Merry Christmas from Pasadena
Posted 31 December, 2007 by Graham in usa
We’ve just spent Christmas in Pasadena, a suburb of Los Angeles. The area we are staying is amazing – each street co-ordinates so each house on that street has the same parkway decorations. Ours are Xmas trees and presents (photo on Flickr). The local association co-ordinating it hands out awards for best overall decorations, best parkway decorations, and best religious decorations.
Christianity sits uneasily with political correctness here – officially everyone celebrates the ‘Holidays’, which includes the Jewish Hanukkah, the invented Kwanzaa, and why not the more ancient Dies Natalis Solis Invicti – but many Christians resent the atheistic-izing of what they perceive as their holiday.
Luckily, the shops don’t take sides, selling inflatable nativity scenes alongside this marvel, Santa’s Jazz Band. Each character stands about human height, the whole inflatable plays jazz music, and each festive musician lights up when his instrument is playing. Happy Holidays!
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Wine tasting in Sideways country
Posted 28 December, 2007 by Graham in usa
With our friends Jim and Valerie we went wine tasting in early December around Los Olivos, North of Los Angeles. This is the area the film Sideways is in / about.
The wine is mostly Rhone varietals, which happens to be some of my favorite grapes.
The photo is of a very friendly bartender / wine consultant at the last wine tasting room we visited, before dinner. The wine here was much better than what I have tasted in Napa.
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Fremont street
Posted 17 December, 2007 by Graham in usa
At the bottom of this picture is Fremont Street, Las Vegas, a pedestrianized street in downtown Vegas, where all the action used to be before the strip took over – now it’s less classy and more fun than the strip, with better odds.
Up there catching your eye is the biggest big screen on the planet, the central part of the Fremont Street Experience. Only in Vegas.
We spent one night in Vegas with fantastic friends we met on our trip in Africa – it’s great to be shown around by locals. Janette won loads of coins from a slot machine.
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A Grand Canyon and a bigger tear
Posted 16 December, 2007 by Graham in usa
The last stop on our South West leg was the Grand Canyon. It’s very, very Grand (in the French sense). When I first set eyes on it it took my breath away.
We hiked the 12 miles (~20 Km) round trip on the Bright Angel Trail (that took my breath away too, especially on the way back up!) to Plateau Point, near the Colorado River which carved the canyon. We passed Bighorn Sheep on the way down and Mule Deer on the way back up.
Grand Canyon National Park was sadly the last of our camping, so we made a big fire to burn all our wood, and had us a personal party involving posh s’mores and good beer.
The morning of the 2nd November 2007, 141 days, or 4 months and 19 days, after we set off from London for Uganda on the 14th of June, we packed our camping gear for the last time of our trip and drove down Route 66 to Las Vegas, feeling very lucky indeed.
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Big boy and Fat boy
Posted 13 December, 2007 by Graham in usa
In New Mexico, between the artists’ towns of Santa Fe and Taos, we visited Los Alamos, home of the atom bomb.
The Manhattan Project was based here, where the first atom bomb was developed between 1941–1946. In the picture are replicas of Big Boy and Fat Boy, the bombs which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, representing the successful outcome of the Manhattan Project.
Today the Los Alamos National Laboratory still controls most the the town and hills around it. There is a security checkpoint on the highway coming into town, and pretty much everyone in town works for the laboratory. This results in Los Alamos being the best educated community in New Mexico, and some great museums.
Aside from the Bradbury Science Museum, pictured, there is a museum about life during the Manhattan Project. The army forcefully acquired the land from a private school for teenage boys. Because a staff list would of shown a suspicious concentration of atomic scientists the staff were given new driving licenses with only numbers in them. This must of confused the local police, who were not told about the project.
Displays in the Bradbury museum wrestle between the bad of atomic weapons and the good of ending World War II (although the war ended in Europe in May 1945, three months before the bombs were dropped), but never convince themselves – the guilt they feel really comes through.
The laboratory is making great efforts to clean up the waste generated during the project and afterwards, and casually dumped before the dangers were well known. They also do lots of non-atomic science, and have some fantastic exhibits about radiation.
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