View from Griffith Park in Los Angeles, looking toward the Hollywood sign.
The main excuse for this trip had been to see my former student Brad Nelson playing minor league baseball. I had watched many of Brad's games in his first full season as a professional, when he had a sensational year-leading all of baseball in runs batted in and being named the Milwaukee Brewers' Minor League Player of the Year. Most of Brad's first season was spent about 350 miles from Algona, with the Beloit Snappers of the Midwest League. While it was a fairly lengthy trip to Beloit, I still basically just got in the car and headed over to Wisconsin on a whim. This year, though, would be different, because now Brad had been promoted to the California League and was playing for the High Desert Mavericks--just down the road from Los Angeles and Las Vegas, but a 1600-mile journey from my home. That kind of a trip requires planning, and I had been planning this Easter getaway since about Christmas. I had also planned to make a second trip out west at Memorial Day. I got some good deals on both airfare and motels, and everything seemed to fit together like clockwork.
Well, as they say, the best laid plans go oft astray. The weekend before I left Brad missed a game because of what the radio announcer called "a tender wrist". That surprised me a bit, because Brad has never been an injury-prone person. In high school his worst injury was a twisted ankle in basketball, and he had made it through a season and a half of pro baseball without any injuries, even while being hit by several pitches and being stuck in the middle of a couple of those "bench-clearing brawls" you hear about. I knew a little wrist tenderness would not keep Brad out of a game, and I got just a little worried about how that might affect my plans.
I worried a bit more the following Monday when Brad's father ... showed up at school. Mr. Nelson talked around what had actually happened, but he strongly implied that it was a lot more serious than "tenderness". Brad would probably be out at least a week, which would mean he would not be playing when I was out in California. He basically tried to talk me out of making the trip, and because of the war, I actually could have changed my airline ticket with comparatively few hassles or penalties. I've never been one to miss out on travel, though, and I knew I'd have a good time one way or another. ...
* * * * *
... I spent the early afternoon running errands all over town-doing laundry, getting a prescription filled at K-Mart, getting the oil changed in my car, depositing my paycheck at the ATM, and returning pop cans at the grocery store ($4.60 worth, to be exact). ...
I had lunch at the McDonalds in Algona. It's McRib month now in Iowa, and I had the temporary special. I still don't understand why they can't make an item as popular as the McRib part of the general menu year-round. I was particularly amused last winter when The Simpsons made fun of that very point in an episode where Homer traveled around the country, following a rib sandwich's temporary appearances in city after city.
* * * * *
I left Algona at about 2:30pm and headed down highway 18. I must say that springtime is definitely not my favorite time of year. I think there are few places uglier than Iowa in April. I drove past mile after mile of bare fields as I made my way eastward. I stopped for coffee at Hardees in Garner, but even so made it to the Mason City airport around 3:30.
Northwest Airlines now lets you complete all your check-in procedures on the internet. I had already printed out boarding passes for my flights to Minneapolis and California. Apparently no one had bothered to inform the counter people at the Mason City airport about the miracles of modern technology, though. I stopped at the counter to double-check that everything was okay, and the man insisted on printing out another copy of the boarding pass for the Minneapolis flight, with essentially the same information. He was pleasant, but it all seemed a bit redundant.
On first glance nothing seems to have changed much at Mason City airport. It's been about ten years since I last flew out of here, and most things looked pretty familiar. They still seem to have the same vending machines and the same empty coffee shop and the same 1970s TV that they've had for decades. United no longer flies here, and Northwest has reduced its schedule, but otherwise most things seem just about the same.
There is one big difference, though: security. It used to be that there was literally no formal security at Mason City airport (or at many of the smaller "airlink" airports, for that matter). The only employees were the people at the counter, who did about triple duty by hauling baggage and then literally going out to the tarmac with flashlights and landing the plane. When I flew to Florida and New Mexico in the '90s, I didn't go through security at Mason City at all. Instead, there was a checkpoint at the end of the concourse in Minneapolis that you had to pass through before you could connect to a "real" plane. In this uneasy age, though, all American airports have security. The area that used to house the United ticketing area now has an X-ray machine and a metal detector. There are four federal employees dedicated to nothing but screening passengers and luggage. Honestly, that seems a big waste of money to me. While they did do a hand search of all the checked luggage, except for about 15 minutes before departure (and there are only four departures a day from Mason City), they basically just stood around and drank coffee.
In addition to the federal security people, a Mason City police officer (a boy fresh out of the academy with ... on his badge) seemed to do nothing but patrol the airport all day. The entire terminal is not much larger than my apartment, so there really wasn't much for this guy to do. He looked at everyone suspiciously at first, but once it became clear we were just passengers, he calmed down a bit. There were signs everywhere advising passengers not to leave their baggage unattended. Many people ignored these signs, and whenever someone would head to the vending machines or the trash can, [the cop] would focus in on their luggage and watch it like a hawk. Occasionally he would take a quick stroll out to the parking lot, but there weren't any real crime happening there either. Mostly he looked very bored. Mason City is a pretty low crime place in general-especially by day-and while I certainly don't want to deny [this man] a job, it seemed a bit wasteful to be employing this guy to be doing literally nothing.
Probably the most amusing thing at the airport was the fact that the new security area took out what used to be the employee entrance to the ticket counter. Now the only way for employees to get there is to literally jump over the baggage scales. Time and time again people would jump back and forth. At one point a little girl had been watching all the employees doing that and decided to give it a try herself-until her mom quickly caught her and put a stop to that.
Northwest advises checking in 90 minutes to 2 hours prior to flights. That was needless advice in Mason City (where they didn't even open up security until about 10 minutes prior to departure), and judging from the lack of lines even in Minneapolis, I think an hour would be more than sufficient. I put my waiting time to productive use, though. While I did a lot of people watching, what I mostly did while I waited at Mason City airport was grade tests. I had given tests in two of my high school classes as well as in my college course this past week, and the airport was really just about the ideal place to get things graded without distractions.
Gradually the passengers for our flight showed up-me, a young mother and her child, a high school athlete who was going to a college try-out somewhere (it made me think of when Brad flew to places like Baylor and Arizona when he was a senior), two businessmen, and an elderly woman. Apparently there was to be one more person. The man at the counter repeatedly paged a "Mr. Christmas". He asked the car rental agent if Mr. Christmas was returning a car, and he even had the cop look through the parking lot for the man. The airport also serves as the inter-city bus stop, and when the bus arrived from Des Moines, and Mr. Christmas wasn't on it, the man turned to the cop and joked "well, I guess Christmas isn't coming this year."
The security people advised us to put anything that might contain metal in special bins to be sent through the X-ray. That even included my wallet, which had a spare key for my car in it. I wondered what effect the X-ray might have on the credit cards in it, but they still seem to work okay. Even without a wallet, I still set off the metal detector. The security agent had me stand on a special mat and gradually waved the wand all over my body. He blamed it on the rivets on my jeans and a small silver neck chain I was wearing (though neither of those would set off the alarm on the return trip). Once he deduced that I had no weapons with me, I claimed my luggage and wallet and was off to board the plane.
The plane was a Saab 340, which is really quite nice. As you face forward, each row has two seats on the left and one on the right. The seats are all leather, which actually is probably a sensible choice for an airplane-they'd be a lot easier to keep clean than most airplane seats. The plane probably seats around 50, but we had almost no one on this flight. The flight had originated in Ft. Dodge, but absolutely no one had boarded there and so far only seven passengers had gotten on in Mason City. In fact, after noticing that we all had been assigned seats toward the front, of the plane, the pilot visited with the stewardess and said she would have to move people or we would have balance problems. She moved the young athlete and one other person back toward the rear to help balance things out.
Finally, just as they were about to close the door for departure, a cheery black businessman bounded up the stairs and announced "Christmas is here!" He was indeed the elusive Mr. "C", and when the stewardess seated him in the back the plane was finally sufficiently balanced that we could take off.
I was seated in seat 2-A, the combination aisle/window seat in the first row back from the door. It was a little disappointing to find out that row 1 had windows, but for some reason row 2 didn't. It's not like there's a great deal to see as you fly above Interstate 35, though, so I really didn't miss out on that much.
The stewardess (a young bimbo ... who really came across as more of a "stewardess" than a "cabin attendant") went through the safety speech and then proceeded to take drink orders from everybody on the plane. When I'd flown this route before they didn't even have a stewardess. Apparently the new federal safety regulations require that there be a flight attendant on every plane, though (not a bad idea, really), and since she was there she was going to serve us drinks. Mason City to Minneapolis is really a very short flight, but it doesn't take that long to serve drinks to eight people.
Another change due to security was that I could no longer look up into the cockpit as we flew. That was some of the best entertainment on small flights in the past. Now, though, those secure cockpit doors are in place on every commercial planes, including the ones that fly to places like Mason City. The door appears to have no handle or opening mechanism whatsoever from the main cabin, and I don't know at all how the pilot opens it up to get in there in the first place.
We began to taxi promptly at 5:15, exactly the departure time shown on my ticket. We made it to the end of the runway and then parked. The pilot said we had been denied take-off by the tower in Minneapolis. We would have a 15-minute delay, but we still expected an on-time arrival. That's because the schedule allows a full hour for the flight, but the actual flying time from MCW to MSP is just 33 minutes. We actually left the ground at 5:36pm, even though in the official logs of Northwest Airlines departure was recorded as 5:13-when Mr. Christmas finally showed and they closed the cabin doors.
It had been a gloomy day on the ground all day, but we quickly rose above the clouds into bright sunshine. After about 10 minutes the pilot briefly turned off the seatbelt light, and the stewardess began serving drinks. She apologized for the coffee, saying it had "been through four legs already". My bet is that this same plane just flies back and forth from Ft. Dodge/Mason City to Minneapolis all day, so the coffee may have gone back to the early morning departure. It was surprisingly good, though. They stored it in one of those vacuum containers, and it while it was a bit on the strong side, it still tasted remarkably fresh.
With the drinks the stewardess gave each passenger two tiny bags of pretzels. It amused me that they were manufactured by "Pretzels, Inc." (would it ever have occurred to you that a company would actually have that name). Their website (pretzels-inc.com) says that they are "the world's largest manufacturer of private label pretzels" (like these that said "Northwest Airlines" on them), the "most technologically advanced" pretzel bakery in America, and apparently the biggest industry in Bluffton, Indiana. The pretzels actually were quite good, with a distinctive buttery flavor.
At 5:54 the pilot announced that we should prepare for landing. The stewardess had just finished serving drinks, and she scrambled to pick up the trash. As we descended she filled out an inventory sheet listing every beverage and bag of pretzels on the plane. It intrigued me that in addition to soft drinks and coffee they also had alcoholic beverages on board. I can't imagine why anyone would want a cocktail on a half-hour flight, but apparently some people do.
We touched down at 6:10pm, taxied very fast but otherwise had a very smooth landing. Even though this was a relatively small plane, they hooked up a jetway for us to exit through. I gathered my things and quickly exited the plane.
I was impressed with the renovations they have made at the Minneapolis airport. It was at best utilitarian before; now it is really quite pleasant. They've expanded things greatly, so that now concourses extend on all four sides of the parking ramps. They also have skywalks connecting the concourses midway through, so you don't have to go all the way back to the terminal to get from one concourse to another. There are moving sidewalks everywhere to speed people on their way, and they've re-carpeted the whole building and installed more upscale furniture in many locations.
Those moving sidewalks definitely give the place a personality. They were obviously manufactured in the United Kingdom, because their warning announcements are given in a disembodied female British voice. All over the airport, it feels like you're hearing some stern computerized nanny saying "Caution: you are nearing the end of the moving walkway". The vowels are particularly British, with nearly a long "o" replacing the "au" in "caution" and the "a" in "walkway", sounds closer to a long "a" than "e" in "nearing" and "end", and a distinctive long "u" ("you", not "oo") in "moving". The announcements appear to be made quite randomly, with no regard whatsoever to whether anyone is in fact nearing the end of the moving walkway.
Those announcements are in English only, and so is almost everything else at Minneapolis airport. There are a few directional signs in Japanese, but too bad for you if you speak Spanish or French. Even the security signs that warn you not to joke about bringing a bomb on the plane, which were bilingual in Mason City, were in English only in Minnesota.
* * * * *
[The flight to California] was apparently over-booked. The gate clerk asked if there were three or four volunteers who would be willing to fly out tomorrow morning in exchange for a $400 travel certificate, meals, and a hotel room. If pressed, I certainly could have volunteered. There was nothing pressing in my itinerary that required me to be in California tonight. However, I had rental car and motel reservations already arranged, and my preference was definitely to deal with the infamous L.A. freeways at night, rather than at rush hour. So I just kept my mouth shut, and before long enough other people had volunteered to fly out tomorrow.
It was indeed a full flight, with literally every seat packed. The plane was an Airbus 320, the first time I'd ever flown on the French-made aircraft. It's clean and surprisingly spacious, even with every seat full. The coach seats are three across, and I was thankful to have pre-assigned myself an aisle seat (23-C) when I checked in on-line. A rather overweight gentleman was in the middle seat across the aisle from me, and he was obviously uncomfortable.
We left the gate at 8:59 (the schedule said 8:55, and the official flight log said 9:02). We actually took off at 9:12. The captain gave the flight pattern (flying over Pierre, Cheyenne, Steamboat Springs, and Bryce Canyon). He said assumed everyone would be sleeping, and he said he'd wake us when we were over Las Vegas and it was time to begin our descent. He may have thought people would sleep, but absolutely no one did. This was one of the most active and talkative flights I've ever been on-not a negative thing really, just an observation. Pretty much everyone had their mouth open the entire flight. People were forever walking back and forth to the restrooms, and some people were literally doing exercises in the aisle.
My seatmates were especially talkative. 23-A was occupied by a woman who was in the process of moving from Buffalo to Rancho Cucamonga. Her husband had already been transferred to a new job in Pomona, California, and she had flown back and forth six times in the past month as she finalized arrangements for the move. It was quickly clear that six plane tickets was to her about what a subway fare might be to most people. They had basically bribed their son to agree to the move by giving him a new car. She was surprised to find "reasonable" housing (in the half-million range), but she was disappointed that the lot was very small. I should have such problems.
In 23-B was a chronically happy man about my age (so was the woman, for that matter). He had grown up in Chino, California back, he said, when it was a little town that was nowhere near L.A. Today Chino is right in the heart of the suburbs and apparently just isn't the place it used to be. ... He was flying to California to visit his children, who were apparently going to meet him at a hotel and then going to Disneyland. He apparently does these formal family visits every two weeks. It made me wonder if there was anyone else who finds plane fare expensive. It would seem to me that people who can afford to fly so frequently should be flying first class, not crammed in a center seat in coach. I got a very good deal on airfare, but I was still going to be counting pennies on this trip, and at that it would use up my whole tax refund.
23-B was the first person I'd found who had actually heard of Adelanto (add-uh-LONN-tow), my ultimate destination on this trip. I'm sort of the resident expert on Brad's career around school, and mostly when people ask me where he's playing, I say "in the middle of nowhere, halfway between L.A. and Vegas"-which is pretty close to being true. The gentleman next to me identified Adelanto as being on Highway 395, which I knew only from studying maps before this trip and located it in the Victor Valley, California's fastest-growing urban area, which includes the nearby towns of Victorville (my brother John's birthplace), Hesperia, and Apple Valley. On hearing Victorville, the woman mentioned that she had looked for homes there, but she felt the commute would be longer than her husband wanted. ... The man mentioned that the Victor Valley had just about the only affordable housing in L.A.--L.A. in this case being extended over 100 miles east and over a pass.
There was no meal service on this flight. We were served one drink and a single bag of pretzels. The woman said that airline pretzels were all she had eaten today. I had been grading some more tests and was pleased to finish precisely when the drink cart reached our row. I sipped some grapefruit juice as we continued flying westward.
I had taken a single book with me that I picked up on Amazon.com a few months back. It was called The Bus, with the subtitle "Cosmic Ejaculations of the Daily Mind in Transit". Written by a high school English teacher in Los Angeles, it uses a cross-town ride on the bus as a metaphor for life in that city. It was a bit too pretentious and "literary", but nevertheless made a fascinating read--quite a bit more interesting than listening to my seatmates babble on.
The pilot made good on his promise of "waking" us over Las Vegas, though if anything the cabin got a bit quieter at that point. He pointed out the "beautiful neon lights" on one side of the plane and a "lovely full moon over the mountains" on the other. While I appreciated the legroom of my aisle seat, it was too bad to see neither of those things.
We landed in Ontario, California at 10:30pm Pacific time (12:30 back in Iowa) and pulled up to the gate right on time at 10:40. Since I had only a carry-on, I skipped the mad rush for baggage claim and headed outside to catch a shuttle bus to the "ground transportation center". While Ontario is far from the world's largest airport, it has an extremely complicated shuttle bus system. Instead of just making a loop-which would be the sensible thing to do-different buses lead to different places. You have to make sure you're on the right bus (in my case "G") to get to the right place. Eventually the correct bus pulled up, and I and the man who had sat next to me headed off to the combination rent-a-car building and city bus stop.
The bus driver was a ... woman who had lived most of her life in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles. She had driven an MTA city bus in L.A. for 30 years and then retired to Moreno Valley, a distant suburb closer to Palm Springs than Los Angeles. She said "it's so boring there, I just had to have something to do", so she took the job driving the airport shuttle. She welcomed us to "my nice little airport", which I suppose it is--compared to LAX. In my book, though, any airport with two large terminals and a "ground transportation center" doesn't exactly qualify as little.
I had never realized renting a car was so easy. I had reserved a car on line, and all I did was show up at the Alamo desk, sign a couple of quick forms, and head out to the lot to get my car. I figured I'd at least have to show my insurance card or something, but all the man at the desk cared about was that I had a driver's license and a credit card. He charged the card for $104.78 ($87.96, plus a wide range of taxes) and gave me directions to Interstate 10.
I gave the car (a Mitsubishi Lancer ...) a quick once over, started it up, confirmed the directions with the woman at the exit, and was on my way. Quickly I realized that driving in California was not the same as driving in Iowa. There's little things like stupid spikes that separate lanes on every road, speed limits painted in the lanes (sometimes different in different lanes), arrows pointing every which way on the pavement, and directional signs that don't reflect headlights at night. The freeways are mostly four lanes in each direction (even 100 miles out into the suburbs), which also takes some getting used to. There's also the annoying fact that California's freeways have no exit numbers and very few advance signs, so you really have no clue how far away anything is.
Then there's the fact that Californians drive FAST-way too fast, if you ask me. Virtually every speed limit is faster in California than its equivalent in the Midwest. For instance 40 mph is the standard speed in quiet residential areas, it's 50 on suburban strips, 60 is official on two-lane highways, and 70 is the speed limit on freeways in both urban and rural areas. Even official guidebooks, though, will tell you that it's standard to drive 10 miles over the posted limit everywhere in California. In Iowa if someone does much more than 5 mph over the speed limit, they're not surprised if they get a ticket, but the magic number really does seem to be 10 mph in California-which means people drive past children at play doing 50mph and folks go careening down jam-packed freeways at 80. At night they go even faster. I was doing 75, and people were sailing by me like I was standing still. Frankly, that's just too fast for me. I think driving should be relaxing, and I find it really hard to relax when I have to clutch the steering wheel for dear life because I'm going so fast.
Compounding things was the fact that the heater in the Lancer was turned on full blast. It was a little nippy outside, but certainly not what I'd call cold. Obviously it was too cold for the previous driver, though. As is invariably true in unfamiliar cars, it was not immediately obvious how to work the heat controls. I didn't want to take my mind of driving, so after struggling for a while with the controls, I just gave up and cracked the window open to balance the temperature.
I had memorized that the exit I wanted was Sierra Avenue. I also knew it was 3 - 4 miles past the interchange with I-15. I passed I-15 almost immediately after leaving the airport, and before I knew it I saw a non-reflective sign that said "SIERRA AVE. - 1/4 MI". I started to move into the exit lane, but then I realized it was blocked off by cones-not any major cones, mind you, but the kind of thing you'd see in gym class in grade school. At the very end of the ramp I saw a non-reflective sign (it was the signs, not my lights that were the problem, by the way) that said "RAMP CLOSED". There was construction equipment at the end of the ramp, and even though nobody seemed to be working, I didn't want to take my chances driving around the sign. I drove down to the next exit and used the overpass to make a U-turn and go back the other way. The westbound exit to Sierra was also closed (this time with a sign that actually did reflect, but still with cones that would stop nothing). I went west one exit (the exits are exactly a mile apart through most of urban California-even though they think they're too frequent to number) and ended up taking what amounted to an access road (Valley Boulevard, though calling it a "boulevard" is being overly generous) back to Sierra.
At the junction with Sierra, I could see my motel. Unfortunately I could also see that the southbound lanes of that avenue were also closed, this time with both cones and police tape. I kept heading east on Valley and eventually pulled into the back entrance of a McDonalds that was next to the motel. I figured if worse came to worse I could park at McDonalds and walk over to the motel to ask what to do. I quickly was funneled to the exit for the drive through (fortunately the place was closed), which led to the northbound lanes of Sierra. There was no traffic, though, so I decided to take my chances and turn left. I headed the wrong way down a six-lane street for about half a block so I could finally turn into the entrance of the motel.
The main check-in was closed, so I had to use the night window, a high-security affair that made it hard to communicate. Apparently the type of room I had reserved was unavailable, because many of the rooms were having their carpets shampooed. I had requested a room with one bed and was instead given one with two beds. The clerk ... also apologized that the room was on the second floor, although that would really have been my preference anyway.
The main question at check-in was the license number of my car. Not normally driving rental cars, I hadn't memorized things, so I had to pop outside and then back in to jot down 4ZUK104. Just after writing it down, I realized that the plate number was also recorded on the key chain.
The license number amused me, because it reminded me of things I actually teach. In two of my classes we do problems that deal with the number of combinations of license plates that can be produced from varying combinations of letters and numbers. It's not hard (simple multiplication) to figure out that there are exactly 17,576,000 possible license plates that can be made with the standard three letters, three numbers used by most states. You could go up to 35 million if you reverse the letters and numbers. Every state throws out some combinations (like the ones that spell out dirty words), but that's still way more license plates than most states will ever need. It's not enough for California, though. This state has more people than Canada-many of whom own multiple cars. By tossing that extra number at the front, California creates over 175 million possible license plates.
I was staying at a Motel 6, one of the oldest properties in that chain. It was perfectly clean and had been fairly well maintained, but it was certainly nothing luxurious. Probably the worst thing about the place was that there was a security guard (he looked like a stereotypical fat Irish cop) walking through the parking lot all night long. I really don't think there was any reason he needed to be there (the surrounding neighborhood was entirely commercial and certainly didn't seem unsafe), but you had to figure there must be a reason they found it necessary to have security. It reminded me of the motel where Margaret and I stayed in Maine when her pick-up got wrecked in Canada. They had security cameras there-a common thing today, but new then. They definitely made me feel less secure, not more ... and this guard gave me that same feeling of uneasiness. Topping it off, I had just heard [Brad's father] recount that at the Red Roof Inn in Victorville (the hotel where he had stayed and where many of the players on Brad's team live) there had been muggings in the parking lot. You can bet I checked every corner of the stairwell as I headed from the car up to my room.
Between the flights and the slight uneasiness, I tossed and turned quite a bit. It was after midnight when I finally got to sleep.
I was wide awake around 6:00 and quickly showered. Since I really hadn't unpacked anything, it took no time whatsoever to get ready to be on my way. I spent a few minutes watching the TV news (most interesting was the traffic report-they were already well into rush hour at 6am), and then set off. I soon discovered that there was a back alley behind McDonalds that was how I was supposed to enter the motel. That didn't really matter, though, because the Sierra Avenue construction was apparently only at night. The road was open and jammed with traffic as I left. I turned right and headed north about a mile to the Metrolink commuter rail station.
I had originally planned to take the 7:07 train into Los Angeles. Since I was wide awake, though, I figured I might as well take the 6:31 train instead. I parked the Lancer and made my way to the platform.
To ride Metrolink you need a ticket, which can only be purchased from extremely intimidating vending machines. If you read very carefully, the machines sort of explain the steps involved, but it's definitely not all that logical. ... [After making a series of decisions] the machine finally asks you for payment. It says it accepts cash, coins, credit cards, and ATM cards. I figured my ATM card was a reasonable choice for a $15.75 ticket (about double what the equivalent fare would be on Metra in Chicagoland), so I inserted it in the card reader. A little arm came across the card reader slot and locked the card in place, so no one could take it while it was being used. The machine flashed something on the screen that I couldn't read, because it was obscured by graffiti. I assumed it was asking for my PIN number, so I typed the appropriate four digits and pressed "ENTER". After pausing a moment, the little arm then opened, and the machine flashed a message that my card had been rejected. (I could make out "JECTED" in the read-out window.) That was hardly likely, since I had just deposited my paycheck yesterday. I'd had problems with ATMs in California before, though, so it wasn't a complete surprise. Fortunately I had cash with me as well, so I put $20 into the bill accepter-just as the train pulled up to the platform. Almost instantly a tiny ticket, a quarter, and four golden dollars fell into the dispenser below. Everything took just long enough, though, that I just missed the train.
I had about half an hour with basically nothing to do, so I decided to explore beautiful downtown Fontana. Almost nothing was open, but I still had an interesting little walk. Fontana obviously used to be a town in its own right, albeit probably not a very large one. It has an extensive but almost all one-story downtown area. The buildings look like they date to the '30s (wasn't it California they went to in The Grape of Wrath?), and most obviously used to house a higher class of businesses than they do today. Nowadays most of the businesses cater to a Mexican clientele, and it's heavy on dollar stores, used clothing, religious artifacts, and hole-in-the-wall restaurants. It reminded me of Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago, but without apartments above the stores. The downtown was probably built for a town of 10,000, and it seems remarkably out of place in a sprawling suburb ten times that size. While, surprisingly, there were no empty buildings downtown, it's not really where the action is today. Nowadays the real commercial district of Fontana is south of downtown, near the motel I stayed at and east along Foothill Boulevard (old route 66) and Arrow Highway. I could see the strip at Arrow stringing on for what seemed like forever.
Something that sets Fontana (and most of California, for that mater) apart from other centers of strip business is that its strip has sidewalks. In spite of its reputation, California is really quite pedestrian friendly. There are sidewalks everywhere in greater L.A.-and pretty much everywhere else in California, too. Most of the suburbs are older, so they've had time to grow into amenities. Urban California is also a highly regulated place (as contrasted with the libertarian South, for instance), and the local towns felt obliged to assess individuals for things like sidewalks that serve the greater public good.
While downtown Fontana is quite old, the residential areas immediately surrounding it are surprisingly new. It's as if somebody decided to level the original homes and put up new ones. Like far too much of California, much of Fontana is divided into "communities" rather than neighborhoods. "Community" in California is the euphemism for a condominium development. Each "community" has a name given to it by its developer. There are almost always walls surrounding the entire community (usually covered with graffiti), so you can barely see just how tacky the individual homes are. Fontana's communities mostly featured tan and pink stucco rowhouses, with postage stamp front yards separated by stucco-covered walls. A few are secure communities (you have to stop your car at the main entrance and punch a code before you can drive in), while others are pretty much like stucco versions of the same abominations you see in Ankeny or Inver Grove Heights. While they're expensive (starting around $150,000), they also look remarkably like the new public housing Chicago is putting up to replace the old "project" towers.
I find it hard to imagine what attracts people to live in these places. If I lived here, I think the walls would quickly drive me insane. I grew up with an older version of suburbia (ranch homes and split-levels on open lots), and I liked it a lot better. I remember as a child running through all the back yards of the neighborhood, and I really can't imagine growing up in a place of walled-in lots. So many people seem so paranoid about security today, even as the crime rate is steadily dropping. I can't imagine trading the freedom of an open yard for the security of living in what amounts to a prison.
I made one stop in my walk around Fontana. I stopped in to the AM/PM convenience store. In addition to selling Chevron gas at $2.09 a gallon (a pretty typical price for the area), they had all the standard convenience store items. I spent $2.18 on coffee and a danish and then made my way back to the Metrolink platform.
I had brought a lined suede jacket with me, and I wore it while I walked around Fontana. It had rained fairly hard last night, and it was still overcast, damp, and cool. The jacket was really too heavy, though, and I got quite warm from my brief walk. I decided to leave the jacket in the car and spend the day in short sleeves. That made me a minority of one on the platform. Everybody else had a jacket; some were even wearing heavy parkas and gloves. The temperature was in the upper 50s and there wasn't much wind, so most everybody seemed a bit overprotected from the elements. I got some strange looks, but while I occasionally was a bit chilly, it was definitely the right decision in the end.
The 7:07 train was 3 minutes late-kind of annoying, given that the one I missed was right on time. Metrolink runs double-decker trains that look like newer versions of the Metra trains in Chicago. They're actually larger than the Metra trains, since they have a full upper level, rather than just single seats upstairs. The seats are all arranged in conversation groups of four, with two seats facing two other seats. Some of them are centered on a small table (sort of like the dinner table in a camper), while others just face each other. It's really a pretty stupid seating design, since virtually nobody on a commuter train is traveling in groups of four. The vast majority on this train were alone, and most of them (this was near the start of the line) had positioned themselves and their briefcases so they alone occupied the whole grouping of four seats. As the train filled up, people had to ask these rude people to move their things so they could have a seat. Eventually almost every seat was filled, mostly with groups of four perfect strangers facing each other.
Metrolink is one of those things that isn't supposed to exist in Los Angeles-a perfectly good and heavily used alternative to the automobile. The system was started around 1990 to help relieve congestion and reduce air pollution. (I'm not sure it's really done either of those things, but it certainly hasn't hurt things either.) The train apparently caught on big after the Northridge earthquake in 1994 collapsed key bridges on many of the area freeways, and it has become even more popular this past year as gas prices have skyrocketed. (At $2.09 a gallon, even the outrageous $15.75 round-trip train fare doesn't seem so bad.) Today Metrolink runs seven different lines. Six of them run from the distant suburbs (50 to 100 miles away in every direction) to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. The seventh connects San Bernardino and Riverside (both just east of Fontana) with Anaheim and Oceanside (on the coast just north of San Diego). Compared to Metra or New Jersey Transit, it's still a very small system. The trains run mostly at rush hour (on some lines only at rush hour), and there are few enough of them that you have to really be aware of the schedule. The trains run full though, and they move quite a bit faster than freeway traffic. They're also convenient from a tourist's perspective; it provided the perfect way to make a day trip into L.A.
The first major point of interest we passed on Metrolink was the California Speedway, which is apparently well known to those who follow auto racing. The track is built on the former site of the Kaiser Steel Mill, which was Fontana's raison d'être for decades. They don't make steel here anymore; now they pollute the air with internal combustion engines. It was hard to fathom just how enormous the racetrack was. The track itself extends for about four city blocks. Surrounding it is a sea of parking that dwarfs the lots at the biggest mall you've ever been to.
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Just beyond the speedway we entered Rancho Cucamonga, one of those places with a funny name that I've always wanted to say I've been to. My first greeting to the place locals just call "Rancho" was a collection of junkyards bigger than the parking area of the racetrack. Beyond there we saw the unfinished backside of an office park, and then the train stopped at an enormous park-and-ride that extended for three city blocks.
Rancho Cucamonga is the nerve center for the so-called "Inland Empire", a collection of distant suburbs that are almost cities in their own right. Combined with San Bernardino, Riverside, Ontario, Fontana, and literally dozens of lesser suburbs, there are over a million people in the immediate area. While it's a little further away and a little larger, this area is to Los Angeles what the Fox Valley cities (Naperville, Aurora, Geneva, and Elgin) are to Chicago. The people here would like to think that they live in a place that isn't L.A., but there's no break in the urban sprawl from here to the ocean.
It amazes me just how far people commute in southern California. Past Rancho Cucamonga (about 50 miles from L.A.) the train was pretty much full, but lots of people had gotten on before I did. ...
Although it's suburban, Rancho Cucamonga is densely populated. The city covers about the same land area as Mason City (about six miles, square), but it has five times the population (around150,000 people). When I was in southern California two years ago I was astounded at just how closely packed everything was. I should have been prepared this time, but it was again quite a shock. If Chicagoland were built to the same density as Los Angeles, it would probably all fit in Cook County. There's no such thing as wasted land here. In the Midwest landscaping is a big deal. The equivalent of these business complexes in Naperville are set in true office parks, full of trees and spacious lawns. Here there might be a couple of ornamental palm trees beside the entrance, but otherwise just a concrete wall around a parking lot. The homes are packed just as densely. Some of them are truly palatial (with signs at the "community" entrances advertising prices "starting in the low 700s"), but even the grandest are crammed on microscopic lots.
After Rancho Cucamonga, Metrolink stops in Upland and then in the stupidly named twin suburbs of Claremont and Montclair. (It surprises me the former isn't spelled "Clairmont".) Then we stopped at Pomona, Covina, Baldwin Park, and El Monte (pronounced in slaughtered Spanish like "the full monty").
For a large part of this distance the train ran down the median of I-10. That freeway is another example of how no space is wasted around here. It's just about the only urban interstate I've ever seen that was built right at ground level. There are five lanes in each direction, four local lanes and a single express lane. Unlike in other cities, though, there isn't even a wall separating the local and express lanes; they just have more spikes than usual separating the "diamond lane" from the other lanes. There are also no shoulders on either the left or right, just a concrete wall right next to the driving lane. I suppose they removed the shoulder to add an extra lane, but I'd think it would be very claustrophobic to drive on either the far left or right.
Being built at grade makes I-10 a unique freeway in other ways, too. Every through street (one about every half mile) has a partial interchange with the interstate, but a number of them aren't complete interchanges. Instead the streets essentially end at the interstate. Westbound interstate traffic has exit and entrance ramps to and from the north, while eastbound traffic has exits and entrances to and from the south. Because of this you'll frequently see the exact same businesses on both sides of the highway. I even saw two different Target stores directly across from each other. Where there are complete interchanges the cross street tunnels under the freeway, and even there the exits are awkward and abrupt. Traffic exiting the freeway essentially makes a right turn (at 15 mph) to enter the cross street.
For most of this trip my companion across the table was a Metrolink employee, a Hispanic woman ... who did her hair and make-up as we traveled. At Montclair a friend of hers (an Asian with a department store nametag ...) joined us and proceeded to do not only hair and make-up, but also her nails. I felt a bit self-conscious, having barely done anything to pretty myself up for the day.
[The Metrolink employee] had just returned from visiting her boyfriend's family in Chicago. She had a bag full of pictures and postcards, and as the two ladies went through their beauty ritual, they admired the pretty views and discussed the trip. I got a sense of just how removed people in one part of the country are from another when [the Asian woman] admired a postcard view of Lake Shore Drive and asked what ocean was shown in the picture. It was also fascinating that these women had the perception that Chicago was much larger than Los Angeles. In fact they were debating which was larger, Chicago or New York. The "second city" is, of course, in third place nationwide. The city proper is quite a bit smaller than L.A. and not even close to New York. If it's metro areas that are being compared, then New York and Los Angeles are pretty closed to being tied for first place, with Chicago again a distant third. The ladies' misperception probably comes from the fact that Chicago comes across as much more of a city-in both a positive and negative sense-than L.A. It has a much larger and substantial downtown, and the brick rowhouses that make up the Chicago neighborhoods just seem more urban than the "ticky-tacky" bungalows where most of Los Angeles lives. Then there's that difference in density. Chicagoland covers about the same land area as the populated part of southern California, even though it has about half the population.
The next-to-last station on our journey was Cal State-L.A. This is an underground station, apparently built beneath a major bus terminal. The platform is shorter than standard, and an announcement advised that passengers must go to one of the first three cars to exit. This was the only station where more people exited than entered. Some of those who got off seemed to be associated with the college in one way or another, but most appeared to be headed for the bus terminal to transfer to another destination.
We reached Union Station at 8:15, about five minutes before the scheduled arrival. Even though we were arriving early, [the Asian woman] was apparently late for an appointment. She called someone on her cell phone and used "the train is running late" as her excuse for being tardy herself. That's probably a convenient excuse under any circumstances in a big city. You could just as easily say "traffic is backed up" if you were driving. It's believable, and something that you really can't control.
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I made it to Gateway Center, the modern indoor plaza that connects the train station with the subway station. There was a few... changes here. The signs and maps had all been changed in anticipation of this summer's opening of the gold line, the new elevated train that will connect downtown with Pasadena. That will extend the L.A. transit system to four lines and over 100 miles of track. There are two more rail lines in the planning stages, plus an extension of the gold line to Claremont (remember the place I'd just come from). In another ten years they'll have just as extensive of a rail system as any other American city, except perhaps New York.
... I bought a bag of subway tokens. ... The base fare on trains and buses in Los Angeles is $1.35, which is already just about the cheapest fare in the country. Tokens, though, sell in bags of ten for $9, which brings the price down to just $.90 a ride. L.A. has to be just about the last place in America to use tokens, but it fits with their "honor system" non-electronic fare collection system.
The tokens are larger than a nickel, but smaller than a quarter. They are like the two-metal coins you see in foreign countries, brass on the outside and fake silver on the inside. The silver center says "LA" on one side and "ONE" on the other. Both sides of the brass part are ornately embossed. One side shows pictures of a bus and a subway car and says "GOOD FOR BASE FARE". The other side says "LOS ANGELES" and has a stylized downtown skyline and oak leaves.
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When I was here before the subway came across as shiny and new. It isn't anymore. It's sort of like all those Wal-Mart stores that are lovely when they open but rapidly start looking seedy. Subway ridership has apparently skyrocketed since the extension to the San Fernando Valley, which was just a couple months old when I was here before. You can tell the trains are used heavily. There is graffiti scratched on the windows and seatbacks now, and some of the fabric is stained or torn. The sound system sometimes fades in and out, and you hear more screeching when the trains round a curve. Some of the artwork in the stations has been vandalized (a problem I could have predicted when there are no turnstiles and no security guards), and things just look a bit grimier overall. While the system was built to look glitzy, it has not aged well, and it has obviously suffered from the change in financial priorities going from the Clinton to the Bush administration. All in all, the system today-while not really seedy-seems less like an amusement park ride and more like precisely what it is, a subway.
The subway is still perfectly serviceable, though, and it got me where I wanted to go. My destination this morning was Hollywood & Western, a hideously ugly station (every surface covered in random-colored bathroom tile) that has aged better than most of the rest. I walked upstairs and emerged in "Thai Town", an Asian enclave at the east end of Hollywood.
My plan was to do some hiking in Griffith Park, an enormous city park that encompasses much of the chain of mountains that separates the main part of L.A. from the San Fernando Valley to the north. To get there I walked north on Western Avenue, almost straight uphill. It reminded me of the walk our group did to get to the Paris Metro last summer after we saw the Eiffel Tower. As I huffed and puffed I quickly became glad I had left my jacket back in Fontana.
While I'd never been to this exact area before, it looked remarkably familiar. There were the same apartment buildings that fill every street in Hollywood, with some convenience stores and cheap motels thrown in for good measure. Things were definitely more downscale than they were a couple of miles west (the east end of Hollywood Boulevard has been slower to gentrify), where Margaret and I stayed, but the overall feeling was still very much the same.
The hike leveled off a bit at Los Feliz Boulevard, which on maps appears to run at the base of the mountains, but in reality is probably 300 feet higher than downtown. Los Feliz is a true boulevard, with a median full of flowers and palm trees. It is lined with gorgeous homes and important-looking buildings, including the consulates of several nations. This area reminds me a lot of the garden district in New Orleans. The homes are a little bit newer, but they are still old enough to look grand. It made for a beautiful walk. Two things pleasantly surprised me here, compared with what I saw in the suburbs. First, pretty much everything on Los Feliz had a true lawn. They weren't exactly spacious, but at least they were there. Secondly, instead of walls they had wrought iron fences (again reminding me of New Orleans). There was still security, but at least you could see something from the sidewalk.
Griffith Park starts just north of Los Feliz. Normally to get to the trail I wanted to take, a hiker would cut across the south end of the park to the famous Griffith Observatory (the gold-domed palace you've probably seen in countless movies). The observatory is closed for three years for renovations, though, and you're not supposed to hike on the trails leading up to it. Many people obviously did--and it would have been much shorter than the route I took--but being the mostly law-abiding person I generally am, I stuck to the main road.
Even though it took forty-five minutes of uphill hiking just to reach the trailhead, I'm actually rather glad I took the route I did. It was both gorgeous and fascinating. It made me think back to high school, when every other year we had a program of mini-courses (it was the '70s, after all) called "Ever-Changing View". That's really what I saw as I walked up Western Canyon Drive. Literally every turn brought something new and often totally unexpected. The south end of the park is a rainforest, albeit an artificial one. Recycled water from the observatory supports an ecosystem of lush ferns and hardwood trees that were planted here as a WPA project in mid 1930s. Apparently part of the renovation is to replace the watering system, which has been damaged by earthquakes and hasn't been touched since it was installed. North of there the landscape changes a dense pine forest that looks a lot like the front range in Colorado or the Canadian Shield in Ontario. As you gain in elevation, the vegetation thins out to scraggly junipers like you'd see in western Colorado or Utah. That's about the elevation (around 1000 feet) where the observatory is. The "official" Mt. Hollywood trail starts just north of the observatory and continues the vertical climb. It follows a dirt fire road up past the junipers to an ecosystem of desert plants-yucca, sage, and even true cactus. At the very top (1,625 feet) there is no vegetation at all, just bare rock.
Besides the constantly varying vegetation, there are gorgeous views of the city. Downtown is southeast of Griffith Park, and it is definitely best viewed from a distance. Los Angeles doesn't have a large downtown, but it does have some lovely and distinctive tall buildings. To the west is the famous Hollywood sign. I saw this from a distance when I was here before; now I felt like I was right up next to it (even though it was still about a mile away). Looking to the south you could see the city sweeping on for miles. If I looked carefully, I could even catch a glimpse of the ocean, about twenty miles away. North of here the city swept on across the San Fernando Valley until it hit the wall of even higher mountains to the north. There's a breathtaking view in almost any direction. It's basically like looking out from the top of the Sears Tower--though there you don't have to walk to the top.
You might notice one thing I didn't mention in describing the views: smog. There wasn't any. When I was here in August I mentioned that I really didn't notice smog except when I looked off in the distance. In April there just wasn't any smog-period. I'm sure the city had the same rain we got in Fontana last night, and that probably washed what might have been there away. I'm glad it did. It certainly made it easier to hike and made for a much more pleasant view of the city.
Sixteen hundred twenty-five feet may not seem like much of a "mountain", but Mt. Hollywood and the surrounding peaks really do give a feeling of being true mountains. That's probably because that they actually do rise all of that height, rather than just going a little higher than already high surroundings. There are much higher mountains not far from here (the pass I'd cross later today to get to Victorville is surrounded by snow-capped 11,000 foot peaks), but Mt. Hollywood and the other San Gabriels rise steeply from sea level to high, impressive peaks. I probably over-exerted myself making this hike, but I'm really glad I did.
The top of Mt. Hollywood is rather an anti-climax. A lone brass benchmark at the center of a dusty rock marks the highest point in the city. I paused here a while to take in the views and then turned around and made my way back down (at a much faster clip) to the observatory.
For variety I took a different way back from the observatory. The main park road passes through a long tunnel under Mt. Hollywood. I walked through it (over 300 steps across, I counted) and then continued down Vermont Canyon Road, the southeast entrance to the park. This is much more developed and not nearly so pretty as the western part . It looks like-well-a city park. There are tennis courts and playgrounds and picnic areas and a golf course and a swimming pool and an outdoor theatre ... and ... and ... The one thing I really cared about was that there were restrooms. There were (actually, public restrooms seem to be everywhere in L.A.-other cities could take lessons). I used them, got a drink at a nearby fountain, and headed out again.
South of Griffith Park is the neighborhood called Los Feliz, named after the boulevard which was in turn named after Rancho Los Feliz, home of one of the original families that settled the city. Unlike the suburbs, L.A. itself does have real neighborhoods, and Los Feliz is a gorgeous one. Probably because it's so nice, this is one of the trendiest and most exclusive places to live. The neighborhood's residents allegedly include Madonna, though the closest I saw to the superstar was her namesake enshrined in statuary in front of a church. What I did see were Asian and Hispanic gardeners grooming small, but immaculate lawns and weeding some of the most gorgeous flower gardens I have ever seen. The homes here are small, but obviously quite nice. If I had the cash, I could be quite comfortable living here. It was just about the only place I saw where the front yards were open to the street, and sometimes it was just hedges (not walls) that separated one home from the neighbors. I'd guess that most of these date to the 1930s. Guide books describe the architecture as "arts and crafts" and discuss Frank Lloyd Wright influences. I can't say I saw his hand in this (for the most part I liked these homes better than his work), but they were some lovely houses.
I walked down Vermont Avenue, and before too long I reached Los Feliz Boulevard, which here serves as a miniature "downtown" for the neighborhood. There's actually probably more shopping here than there is in L.A.'s real downtown, which is pretty much a place of bankers and lawyers, rather than shoppers. The area was a bit too trendy for my tastes, but it was interesting to walk through.
Eventually I made it back to Hollywood Boulevard. I'd walked about nine miles all together this morning, so I decided it was more than appropriate to take a break and treat myself to lunch. I passed the Fatburger restaurant I had eaten at two years ago. I had liked their food then, and I decided it was as good a place as any for lunch today. Fatburger is a bit on the pricey side for fast food, but their food is really excellent. I had their smallest burger (the baby fat), a bowl of chili, and an enormous glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade. (Hopefully my Catholic friends will forgive me for eating beef on the holiest Friday in Christendom. The only other option on the menu here was fish tacos, and that sounded far less than appealing.) I downed the entire lemonade (bigger than the super size cups you get around here) while I was waiting for the hamburger to be cooked--can you tell I was sweating just a little? The food was again outstanding. It's probably a good thing the chain only exists in California.
The background music on this page is the cowboy classic "Don't Fence Me In", a response to all the walled communities in California.