Thursday, November 29, 2018

From Alcatraz to Chicago

An American mug shot!
From the sun and warmth of California to the chill of Michigan and Illinois. Michigan doesn't half get cold in the winter and this was only the beginning of November. We wrapped up well and made it to the Livonia parkrun in the suburbs of Detroit - this was the very first parkrun to be launched in North America as long ago as June 2012. Here's us pictured with another tourist from the UK, John B from Essex (who was here on business - the motor industry of course!) There were a surprising number of junior runners seeing as we saw hardly any youngsters at the San Francisco event. I was overtaken on the home straight by a young lad who'd actually called me back onto the right path just before the end. I came 8th in 23:02 and Vicky was 47th in 36:35.

Ticket inspectors - you've got to hand it to them!
The following day we had to make our way 280 miles from Detroit to Chicago. Rather than take the plane we decided to go by rail seeing as we weren't in a hurry. We hopped into a cab down to Ann Arbor half an a hour away - this was the scene of yesterday's latest US parkrun. They're up to 26 now, six of these being in the Washington/Baltimore area - it's spreading! The station in Ann Arbor was packed with travellers waiting for trains in both directions - there are only a few trains a day through here - which one would come first? The train from Chicago was delayed by over an hour but our's was just about bang on time! Hooray! And what a nice relaxing way to travel. We were at the back of the train so the sounding of the distinctive loud Amtrak horn for each road crossing wasn't too distracting.

Fire and brimstone!
Once in Chicago we quickly found an excellent watering hole, this being the Haymarket Brewing Company which is located in Haymarket Square scene of an infamous riot in 1886. Workers protesting against the killing of rioters on the previous day were demonstrating and a bomb was thrown killing seven policemen plus a number of bystanders. The publicity that surrounded the incident and the subsequent trial of persons suspected of involvement in the bombing did a lot to raise the profile of trade unions in the US. Gosh what violence - and this was well before Al Capone came along.
Chicago is a more peaceful place nowadays and the Haymarket brewery tap is a most relaxing place to sit and sip. Not only was the beer some of the best we'd had since being away from home it was reasonably priced so it went down very well!





Monday, November 19, 2018

California Dreaming

Coming in to land!


































Normally when I point my camera in the air I get a picture of the sky, despite my best efforts at trying to photograph birds flying or planes cruising overhead. This time it worked! These are Brown Pelicans which are in abundance on the Californian coast. Amazingly graceful in flight but clumsy on the ground - we saw them plunge diving into the sea to catch their supper.
First to arrive - all a flutter!
A couple of hours south of San Francisco is the old city of Monterey, we stayed in the quiet suburb of Pacific Grove and looked for butterflies. There's a stand of trees there that is one of the overwintering sites for Monarch Butterflies - these lovely things have been in decline for years and this particular overwintering sites is being carefully managed. From the end of October to March every year thousands of them descend on these few trees and sit out the winter in suspended animation. So we sauntered up to the park and looked and looked - and so did lots of other people and despite scanning all the branches of the tall trees no-one could see anything - not even me with my super duper binoculars. Clearly they were all leaving the big migration until November and this was October 30th. Just as we we about to leave we had a tip off from a local - 'Just over there in tree number 69!' she said. And sure enough about a third of the way up there was a cluster of butterflies attached to a branch - here's the photo!

Let the ale flow!
I'm doing something a little bit cheaty here - this beautiful poster advertises a Californian pub that I went to many years ago, but not this time! Nevertheless I like the poster so much that I just had to include it here. On this visit to the San Francisco region and beyond we visited (not all on the same night) the longstanding Magnolia Brewpub in Haight Ashbury, the Barrel Head Brewhouse, the Highway One Brewing Company, the Fieldwork Brewing company, the Alvarado Street Brewery (best beer!), the pioneering Half Moon Bay Brewery (best pub!) and the Hop Dogma Brewing Company. All very good but unfortunately the only beers below around 5% tend to be their versions of lager, pilsner and kolsch - and they're all pricey! The one major disappointment was the Cannery Row Brewing Company in Monterey. We should have done our homework here but we were so taken by the idea of visiting Steinbeck's Cannery Row that we failed to realise that it's a real tourist trap - Cannery Row Brewing Co brews no beer of it's own - they serve a wide range of pleasant enough beers but they were very pricey and the service was one step away from appalling.


They're both mine now!
Our last night on the West Coast saw us in Barbara's Fishtrap, a rickety restaurant that looks as if it's about to fall into the sea at Half Moon Bay. The service here was great (Vicky exchanged e-mails with the server who sneaked us out some free Key Lime pie as a takeaway dessert) and the fish was wonderful. You might also take note of the Ballast Point and North Coast Brewing Company beer bottles, just two of a fine selection available here.


To finish on a positive note some of the scenery in California is stunning - this was taken from high up on some cliffs south of San Francisco - Vicky was getting a bit worried that I was too close to the edge!

Nice beach - how do we get down?



Thursday, November 8, 2018

Humming in California


Hmmm!
Here's Anna's Hummingbird! We were quite surprised to see one of these buzzing around on a cold winter's morning in Vancouver - in recent years it 's been found that they don't fly south for winter anymore and one reason that's proposed for this is that they survive on garden feeders. We saw more of these humming around down in California on a series of feeders under the eaves of a seaside bungalow as per the picture below - (the close up on the right is not my snap!) Neat fact of the day - a hummingbird's heart beats over 1000 times per minute!

I took this one!

Gotta stay out of his way!
And so to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Only it's not golden it's a rusty red colour - and you should have been able to see it behind my head here except it was another foggy morning. In the other direction is the island of Alcatraz - as I finished the Crissy Field parkrun I could hear someone coming up fast behind me - I only noticed later that he had an Alcatraz t-shirt on - was he on the run? The escaped prisoner pushed me to my best time for a year 20:47 which took the over 65 record by over a minute. Vicky took it bit more steadily for 34:19.

Nelson - here's the rest of your columns!
Impressions of San Francisco are bound to vary according to where you stay and what you see. We found a wonderful Inn in the Presidio area called the Monte Cristo. In the US 'Inns' are a good idea - they tend to be smaller than hotels, often old and very individual. They usually have excellent breakfasts and that's abut the extent of the catering except that here, the South African cook Andre, makes some excellent afternoon snacks such as cookies and chocolate fudge. The Presidio itself is the top left hand corner of the San Franscisco peninsula - it's a big rambling park with some monumental buildings just outside - these were left over from the Pan American Fair of 1914 and were one of the most impressive sights we saw. Not much else caught our imagination though, we think that in some ways this city is a little overrated - we walked down to the Haight Ashbury district where hippiedom took off, it's a bit tacky now and the story about much of the rest about San Francisco is that it's frighteningly expensive!

Gosh she gets in all the best shots!
However when the fog lifts the bridge is pretty impressive - just to prove the fog did lift here it is - it's that reddish structure far away in the background. This was taken close to where the parkrun took place - Crissy Field is the site of an old US Army airport and the actual run itself is flat all the way round. However it's on a gravel track which means that times are not as quick as they might be (well I think I should have been quicker!) On the day things must have looked very confusing to passers-by as there was a Halloween run at the same time with hundreds of people dressed in costume running in the opposite direction to us at anything between a quickish gallop to a shuffle.

Saturday, November 3, 2018

Fall in Canada

How high?
From an Aussie Spring to a Canadian Fall in an instant (well half a day) courtesy of a trans-Pacific flight - we packed the shorts away, put our woollies on and braved the chill air. It was a cold foggy morning but by early afternoon things had cleared up. You'll have to look very close at this photo to see the figure of a man at the foot of this totem pole - the biggest one in the world, or so the plaque at the base would have it. On checking with that font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, it appears that there are several other contenders for the title. Nevertheless at 128 foot tall and carved from a single tree trunk it's pretty impressive. We found this at Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, British Columbia and we got stiff necks looking up at it!


Got a match?
So this is a typical scene at the waterfront on a British Columbia morning - fog and logs, everywhere we went the beaches seemed to be strewn with logs some of them of enormous size. I guess a couple of centuries of intensive logging using the rivers to convey the haul has meant that the surrounding seas have been littered with tree trunks. The rivers are no longer utilised in this way due to environmental concerns but the residue sits on the seashore bleaching in the sunlight (when the fog has lifted!) The following morning we joined a small band of parkrunners at Clover Point one of the first parkruns to get going in Canada - they've been at it just over a year now!
This was another foggy morning but a pleasant seaside run nonetheless.


Where is everybody?
And what's that on the front of my running vest - a number? With all the parkrunning we've been doing (you don't need a number for those) I'd almost forgotten how to pin a number into my vest. Following the Clover Point Parkrun in Victoria we travelled upcoast to Duncan where we ran the Cowichan Classic 10K, a wonderful race through trails and trees. Having run the day before I started steadily but soon found myself picking off the runners ahead until I found myself on my own and overall winner of the 10K event! (I wasn't actually the first runner home, there were two ahead of me who were running a total of 15K on the same course but they showed up in a different set of results.)


And what better to refresh our weary selves with than beer from Red Arrow brewers of Duncan, British Columbia. We had some very hoppy beers and were very happy.

The Arrow hit the spot!