London

It's Easter which means it was one year ago since we went to England. I've been to many places on this earth, North and South America, Europe, Australia and Asia but never to the British Isles so I thought that it was time to go there. We got very good ticket pricing from, now defunct Iceland  based, WOW Airlines. Considering the prices that we paid, the airplane was reasonably comfortable. We had a short layover in Reykjavik and then flew on to London's Gatwick Airport. From Gatwick we took a bus to Victoria Station in London. At Victoria Station, we took a cab to our hotel. The guy who supervises the loading of the cabs at the station tried, unsuccessfully, to load into some Nissan minivan abortion. After waiting for all these years to go to the UK, I wanted to ride in a genuine London Taxi. I persevered, as is my nature, and finally got my own way. 

The Millennium Gloucester Hotel London Kensington a four star hotel which is conveniently located. We sit here in the USA and consider the US  to be the only place on planet Earth with running water and electricity.  Actually we do know better but deep down inside we like to feel more advanced the the other poor folks.
Such is not the case. Europe, especially Germany and the UK are very much in the twenty first century. In our Uber to LAX, the Mideastern driver gave us a discourse on Halal. For you ignorant slobs, such as me, who never heard of Halal, Halal is the Moslem equivalent of  Kosher. They are basically one and the same. London, much like Long Beach, is  very much a multicultural city. Which means, so it seems, that half the people that you see there are not English. This means, among things, that there Arab everywhere. That meant that in a lot of eateries there were large HALAL signs in the windows. 
I was really surprised how much better the food was in England then I was led to believe. There is much more to eat than boiled beef and black pudding.
Our inauguration was in the morning when we went down to breakfast.  There is an entity called the English Breakfast. It is a bit like an American breakfast but instead of Egg McMuffins and pancakes it goes something like this.
 The traditional full English breakfast includes bacon (traditionally back bacon), fried, poached or scrambled eggs, fried or grilled tomatoes, fried mushrooms, fried bread or buttered toast, and sausages (also known as "bangers"). Black pudding, baked beans, cooked tomatoes, and bubble and squeak are also often included.
Along with all of this theren was a London Times newspaper to read which I enjoyed so much I  have subscribed to the digital edition that I still read every day. 
I had to try the fish and chips across the street. As an aside, these folks drive on the "wrong" side of the street. While walking, we Yanks when crossing the street, we look to the left before stepping off of the curb. WRONG yank, there speeding towards you from the right. I almost got creamed to many times to mention. But I digress. After braving the crossing of the British street, we were in front of a nice looking establishment that had a HALAL sign in the window. I said to myself, myself you only live once what the hell go in and risk your life. I came, I ate, I loved it. I still have an inherent distrust of Middleasterners, yes all of them, Arab and Jews. I used to work for two Israelis so I've earned the right to keep my guard up. But that's another story for another time. I think my distrust is partially due to their accents but it's now a little less so. 
For two weeks we were tourists of the highest order. We now can navigate the London Underground like a couple of Cockneys. 
We went to dozens of museums, which most have free admissions in the UK. 
We took a couple of coach excursions. To Stonehenge, Leeds, Dover, Standford on Avon, Bath, Winchester, Cambridge and Jamie's all time favorite Highclere Castle where Dowton Abby was filmed plus the surrounding villages.  We went to Greenwich to see the Clipper Cuttysark and the Naval Observatory. 
We took a train to Portsmouth, the home of the British Navy which the US Navy is modeled after. 
I would be remiss if I didn't mention Big Ben, The Tower Bridge, The Tower of London, Buckingham Palace and Westminster.
All too soon we had to take a tram to Heathrow Airport and fly WOW back to LA. I do love to travel but I also love being home here In Long Beach.


 

WHERE I'VE BEEN

When I was very young, my parents and I went to  Atlantic City and Niagara Falls. I believe this whetted my appetite for travel. 

Between my junior and senior year of high school I went to Chicago on a New York Central train to go to boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Station. This trip heightened my desire to see the world. I knew that I didn't belong in Northern Ohio. 

After I graduated from high school I took a train to the Naval Recieving Station in Philadelphia on the Pennsylvania Railroad. I was booked in a roomette and had my own little stateroom to myself. This was when my fernweh really kicked in. 

After two weeks in Philly  I boarded a Greyhound bus for Guidedmissileman A School at Virginia Beach. I was now in the real navy and I really enjoyed my time there.

After A School I boarded a Continental Airlines DC-3 at Norfolk airport. The weather was too rough for a piddly DC-3 so we turned back to Norfolk. An hour later I boarded a Vickers Viscount a four engine turboprop to Washington National Airport. We jumped on a United Airlines DC-7 to Baltimore. At Baltimore, we boarded a DC-8 jet to LA. So in one day I went from never being on an airplane to piston powered to turboprop to jet. All on the same day. This in February of 1961 when I boarded the jet in Baltimore I was bundled up in woolen dress blues and a peacoat. When I deplaned, at ten in the evening in LA it was about 77 degrees outside, this was in the prehistoric era before jetways. I knew right there where I wanted to live, SoCal.

After Terrier C School at the General Dynamics plant in Pomona I was transferred to Naval Ammunition Depot Crane, Indiana. I drove back to Cleveland on Route 66. This was before interstate highways. Tom owned a Corvair and we drove through the deserts of California, Arizona and New Mexico. Over the plains of the Midwest and farm country east of the Mississippi.

After two and a half years in Southern Indiana and reenlisting, I sold my Auston Healy Sprite and bought a 59 Buick. I, and my new wife, then drove west across the USA to Vallejo, CA to attend Missile Technician B School. After B School, we drove down the coast of California to San Diego where I was stationed on finally my first ship, an aircraft carrier USS Constellation CVA-64. We made a MidPac cruise to Hawaii. That was fun but I wasn't fond of life on a birdfarm and after only seven months on board I got orders to go to new construction at Todd Shipyard Seattle, WA.

This started my life as a plankowner of a brand new Guided Missile Destroyer USS Waddell DDG-24. We made two WestPac cruises to Vietnam with ports of call in Yokosuka and Sasabo Japan and many calls at Subic Bay in the Philippines which was virtually  our second home port. Between the two WestPacs we drove back to Cleveland where I took a thirty day leave and then back again. We stopped at Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone on the way back.

I got out of the Navy after eight years and we, once again drove back to to Cleveland in 1968.

After two years, we realized returning to Cleveland was a huge mistake so in 1970 I got the company that I worked for, API Instruments, to move me back to SoCal. While with API, I made numerous trips to Mexico City, Austrailia, Japan and Korea. I suppose because I was gone so much my wife left me. After a while, I had a new girlfriend who was from Germany. I had to learn how to speak German because when Brigitta and her German girlfriends started talking in German, I wanted to know what mischief they were cooking up. 

I took a month off and we flew to Germany. Brigitta was from this cute medieval walled town, Bad Wimpfen, up on a hill next to the Neckar River.  I bought us Eurail passes while in the USA which was like a bus pass. All you needed to do, was flash the card on any train, or bus, in all of Europe and off you went. We would go to a train station in the evening and look at the board and select a destination that was about eight hours away. We would then sleep on the train and not blow money on a hotel room. We had no
predetermined itinerary and had a ball. We went to Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Monaco, France, Spain, Belgium, Holland and of course Germany. 

I didn't much like the new management at the company when they merged with LFE Corp, so I moved on.  

My second wife was from Rhode Island so we ended up diving cross country twice.

My third wife was a TWA flight attendant and I flew on many flights with her and for free on my own.

By 2010 I had been to every state except North Dakota and Alaska. I drove to South Dakota to do a job in Watertown and thought as long as I'm this close, I might as well drive up to North Dakota.

Three years ago, we took a cruise through the Inland Passage to Alaska and I made it a clean sweep, all fifty states plus Puerto Rico. We went to Loreto in Baja Sur, south, to pet the baby gray whales in Laguna San Ignacio and liked it so much we made a second trip to Loreto.

Last year we spent two weeks in London, I'd never been to the UK. Three weeks in Italy mainly in Tuscany, a week in Honolulu, two weeks in South Carolina, ten days in Kauai and Maui and another week in Italy.   

 

WHO AM I

I am, most importantly,  a father and grand father. I've also been a husband and a sailor, a veteran of the US Navy. I am a retired business owner. I owned and operated a plastics forming machine building company. I am a dog lover. I've had three dachshunds, two German Shepards, two rottweilers, one mutt and a Golden Retriever. I've always maintained that the best dog that you ever had is the one you currently own or your last dog.

I love all things transportation. I love cars. I've had sports cars, cars with big engines and cars with turbochargers. Convertibles and cars with single overhead an double overhead cams. If I had the money and garage space, I would keep them all.

Motorcycles, I've had two Ducatis, a two Hondas, a Yamaha, a Suzuki, a Triumph Bonneville and saving the best for last two different Norton 750 Commandos.  Far and away the Nortons were the best of all.

I love to travel on trains. I first went to Navy bootcamp at Great Lakes Naval Station in 1959 all by myself on a New York Central train. A Pennsylvania Railroad train took me to the receiving station  in Philadelphia in 1960. I had a roomette and I loved the trip. I've taken Greyhound and Trailways buses on long distance trips. The buses were not as exciting as the trains, but I was still on the road.

I love airplanes. I first flew in an airplane in a DC3. On the same day, we flew from Norfolk to Washington DC in a turboprop Vickers Viscount. DC to Baltimore on a DC6 and lastly to LAX in a DC8 jet. I arrived in LA on a February evening when it was literally freezing back East wearing my woolen Dress Blues with a woolen a Navy issue crew neck sweater  and a Peacoat. I stepped off of the airplane, pre jetway days,  at eight PM and it was 77 degrees outside. My first thought was, I want to live here. My second thought was I am going to live here. Since those days, I've flown in 707s, DC10s, L1011s, 747s, 757s, 767s and my favorite a VC10 back from Australia.

I took most of my flight instruction in a Piper tomahawk.I've flown a Ford Trimotor a lot. I could go on all day but modesty prevents. 
Ships and boats: I was stationed on an aircraftcarrier  USS Constellation and a destroyer USS Waddell. I didn't much care for the birdfarm but the tincan was all I was hoping for. Waddell was a DDG, a guided missile destroyer. I first saw her at Todd Shipyard in Seattle in February of 1964. I was on, in Navy parlance, new construction. We commissioned her at Bremerton Naval Shipyard in August of 1964 making all of us in attendance, Plank Owners. We'll save that for another tale. In 1968, I was discharged out of the Navy at Seal Beach and began my civilian life. As for boats, I sailed on Lake Greenwood in southern Indiana while stationed at NAD, Naval Ammunition Depot, Crane Indiana. While in Seattle, I rented twenty two foot sailboats on Lake Washington. While stranded at Midway Island, I circumnavigated the island in a 18 footer that I checked out from special services. Later on, as a civilian, I had a twenty two foot Venture which was a spiffy little trailerable boat that we also used as a camping trailer. Next I had a 28 foot Columbia that I lived aboard on in Marina Del Rey and later Redondo Beach. We bought a brand new Yankee Clipper a 41 foot Taiwan built Bill Garden ketch. After that I bought a 38 foot Downeaster Schooner which I lived on in Alametos Bay for the thirty five years that I had her. Now I live on a forty foot  Choey Lee Trawler also in Alametos Bay and have a thirty foot Newport sailboat which we keep in Wilmington. I just couldn't kick the sailing habit after fifty seven years.

Where I am, who I am and where I've been

Part One   Where am I? 

I am home on our forty foot trawler power boat. I've been a sailor since 1961, that's fifty eight years. That's a long time. I started sailing in Lake Greenwood at Naval Ammunition Depot, NAD, Crane Indiana. What the hell was I doing in southern Indiana while being a sailor in the IS Navy is another story for another time. We had a 17 foot fiberglass Rebel sloop in special services and I kept the sails and rudder in the trunk of my 1957 Plymouth Fury. Why, you may ask? That is another story for another time. Lake Greenwood was about five miles long and about a mile wide. It was my own private lake. After two years in Indiana, I was transferred to Missile Technician B School for a year and on to Coronado by San Diego on an aircraft carrier. I really didn't have any time back then to much in the line of recreation until I ended up at New Construction in Seattle. I rented twenty two footers and sailed on Lake Washington while in Seattle.

My destroyer was commissioned at Bremerton and we headed to Long Beach. While in Long Beach I used to rent Sabats which are eight  foot sailing dinghies at Naples Island. On our first deployment to WestPac, we, the ship went aground at Midway island. Being the screws, propellers to you land lubbers, got their tips knocked out of balance requiring us to be towed back to Pearl Harbor by an ocean going tug. While waiting for an entire week for our tug to arrive at Midway, we, the sailors had nothing but time on our hands. On the third day, we had managed to drink the entire island dry. The beer lasted two days, the hard stuff another day and the we were getting antsy. There was a little used beach shack on the island and it had a few little sailing dingies stowed away. I and my mate checked one out and we proceded to circumnavigate Midway Island. 

After my eight plus years in the Navy, I ended up living in Glendora, California. There I bought a 22 foot trailerable Venture sailboat which I named Tumwater. Probably few of you know the significance of the name Tumwater and if you don't that will have to be yet another story for another time. I had Tumwater for two, or three, years and used it a lot. We went everywhere using her not only as a boat but also as a travel trailer. Then came divorce number one and we sold the house and the boat. I used the procedes to buy a Columbia 28 in 1975. Tumwater II was a real boat, inboard engine, wheel steering and I lived aboard her for two years. 

In 1978, we bought a brand new forty one foot Yankee Clipper ketch which was built in Tiawan. We named her Bianco, yup another story, and she was huge. She even had a seperate crews quarters. 

Four years and another divorce later, Bianco was sold to friends and I bought a thirty eight foot, on deck, forty three feet overall schooner. Her name was Merrymaid and she was famous being she was Downeaster hull number one so I didn't rename her. Merrymaid is Middle English and is what morphed into the word mermaid. I had her for thirty five years and lived aboard her for over thirty of those years. I loved that boat and I still do but due to my two strokes I found that I didn't have the mental capacity to handle her with her five sails.

Which brings me around to the dark side which us, yes us, sailors call power boats. She is a forty foot Cheoy Lee trawler and it is like living in a floating condominium. Her name was Queen Bea when we bought her. While we were on the hard, I renamed her to Phase II. Yes, there is another story here. 
That's where I am right now. Aboard our little ship, or should I say yacht. In case you don't know the difference between a boat and a yacht. The yacht has an icemaker. 
Also, a boat is a vessel that can be hoisted aboard a ship. 

To be continued.

  

RMS QUEEN MARY

Over fifty years ago when I was a young twenty six year old short time sailor with a one month old new  baby RMS Queen Mary pulled into our lives. By our our, I mean both myself and the City of Long  Beach. The old regal gal has sit inside of her little breakwater across the bay from downtown Long Beach all of this time.

During this time, I have been aboard the ship over a dozen times. Usually on tours and once to meet and greet QM2 to Long Beach but I never got around to spending a night on board. It's like the time I took my sister to Disneyland years ago. She said that i probably got tired of going to Disneyland and I told her that the only time that I went was when someone from back east came out and wanted to go there. Which wasn't that often.

Well we took a page out of the tourist's guide book today and went to RMS QM. The Sunday brunch is said to be, according to a traveler's magazine, the best in the world. I don't know about "the best in the world", but I would rank it in the top five. The best I've ever been to is at the Saint Francis Hotel in San Fran. But good eats in San Fran is no big surprise. 

Spending an overnighter on a ship is not a real big deal. I've lived on an aircraft carrier, a destroyer, I lived on my schooner for thirty five years and on the trawler now for four years.  The Queen however is a whole new experiance. She is the stuff of legends. She is the one and only Gray Ghost. 

USS Constellation, the carrier that I was on was big, one could put both  Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth on the flight deck at the same time and neither would hang over the edge but the true measure of the size of a ship is it's displacement. The Queens both top out by over ten thousand tons over Connie and you can feel the magnitude of this ship while walking around aboard. 

The view of downtown Long Beach from our porthole is also incredible. This is the stuff that my dreams are made of.

AMERICAN FOOTBALL

AMERICAN FOOTBALL

I was born in Cleveland in 1942. Near the end of the forties, Cleveland had two teams. The Browns and the Rams. The NFL deemed that Cleveland didn’t need two teams so the Rams were moved to LA. A few years back on a PBS series called The Greatest Moments in Sports, I saw a film of the 1950 NFL playoff game. The Browns verses the Rams. The Rams had a bone to pick. They wanted to show the world that the wrong team was moved to LA. Right before the end of the game, the Rams were leading by five points. With about five seconds to go Otto Graham threw a hail Mary pass to a receiver in the end zone. While the ball was in the air, the gun was sounded to indicate that all the time on the clock had elapsed. Back then, I don’t know about now, the game wasn’t over until the play finished. The ball was caught in the end zone and the Browns remained the NFL champs. I truly believe the the Pro Football Hall of Fame is in Canton which is close to Cleveland because of the Browns. Players like Otto Graham. Lou Groza and Dante "Glurfingers" Lavvle were heros back in the day.

For many years, I was an ardent Browns fan, even after I moved to SoCal. I remember watching the NFL playoff game on the messdeck on my destroyer in 1967 when the Browns beat the Colts. I was on the ship because I had the duty on that day. The AFL joined into the NFL and the Superbowl became the paramount sporting event. Alas the only times the Browns attended the Superbowl was as spectators. That didn’t lessen my enthusiasm one damned bit. From about 1977 to 1982 I had season tickets for the Rams but they were only the Rams not the Browns. For that reason and for certain economic reasons, that era had run it’s course and I eschewed the tickets.

What really hurt was when Art Model, that son-of-a-bitch, moved my blessed Browns to Baltimore.  The Raiders moved back to Oakland and the Rams were moved to Saint Louis. My mantra was a sailor version of screw football, who needs it.

My attitude improved when a new Browns emerged into Cleveland. I used to say that this new Browns team was a facade, the real Browns were hiding in Baltimore hiding as the Ravens To add insult to injury, the damned Ravens not only went to the Superbowl the next year. They WON the damned thing. By about 2010 my patience with these loser new Browns had run it’s course. I simply quit being a football fan.

Along comes 2017 and not only do the Rams move back to LA after a 23 year hiatus and the Chargers move back to LA also. It’s an embarrassment of riches and to sweeten things, they both do very well. The Rams actually won the NFC game and are going to the Superbowl.

Back in 1982, when I was a season ticket holder, I got a letter in the mail stating that if I were to send $600 in the mail, if the Rams made it through the playoffs, I would be the proud possessor of Superbowel tickets. The Superbowl that year was to be held at The Rosebowl which was less than a hour’s drive up the freeway. Not only was I was certain the Rams Wouldn’t make it through the playoffs, and as I said above  I wasn’t actually rolling around in loose cash, so I passed. You guessed it. I missed going to a Superbowel game.

Well now our/my Rams are going to the Superbowel again and I don’t have four of five thousand dollars in my retirement funds to blow on a football game. If the Rams win, the odds makers in Los Vegas have them pegged as a one point favorite and they are playing the Patriots, maybe my enthusiasm will be restored. We’re in wait and see mode right now. 

TAKE THE BULLET TRAIN

TAKE THE BULLET TRAIN

Yesterday, over a “few” beers I told my friend Dennis about one of my stays in Japan.

In the mid seventies, I was working at Kawasaki Steel in Kobe Japan. I was installing a Zenzamer rolling mill that would be making transformer steel. The mill itself was built by Waterbury Ferrel in Waterbury Connecticut. A zenzamer mill is a complicated machine that rolls extremely precise cold roll steel. I worked for LFE Corp who built the control system. It was a non-contact gauge that used a radioactive Americium isotope gamma source that could penetrate steel. The gauge also automatically controlled the gauge, thickness, of the steel in real time.

Working in Japan was a real adventure. I stayed at the Hotel Newport, what would be called a boutique hotel nowadays. It was a real Japanese hotel, not at all like a Holiday Inn, with tatami mats and in the evening after dinner your little Japanese bed was laid out on the floor with a hot rock to help keep me warm..

I and the guy from Waterbury worked all day in the extremely clean mill. Japanese factories are much different than most other plants. Not only are they clean but if a Japanese foreman tells a worker to pick up a hose, or something, the worker doesn’t say not my job, he bows and then runs over to the hose, or whatever and coils it and hangs it up.

My Waterbury cohort was actually a pilot in the Luftwaffe in WWII. He was drafted near the very end of WW2 at the tender age of sixteen. He had about four hours of flight training and then was shoved into a Messerschmidt. He was happy to have survived his three of four missions before the war ended. One evening, after work hans and I went to a local bar and had a few Kirins. Hans made a benjo call. When Hans was out of ear shot two round eyed guy s at the next table wanted to know if Hans had been in the Air Force. He said to me that he had been a pilot in the Air Force and he had never heard of any of the airplanes that Hans was talking about. I said the question should be who’s Air Force. He asked who’s and I replied Hitler’s.  

When the job was done, I tried called our trading company’s office in Tokyo. I had no idea on how to use a pay phone to make a long distance in Japan. Besides, my Japanese language skills weren’t up to the task. I ended up standing in front of a bank of green payphones looking very pitiful with my hand extended a handful of Yen saying Kudasai dingwa.

A Japanese guy with short beard walked up to me and said in English “Don’t you know how to use a pay phone in Japan? No, I did not. 

 

 

Back then, at least, while you were talking, when you heard a tone in your earpiece, you had to feed the beast more coins. I talked to someone in the Tokyo who instructed me to buy a ticket on the Shinkansen, the Bullet Train, and then call back and tell them what train and what carriage I’d be riding  in and someone would be waiting for me on the platform. Right now I should explain two things. The first is if the ticket says that the arrival time is 2:32, the train will arrive at 2:32. No sooner and no later. When you board, or get off of, the train there will be a big colored square painted  on the platform precisely where the door to your carriage will be. The second thing is should you get lost in the Tokyo train station, you are screwed. You’re a goner. It is below street level and is massive. I did get turned around one time and I had to go up stairs to get my bearings and then go back down again.

As for the guy who came to my rescue, I said that I was very lucky that he came along when he did and asked him where he was from. He replied “Chicago”. I asked if he was here in Tokyo on a vacation or on business. He replied a little of both. He explained to me that he had a Japanese restaurant in Chicago and the price of the wooden one use chopsticks that you break apart was getting very pricy. The chopsticks were made in Japan but there was no real timber so the wood had to be imported from another country. Manufactured and then re-shipped to the USA and elsewhere. He knew there were a few manufactures in the Kobe area and his family was from Kobe so he thought he’d come over and visit his long lost distant family and do some business. He went to a manufacturing plant and looked at their machines. He told them these were beautiful machines but they only make bamboo chopsticks. He wanted to buy a machine that made wooden chopsticks. He told me the guy looked at him and said “They make those in Chicago”.