Month: May 2018

Flight to London

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Bicycle on Norwegian Air

I had booked my flight to London before I left Australia. One of the reason for doing this was to avoid the nonsense with QANTAS who incorrectly demand that you show evidence of a return or onward ticket when boarding I flight from Australia to the USA.
I will post about that issue later.

Anyway I booked a flight with Norwegian Air from Orlando to Gatwick. I had read about this company before. They are one of the newer, and apparently very successful, ‘budget’ airline.

Their model is to provide ‘no thrills’ service and use the latest most fuel-efficient aeroplanes like the Boeing 787.

Before I made the booking, I confirmed that I would be able to carry my bicycle. At GBP 60, it was not only possible, but also reasonably priced.

As the time for the flight approach I contacted the airline to confirm the arrangements for carrying the bike. I don’t mind boxing the bike, but it can be a pain. In the past I have travelled in Lufthansa. They don’t require that bikes are boxed. That makes life easier.

Anyway, I contacted Air Norwegian using ‘Chat’. I find this mechanism useful, because it provides a transcript of the conversation you have had with the ‘help’ desk.
The upshot of my chat was that I would be able to carry the bike ‘unboxed’ and leave the wheels on.

I took the train from Winter Park to Orlando where I caught a bus to the Orlando International Airport. At USD 2 this is excellent value, particularly as you can carry a bike on the bus.

When I went to check in with Norwegian Air the clerk told me that I would “not be allowed on the flight unless my bike was in a case or a box”. I was told that another customer was refused permission to fly with an unboxed bike the previous day.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was allowed on the flight with the bike ‘unboxed’. Having the transcript of my previous discussions with the ‘help desk’ proved invaluable.

The flight turned out to be okay. The configuration of the 787 seemed to be very similar to the Scoot planes that also use these planes in ‘budget’ mode. The seats have thin cushioning and are packed closely together. They hardly recline at all and you are sitting very upright.

My flights on Scoot have been during the day between Sydney and Singapore and vice versa. You don’t need to sleep on those flights.

This flight from Orlando to London was overnight. I found it very difficult to sleep.
Apart from that the service was efficient. You have to pay for food and drinks, but that is what happens of budget airlines. At least the air was included in the fare.

Notwithstanding the lack of sleep, I managed to stay awake until quite late on my first day in London, thus managing to avoid serious jet lag.

To El Paso

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To El Paso
The train left Union Station at 8.30. It has been my experience that the only time that Amtrak trains are on schedule is at the time of departure. After that they are typically delayed and rarely make up time.

This is because Amtrak does not own the tracks. They are owned by the freight companies and Amtrak trains have to give way to the freight trains even though under the law, passengers trains have first priority to use the tracks. The freight companies simply ignore the law.

Across Arizona into Texas
The train headed off into the night.

When I woke up in the morning, we had crossed the border into Arizona and where heading to a major stop at Tucson.

The view from the train was interesting, but like the train across the Nullabor in Australia, it is very similar for a very long time.
We had a long stop in Tucson, which provided the opportunity for the passengers to stretch their legs. A number of passengers also took the opportunity to smoke. A surprisingly large number of people in the USA still smoke.

Arriving in El Paso
I arrived in El Paso in the late afternoon and headed to my hotel, the Gardener, that is located in the ‘Old Town’ area not far from the station.

The Gardener Hotel is a classic. It was like walking back in time. Check out the Flickr photos.

Remembering my Last Visit to El Paso
This was my second visit to El Paso. The last time was in July 1979 when I was travelling in the USA on my way back to Australia after living in London. I had a Greyhound bus pass and was trying to see as much of the country in fairly short period of time. I will post about that trip one day.

Anyway, part of that trip was from Los Angeles travelling east. I found myself travelling with a group of people of various nationalities all around the same age. Among the group were two sisters form Sweden.

We stopped in Las Vegas and Phoenix Arizona. For some reason the Swedish girls and I decided to stop in El Paso. I have quite vivid recollections of when we cross of the border from El Paso into Mexico. The girls with their blonde hair and height caused quite a stir. As we walked around we were followed by an ever-increasing number of young children and some, not so young men.

I recalled that it was a bit of a relief when we got back over the border in to the USA.

Checking out the Town
In the morning, I walked around the area close to the hotel. This included going down to the border crossing with Mexico.

As is the case with crossing near San Diego, there was a constant stream of people crossing in both directions. I decided to wait until till ne next day before crossing the border.

In the afternoon I took a bus took a outside the downtown area to visit a bike shop that advertised group MTB rides. As it turned out, they weren’t offering the rides on the days I was in town.

Baseball Game
Back in I stopped briefly at a AAA based game. The local team plays in the league which is below the Major League. However, the game still seemed to attract a reasonable crowd

Craft Beer and Chat about being a ‘Digital Nomad’
In the evening I had a meal in the bar next to the Hotel. As well as reasonable food, it served good craft beer.

In the bar I chatted with a bloke I had seen in the hotel. He told me that he was a musician but also did “other stuff”. The other stuff was a couple of jobs he did on the internet.

One of these jobs was being an “evaluator” for a record company.

The company gets him to listen to, rate and make comments on music that potential recording artists have sent them. He gets paid by the hour for this work. He told me that there are four levels of ‘evaluator’ and it is a filtering process. If a song or piece of music is rated ‘good’ at the bottom level is passed up the line to the next level and so on.

At the higher levels, the ‘evaluators’ are expected to make more detailed evaluations and make suggestions on improving the music. They are also expected to make suggestions at to who the candidate may think about collaborating with. The higher level ‘evaluators’ also get paid more.

This bloke is a ‘level 3 evaluator’ but expects to move to ‘level 2’ soon.
He told me that his other ‘job’ was writing articles for an on-line music magazine. These articles are mainly about music venues that he visits. He is “paid by the word” for this work.

He also told that he gets some work as a ‘musician’ – guitarist and singer. However, most of his income is doing the internet stuff.

He told me that he would be staying El Paso for at least two week because “it is cheap, the internet was okay and there were some music venues to write about”.

This bloke is one of many ‘digital nomads’ I have met. These people make a living working on the internet. They often have no permanent place of residence.

An example is a Brazilian couple would are travel writers. I met them in Chiang Mia. They travel the world and write about their travels. Their stuff is published magazines like the ‘Gourmet Traveller’. They also have a blog that makes money. They write in both English and Portuguese.

Another example is an English girl that I met in Santiago in Chile. She writes about wine.

She also writes for well known magazines, but also makes money from a blog.
Other people I have met do editing for publishing houses.

It is all very interesting.

Ride up Mount Franklin
The next day I went on a ride on my bike up Mount Franklin that towers over the city.
The ride was spoiled by a very strong wind that got stronger as the day progressed.

When I got back into the ‘Downtown’, the weather was so crap I decided to skip the border crossing into Mexico.

Tram
One other thing. El Paso is putting in the tram system. It is being done on a very low budget – less that USD 100 million and is mainly designed for use by tourists. Anyway, it is a good initiative. I hope it goes well.

Flickr Links

Train to El Paso
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmb1aBsA

El Paso
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmf5NdKy

Garmin Link
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2670906036

About the Tram Project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paso_Streetcar

Back to LA and a Visit to Newport Beach

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After a very pleasant stay it was time to leave San Diego.

Ride to Train Station

I rode down to the waterfront, rom my hostel and around the harbour to the Amtrak railway station.

Great Rail Journey

The train ride up the coast to Los Angeles turned out to be one of the great train journeys of the world.

Check out the Flickr photographs and video.

The train closely follows the coast and is sometimes right on the beach. In my experience, this is very unusual. Another place where I have seen this is, part of the line running along the south coast of England through Dorset and into Cornwall. This line was engineered by Isambard Brunel the famous railway and bridge engineer of the Victorian era.

I suspect that nowadays it would be impossible to build such a line because of environmental concerns.

It was a short ride from Union Station to my hostel.

Day in Newport

Next morning, I returned to the station catch to a train to Santa Ana where I was met by an old Caltex colleague and mate who lives in Newport Beach.

I caught up with his bloke and his wife last time I was in LA. However, this time I was going to be able to see them on their home patch.

We drove from Santa Ana through, what my mate described as being, “the Orange Curtain”. This is a border between the very affluent Newport Beach the less desirable area just a few kilometres inland from the coast.

We stopped briefly at my mate’s house by before taking ‘his ferry’ across to Balboa island. The ferry was the same one that I crossed when I passed through Newport Beach on my way to San Diego.

On the island we had lunch at my mate’s yacht club. It was a good place and there was lots of chat, including our experiences working for Caltex in Australia and his experiences working for the company in Thailand and Sri Lanka.

I told him that my decision to resign from the company after the merger of Caltex with Ampol in 1996 probability wasn’t one of my best career choices.
After lunch, we drove around Balboa Island and the suburbs adjoining nearby beaches.

This is a very nice place to live and it is easy to understand why the property prices so high.

Leaving Newport, we drove south to Laguna Beach where my mate took me to one of his favourite drinking spots. It is a roof top bar overlooking the beach.

After working for Caltex my mate transferred over to Chevron and worked for them in California when he and his wife returned to the USA. After leaving Chevron, he continued to work in the energy industry. He is now “semi-retired” but still has an involvement in the energy industry. In particular he is interested in “energy storage”. It was very interesting to hear what he had to say about energy storage and its relationship with renewable energy sources including solar and wind.

After a few beers we headed back to Newport Beach for dinner with his wife.
It was a fitting end to a great day.

Back to Santa Monica

The next day I took the train from downtown LA out to Santa Monica. As readers may have guessed by now I really like Santa Monica.
I went for long walk along the beach through Venice Beach. It is a bit seedy but there is always something interesting to see there.

Some ‘Culchta’

On my last day LA, I decided to get some ‘culcha’.

My first shop was the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown LA. This wasn’t as good as I expected. However, there was one painting by Jackson Pollock, albeit not as good as ‘Blue Poles’.

My next stop was Los Angeles Country Museum of Art on Wilshire Boulevard
This turned out to be really good. I was fortunate enough to be there when there was a special exhibition of portraits by the English artist David Hockney. This particular exhibition has been touring the world. It is a series of portraits that the artist painted over a period of think 60 days. Most of the subjects are just ordinary people that he had met or new.

However, one of his subjects would be well known to all Australians and people from the UK. That person is Barry Humphries.

I asked a couple who were looking at the portrait of Barry Humphries if they could take a picture of me standing next to the portrait. They told me that they have noticed that this painting was on the banners that were on poles around the city advertising the exhibition. They asked me who Barry Humphries was.

I told them he was an actor who had a number of characters including Sir Les Patterson. I told them to look him up on YouTube, in particular, his appearance on the Michael Parkinson Show.

Check out the link below. I wonder what made of the show, if indeed they bothered to watch at all.

Another interesting exhibit at this Museum was a sculpture about transport.  Check out the Flickr photos and video.

Catching the Train West

After getting back to the hostel, I packed up my bike and headed to Union Station.

There was another cyclist the queue at the check in.
After checking in, I headed to a nearby restaurant for quick snack before boarding the train. As I sat waiting for my order, and the other cyclist approached the restaurant. I saw the waiter talking to the cyclist. When the cyclist joined me at my table, he told me what had transpired in the conversation with the waiter.

Apparently, the waiter and told the cyclist that he couldn’t come into the restaurant unless “he was a customer”.

I guess I was lucky that this particular waiter didn’t see me entering the restaurant.

The cyclist explained to me that this often happened to him and cyclists he knew.

Apparently, a lot of restaurants staff, when seeing old men with bicycles that have bags on them, assume the cyclists are homeless people in refuse them entry to the restaurants.

Unfortunately, this tells you a lot about the state of the nation.

Flickr Links

Train to LA
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmeMfKFN

Day in Newport
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmeSuFCu

Last Days in LA
https://flic.kr/s/aHskxgiXJp

Les Patterson on the Parkinson Show