billrider2013

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