Children and animals

We popped to San Diego today, as you do, mainly because Lexie had a modelling job down there.  With Jim and Gen taking the day off work, and Frankie cutting school, Lex was the only one of us making any money.  She doesn't get out of bed for less than $10k.

After she was done we took the opportunity to visit San Diego Zoo.  It's an establishment of international reputation - those of us who grew up watching The Really Wild Show on the BBC heard mention of it most episodes, and for good reason: the place is huge.  We encountered elephants and tigers, giraffes and hippos, and I saw my first rhino.

James gallantly drove back to Irvine while the rest of us snoozed off our trek, but with six in the vehicle at least he could use the car pool lane without a shred of guilt.  It was a wonderful day, iced with the crushing victory at backgammon I inflicted on James after the kids had gone to bed.  Just like when we were at school...

Frankie, in the wild.

Lex and Pete make each others' acquaintances.  One looks shocked, as usual.

The Holland girls of Orange County.



Down at the zoo.

Pretty flamingos.

Big cat.

Three inches away from a hippo.

Lexie isn't phased.



This is a pit viper.  Anything called a "pit viper" is not something you want to mess with.

A red panda.  Lazy.

A monochrome panda.  Even lazier!  They sleep for 14 hours a day.

This creature should be sleeping for 14 hours a day but has recently decided that shut-eye is boring.  He broke his previous no-nap record today, clocking up almost three hours of (increasingly grumpy) wakefulness.

A polar bear from below...

...and above.

Frankie learns how it feels to be polar bear lunch.

What do you get if you cross an elephant and a rhino?  'Ell if I know!  Hahaha....

Riding the tiger.  In the background you may notice that they're serving beer.  How do you make a zoo better?  Serve beer!  I'm sure no one ever has a few too many and decides to wrestle a pit viper.

This is from yesterday, when James and I did our gay dads impression in the pool.  Don't laugh - today someone asked if Pete and Lexie were twins.

Impressive thighs double as flotation devices.

Tricky Dicky

Richard Milhous Nixon is the greatest president the USA has ever had.  He won the Vietnam and Cold Wars, put a man on the moon, solved the drugs problem, invented China, and was the second greenest world leader in history.

I learnt all this at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda.  Every president gets a library - even the ones that can't read - and Nixon's is an impressive building on the site of his parents' citrus farm, enclosing the house his father built, where he was born.  The place is full of election memorabilia and artifacts, chronicling everything about the man.

He certainly did a lot, being possibly the most widely travelled American ever.  He had a pretty productive strategy of non-isolation, especially with China and the Soviet Union, while carrying the proverbial big stick.  He had his fair share of crises and defeats as well, including a failed attempt to be Governor of California in 1962, losing the election to Kennedy but securing the nomination again in 1968, etc.  He gambled everything on several occasions and managed to win each time.  All in all, not a man to play poker with.

So, from what I saw today, he was definitely the best.  There was some scandal involving a gate towards the end of his career, recording innocent civilians or something, but as that's recently become totally legal I'm not sure what the fuss was about.  Once again, Nixon was just ahead of his time.

An impressive entrance.

Quite a cutie!  And I know something about cute babies.

This is the letter inviting Nixon to run for Congress.  The rest is, quite literally, history.

Nasty political attack ads: nothing new.

Nixon delivering his famous "Checkers speech" to prove that he's not corrupt.

Educating Khrushchev.  This was actually about the display of an American kitchen.

The most memorable and important meeting of his life.



Or maybe this one.

The house where he was born.

Showing support.

Comeback time!  Eight years in the political wilderness, then president.  Not bad.

Told you he won the Cold War (don't touch!)

And the moon thing.

A gift from a close friend.

The president had no idea what was happening.  A nearby video told me that.

Some of the actual break-in tools.

Before.

After.

See?

See?!

Marine One, the presidential helicopter.  This one served several presidents up to Ford but was lovingly restored to the way Nixon had it, complete with cigarette packets bearing the presidential seal.  It's the one that flew him from office on August 9th 1974.

Past presidents...and a future one?

The Road to Los Angeles

They departed at daybreak, driving south and cutting through a pass in the mountains where the asphalt was the latest description of a path trod by ancient men and things before men. The country crowded them with ponderosa and white fir until they topped the saddleback and dropped towards the vast valley beyond. The land here was without form, as if even the imagination of God had found its finitude in the coastal ranges and left this flat blank canvas a testament to the seventh day, and yet men had come and fashioned it into a laudation of fruit and crops closer to the divine will than creator might have reckoned. The child wailed for his mother, for his mother country, and the father fed him and he was silenced and they moved again.

They continued through flannelbush and dwarf pine until they came to the managed trees and shrubs leached up from the aquifer. Everywhere they saw disconsolates hawking their harvests at sidings and crossroads, for there is a duplicity in the fecund richness of land that leads custodians to seek rather than to apprehend the bounty of their proximal estates.  Pillars of dust showed where men worked the land with machines.

At midday they paused at a gathering of buildings that might have been drawn together from the dust by the will of passing travellers to find repass. Signs described cuisines from such states and countries as existed beyond the rim of their world but the bland dimness of the servings spoke only of tediousness and anonymity. These cookhouses testified against themselves for they came of no country and yet could only exist here, in this form and at this very time for them. As they left the man sipped a coffee thin and insipid and he watched the country ascend around him as they rose with it towards the dark mural of the mountains.

From an apex ridge scarred with arroyos and heucherella they looked down, suzerains of a short dynasty and a world conceding a city vast and incohesive and unctuous in its magnitude, so captivated by its varying polarities that it choked and twitched even as they watched it. The child slept and in his unformed dreams the smoke of the territory billowed and coalesced into forms that he did not understand because he could not. The man drove and the smeared reflections on the glass were also the reflections in his eyes.

Their route was a triage through the hemorrhaging arterials of that municipality. The father sang songs to keep the child quieted, some of them passed on from his father and some of his own devising in that moment, and he wondered if the words and tunes might be etched into the cells of his progeny and echo in their cloisters, for it is in the will of every man to rebuild himself not only physically but discarnately and so leave some intangible portion wrought of his spirit behind.

The tangled skein conveyed them far to the south where they looked for shelter in a community of adobe and wood, the streets austerely angled as though chronicling on the desert's crust the skeleton of something vast and terrible slumbering a short ways beneath. The light from the opening door was a heliograph to both man and boy and in the exhaustion of movement they unlade their chattels, the child already disburdened of consciousness and the father nourishing the hope to join him soon.

The child was quieted by gaudy trinkets and bagatelles.

Goodbye Mat!

Too soon it was all over, and we waved Mat goodbye as he departed to the inhospitable frozen wastes to the north.  Where we'll be moving soon.  During his stay we watched movies, discussed music, and ate lots, while reminiscing about times past when we used to watch movies, discuss music, and eat lots.  We've come so far!

Talking of distance, there are more partings of the ways tomorrow as Hannah flies up to Calgary for a business meeting and I head down to LA to see Jim and Gen (who have a nanny...)  It's our first father and son road trip, six-plus hours on the I5 through the most congested metropolis in the western hemisphere.  What could possibly go wrong?

Keeping cool as the temperatures soared.  He's not used to this.

Entertaining the young one.



And, just to prove it, here are some moving pictures.  Mat's nearly good enough to be in my band.

Ready for a wander around Walnut Creek doing our "gay dads" impression.

A farewell breakfast - Eggs Benedict at Katie's Kreek to keep him warm up there.

My Godfather!

Pete's Godfather Mat flew into town today, because you can never have too many Brits about on 4th July.  He's spending some time in Canada so only had a short hop down but he didn't bring Canadian weather with him - we topped 100F this afternoon.  So what to do?  A trip to an ice cream shop and an extended dip in the pool. Pete's swimming has improved greatly, from unguarded terror to mild worry.  Tomorrow we're going to see how long he can float for unassisted.

Be my friend...Godfather.

Memorising Mat's banking passwords.

It's getting hot out here...

...so let's head to the pool!



Hannah, already coaching MBA competitiveness into her son.

Happy family.

Less happy with a public display of physical affection.  No petting!

Just to prove that he is actually enjoying himself.

Canada: diseased

I have to give it to Chevron, they're a zero-risk company, which probably makes sense when you're dealing with toxic and explosive things (see: BP).  What it means for us is an incredible amount of processes and paperwork for moving with them to a different location, and today's highlight was a full medical.

Vancouver is a 30 minute drive from the US border (in traffic) but once you cross that parallel you're into a land of hepatitis, tuberculosis and possibly dragons.  The medical took two hours each, included an electrocardiogram, taking all my clothes off and coughing, and giving blood - five vials of the stuff, more than a whole arm full!  "Nearly done," said the nurse as she stuck me, which was a complete lie as I spent countless minutes concentrating on breathing and not bleeding out.  But I was allowed into the snack cupboard after that, which was nice.

Hannah had it worse, with an employee-only test that involved sitting in a soundproof box the size of a fridge and pressing a button when she heard a beep (she has a very demanding job).  Apparently when you're inside you can't hear anything and no one can hear you!  I asked the nurse if I could take it home.  Then they injected Pete with TB to see if he reacted to it.  Like they do with cows!  Their parting gift was six immunizations each for the adults.  "This one has to go right into the muscle, so may hurt a bit," said the nurse.  I didn't care; by then I was waiting for her to bring out the bone saw.

The only redeeming moment was when I was asked "are you an athlete?  Because you have the heart rate of an athlete."  But Hannah was told the same, which means they probably use the line to every sorry specimen who comes through, like telling you your baby's cute.  We're so immunized we could survive your average disaster movie, but we have to wait a week to see if we're healthy enough to risk extended time in Canada.  It's a good job the US spends so much on border defense - who knows what the foreigners might bring in with them?

Probable path of infection.

Canadians?