California stopover--It's hot, hot, hot!

California: as many people as the entire country of Canada

After a short night's sleep in the SF Bay Area, we split up for the weekend. Craig and Wili stay. They'll drive inland to see relatives in Stockton. I grab a cheap flight in and out of Oakland to visit some kin down LA way. The one-hour flight passes over a rolling landscape that screams dry.

I fly into the Burbank airport, as it is the closest to my destination. By air, it seems that nearly every house sports a turquoise-blue swimming pool. It also seems like there are freeways everywhere, some eight lanes wide. Too dense for me! As I depart the air-conditioned airport, the heat hits. Hard. Like a blast from an open oven door. At the outdoor shuttle collection curb I wonder, for the umpteenth time, just how so many millions manage to live in conditions like this?

It's always hot in LA in July, but this was a record-breaking, headline-making, full-blast, heat wave.

An older woman is there, dispatching cabs and shuttles. She mentions she is supposed to be across the street in the sun but she is opting for the slight shade offered by the the covered pick-up benches. (Who can blame her?) She tells me it's 110 F, and has been all week.

She is carrying a spritzer bottle and spraying herself with mist every few minutes. I make a point of sitting where some downwind mist can reach me. Considering how frayed she looks she is surprisingly friendly. She says all she wants in the world right now is for 3 o'clock to arrive so she can go home and cool off. She remarks, "It's a perfect day to die out here."

Other cabbies wander over to chat. They companionably borrow the bottle to spritz each other. "How I love sunny southern California!" one quips, and I wonder where he came from and what his story is. (I surmise that most came from somewhere else, judging by the accented English.) "110!" my dispatcher mutters. "Oh no, my dear." corrects a cabbie, "Now it's 115!"

I wait 20 minutes for my ride. Sweat pours down in rivulets from body creases, like my knees, while instantly evaporating from all flat skin surfaces. When my shuttle comes I make sure I tip the dispatcher, thinking what ever they are paying you people, it's not enough.

I am the only passenger in the van. My driver talks the whole time on a hand-held cell phone in a language I could not even guess. He navigates the 20-minute drive by touch-screen typing into a windshield-mounted 3x4 inch GPS map system, with cell phone in hand. I think of different personality types and how some would simply turn the Car Talk mantra into an order: "Hey buddy, drive now talk later". Others would seethe and complain to the company. My choice is to do nothing and to release any worry. He's obviously done it a few times and lived to tell the tale. This is not really going to kill me, not today. (And isn't that A/C mighty fine?)

I content myself with watching the GPS computer, the first one I've seen up close. It image-maps the whole route, right down to displaying how long the trip should take. Talk about Big Brother watching you!

Baked to a delicate crunch

Like my parents, my Aunt was born and raised in the Territory of Hawaii. Unlike my parents, she left. She's a retired art teacher and has live in the same compact house since the 1960's. The garage is her artist's studio, where she still paints and fabricates metal jewlery. Her suburban lot is wonderfully landscaped with a multitude of flowers, trees and shrubs under the high branches of a massive live oak. (These oaks are protected by law in many California municipalities.) The desert/Mediterranean plants are all fine. The roses and lilies are showing stress, the flowers shriveled--literally baked to a crisp. The plants revive overnight and send out more blooms, which may or may not survive. Hope springs eternal.

We spend the weekend avoiding the heat and catching up, after a year since my last visit. Some family visits are a replay of oft-told tales. Probably because I came alone, with no bored men about, her conversations are fresh and full of details that are new to me. It's hot as Hades but, otherwise, it is a good visit.

Flying back to SFO, I re-connect with my "boys" and we catch our flight to Maui.