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thebratqueenSo apparently I went to California.
The trip to California was due to my nephew being Christened. The goal destination was Santa Ynez, where Elder Brother and his family live. The people on the journey were myself, my dad, and Older Brother (who is not as old as Elder Brother, for those of you playing the home game).
We left on Friday with no traffic and plenty of time to spare. At the airport yours truly was pulled aside during the security check for what they claim was a blip in my baggage, but I think we all know it was because I had Eminem's "Mosh" on my mp3 player. I read blogs. I'm savvy like that.
The plane ride was good. The first leg was JFK to LAX, wherein the plane itself was not crowded per se but had that sheep-like stress due to everybody wanting to sit in an asile seat. Luckily OB and my dad got one, and I sat next to OB. This then resulted in the woman who had the window seat looking at us with the sort of horror one normally reserves for those who are currently sporting open head wounds, and she promptly volunteered to take a window seat elsewhere if it meant getting the hell away from us - I mean if it meant Dad could sit with us too.
So you had the 3 of us all in a row which is really just a disaster in the making. Sure enough, Cleveland vanished off the map.
Now if you've read my previous trip logs you know that I apparently have the ability to make entire geographic locations disappear. That was in full force on this trip as our pilot informed us that Cleveland's radar was down and nobody could fly until the secondary radar was up, or somebody managed to use the right amount of force while kicking the side of the first one.
I don't want to say that the anticipated wait for this was long, but I'm reasonably certain that it can't ever be a good sign when your pilot effectively tells you to smoke 'em if you got 'em.
But all was not lost as we were up and running in 15 minutes, give or take. Soon we were winging our way across the country, of which I can't give you too many fascinating details because I was blessedly asleep for most of it.
Upon arriving in LAX we navigated our way to the puddle jumper that would take us to Santa Barbara. The name of the plane was quite literal as Los Angeles had pouring down rain that day, which all of the locals informed us was entirely our fault so - sorry about that LA! My bad!
I'd like to take a minute here to talk about the Santa Barbara airport, and specifically the rental car situation that one can find there. If you have, as you might, arranged from a rental car with Enterprise out of the Santa Barbara airport you should not, under any circumstances, labor under the misapprehension that you can find send rental car by following any of the signs which say, as for example, "car rental". This is because the Enterprise franchise out of Santa Barbara is run by playful minxes, who think that the one thing anybody needs after a long plane ride is a scavenger hunt which uses no clues whatsoever.
I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's entirely possible that they change the setup for each and every passenger since that way they can guarantee that nobody ever knows where the Enterprise office is, so I don't mind telling you that our answer was to go on a very long walk in the wrong direction, go on another long walk, call the 800 number for the office, be told to go into baggage claim (because using nothing but carry-on luggage clearly leads to communism, and Enterprise can't encourage that by enabling such Castro wanna bes by giving them actual transportation), call for a shuttle, wait 15 minutes, call for a shuttle again, then finally be picked up by a woman who does a very good impression of someone who only knows how to operate the shuttle van because she managed to scribble down some crib notes ("long skinny pedal = movement" "running over animals = bad") onto the palm of her hand, possibly in the lag time that passed between the first phone call and her arrival.
During the ride over and at the Enterprise office, you will then be given a half-syllable of apology at best, told in a patronizing tone of voice that their website makes the shuttle situation perfectly clear, have absolutely no one volunteer to explain how you were expected to boot up the website in the middle of an airport about the size of a Chiclet though decorated much more attractively, given a car upgrade to effectively shut you up when you try to explain that a sign of some kind within the actual airport would not actually kill anyone as far as you're aware, have your shuttle driver start out to make a good effort on apologizing until she admits that you're not the first to have complained about the problem, wait five years for your upgraded car to actually be given to you, have the man doing the paperwork mistake your age, location, and just for shits and giggles your name and gender, and then be told that the only way you can return the car next Tuesday for your 8:30am flight which boards at 7:45 is to show up at the office at 7:30 and trust that somehow the crack car rental team who took more time to get you from the airport and into your vehicle than most people do to successfully raise an infant and send them off to college will manage to get you from the office and to your gate before the plane takes off while the other passengers wave at you sarcastically from the window.
That is, if you're me and my family. Other people might have to wait longer.
Our little posse then drove up to Santa Ynez to hook up with Elder Brother and his crew. The hobbit child is truly a hobbit child now, and not merely a hobbit by proxy. You know in the movies? When you see the wee little hobbit children with their big eyes and round cheeks and dark curly hair? The hobbit child looks exactly like that. And I'm not saying this out of a doting aunt's love, because I love my nephew but he does in some ways bear a close resemblance to a frog. He also looks a great deal like Elder Brother, aka his dad. Coincidence? I think not.
We were not staying in Santa Ynez, though. Instead we made our digs in beautiful downtown Solvang which, if I am understanding things correctly, is located in the exact same spot as beautiful uptown Solvang, beautiful midtown Solvang, and Solvang's beautiful and bustling East Village Queer Co-op Collective. Not that I actually saw any gay people while in Solvang, but a town built entirely on the commerce of kitch has to be hiding them somewhere.
Solvang, for those of you who haven't heard of it before - and really you should be ashamed of yourselves - is the "Danish Capital of America", so those of you who were losing sleep at night about this can rest assured that our needs in that area have been fulfilled. (Which is no slam on having a Danish anything in America, I'm just amused that apparently we only need one. All other Danish towns in the US can slit their wrists now and stop pretending, is the message of Solvang. Perhaps try to redo your mission statements and aim for something in a nice Belgian Capital of the US, or possibly even Peruvian if nobody's laid claim to that yet. Solvang, in the meanwhile, will try not to gloat too much about how, if nothing else, they figured out the slogan before anyone else could.)
The concept of Solvang is interesting in that it was apparently originally settled by actual Danish settlers who got there in 1911, took approximately 40 years to decide that the town looked like ass, and rectified the problem by redoing everything in Classic Quaint Old Worlde Style. To modern eyes what this results in is a town that certainly has a look to it, but you can never quite decide if it's the neat taste-of-Europe look that you get in the French Quarter (though minus the pee smell and the vomiting) or if it's a town that, with the best of intentions, recreated all of the Old World class of, as for example, the fake countries in Epcot center or even quite frankly It's A Small World After All.
Which isn't to say that I didn't like it. I just don't know if I properly understood it. On the one hand: great food and interesting window shopping. On the other: people of very obvious non-Danish backgrounds being made to wear Ye Olde Classic Authentic Danish Outfits lest the theme fall apart for even a second, plus there was a Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light gallery.
For those who don't know Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, allow me to burst the bubble of you lucky bastards by explaining that Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light first and foremost calls himself Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light in pretty much every available opportunity, possibly up to and even including the moments when he's having sex ("I, Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, would like to remove your bra now.") and yet doesn't have the dignity that even Michael Jackson possesses to allow for reports about him to include the disclaimer "self-styled".
Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light has also managed to make a fortune for himself as really only someone in America can. Basically he painted some pictures back in the day (of light, obviously, though other colors manage to sneak in there as well), people bought them, and then Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light thought to himself that this whole exchange of money for goods and services was very nice, but was there possibly a way to arrange it that allowed people to buy his signed, limited-edition, original artwork while at the same time removing the pesky issues of Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light actually having to limit the editions, sign his name, and do the actual painting.
So if one was to, for example, decide to buy a painting from Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, the odds of Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light actually having touched the painting in question are nowhere near the odds that the painting was designed, created and painted by an underling who then turned it over to be signed with the name of Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, via an auto-pen, and then thousands of copies are made of said picture and given to anyone who had that much money burning a hole in their pocket.
However, if one actually cares to see an original, actually breathed upon by Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light masterpiece, it is possible to do that in the Solvang located gallery. I, for some reason, consistantly managed to be elsewhere.
One must give a shout-out to the food of Solvang, however, and in their breakfasts they did not disappoint. On the first morning OB, Dad and I ate at Paula's Pancake House, where we obviously ordered the Eggs Benedict, and on the second morning we ate at the Solvang Restaurant, where we obviously ordered the breakfast burrito.
Actually, the Solvang Restaurant gifted us with waffles and an order of Æbleskiver. Here is where I have to give the Danish ancestors of Solvang their props, because it's not many people who can sit back and ask themselves "How do we take something that has all the nutritional value of a powdered donut and make it both more and less healthy at the exact same time?" And the answer is by adding a fruit product infused with sugar, and lo it is actually pretty good, if that's the sort of thing you like. I don't know that I would call it a part of this nutritional breakfast unless a glass of OJ, some tofu, and approximately half a loaf of seven-grain bread was served on the side, but on the other hand it's not like my waffle was climbing its way high up on the food pyramid either.
Solvang also possesses some very good pastry and chocolate shops, and Svendsgaard's Danish Lodge is possibly the nicest hotel I've ever stayed at while consistantly never being able to remember or spell the name of my home away from home.
In addition to Solvang there was some touring of the area to be done. I'd seen some of it before but it was nice to do it again with a digital camera.
On Saturday morning my sis in law and I went in to Santa Barbara to pick up outfits for the hobbit child and the nephew to wear for the big day. Los Olivos factored in as that was where Elder Brother's family goes to church. It is also where I was nearly savagely attacked by honey mustard, but fortunately I was able to thwart the attempt in time.
Various drives around the area were done, in which I learned 1) The Santa Ynez area is very pretty 2) hawks are everywhere 3) vultures are really frikkin' big 4) Michael Jackson lives directly across the street from a pre-school and 5) the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile shows up when you least expect it.
ETA: I completely forgot that while there I visited the Chumash Casino. I think the reason for this will be very obvious to anyone who's been to the Chumash Casino, as, well - Okay, I'm not a casino expert by a long shot, but while at casinos I tend to like getting the full experience, and to me roulette tables that aren't actually tables and craps tables that have no actual... er, crap (they used paper cards with dice printed on them instead of real dice) lack a certain thingness. I did, however, have the Buffy musical stuck in my head the entire damn weekend, and also picked up a great T-shirt that I shall definitely be wearing to the Buffy panel at this year's Connexions. It doesn't say "No longer inflicting people with the funny syphillus", but I think it's safe to say it's implied.
There was also bonding time with the family to be had. Inspired by our proximity to Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light - or at least our proximity to stuff that had his name on it - we decided to Christen ourselves with our own titles. So Dad is now Caller of Mom (as he does this every five seconds whenever he's on a trip), Older Brother is Eater of Pancakes. Yours truly is Petter of Cats, and Elder Brother is Changer of Poop, lest you worry that anyone in my family has a mature and subtle sense of humor.
The hobbit child was agressively adorable, and if you think I won't be co-opting some of her behavior for fics of mine involving young children you are so, so wrong. Of note, however, was the one time she paused while I was in the middle of reading her a story, snuggled over, looked up at me with her large hobbit eyes and whispered "I like you." Afterwhich I naturally bought her a pony.
The trip back to the Santa Barbara airport was without much incident, other than the fact that Dad, when bringing the car back to Enterprise, was told that in spite of being informed that the only possible way to return the rental car was to do so at 7:30am which again is 15 minutes before boarding began for our flight, that he could have actually left the car in short-term parking at the airport and dropped the keys off at a drop box, also located at the airport. So the spirit of fun and whimsy at Enterprise lives on, and if you think I'm hammering this point home to help make sure nobody ever uses the Enterprise franchise located just outside of the Santa Barbara airport ever again, you are so, so right.
And I think that pretty much covers the highlights. Questions? Comments?
The trip to California was due to my nephew being Christened. The goal destination was Santa Ynez, where Elder Brother and his family live. The people on the journey were myself, my dad, and Older Brother (who is not as old as Elder Brother, for those of you playing the home game).
We left on Friday with no traffic and plenty of time to spare. At the airport yours truly was pulled aside during the security check for what they claim was a blip in my baggage, but I think we all know it was because I had Eminem's "Mosh" on my mp3 player. I read blogs. I'm savvy like that.
The plane ride was good. The first leg was JFK to LAX, wherein the plane itself was not crowded per se but had that sheep-like stress due to everybody wanting to sit in an asile seat. Luckily OB and my dad got one, and I sat next to OB. This then resulted in the woman who had the window seat looking at us with the sort of horror one normally reserves for those who are currently sporting open head wounds, and she promptly volunteered to take a window seat elsewhere if it meant getting the hell away from us - I mean if it meant Dad could sit with us too.
So you had the 3 of us all in a row which is really just a disaster in the making. Sure enough, Cleveland vanished off the map.
Now if you've read my previous trip logs you know that I apparently have the ability to make entire geographic locations disappear. That was in full force on this trip as our pilot informed us that Cleveland's radar was down and nobody could fly until the secondary radar was up, or somebody managed to use the right amount of force while kicking the side of the first one.
I don't want to say that the anticipated wait for this was long, but I'm reasonably certain that it can't ever be a good sign when your pilot effectively tells you to smoke 'em if you got 'em.
But all was not lost as we were up and running in 15 minutes, give or take. Soon we were winging our way across the country, of which I can't give you too many fascinating details because I was blessedly asleep for most of it.
Upon arriving in LAX we navigated our way to the puddle jumper that would take us to Santa Barbara. The name of the plane was quite literal as Los Angeles had pouring down rain that day, which all of the locals informed us was entirely our fault so - sorry about that LA! My bad!
I'd like to take a minute here to talk about the Santa Barbara airport, and specifically the rental car situation that one can find there. If you have, as you might, arranged from a rental car with Enterprise out of the Santa Barbara airport you should not, under any circumstances, labor under the misapprehension that you can find send rental car by following any of the signs which say, as for example, "car rental". This is because the Enterprise franchise out of Santa Barbara is run by playful minxes, who think that the one thing anybody needs after a long plane ride is a scavenger hunt which uses no clues whatsoever.
I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's entirely possible that they change the setup for each and every passenger since that way they can guarantee that nobody ever knows where the Enterprise office is, so I don't mind telling you that our answer was to go on a very long walk in the wrong direction, go on another long walk, call the 800 number for the office, be told to go into baggage claim (because using nothing but carry-on luggage clearly leads to communism, and Enterprise can't encourage that by enabling such Castro wanna bes by giving them actual transportation), call for a shuttle, wait 15 minutes, call for a shuttle again, then finally be picked up by a woman who does a very good impression of someone who only knows how to operate the shuttle van because she managed to scribble down some crib notes ("long skinny pedal = movement" "running over animals = bad") onto the palm of her hand, possibly in the lag time that passed between the first phone call and her arrival.
During the ride over and at the Enterprise office, you will then be given a half-syllable of apology at best, told in a patronizing tone of voice that their website makes the shuttle situation perfectly clear, have absolutely no one volunteer to explain how you were expected to boot up the website in the middle of an airport about the size of a Chiclet though decorated much more attractively, given a car upgrade to effectively shut you up when you try to explain that a sign of some kind within the actual airport would not actually kill anyone as far as you're aware, have your shuttle driver start out to make a good effort on apologizing until she admits that you're not the first to have complained about the problem, wait five years for your upgraded car to actually be given to you, have the man doing the paperwork mistake your age, location, and just for shits and giggles your name and gender, and then be told that the only way you can return the car next Tuesday for your 8:30am flight which boards at 7:45 is to show up at the office at 7:30 and trust that somehow the crack car rental team who took more time to get you from the airport and into your vehicle than most people do to successfully raise an infant and send them off to college will manage to get you from the office and to your gate before the plane takes off while the other passengers wave at you sarcastically from the window.
That is, if you're me and my family. Other people might have to wait longer.
Our little posse then drove up to Santa Ynez to hook up with Elder Brother and his crew. The hobbit child is truly a hobbit child now, and not merely a hobbit by proxy. You know in the movies? When you see the wee little hobbit children with their big eyes and round cheeks and dark curly hair? The hobbit child looks exactly like that. And I'm not saying this out of a doting aunt's love, because I love my nephew but he does in some ways bear a close resemblance to a frog. He also looks a great deal like Elder Brother, aka his dad. Coincidence? I think not.
We were not staying in Santa Ynez, though. Instead we made our digs in beautiful downtown Solvang which, if I am understanding things correctly, is located in the exact same spot as beautiful uptown Solvang, beautiful midtown Solvang, and Solvang's beautiful and bustling East Village Queer Co-op Collective. Not that I actually saw any gay people while in Solvang, but a town built entirely on the commerce of kitch has to be hiding them somewhere.
Solvang, for those of you who haven't heard of it before - and really you should be ashamed of yourselves - is the "Danish Capital of America", so those of you who were losing sleep at night about this can rest assured that our needs in that area have been fulfilled. (Which is no slam on having a Danish anything in America, I'm just amused that apparently we only need one. All other Danish towns in the US can slit their wrists now and stop pretending, is the message of Solvang. Perhaps try to redo your mission statements and aim for something in a nice Belgian Capital of the US, or possibly even Peruvian if nobody's laid claim to that yet. Solvang, in the meanwhile, will try not to gloat too much about how, if nothing else, they figured out the slogan before anyone else could.)
The concept of Solvang is interesting in that it was apparently originally settled by actual Danish settlers who got there in 1911, took approximately 40 years to decide that the town looked like ass, and rectified the problem by redoing everything in Classic Quaint Old Worlde Style. To modern eyes what this results in is a town that certainly has a look to it, but you can never quite decide if it's the neat taste-of-Europe look that you get in the French Quarter (though minus the pee smell and the vomiting) or if it's a town that, with the best of intentions, recreated all of the Old World class of, as for example, the fake countries in Epcot center or even quite frankly It's A Small World After All.
Which isn't to say that I didn't like it. I just don't know if I properly understood it. On the one hand: great food and interesting window shopping. On the other: people of very obvious non-Danish backgrounds being made to wear Ye Olde Classic Authentic Danish Outfits lest the theme fall apart for even a second, plus there was a Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light gallery.
For those who don't know Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, allow me to burst the bubble of you lucky bastards by explaining that Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light first and foremost calls himself Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light in pretty much every available opportunity, possibly up to and even including the moments when he's having sex ("I, Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, would like to remove your bra now.") and yet doesn't have the dignity that even Michael Jackson possesses to allow for reports about him to include the disclaimer "self-styled".
Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light has also managed to make a fortune for himself as really only someone in America can. Basically he painted some pictures back in the day (of light, obviously, though other colors manage to sneak in there as well), people bought them, and then Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light thought to himself that this whole exchange of money for goods and services was very nice, but was there possibly a way to arrange it that allowed people to buy his signed, limited-edition, original artwork while at the same time removing the pesky issues of Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light actually having to limit the editions, sign his name, and do the actual painting.
So if one was to, for example, decide to buy a painting from Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, the odds of Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light actually having touched the painting in question are nowhere near the odds that the painting was designed, created and painted by an underling who then turned it over to be signed with the name of Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, via an auto-pen, and then thousands of copies are made of said picture and given to anyone who had that much money burning a hole in their pocket.
However, if one actually cares to see an original, actually breathed upon by Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light masterpiece, it is possible to do that in the Solvang located gallery. I, for some reason, consistantly managed to be elsewhere.
One must give a shout-out to the food of Solvang, however, and in their breakfasts they did not disappoint. On the first morning OB, Dad and I ate at Paula's Pancake House, where we obviously ordered the Eggs Benedict, and on the second morning we ate at the Solvang Restaurant, where we obviously ordered the breakfast burrito.
Actually, the Solvang Restaurant gifted us with waffles and an order of Æbleskiver. Here is where I have to give the Danish ancestors of Solvang their props, because it's not many people who can sit back and ask themselves "How do we take something that has all the nutritional value of a powdered donut and make it both more and less healthy at the exact same time?" And the answer is by adding a fruit product infused with sugar, and lo it is actually pretty good, if that's the sort of thing you like. I don't know that I would call it a part of this nutritional breakfast unless a glass of OJ, some tofu, and approximately half a loaf of seven-grain bread was served on the side, but on the other hand it's not like my waffle was climbing its way high up on the food pyramid either.
Solvang also possesses some very good pastry and chocolate shops, and Svendsgaard's Danish Lodge is possibly the nicest hotel I've ever stayed at while consistantly never being able to remember or spell the name of my home away from home.
In addition to Solvang there was some touring of the area to be done. I'd seen some of it before but it was nice to do it again with a digital camera.
On Saturday morning my sis in law and I went in to Santa Barbara to pick up outfits for the hobbit child and the nephew to wear for the big day. Los Olivos factored in as that was where Elder Brother's family goes to church. It is also where I was nearly savagely attacked by honey mustard, but fortunately I was able to thwart the attempt in time.
Various drives around the area were done, in which I learned 1) The Santa Ynez area is very pretty 2) hawks are everywhere 3) vultures are really frikkin' big 4) Michael Jackson lives directly across the street from a pre-school and 5) the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile shows up when you least expect it.
ETA: I completely forgot that while there I visited the Chumash Casino. I think the reason for this will be very obvious to anyone who's been to the Chumash Casino, as, well - Okay, I'm not a casino expert by a long shot, but while at casinos I tend to like getting the full experience, and to me roulette tables that aren't actually tables and craps tables that have no actual... er, crap (they used paper cards with dice printed on them instead of real dice) lack a certain thingness. I did, however, have the Buffy musical stuck in my head the entire damn weekend, and also picked up a great T-shirt that I shall definitely be wearing to the Buffy panel at this year's Connexions. It doesn't say "No longer inflicting people with the funny syphillus", but I think it's safe to say it's implied.
There was also bonding time with the family to be had. Inspired by our proximity to Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light - or at least our proximity to stuff that had his name on it - we decided to Christen ourselves with our own titles. So Dad is now Caller of Mom (as he does this every five seconds whenever he's on a trip), Older Brother is Eater of Pancakes. Yours truly is Petter of Cats, and Elder Brother is Changer of Poop, lest you worry that anyone in my family has a mature and subtle sense of humor.
The hobbit child was agressively adorable, and if you think I won't be co-opting some of her behavior for fics of mine involving young children you are so, so wrong. Of note, however, was the one time she paused while I was in the middle of reading her a story, snuggled over, looked up at me with her large hobbit eyes and whispered "I like you." Afterwhich I naturally bought her a pony.
The trip back to the Santa Barbara airport was without much incident, other than the fact that Dad, when bringing the car back to Enterprise, was told that in spite of being informed that the only possible way to return the rental car was to do so at 7:30am which again is 15 minutes before boarding began for our flight, that he could have actually left the car in short-term parking at the airport and dropped the keys off at a drop box, also located at the airport. So the spirit of fun and whimsy at Enterprise lives on, and if you think I'm hammering this point home to help make sure nobody ever uses the Enterprise franchise located just outside of the Santa Barbara airport ever again, you are so, so right.
And I think that pretty much covers the highlights. Questions? Comments?
