Southern California Wrap-Up

Part of the purpose of this trip of mine is to discover how I get to grips with being thrust into a new city, with few anchors except for a hostel reservation and a flight ticket. It's also for me to have a few parts of the world in which I have survived for a few days or a couple of weeks, to help me judge whether I could live there if I was ever asked to. Of course, visiting a city as a tourist is very different to living there as a resident, and I won't visit enough of any city to truly know if it's for me. But I can judge the feel of a place and record a few observations as I go along.

Southern California was a lot of fun - I crammed a lot into my time there (possibly a bit too much, as you can  tell by the infrequency of my blog updates). Engineering-wise, it is home to so many Aerospace companies that I am highly likely to visit, or be invited to work, there at some point.

The climate is hot here, but I was able to manage fine and adapt quite quickly. I certainly wouldn't want an outdoor job, neither could I bear it much hotter, like it is further inland. Geography-wise, I was pleased with how quickly I could get used to covering large distances by road, a 2.5 hour drive wasn't much of an issue by the end of the week, even though it would get you to Nottingham or Dover from where I live in the UK!

American cities are just normal cities at the end of the day, so apart from the slightly different road network planning, I can't see too many differences here with cities I'd live in in the UK. It seems like any activity I enjoy doing in the UK, I could do just as easily in California, it just might take a bit of a further drive than usual.

Driving around the state was probably a highlight for me - the Californian road network is very good indeed (although I never saw it in the morning rush hour) and I loved the 6-7 lane freeways - they were varied enough to keep interest and went through some fantastic scenery. The highlight, of course, were the meticulously crafter country roads with their good use of camber, excellent surfaces and markings, and great fun weaving through the scenery! The American drivers are a bit more robotic than the UK ones, for instance if you want to change lanes on the freeway, you can indicate all you want and no-one will react; it's up to you to find a space to move into. Also, people just stay in one lane until they come up to a car going slower than them - at which point undertaking is just as permitted as overtaking. I had no problem with this, though I watched an amusing compact convoy of cars on a two-lane highway as one car refused to accelerate to go past the other!

The American people, then, are what make the real difference. I came across some very friendly, helpful people, both in my company visits and around the cities I was visiting. It seems like most citizens could be switched into friendly mode - but you had to initiate it! There was much less impromptu interaction than I've seen in the UK, but again that could be a feature of being in the cities.

I think I could very easily live and work here, and adapt pretty quickly as well. What would annoy me would be the fact that prices are never actually what they say they are. What I'd miss would be the variable climate (especially soaring weather) and the shorter driving distances of the UK. But apart from that, I think I could safely say that California is for me :-)

Jazz in the Pines

Saturday morning I woke up quite cold but otherwise comfortable in the passenger seat of my car, and went for breakfast in the cafe. I am sure I will get used to the combination of eggs and ketchup, sausage and mustard, and pancakes and maple syrup, all on one plate... Though sausage and maple syrup is a good combination. Try it!
Also I manged to do a bit of this:

 

It was a good start to the day! Bright and fresh, wandering through the mountains on horseback with just my high-school guide and her sister (plus the horses) for company. I was on an 18-year-old mare called Dakota who had clearly 'seen it all' and was very well behaved, if a bit windy.
This left me just enough time to drive down (about 3 miles of more awesome mountain road) to Idyllwild and park up in the town centre. So, why am I here? Well it just so happens that there is an annual Jazz festival which attracts some huge names in the worlds of jazz, funk and big bands. As well as all that, there was one reason why I was going along. Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band is a world-famous ensemble of exceedingly tight and exciting music in all sorts of styles. The University of Bath Big Band plays lots of Gordon's music, I own a number of their CDs, and for just $65 I could come and watch them play along with a whole host of other impressive ensembles.

Here are some of the other bands I managed to see:



Barnaby Finch and the Straightjackets (fantastic flowing jazz, especially one amazing composition with an orchestral opening. The saxophonist in particular was probably the best I saw all day)

Janis Mann - a brilliant singer...

...upstaged at times by her very enthusiastic drummer! Here, the whole band stare at him while he completes his solo...

Rocky Zharp and the Blues Crackers. Lots of people dancing to this!

World-famous Kenny Burrell (the guitarist)

Lunch for me was slightly unusual. Have you ever had battered catfish and hush puppies on a bed of seasoned fries? Me neither, but I suppose I did want 'a taste of Louisiana'... To finish, of course, I had a root beer float. Which tasted for all the world like Milton disinfectant - the stuff that you clean baby bottles with? So much so that I took it back and the guy tasted it but assured me that's what root beer tastes like!! So I did my best to 'acquire' the taste before the end of the cup (but unfortunately failed).

And finally, on the main stage and under a shady canopy of parachutes...

Gordon Goodwin and his very own Big Phat Band! http://www.bigphatband.com/

What a show it was! I love Gordon Goodwin's amazing composition, and the band was so tight it was like listening to a recording. They played a whole load of awesome pieces including That's How We Roll (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cZQaD2CCVE), Rippin' and Runnin' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI1MmdLIyqk) and of course, the finale of the Hunting Wabbits trilogy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEki23tQSr8). I filmed a couple of these, but frankly I was just enjoying the awesome music-making! What was new to me, of course, was seeing which instruments were played by which musicians - I had no idea that the lead Alto player was also the clarinettist, and the soprano player, and had a flute in his arsenal as well...

So I just sat back and soaked up an awesome hour and a quarter of top-notch music. Worth every cent :-)

 

 

 

After GGBPB had finished, to raptuous applause, I (and most of the rest of the audience) headed out to the shuttle to take us back to our cars. Upon reaching mine, I tried to put the roof away and, part way through, it came up with 'Convertible Top Malfunction'!!! So now I have a car with the roof half-down and the boot open the wrong way, and can't put it away or put it back up... Dave, what should I do in this situation? Turn it off and back on again, of course :-) And the problem was solved.

Following this was the fantastic drive back down the 22-mile mountain road. In case you're wondering, it's route 243 (http://goo.gl/maps/wHUUB which you can explore on Street View if you're really bored) and the route down was just as good, if not better, than the route up! Of course I had the roof down the whole way, and every time I came up behind another vehicle, it either pulled over in a layby or just happened to be at a good overtaking opportunity with no oncoming traffic! I guess they just see a white convertible being driven 'enthusiastically' and don't want to be anywhere near it....

Following that was another couple of hours of freeway driving, to take me to my final LA destination, the Travelodge at LAX. By far the most costly of the accommodation I've had, it's only redeeming features were the laundry, the pickup from the car rental, and the free airport shuttle. And I suppose its location! I mean, there was nothing wrong with it at all, but apart from the aforementioned features, it was no better than the Days Inn at Palmdale, just twice the cost (and that was with a 30% discount).

The time, therefore, had come to return the hire car. I couldn't believe how upset I was to part with this nice little white car! We'd done close to 800 miles together which is 10% of its total mileage (for a mere $80 of fuel, in fact, since I got the car full and was meant to return empty, which I did) and I reckon at least 16 hours in the saddle - not to mention the night in the passenger seat. The sound system was fantastic and it handled really nicely. The only thing I could complain about was the gearbox - not the fact that it was automatic, but the fact it was quite slow to kick-down and not very easy to control using the throttle. I reckon it was probably a hydromechanical one rather than electronically controlled, and was the only weak point in an otherwise nice car. Though more on the driving in a later post.

However, I consoled myself with one last photo, and the knowledge that the car would now be properly cleaned and looked after and fuelled, ready for a whole new adventure with a new driver. It certainly wouldn't miss me!!



Back to the hotel to finish off the laundry and finally rid myself of the cursed Formil travel wash which had started to leak through it's now-triple-bagged protective layer. I was fed up with putting it in yet another bag and it was far too lubricated to repair the slit in the tube - so I finished it off and took great delight in binning it :-)

Car Camping

The car was so hot when I got back to the car park! It told me the outside air temperature was 100 degrees F but I could barely touch the steering wheel! It was a good job I could just put the roof down to let all the hot air out, and then put it back up and let the air conditioning do its job. I'm definitely getting used to the heat though, which is a good thing considering my future destinations of Beijing, Singapore and Delhi, although I think these are significantly more humid.



Roof down mode of my very own Transformer :-)

So I then drove through the desert, the outside temperature never dropping below 90 degrees and the tape which was holding my phone-come-satnav to the dashboard doing a magnificent demonstration of Kelvin-Voigt model creep in the strength of the solar heating.



The view for most of the desert drive

It was about a 2 hour drive to the mountains, about halfway through I came across a 'Roundabout' which was advertised well in advance with orange flashing lights to warn you that you were approaching a very unusual road feature, and so much signage to remind you to yield to the left and follow the road around the island and take the correct exit, that it was arguably more confusing than a normal one! Necessary precautions, maybe, in a country which probably only has one roundabout per state... Luckily, though, the road I was on avoided going around this feature, and I was spared the confusion...

The road from the valley up to Idyllwild was the best 22 miles of driving I've ever done! I put the roof down for the twisty mountain road, ascending from about 1000 feet up to 7000, with so many turns, close passes, steep drops on each side and a fantastic road surface with 5-15 degrees camber in almost every corner. Every quarter of a mile or so, there were passing points, where the slow vehicles (should you end up behind one) would pull over and let you have the road to yourself! It was such an awesome drive, part of me wishes that I had filmed it, but these things never look as good afterwards and there was no obvious place to attach the camera where it would have a good view of the road ahead.



Valley view

 

Fantastic roads, and a good car to enjoy them with!

At the top of this magnificent rollercoaster ride of a road, I arrived at Thousand Trails campsite - primarily an RV camp, I had booked a tent space here for just under $30. I hadn't realised, though, that the facility came with its own swimming pool, cafe and every site having electricity and water. So I went for a dip in the heated pool and, being Oktoberfest that weekend (somehow - in late August), the proprietor of the cafe wanted to try out her Rahm Schnitzel on me for supper - which was superb and almost as good as the one that Jamie made for us in Bath!

The cafe. What you might not be able to see behind is the 11,000' mountain looming over the campsite!

Chez Colin for the night.

Exploring Edwards AFB

Friday was a pretty awesome day - I had found out, well in advance, that it is possible to get a tour of Edwards Air Force Base if you apply to the right website with enough notice! So I did, and provided my nationality and passport details etc, and was rewarded with a trip around Edwards in a very small group...


Every Aero Geek's wet dream...

For those who don't know, Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave desert is the world's top test flight location. Over 150 aircraft types have had their maiden flights here and hundreds more have gone through the extensive flight testing required for new airliners, military aircraft, spaceplanes and novel designs to achieve certification. Edwards has been the home to some seriously wacky aircraft in its time, including the NASA switchblade aircraft, the space shuttle, Proteus, flying wings, lifting bodies and so many more. It is the site of so many firsts, including the first flight through the sound barrier, you must read up on the base online (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwards_Air_Force_Base or, if you prefer a more reputable source, http://www.edwards.af.mil/) - it's a fascinating place.

   etc...



Edwards is an ideal location for the testing of aircraft due to its unique geography and geology. The base itself sits on the edge of a very hard, very flat lake bed, which floods every couple of years or so in a process which moves the silt around to make the surface flatter and fills in the cracks each time. As well as the main tarmac runways, this lake bed houses 13 marked runways of up to 7 MILES in length! This is why it is perfect for flight test - there are so many different options for a stricken or untested aircraft to find somewhere to land. Of course, it was also used as the landing site for about 50% of the Space Shuttle landings, including the flight tests at the very start of the programme.

Anyway, driving up to the base took about 45 minutes, included a 10 minute drive at 60 mph from the edge of the base to the guard gate!! Waiting for us there was a collection of iconic aircraft, primarily the Century series of transonic and supersonic fighter aircraft, and the YC-15 prototype aircraft which led to the development of the C-17. It was permitted to take photos of these aircraft, with the caveat of 'beware of snakes', but cameras weren't allowed into the base so I can't bore you with anything other than stock photos!



The Century series of fighters

YC-15 cargo aircraft. The letter C = cargo, F = fighter, B = bomber etc... No idea what the Y stands for!



After being issued with name badges etc, the first stop for the 30 or so guests on the tour was the base museum. Just parked outside in an almost hapazard fashion was a selection of aircraft including a Gloster Meteor, an SR-71 Blackbird, a B52 bomber and many more. Inside the museum, however, was Glamorous Glennis - the X-1 rocket aircraft which was the first aircraft ever to fly through Mach 1, piloted by Chuck Yeager! There were all sorts of other exhibits and I wish I could have photographed them, but the museum is hoping to raise the capital to relocate just outside the base so everyone can visit, so I hope this becomes possible.

Edwards AFB has about 11,000 employees on a weekday (of which 2000 are military) and contained therein are the office blocks, churches, shops, recreation areas (including paintball arena) and houses to accommodate them. There is even an 18 hole golf course, irrigated with reclaimed water, which stands out as an incredibly lush corner of an incredibly dry desert. We saw all of these on our way to the flight line. After the bus was checked for FOD, we drove down the flightline and saw F-16s and F-22s warming up, taxying and performing touch-and-gos. Definitely the highlight though was the F-35 which landed and then taxied right past us! We also saw the filming location for Iron Man (the building used for Stark Enterprises) and then drove over to NASA for lunch.
I can't even remember all the aircraft just parked around the base, preserved perfectly in the very arid desert air. It just boggles the mind, how many milestones were reached at Edwards AFB in the last 60 years. NASA, too, had various aircraft parked outside (including yet another SR-71 - the 3rd I'd seen this week!) and it was interesting for me to see the first ever fly-by-wire modified F-8 aircraft whose flight LOOKS like it very nearly ended in disaster... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHPv0qt03aA)
We watched a publicity film at NASA and bought lunch in the canteen, then we were ferried back to our cars, after a tour lasting about 5 hours. It was really professionally done and if you are within an hour or 2 of Lancaster, CA then I can really recommend it!!

Though it was very hot when I got back to the car...

Fish Tacos?

So on Thursday morning I checked out of the Santa Monica Hostel for the last time and drove up to the North of LA County (which is a huge area, x square miles and y million people, of which Los Angeles and Hollywood and Santa Monica and Long Beach are all cities within LA County) where I had another meeting with a company. Suffice to say, this was one of the best yet, in terms of the insight I was able to get from a very helpful chap I'd met at a conference when I visited DC 2 years ago, and also he took me to lunch courtesy of the company. I had fish tacos, on Brandy's suggestion, which were very messy until I realised that you should eat them with cutlery!!



Not the actual tacos I ate...

After that I drove North, and inland, towards Palmdale where I was due to stay the night. I was now driving into the desert, and watched the thermometer on the car rise from about 78 up to 94 degrees F - no where near the hottest I saw, but it's amazing how much hotter it gets as you drive inland.
The Days Inn motel at Palmdale had a very pleasant pool and I got a nice room for a steal at just under $50 (thanks to Priceline website).



View from the room. Mostly desert!

 Sure, it wasn't as flash as the Hilton, but a bit more private than the Hostel and everything worked nicely. I had a dip in the pool and spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on 'admin', including some emails and a load of recent blog posts (hence the splurge a couple of days ago). Dinner for me was a Pizza Hut takeaway - I couldn't find anything else nearby that took my fancy and didn't really have the time to drive further away!

The pool. Quite difficult to swim lengths in.

Nothing to Do but Drive

Sometimes, it's really nice to have nothing to do all day but get from A to B. On Wednesday, I had that luxury, where A was La Jolla, B was the Santa Monica Hostelling International (where I stayed last time I was in LA) and, of course, I ended up rushing everywhere anyway. First of all I had the now-obligatory Eggs Benedict and finished off Brandy's watermelon, then wrote a blog post, then realised how late it was getting and packed, stripped the bed, etc before heading out of the front door. I then had to return to drop off the pop-up map of San Diego which I had so annoyingly lost the day before, and found wedged between the passenger seat and the door. Humphhh..

Eventually I set off, went through the refuelling dance with the cashier (I couldn't work them pump, then of course I had to pay in advance with my UK-based debit card, thanks Dad for the warning) and then headed East into the desert. The temperature started rising, but didn't get any higher than the high-80s (warm but not too hot). My destination was Sky Sailing (http://www.skysailing.com/), a gliding operation based at Warner Springs which I had read about online and was also recommended to visit by Vance - the chap at Torrey Pines. Once I arrived, I had a really long and useful chat-come-tour with Ken, one of their professional towplane pilots, who couldn't have been more helpful.

So Warner Springs is a typical American commercial glider operation. Tows are between $30 and $50, and instructors are charge at an hourly rate of $51 an hour. Most are booked for 2 hours at a time. Plenty of glider rides are sold to the general public and there is a gentle stream of students going through the learning process. This is a completely different model to the gliding clubs I am used to. At Sky Sailing, you probably only come into contact with 2-3 instructors while you learn, you pay quite a lot of money for the privilege, and the instruction is quite regulated - it is analogous to powered aircraft instruction, in fact the only difference is you get a different type of PPL at the end of it! But the pupils, in return, get 2 hours of contact time with an instructor, can work on exactly what they need without rushing, and they know that they WILL make progress in that time (rather than a rushed circuit followed by a poor debrief because the instructor needs to have a bite to eat). It's all just a different model. There is another type of gliding club in the USA which is much more analogous to those in the UK - but, since the instructors and tow plane pilots are all amateurs, they escape the attention of the FAA as long as nothing gets damaged! Personally, I prefer the way that that BGA supervises gliding in the UK - passing on best practice, maintaining training standards, and organising development opportunities. Long may that continue.

The ubiquitous Pawnee towplane. Warner Springs has 2 of these, plus another rip-off look-alike known as 'Miss Piggy'. Not bound by the noise regulations we have at the UK, especially The Park, this aircraft has a two-bladed prop and no silencer at all! On the other hand, it is operating from a strip at 3,000' AMSL so needs all the power it can get...

  

This aircraft is a Schweizer 2-33. The standard training aircraft for pre-solo students. Very, very simple (you can fill the cockpit with water and it just drains out with no damage) and extremely rugged. 22:1 if you're lucky!

This is a Schweizer 2-32 , the aircraft used for 'glider rides'. Note the GoPro mount on the wing. Also, it's a 3-seater! Do you see the rear bench seat? Two people can sit there and enjoy the flight together (as long as they're not too lardy). How cool would it be to take not one but two people flying with you? You have control! Who, me? No, you! You mean me? Yes! P3 has control! (actually there is no stick in the back when it is converted for 3-person operation. Though they do have one rudder pedal each).

And this is a Schweizer 1-35, a single seater version of the other two. Blistering glide angle performance of 76:2! The rest of the Sky Sailing fleet was repetitions of the aforementioned Schweizers, plus a couple of Grob 103s (used for XC and aerobatics) and Grob 102s (rentals) which everyone knows what look like anyway.

A fun little toy I saw was the 'Grobus', bastardized from some unfortunate 103, to demonstrate the effect of the controls on the flight surfaces. To my disappointment, though, it wasn't gimballed so couldn't be put into wind for the pupil to have a go at flying on the ground!

I waited around for a little while til a lesson went out (by this time, 4pm, that's how much time I had wasted!) and watched as they untied the aircraft and did their preflight checks. This aircraft is amazingly basic, rivetted aluminium wings and strut-braced, but clearly has been doing a good job for the last 50+ years!

 

It really does look like a massive Ka8!

I helped run the wing, watched as they flew off behind the Pawnee, then got in my car and drove on towards Los Angeles. I am so glad I have Google Maps on my phone and a data connection - instant satnav of the highest quality! That is, when it isn't crashing. Thanks Chris for the hints how to back-date the version.

 

I stopped en-route just to get a photo of the scenery I was driving through. It was on this journey that I was so grateful I was driving a convertible! The temperature was perfect, I was playing some great music on the awesome sound system, and the Americans REALLY know how to build roads out here in the countryside (and barely anyone on them too). Every corner is cambered, the speed limit is set nice and high, and you can just roar around to your heart's content. I'm really getting to love this car and driving round the 'States but I will write up the whole driving side of things later!

I eventually got to Santa Monica bang on 7pm, rush hour isn't that much of a problem going into the city, and the 7-lane freeways make things much easier... I had an hour of parking so had just enough time to check in and buy a ticket for the evening meal - sloppy joe's and mac'n'cheese, all you can eat for sub-$7! So I stuffed my face until my parking ran out (not quite...) and then moved the car to the nearby multi-storey. Only $14 max for 24 hours.

Getting back to the Hostel, I quickly showered and changed and then met up with the group heading out the pub crawl - which I wouldn't have heard about if I hadn't been chatting to a nice Aussie girl 'Beck' over dinner! Now you should know I'm not a fan of pub crawls, but this one seemed good fun, we got an impressive discount with the wristbands we were given and went first to a normal bar (which was probably dead before we arrived, and even more so after we left, but was packed while we were in residence) before hitting up a 'British Pub' for the next destination! A really good Beatles tribute band was playing and we all had a good evening. AND I was in bed by midnight :-)