Occupying the Suitcase
We are on our first road trip (or any trip for that matter) since July. That was four months ago. For years during my active working life, I had a private view that it was important to plan some sort of getaway every two months. Of course, that was in addition to weekends in Ithaca, business trips to here or there and nights out. I mean I would plan something “special” to break from the normal grind of life, something to which we could look forward. I always thought that the anticipation of breaks was as important as the actual break. I have no idea if others use these little mind tricks to keep themselves upbeat and driven, but I suspect that they do. Now it seems that those rules of life are either suspended for changed for good in the new protocol of life. Once again, I can’t say for certain if that is more a function of retirement as I am beginning to know it or COVID as we are all beginning to adjust to it. But here we are at the Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena for just one night. We have seen perhaps two or three other occupants in the hotel, which is a large and lovely affair. Affair is the right word since this is the hotel that Dustin Hoffman supposedly got wooed by Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate all those fifty-five years ago. It’s a pleasant place that is pet-friendly to the point of having a doggie pouf-bed in the room for Fido (that would be perfect for Bling Betty).
Our new travel reality is multi-faceted in that we are not even close to wanting to fly anywhere, so travel is therefore a road trip. We also travel almost entirely to see friends and family much more than to attend events or see sights. And then there is Bling Betty, who, now that she can more or less see (I say more or less because she can clearly see things, but we suspect there is a lag between seeing and realizing, which causes some strange and hesitant maneuvering). For example, we entered the hotel yesterday the way one does, into the highly polished marble lobby floor, looking to check in. Bling Betty stopped dead at the automatic door and slapped herself out in a ground-level crouch on the shiny floor the moment she set foot on it. Apparently, a highly polished floor with lots of reflection to it, was new to her and somewhat disorienting. It took a few moments, but she got used to it and tentatively pranced into the lobby seeming to place each and every foot with great precision, just in case this shiny surface was something akin to liquid. We checked in through a plexiglass shield and took our own luggage to our room (something I like to do anyway). We did not see a soul and it reminded me of a massive luxury hotel I once stayed in in central China where no normal folks could afford to enjoy its facilities since it was reserved for only high-level Communist Party officials and the rare foreign dignitaries (for which I must have somehow qualified). They gave us a pet-friendly room on the ground floor that had a nice private outdoor garden for Fido, which Bling Betty enjoyed with all its new smells.
Yesterday we drove to another Mission in our quest for all twenty-one. This was the San Gabriel Arcangel Mission in southern Pasadena (a.k.a. San Gabriel) and it had a bad roof-caving fire six months ago, so our visit had to be limited to photo ops of the entry and campanile with its lovely two-hundred-fifty year old bells. We then found our way to Kim’s nephew’s place in northern Pasadena where we enjoyed a driveway gathering for a light lunch and the sharing of some advance Christmas presents for the kids. The big hit was the set of bright blue and pink walkie-talkies that would undoubtedly provide many AA batteries worth of fun and hide-and-seek games. The big topic for this young family where Nephew Josh is a content producer for TV and film (an industry going through as much COVID-based change as any industry except perhaps dining and events/attractions) and wife Haj is a sociology professor at USC (a field that will perhaps be even more relevant as COVID redefines our social organization), was how we all feel about living out West here after a prior life in the East. Not an easy question in an era when the ease of moving has had plenty of new barriers put in front of it to add to all the other cultural, physical and emotional barriers. We are one year into being Westerners and they are three years in. No major revelations from that conversation other than that there were pros and cons to both East and West.
After checking in to our empty hotel (in all fairness, it was a Sunday night after a holiday weekend, so it was probably a lull even under normal circumstances), we drove into North Hollywood to meet our friends Gary and Oswaldo for dinner at their friend Fritz’s home in the Hollywood Hills. Fritz has done well for himself and his home is a classically spectacular Hollywood Hills home with a view over the twinkling lights of L.A. towards the Pacific Ocean. This is not completely unlike the sunset views we have from our hilltop, but the addition of the L.A. lights makes it extra special. This was a very dog-friendly house to the point of having two other guests with dogs, who were all friendly with Bling Betty, but lots of doggy interaction with sniffing, growling and playful running and rolling. One of the guests was a modern L.A. on-call veterinarian who has a practice of caring for pets of the rich and famous. The seven of us maintained a more or less COVID-appropriate socially distant and masked outdoor dinner with the view as our backdrop and their space heaters as our comfort. It was a gathering with new and old friends and felt as pre-COVID as anything we have done in 2020. Obviously there was a bit of lingering concern in our minds that we might be falling into the COVID surge trap of the Holidays, but we all try hard to keep in protocol even if the dogs did their thing undeterred.
This morning we are preparing to go to Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana in Mission Hills in the Valley. We will see Bob Hope’s grave there. We will be joined for the day by Gary and Oswaldo, who are getting dragged onto our Mission Mission whether they like it or not. From there we meet with Sharon and Woo for lunch on their terrace in Camarillo (another lovely Pacific Ocean view where we most often see them these days). We will wind up our outing with a visit to the Old Mission San Buenaventura in Ventura at what is called “The Mission by the Sea”. We will have then visited seven missions in our quest, one-third of the mission completed and the rest on the menu for next week’s trip. A “quick” rush hour trip back to our hilltop with the 101 to the 71 to the 91 to the 15 to Casa Moonstruck in what Google Maps says should be less than three hours…..
As we prepare to head out I notice that Betty is taking the low-risk approach of sitting in Kim’s suitcase, insuring that she will not get left behind. I think that is a wonderful analogy to COVID travel these days. We are all inclined to occupy the suitcase of the ones we love as a risk-reducing measure.