Author: Rudy

Another beautiful morning in Rancho Mirage. Sue got up at 6:30; I slept until 8:00. Got up and had a coffee before the ‘official’ Good Friday breakfast — French toast with icing sugar, peanut butter, strawberries, kiwis, bananas, and ALL the Aunt Jemima pancake syrup left in the bottle poured over the whole shebang. So now you know it’s a special day.

After breakfast Sue started gathering up our stuff from the cupboards — the packing has begun. Alex skyped to show us the marvellous Easter cake she baked to bring to the Nikkel gathering today at Walter and Angie’s. I took the pedals off our bikes and parked the bikes in the van, all ready for the trip home. Dave Driedger skyped too, and tried to convince us that it really is better in Manitoba.

But the whole day wasn’t just one long depressing packing day. No, Sue booked a tee time at the Oasis Country Club, and so we stopped all the packing and headed off for some golf at around 2 in the afternoon. When we got there we saw lots of people, lots of cars and golf carts, lots of celebrating people. I guess they had a big Good Friday celebration at the country club. Sue found some pretty nice Nike golf shoes in the clubhouse — and got 50% off, today only. So that was a good deal!

We were paired up with a couple of young golfers from L.A. who turned out to be very good golfers. I would take my trusty (3-wood) driver and tee off from the whites, occasionally getting it within 100 yards of the hole, while these two jokers would take an 8-iron from the back tees and blast it onto the green! And once on the green, they’d line up their 30-foot putts and roll the ball into the hole, while my game was TOTAL SHIT! Really! It was MISERABLE! On hole number one I shot my first shot into the fountain. Too far to retrieve it. Took a second ball. Plunked it into the same spot in the fountain. Third ball. Over the green. Meanwhile Sue pars the hole. The two schlengels par the hole. You know, what really pisses me off is that my friend Robert Dyck shot his best game ever on his birthday. Well, this is our LAST golf game this winter (probably until some time in JUNE!) and tomorrow’s my birthday — and golf gods are being mean to me.

Oh well, any day on the golf course is better than a day shoveling the driveway. And each hole is a new game. Not today. By the end of nine holes I was totally defeated. Ready to call it quits and go home.

But the weather was perfect and the course was beautiful, and I’m too old to whine. And I played much better on the back nine. In fact, at about hole number 15 there was a big gallery of neighbours, drinking and laughing and being very noise, who welcomed each golf party when they rolled up to the tee blocks, cheering like the fans at the TPC Scottsdale’s 16th hole. One guy had a big ‘QUIET’ sign which he held up as we prepared to tee off — and then he yelled, “Quiet! We’re trying to have a party here!” As unnerving as it was to have to tee off in front of the gallery, it made us laugh and relax and have a better time.

After finishing the final hole we drove back to the house. It was 7 o’clock. Time to tune into our comedy shows. Meanwhile, Sue started cooking up a storm in the kitchen, and in no time we were enjoying a hot and spicy shrimp and pasta dinner. Fantastic!

Tonight’s TV will include “Kitchen Nightmares”, “Shark Tank”, and “Rock Centre with Brian Williams”. Good times on a Friday at home with the Nikkels.

Although we had sort of talked about going to see The Living Desert today, we decided at the last minute to go there by bike. I checked the distance and it was an easy 15km ride each way. I pumped up the rear tires on each bike and we were off. Some golfing friends had highly recommended the park to us — in fact, they suggested that we’d be hard-pressed to see it all in THREE days. They had even bought annual memberships so they could keep going back. Well, with only 3 days left here in Palm Springs, we decided we’d better go check it out. Our golfing friends had praised the 9:30 Nature Walk and the 11:00 Wildlife Wonders Show. We had to hurry a bit to make it to the park by 9:30, but luckily for us the ride there was mostly downhill. We arrived at the park and chained up our bikes. We were pretty sweaty as we stood in line to get our tickets. We went through the gates just in time to join the Nature Walk. Well, for a few minutes it looked like we were the ONLY ones on the Nature Walk. But a few others gathered around our tour guide and when we departed we were about 10 people in the group. The guide took us down the pathway and sat us all down in a circle at a rest spot and handed out laminated booklets. We all introduced ourselves (more Canadians again) and then he began his lecture. He told us that his style would somewhat ‘academic’. He talked about deserts, about rainfall patterns, about tectonic plates. At one point he asked the young kids who were sitting there looking bored why they weren’t at the giraffe feeding — wouldn’t that be way more interesting? Finally, after about 15 minutes of going on and on about the average rainfall in Palm Springs, we were off. Not so fast! We’re about 10 feet from the introductory rest spot. Let’s just take a look at this palo verde tree. Why do you think it has green bark? Well, they do photosynthesis. And so on. And on. And on. And then, when everyone in the group is gazing down the path, hoping that this guy will stop talking and start walking, the lady from Victoria who dragged her husband away from his bike ride to join her for this informative nature walk pipes up with a question. Good question!, announces the tour guide, and off he goes on another explanation. And that’s how it went. I whispered to Sue that I was NOT going to make it for the full hike and that she was free to join me in breaking away with the next big field trip group when they filed past us.

[symple_divider style=”solid” margin_top=”20px” margin_bottom=”20px”]Next, we stopped to look at some animals. And what animal did we see on our first stop? A couple of turtles pacing their cage. I know turtles can be slow and boring, but these two were just zipping back and forth along the cage. And the tour guide, whose approach is even slower than a turtle, launches into another ‘academic’ lecture. He goes on and on. And Miss Victoria (obviously a retired ‘educator’ — you can just tell this by looking and listening to her — does her best impression of Susan Wiebe at a SMC congregational meeting by asking question after uninteresting question. She enunciates every word and makes sure that each sentence has a subject and a predicate. I’m starting to gasp for air. I need to make a break for it. I point my camera at an imaginary butterfly and follow it away from the group until I’m out of sight. Whew! I check out some more of the displays, a big puma, some african deer, and finally end up at the amphitheatre where the Wildlife show is supposed to stat in 20 minutes. I sit and watch little schoolkids on a field trip fill up the bleachers. A couple with their two kids come sit down beside me. I look at the mom, she looks at me — hey, these people were in the morning Nature hike — and she says ‘hey, you escaped too!’. You mean it wasn’t over yet? No, but we couldn’t take it. Where’s your wife? I guess she’s still listening to the talk. But just before the show was to begin, there comes Sue — was it over? no, not yet, but I had to leave. The guide was bad but that Miss Victoria was W-A-Y worse! We watched the animal show, an impressive eagle and some furry animals too, and then we left. We both agreed that we would pass on a visit to ‘The Ant Lab’ or any of the other displays — we were done, ready to go home. So we got on our bikes and cycled back to the house. Had lunch. Showered. Skyped with Max for a few minutes. Then Sue went outside to read and I went to my room to compute.

We had happy hour at around 4pm and I lit the barbecue at around 6. Chicken and potatoes. Watched the news. Skyped with JP. Then at 7:30 we drove down to the Palme d’Or to see a movie. Not too many people out for ‘the late show’! No problem finding a parking spot here after 7pm! Our movie was ‘Lore’, a German movie with subtitles, all about a Nazi family after the war. The movie was very well done — and very sad. We got back on the empty streets at 10pm and looked for a place to get an ice cream. Nothing’s open. Oh well, let’s go home and you can have ice cream there. So that’s what we did.

I worked on the computer again all morning. I know that it’s our last week here and that in a week from now I’ll be wishing I’d spent more time outside in this beautiful place, but I’m just getting swamped with work! Oh well, I really enjoy doing computer work too, so I’m not really complaining. Sue read her book club book. Sue called MTS and arranged to have our TV and internet hooked up for us for the 4th of April. Shortly after lunch the gardeners came and chased Sue back into the house. She skyped with Alex. Then it was time for us to get to our golf appointment. We went to Palm Desert again — Sue thinks it’s one of best courses for us. Although our tee time was for 3:08 Sue managed to talk the pro into letting us on 20 minutes early and to golf as a twosome. For the first few holes there was no one ahead of us, but we quickly caught up to the foursome ahead of us. By the second nine it became clear that we would NOT be barbecuing early today — things were a bit backed up and we had to wait at every tee. But we had a lot of fun, especially because the day was absolutely perfect for golf. A bit cloudy and hazy, a nice cooling breeze every now and again (those 30mph winds that were forecast for late afternoon never materialized), and such beauty all around us. And because we were slowed up we also got to enjoy the evening shadows on the nearby mountains and a sky on fire as the sun set.

We stopped at Albertson’s after we finished our game at around 6:30. We need more fruit for breakfast and I bought my last box of St Pauli Girl beer. It will be a bit of a shock to our system to not be able to buy great imported beer for a buck a bottle when we get home. At home we barbecued cheese and bacon burgers and watched our shows. We had a little night snack and then mosied off to bed at around 11.

Soon after breakfast we packed some extra jackets and took a ride in our van out to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. The tram takes visitors on a 2.5 mile trip up to Mount San Jacinto State Park. I think we were there just at the right time — the right day and the right time — because we passed quite a few large empty parking lots and parked at the lot right next to the Valley Station. Later, when we left the parking lot, the parking attendants were ushering cars into a couple of parking lots down the hill. So we were at the ticket booth in no time, and boarded the tram about 20 minutes after that. There are 2 tram cars, one going up and the other coming down. The floor of the tram car rotates, so everyone on the ride gets to see all around — up, down, and east and west. The tram starts at 2600 feet and takes you up to 8500 feet during the 10-minute ride. It’s all pretty slick. Once we got to the top we quickly decided on a trail to go hiking on (there are 54 miles of trails to choose from). We took the Desert View Trail, a 1.5 mile loop with incredible views of the Coachella Valley. There were about 5 lookout spots along the way. The forest smelled like pine needles. There was quite a bit of snow up on the mountain too. At first we thought we sure wouldn’t need jackets because we were huffing and puffing so hard from the climb. But after a while we began to notice the cooler temperature and we were glad we’d brought our sweaters. I took quite a few photos. Sue tried to take some photos too, but had some problems with our little old Canon camera. She’d get herself into ‘photo-shooting’ position and squint through the little eye-piece and then press the button — and the lens would retract and the camera would shut itself off. Was it the batteries? No, we just put new batteries into it. Was it taking her too long to set up the shot? Yes, but that wasn’t causing the problem either. After a bit of experimenting she noticed that the problem only happened when she was taking a ‘portrait’ orientation photo, but the camera worked fine in landscape mode. Finally, after standing and smiling for quite a few shots but getting no pictures I watched to see if I could spot the problem. If the same issue ever happens to you, maybe reading this will help you discover the solution. Whenever Sue turned the camera on end to take a portrait photo she was pressing the ON/OFF button in the middle of the top of the camera, instead of the ‘Photo’ button which is on the top right side of the camera. Sue was a bit surprised to (finally) learn that when you turn the camera on its side the buttons just rotate with the camera — so when you want to snap a photo you still have to press the ‘photo’ button, not the ON/OFF. So here are some of our Mt Jacinto photos:

 

Sue had quickly made some sandwiches to take with us. After an hour and a half of hiking we sat down and ate our lunch. Soon after lunch we were on the ‘down’ tram. We got home shortly after 1. Sue went outside and read and I sat down at my computer and did some more work. We had an early supper and then watched our DVD rental from yesterday, “Smashed”. It was pretty good — the story of an alcoholic wife and teacher. We took a little moonlight (full moon soon) stroll after the movie and returned the rental to the Vons across the road. Sue watched some TV while I finished up one of my web projects. Ice cream for snack, and then off to bed a little after midnight.

I woke up early again. Sue did laundry. I finished up some computer work for Koop and started on a new project. Max and Alex skyped for a bit. We had lunch. We went golfing at the Oasis Country Club. Sue booked it on golfnow for $12 each. Seriously! $12 each. That’s how much just the cart rental is normally. We checked in and got our golf cart. We had a 20-minute wait to tee off. We would be joining another couple. We went to the putting green for a bit. Then we met our golf partners — and they were THE SAME PEOPLE we golfed with here at Oasis a couple of weeks ago! Grant and Pam from Victoria. Nice. As my faithful readers will recall, last time my first tee shot here went onto the number 9 green and from there I put it into the fountain. Today my first shot went into someone’s backyard. From there I shot it into the fountain. Progress! But some pars and birdies followed that. Sue is just golfing better every time we go out. Putting, drives, scoring. We were slowed down by the fatsos ahead of us for most of the front nine, but the second nine were just fantastic — the sun was setting and a coolish breeze was keeping us comfortable. And i was hitting the ball much better. After the game our new friends invited us to take a look at their new motorhome. And then we joined them at the 19th hole pub down the street for happy hour. Pitchers of Stella and fish ‘n chips. And lots of visiting. Turns out that we haven’t done ANYTHING during our 3 months here — these people have seen concerts, plays, gone hiking, volunteered at the local zoo… Whew! I guess we’ll have to come back next year. We’ll definitely go to see the Joshua Tree park and maybe the Living Desert park. We said goodbye to our new friends and stopped at Albertson’s to pick up my Redbox rental on the way home. Snacked on chocolate and nuts while watching some dance show on TV. By 10:00 we were nodding at the TV. We’ll save our DVD for tomorrow. Tomorrow we plan to take that aerial tram tour. And we’ll wish our friend Robert a very happy birthday.

I woke up at 6 today. I must be getting ready to move back to Manitoba’s timezone. I wrote my journal for yesterday and then at 7:00 it was time to sit down and watch our “Sunday Morning Shows”. I saw Karl Rove on the ABC news show — such ‘easy answers’ to complex problems (kind of like Ray Duerksen in Steinbach). Speaking of Southland, my friend Ed Peters sent me a couple of ‘Letters to the Editor’ from the last few issues of The Carillon — seems like the ‘Bill 18′ issue has got BOTH sides fired up back home. Makes a guy wonder if we should even bother going back home — it might all have gone to hell in a hand-basket by the time we make it back. And speaking of making it back, the top news story is the (ANOTHER!) big winter storm that’s pounding the Midwest. Really! Maybe we should just stay here in our beautiful artificial world and drink and golf for cheap for another few months!
We stayed home today. We had french toast and bacon for breakfast. The final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando got hit by a major thunderstorm so we couldn’t watch Tiger try to reclaim the No.1 ranking this afternoon — maybe tomorrow. Sue went outside and read — she finished her book club book, State of Wonder. I spent the whole day on my computer. I have lots of work again — I drew some logos and created a booklet and started working on a website.
After supper we watched ’60 Minutes’ and then I went back to work while Sue watched more TV. I think I finished that Moose Tracks ice cream today for night snack — we’ll have to buy one more container before we head for home on Sunday. Sue went to bed around 11 and I worked on the computer until one. See, we must be getting ready to go home — we’re starting to keep ‘home’ hours!

Bacon and eggs for breakfast. Skyped with Max for a while — he’d just come back from a sleigh ride. Still lots of snow in Manitoba. Not here. I cleaned the fallen leaves and flower petals out of the pool and Sue gathered up the lemons that had fallen to the ground overnight.
We have so many lemons we don’t know what to do with them. There are bags of them in the garbage. The nicer ones Sue has washed and put on display on our counter, but we just don’t know how to use them up. I’m sure we’ll end up throwing them all out. Some of the lemons are HUGE, as big as a grapefruit.

I had a long Skype call with Koop — got lots more work. His renovations are nearly done and his new printer is hooked up. Sue read out on the patio and I sat in my office chair at my computer for the rest of the morning. We had lunch and then we got ready for our golf game. We’d booked tee times at Palm Desert Golf Club — we hadn’t been there since early February — before Tim and Alex came for a visit. Tim and I went there twice, but Sue couldn’t remember the course layout at all.

When we got there we were partnered up with a single, Scott, from Chicago. He was a pretty good golfer. The course starts off with a couple of par fives in a row. We all played well; I think we bogied the holes. At the end of the first nine I had 3 pars! Well, I think I had a 9 on at least one hole, so it wasn’t THAT great. But we had some good shots. Sue is playing better all the time — good drives and very good putting. And we had a good time. The weather was perfect — not too hot. We had no waiting at all on the front nine, but I guess they’d let a bunch of golfers onto the back nine so it got backed up towards the end. So it was slow going, and the sun was setting, and it was starting to cool off nicely (probably the nicest golfing weather happens on the last hole — kind of like the last round of water-skiing when the lake is like glass).

After golf we stopped at the Albertsons to pick up a few groceries. Then home. It was after 7 o’clock. I barbecued chicken in the dark while Sue cooked the pasta and made an avocado salad. We watched some TV until we were too tired to stay awake — and went to bed at around ten.

After breakfast we had a little visit with Max (via Skype). He’d slept 10 hours and had just finished another 2 hour nap. And he was VERY happy and VERY cute.

Somewhere around 10:30 it was time to go for a walk. The day was quite warm, but not stinking hot. We headed out on Ginger Rogers and stopped at the mall on Monterey. Picked up a few things and once we were nicely cooled off, headed back home. Along the way we stopped at Macdonald’s for a quick lunch. When we got home Sue headed out to her spot in the shade in the backyard and I sat down at my computer.

We had to hurry our showers and hurry out the door and even drive through a couple of just-barely red lights to get to the Palme d’Or theatre in time for the 4:20 showing of “The Gatekeepers”. But we made it. The cool thing about the Palme d’Or is that they are showing lots of small independent films, including foreign films. Today’s movie was one of the five best foreign film nominees for the 2013 Academy Awards. It tells the story of Shin Bet, Israel’s secretive internal security service, from the perspective of six of its former leaders. The description doesn’t sound at all interesting, but Sue and I really enjoyed the movie and even had a little movie discussion on the way home.

When we got back to the house we watched a bit of TV. No pizza tonight — too many leftovers in the fridge. We had leftover steak and fried potatoes. After our comedy shows we watched “Kitchen Nightmares” and the first part of “Shark Tank” and … well, actually we had ‘cued up’ a couple more shows after that but that’s around the time I pulled a Max and fell asleep on the couch. I don’t remember what time it was when Sue dragged me off to bed, but we’ll see tomorrow if 10 hours of sleep really is the secret to happiness.

Ten days left here in SoCal before we load up the paddy wagon and head for home.

We had breakfast with Robert and Arlene — Sue was happy to make bacon and eggs for the final meal together. It’s been fun to have them here with us for the last two days. We had a leisurely morning and saw them off at around 11. They are heading back to Phoenix where they will be hosting Robert’s siblings at the end of the month.

We skyped with Max and Alex before lunch. We hadn’t seen them for a couple of days — and it was fun to see them again. Max is such a happy boy and trying to grow up as fast as he can — with each skype call we notice a change. It will be fun to see him in person again in a couple of weeks.

After lunch (back to the prepared plates, with small sandwich and chips and a cookie now the we’re not hosting visitors) Sue sat outside in the shade and read her book. I read the news and looked over some programming tutorials online. Around happy hour time I went out and we shared some pistachios and a beer. It was a beautiful spring day — and even here, where everything is irrigated and lush and green, even here there are signs of Spring. Bare branches are suddenly sprouting green leaves and colorful flowers, and bees and hummingbirds are checking them out. So I decided to take a walk around the yard and photograph some of the flowers.

After watching the evening news Sue and I went for a walk, stopping at the Vons across the road to pick up our Redbox rental for tonight. Back at the house Sue warmed up supper while we watched our comedy shows. I didn’t really have high hopes for the movie, Anna Karenina — I’d read some of the reviews, and although it won one of the 3 Oscars it was nominated for, that was for costume design — the movie looked good but the plot got a bit muddled by the screenwriter and in the end we’d have to knock it down a star or two in the ratings.

After the movie we watched a bit of the discussion about the new Canadian Federal Budget on CBC’s At Issue panel (online). But it was hard to keep our eyes open and by 11:00pm we were in bed.

Sue didn’t sleep from 4 to 6. She blamed it on my snoring. I don’t recall any of it. I woke up at 7. Happy. As usual. It’s going to be (another) great day. Coffee brewing. Robert’s already sitting outside reading his ipad. Oh yeah.

Right after our breakfast the gardener guys showed up and started up their leaf-blowers. I GUESS WE’LL HAVE TO TALK A BIT LOUDER. We walked around the neighbourhood with our guests. Talked business. Okay, not really, but we had a brisk little walk, enough to warrant a shower when I got home. And then it was time for lunch. As per usual, when we have visitors we have a ‘make your own sandwich’ kind of lunch instead of the (preferred) usual complete ‘platter’. Oh well, Sue thinks it’s so much nicer than ‘the usual’.

Robert decided to take a little nap after lunch before our 2:30 golf tee time. I went to do a bit of computer work before getting ready for golf. When I next check up on the others, there are Robert and Arlene and Sue each on their yoga mat in the living room, doing stretches and exercises. Yikes! It’s time to go golfing. Warm outside; cloudy, but warm. It’s going to be perfect for golf. We drive down to Rancho Mirage. Arlene says I think we’ve golfed here before. Yeah, right. So have we, but that isn’t going to make this any easier.

At the clubhouse, the Dycks pay for our round of golf. Thank you very much. We head out to the driving range. My seven iron. About 1 out of 8 shots actually go anywhere near the 150 yard marker. Then we get into our carts and head off to hole number one. First drive — into the water. But Rudy, you usually hit such nice tee shots! Well, not today. But let’s not let that put too big a damper on our game. There’s always the next hole. The foursome ahead of us are really slow. Finally, at around hole number 12 we pass them. Wide open country ahead. We drive up to hole 13 tee blocks. Time for a photo. Let’s all be in it. Isn’t this a pretty hole?

We finish the 18th hole. Tired. Don’t really want to say this, but we’re ALL a little disappointed with our scores. We all lie that it’s more about THE FUN WE HAD than about the golf shots.

We take a little diversion on the way home and go to Sherman’s Bakery and the girls select some appropriate ‘no-fat low-calorie’ (but still sinfully delicious) desserts to go with our supper. Then home.

Bathroom breaks. Cold beers. Snacks. Sue and Robert start working in the kitchen. It’ll be a steak barbecue.

And as you might expect, supper was super. Steaks were great, potatoes, asparagus, salad — all great. After supper we retired to the living room and watched a bit of TV — first the last few minutes of the Chicago-L.A. hockey game, followed by a show about where to get the ‘best steaks’ in America. It was all we could do to hang on until we got our special desserts and then be allowed to high-tail it to bed. Some of us didn’t quite make it that long. But Sue FINALLY deemed it the right time for dessert and we quickly gobbled down our chocolate mess on a plate. Delicious. Then, as the time-keeper’s clock S-L-O-W-L-Y wound it’s way down to 11:00pm, we all headed off to bed. A good day.