2015-June-28 USA, California, San Ramon: Some Words From Fo – For A Change

It’s Fo here. Anthony & Jean have gone out to San Francisco for the day so I’ve taken the opportunity to update you all on our travels from my perspective.

You already know where they have been so I’ll mainly be reporting back on what they talk about and some of my observations of life in the USA. Having said that, and given they are paying the bills, I will quickly let you know we all went camping at Yosemite National Park for Jean’s birthday. I loved the scenery and interactions with my American cousins. I had a lovely time running around this fallen tree with the ground squirrels in the photo whilst J&A went for a walk to a waterfall. Apart from the stunning scenery my lingering memory will be the beautiful smell of the pines as we walked around.

California Ground Squirrels at Cathedral Beach, Yosemite

We did also manage to see an adolescent black bear from about 60 metres away as we waited outside the car for some road works to clear. I didn’t get to speak to him but we made eye contact and gave each other a respectful nod before he continued on his way.  

Jean photobombing a shot of me in front of the Half Dome at Yosemite

And now I want to go over some of my thoughts & observations from the past few weeks. I should say they are not Pros and Cons about life in America, just things I’ve noticed.

Firstly, the light switches here go up instead of down.  Also I’ve noticed that it can be hard to order unflavoured food / drinks here. For example, if you want an iced coffee it’s tricky to find in a supermarket. You can find vanilla, mocha, caramel (pronounced with a silent middle 'a') etc but rarely plain iced coffee. 
Alcohol is very affordable here, particularly spirits and often comes in 1.75 litre bottles. Between us I’m glad Anthony doesn’t live here as I’ve caught him more than once looking a bit too long at a supersized bottle of Scotch, Tequila or Vodka or something for around $AUD25.

I’ve also noticed that many folk here snack a lot on relatively processed foods. Just a different approach to what I’m used to with J&A. The snacks are often sold as healthy options and have organic ingredients and all that but it was still a surprise how much of it there is. At home J&A have some crisps or cheese in the evenings from time to time so it’s not like I’ve never seen snacks before but it’s not a regular part of their diets. On a final snack note:  America does have an outstanding range of quality nuts (brazil, pistachio and the like) at about half what they would cost at home. This has proved helpful when we’ve needed a lunch when travelling as a small container of nuts can keep you going for ages and doesn’t need to be kept cold. 
There are very few clothes drying lines in California and tumble dryers appear to be the preferred method of drying clothes. I’m not sure why as they have a fair bit of sunshine but culturally it isn’t the norm.

We’ve been introduced to S’mores on three separate occasions. These consist of two slightly sweet but still savoury crackers with a single fire-roasted marshmallow and a square of a Hershey (chocolate) bar between them. Given the diversity of people we’ve stayed with these clearly feature as a shared camping / fire-pit food across many aspects of American society. For that reason alone they are worth trying.  I don’t think J&A were taken enough to bring the tradition home.

S'mores

And how are J&A getting on with their travels… do they miss their corporate lives or Australia yet? From what I can see the answer is ‘no’. Jean misses her local coffee shop and has just about given up on coffee when we are out as the American pour over is not to her taste.  Both of them miss the interactions with the people they worked with and family and friends but, so far, they are really enjoying the ‘walkabout’. They both commented the other day they have only been woken by an alarm clock three times since leaving home and I think they liked that.

I suspect that shortly they will move on from the vacation mode they are currently in and start stretching themselves a little but for now it’s just nice seeing them unwinding. I won’t be sad however to see the end of Downton Abbey as J & A have completely ignored me in the evenings and taken to watching at least 3 episodes a night since being in San Ramon starting from Season 1 Episode 1. (They only have Season 5 to go so hopefully they will move on from that shortly).

J&A are back from their outing now.  Apparently they turned up in town shortly before the San Francisco annual Pride parade. They popped out of the train station at the beginning of the parade and spent two hours watching the floats. Apparently the local baseball team, the Giants, were also playing a game so there were lots of people and colour in the city. I’ll leave you with one of their photos from the parade and hope to write again soon.

Fo

Pride Parade  - Golden State Warriors Basketball Team Section