A Leslie Wong Blog

We got here safely but the trip makes me no longer want to do any air travel. All those airline nightmares you hear about came true for us.

I think we were supposed to leave Tuesday, 6:30 AM. At 4:30 AM, the phone rings and we don’t answer it, because who would be calling at 4:30 AM? Then Chris’ cell phone rings and it’s an automated call telling us our flight has been canceled, tough luck bub. Chris calls a human at Delta; they say tough luck bub. She pretends to cry and says we’re supposed to be at a party at 6:00 PM in Toronto. They say tough luck bub, route us – Monterey (MRY) – Los Angeles (LAX ) – Cincinnati (CVG) – Toronto (YYZ). Our 6.5-hour flight becomes 13.5 hours with a nearly 5-hour layover at LAX. We go back to sleep at 5:30 AM.

After waking up at 9 AM, I start thinking about the 5-hour layover in LAX and I called Brian Baxley to see if he wants to have dinner. He picks us up at the airport and we go back to his house. Their house, inside and out, looks as if they’re very poor.

Brian and Ami treat us to Chinese food in Manhattan Beach. Brian says he brought his Taiwanese clients to this restaurant as a business apology. Epic episodes of Brian stories ensue, a stream of consciousness jumping from one topic hooked to another. Chris wonders how his wife can take it. I guess he can’t be like that with her. Brian and Brandon are going up to Wentworth this weekend.

They drop us off at the airport in Ami’s Lexus and at the curb, he starts telling us the story of how he bought it for $7,000 even though he had already bought another one, then somehow the story morphs into an truncated story of the professor who was selling the first car, then city giving Brian a new battery for his lawn mower.

LAX to CVG is a center seat four-hour flight, midnight to 4 AM PDT. I can’t sleep. The stories of the airlines getting back to profitability are true. I’d say there are 5 empty seats. I thought the plane would be empty. Who wants to go from LA to Cincinnati? A lot of people, apparently.

At Cincinnati airport, our flight lands at a remote terminal, where you have to take a bus to the main terminal. Can’t these guys negotiate a decent landing contract? Who designs these things? The bus to the main terminal looks like a system administrator’s convention – guys in dark pants and sport shirts with phones on their belts. Chris says they look odd to me because these people have jobs.

It’s 7:15 AM in Cincinnati airport and it is busy. We’re walking to our next gate past Brooks Brothers, Johnston & Murphy, Brookstone and a PGA Tour shop. It looks more like Madison Avenue and 44th Street – this is more upscale than most malls.

Our one-hour flight to Toronto departs from gate 49. At the supposed gate, all the doors by the boarding agents’ desks have a letter above them. Once again, I am wondering what the designers are thinking (am I just to fatigued to understand this?) I get an window exit row seat and the flight attendant who greeted me with, “Howya doin? today” (Answer: crappy) asks for confirmation that my exit row seatmates and I understand the responsibility we are taking in sitting in the exit row. I give her thumbs up. She asks me if I understand. I say, “Yes, I understand.” I understand that she has to know that I can understand English commands in case we go down and I have to lift the door out of the way. I understand that I am tired because her airline cancelled changed my itinerary.

At Toronto Airport, we pass through Canadian customs without the agent even looking at me. I smile at him in thanks and it seems that he does not notice me.

Chris and I walk through the terminal looking for the sign for the rental cars that are usually over the entrance to the parking garage. We walk two thirds the length of the terminal to the rental car counters and see there is sign pointing towards where we just came from. At the terminal exit to the garage, across the street, there is a 1.5 inch sign that says “Hertz.” A theme is beginning to emerge.

The Hertz agent asks if we want a Buick or an Impala. I don?t want to drag down the Buick demographic and the Impala is just one ugly motherfucker. I ask if she has any Ford products.

Moments later we?re loading our black Ford Escape. Chris is driving because I figure that she should drive in Canada. She is asked me what I want to do. I tell her we should go to Bass Pro Shops.

I am trying to get the a/c to work. It is hot and humid. Back East kind of humid. Chuck doesn’t know what this is like. He may know hot.
Bass Pro Shops is built in a sprawling mall that seems to be the opposite of ecumenopolis. All those futurists that saw vertical expansion don?t see all this land.

I am disappointed there are no 250 hp bass boats parked in front that I could have my picture taken with. Instead there are a bunch of ATV?s – as Liz says – summer snowmobiles.

Inside, I head for the lures. I think I will be fishing for pike, because that?s what I?ve caught before, but a lot the Internets references pointed to the UK. So I simply by an assortment of hard and soft baits: tubes, worms, jerk baits, spinner baits, buzz baits, crank baits, top water, jigs and spoons.

It is now 16 hours since we left home; with one more stop for groceries before getting to the cottage. Chris is too tired to drive, and I suddenly realize that this was when I really needed the Provigil and I didn?t have it.

As we drive north, it gets darker and darker. The pilot on the Cincinnati – Toronto leg said that a front was probably going to move in around 11:15 am.

In Coldwater, the IGA parking lot is packed, the store not at all. We are too tired to think about a menu for the week but just get a bunch of things.

There are no 8-liter water bottles in the water section but by the register there are two cases four bottles. We pack the groceries in empty boxes and are on the road to the LCBO (Liquor Control Board Ontario) for some beer. I said to Chris that she told me there were no more stops after the groceries.

As we got closer to the cottage, it got darker and darker. I was tireder and tireder. I kept asking Chris if I was still on the road. Then, of course, it started pouring.

The dock on the road side of the river is down a hill that is probably a hundred feet high. Carrying groceries and luggage down a slippery hill to the boat in heavy rain is not something I was looking forward to doing. Add the humidity and the guarantee that I will get at least 5-10 mosquito bites before we leave the dock caused Chris and I talked about driving down to the Big Chute. I could walk 30 feet with everything to a public dock and load the boat. But it was not that simple. She?d have to take the small boat over to the other side and get the big boat (that has a cover), then go down the mile to the Big Chute. I ended up carrying everything down to the dock, cursing and slipping – but I only got four mosquito bites.

“There are many ways to sharpen a knife. This method produces a good general purpose edge.”

About 25 years ago, Kenny bought me a Henckels Four Star 8″ chef’s knife because I told him that I needed a good knife to slice some chicken breasts. I was going to make Pierre Franey’s Chicken and Avocados in Cream, which Kenny liked. When Pierre Franey’s column first came out in the NY Times, I thought the title was “The 60 Second Gourmet,” not “The 60 Minute Gourmet.”

A few months ago, I broke the tip off the knife while trying to separate some frozen hot links. (I use a flathead screwdriver now). I used my Dremel to grind the tip so it looks like a Santoku, but I haven’t been able to keep it sharp. I’ve had it sharpened professionally 3 times in the past 5 years but they weren’t great sharpening jobs.

I’ve used a Zip-Zap, the Accusharp All Purpose Knife and Blade Sharpener and a steel, but it still doesn’t hold an edge very well. My Dexter Chinese chefs knife always stays sharp. I have a 30 year old six-inch Sabatier chef knife that also holds an edge well. I used to get my knives sharpened by a knife sharpening guy in Manhattan who drove a Step Van around and stopped at restaurants. I would bring him 4 or 5 knives, but he would always say, “Ahhhhhh, Sabatier!” about the little six-inch knife.

I like Tim Andersen’s first paragraph of Step 3 (click read more). I had to go to San Jose to get my sharpening stone (at 99 Ranch) but it actually cost $0.99.

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I remember going up Alpe d’Huez in the 1991 Tour de France. I was working for ABC. I took a couple of trains from Paris to Albi. Because the roads were closed, I had to lug my cameras and bag about a mile from the train station to the finish line of the stage where all the team and media trailers were parked. The producers got me a car to take me to the hotel. All I remember about the drive was the driver making like it was a rally car, drifting around the switchbacks that ended up at an alpine hotel.

I went down to eat dinner by myself, and one of the producers, Katherine Love, was kind enough to come over and sit with me to tell me the plan. I was going to ride (in a car with a French driver and navigator) with the ABC camera guy.

The weather at the start of the Gap to Alp d’Huez stage bright and sunny. Our plan was to stop at a great place to get a shot of the peloton, and then try to stick to the backstreets and get ahead of the peloton. This involved a lot of high speed driving through very small towns while the driver and navigator consulted a Michelin map trying to find open roads that were parallel to the stage. I’ll readily admit that there were more than a handful of times that I was scared. Driving through these tiny towns at breakneck speed wasn’t exactly a calm experience. If someone popped out from behind a wall, they would have been instantly splattered on the front of our car like an innocent deer.

All the high speed driving must have taken a toll on our car, because it broke. That left the cameraman and I to find our own way to the finish. Our driver flagged down a carload of Gendarmerie Nationale and they gave a ride to the base of the climb to Alpe d’Huez. I can confirm that those French sirens really sound like they do in the movies because we were whizzing along with sirens and flashing lights in a real Peugeot 404 station wagon. Thinking about it now, it seems unlikely that it would have been a 404 but I distinctly remember it because Emily had one.

When the Gendarmerie dropped us off, the cameraman quickly hitched a ride with another camera car that had no room for me. The Gendarmerie recognized my plight and just in time, flagged the “voiture balai” – the broom wagon – the last vehicle in the peloton that picks up riders that drop out of the race. That was my ride to the top of the Alp d’Huez. I moved to the rear (it-s really just a 20 or so passenger van) past a couple of riders that were already sitting in the front. Even though we were far behind the peloton we still had to trail behind the last riders, so it was slow progress to the top.

The crowds were just like on TV, packing both sides of the road four or five deep. With no restraints holding fans back, they would run, wave, push and scream encouragement just inches from the riders. Due to the size of the van, the crowd had to quickly back away from the center of the road. It was like an icebreaker except we were breaking through a sea of people.

While most of the United States is suffering from a heat wave, the summer is always cool where I live – cool as in it rarely gets over 70 degrees F. In fact, when it’s overcast here during the summer (the marine layer, near the ocean, etc) it feels cold. (Though it’s not as cold as Stanley, Idaho; Truckee, California or Chiloquin, Oregon – see this USA TODAY page)

Clicking on the Google Calendar button will take you to my calendar where I note the overcast days during the summer in Pacific Grove, California, United States of America, Planet Earth. (Sorry, you need a Google account to see it)

Chris won two first place awards and two second place awards in class at the Pebble Beach Summer Dressage Show.

Apparently, contradicting my initial observations, there is more to dressage than just sitting on the horse while it prances around.

The owner of Simply Roy, Mr. J. R. Rouse, of Pacific Grove and Mountain View, California, gave his full support for his horse and rider.

While her victories are permanently engraved on the Pebble Beach Summer Dressage Show Trophy, at home, Chris now eats her breakfast cereal out of her first place crystal bowl.

Chuck wanted a burger. The last good one I had was at the Emerald Inn and that was too far away. I wasn’t hungry when I walked in, but the photo of a juicy burger and the TV memory of those slobs scarfing down their burgers while desiring solitude made me hungry enough to try the food.

It was a mistake – it was bad. I’d never eaten at a Carl’s Jr. and most likely will not again. This is Chuck’s uneaten part of a dried out Six Dollar Western Bacon Burger.

Maybe Kobayashi’s water helped his hot dogs go down, but all the free Carl’s Jr. refills in the world wouldn’t have helped this burger.

A school of sardines (background) at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Kelp Forest.

(Monterey Bay Aquarium membership courtesy of Gwen Monteith and Robert Klei)