Not far from the Plumas County town of Graeagle is the charming mountain resort of Gray Eagle Lodge.  Jim and I spent the (long) weekend there and really enjoyed ourselves.  It was all about the hiking.  Or was it the food?  Kind of a toss-up.  When we stopped to get gas in Truckee, my heart sank.  The smoke was still present enough to seriously obscure the mountains surrounding and Donner Lake was not its usual breathtaking blue.  Happy to report that, surprisingly, things cleared considerably as we headed north to the Lakes Basin area.  In fact, the smoke really didn’t impact us until we climbed Mt. Ellwell.  We were excited at the prospect of seeing Mt. Lassen from the summit, some 100 miles further north.  That didn’t turn out to be possible but the 360 degree panorama was still impressive.  The Gray Eagle Lodge is made up of cute little cabins  (with bathrooms and a mini-fridges).  Meals were served in the 20’s era log lodge, (hey, is that redundant?)  Food was really good.  It was very family-oriented so we felt a little out-of-place with no rugrats in tow.  A small creek runs through the property, providing the perfect place for a quick cool-off.  Although it’s not the most comprehensive website in the world, here’s more info.  

Just back from a VERY relaxing and fun cruise to Alaska with about 20 KDFC listeners. For some it was their first cruise, but everyone seemed to have a great time. The neat things about cruising is that you can enjoy it any way you want. You can wonder about free as a bird during each port visit, sign up for activities like, fishing trips, kayaking adventures, zip-lining through the trees, float plane or helicopter sightseeing…whatever. Or you can just hang out on board and read, spa, walk, and, oh yes…EAT. I think we were better at avoiding temptation this time around, but not by much. The MS Statendam is a nice sized ship housing around 1200 passengers and nearly 600 crew who took great care of us. Alaska hasn’t had much of a summer, but we did get some sun at our last port of call, Ketchikan.

Jacquie and I signed up for some fun excursions since we thought this might be our one shot at the 49th state. Our first port of call, Juneau, saw us outfitted for glacial adventuring by helicopter. A listener called me months back to say that stepping out in the middle of a glacier was something almost “spiritual” so we had to splurge on the chopper flight. It was raining lightly through much of the flight, but the views were spectacular and the “glacial blue” is almost “otherworldly”(maybe a movie highlight of it later).

On to Skagway and an ambitious kayaking and train adventure that rousted us out of the sack at 6am! Hey, this is supposed to be “vacation”. You know, no early calls. Oh well. It was exhilarating to be on the lake up in the mountains and the train is one of the world’s engineering marvels. I do have a video of this ready to go. The music by Heitor Villa-Lobos is inspired by a train trip in Brazil.

Glacier Bay was our next stop and a must on everyone’s list. It was fascinating to float just nearby and watch a bit of the face “calving”, but after actually setting foot on a glacier it was more of a spectator event.

Our final stop was Ketchikan. We arrived with no plans, but it was a beautiful sunny day so we chatted up a salesman on  the pier and decided to take a float plane trip back into the “Misty Fjords” which on that sunny day were not particularly “Misty”, but they were breathtaking (more video of that, to come, I hope). Our pilot, Kevin, explained about the bear population around Ketchikan and if I remember correctly there are half as many bears as people. This explains this tee-shirt wisdom seen in Juneau.

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Saturday was such a perfect day!   I managed a rare day to myself and decided to spend it in Sonoma as I was to MC the Midsummer Mozart Festival concert that evening at the Gundlach Bundschu Winery.

The drive from the Oakland Hills to Sonoma is only about an hour.   I stopped a couple times to buy cherries and pumpkin seeds to snack on.   I got to the town of Sonoma just after 2.  It was in the mid 90s but thankfully, not at all humid.   I walked around town, got some ice cream at the El Dorado Hotel and checked with the spa down the street to see if they had any openings.  No…all full.   So I checked with the MacArthur Place Hotel and Spa on Broadway,  just a short walk from the center of town.   I stayed there a number of times back in the early 2000s and hadn’t been back in a few years.  The gardens are stunning and the outdoor garden artwork is whimsical and charming.   

After a couple hours of pampering, I stopped at the Thai Cafe on Broadway.   It’s just a tiny restaurant with about 10 tables and they had several vegetarian items on the menu.   I had a light dinner and it was fantastic.    Then it was off to the winery which is just a few miles from town.   Gundlach Bundschu is simply beautiful and its history goes back to 1858.   After walking around the grounds, I found a secluded spot in the shade and read for about an hour before the concert started.  

I’m the middle of Wallace Stegner’s  “A Shooting Star.”   It’s a captivating story that takes place in Hillsborough in 1960 (ish) about a woman raised with privledge, the platinum spoon, and marries a doctor only to find herself dissatisfied with the very meaning of her life.   Stegner’s books fascinate me.  If you’re not familiar with him, he’s been refered to as the Dean of Western Writers.   A more modern Steinbeck even though Steinbeck was just about seven years older.   Stegner was a professor at Stanford where he founded the creative writing program.   One of his students was Sandra Day O’Connor!!  He quit in about 1970, disenchanted by the affect that the student rebellions at the time had on learning.  He became an activist himself, a staunch environmentalist and one of the most gifted writers of the 20th century.   A few years ago, Tim and I went to the Stegner exhibit at a peninsula library which displayed his desk and typewriter in a recreation of his home office.  There were several kiosks with audio presentations voiced by Stegner’s good friend, actor/director Robert Redford.  Stegner died in a traffic accident while on a lecture tour in Santa Fe in 1993.   The 100th anniversary of his birth is next year, 2009.

(Mary and Wallace)

After several great chapters of my book, it was time to join the crowds for the night’s concert.  The Gundlach Bundschu concert venue is a hillside, the bottom of which meets the stage.  George Cleve led the 13 piece chamber orchestra in Mozart’s Gran Partitta.   The sun dropped below the hill midway through the piece.   I welcomed the crowd for the second half of the concert and as always, I am humbled by the warm and enthusiastic reception that KDFC always gets.    Russian/British pianist Nikolai Demidenko played with the larger 40 piece orchestra performing Mozart’s 24th Piano Concerto.  Demidenko was flawless!   I noticed a number of times when Cleve from the podium watched him in wonder during Nikolai’s solos in the first movement.

A relaxing day, an enchanting evening and a good night’s sleep.
Fulfilled!

The other morning I heard a commotion out front and noticed three NAKED PEOPLE dancing in the street right in front of my house!!!
Only they weren’t dancing.   Apparently they were driving down the street to work when somehow they were attacked by a swarm of bees.  They came to a screeching stop, flew open their car doors and started running wildly flapping their arms and ripping off their clothes.  I swear they were naked and in a near panic.   By the time I could react, they’d settled down and then the realization hit them.   They were NAKED…in the street.  The embarrassment washed over them as they grabbed their clothing and sheepishly made their way back to the car and drove off.

I laughed my *%!? off.

I needed to get my annual eye exam today.  What made it even more urgent was that it’s taken me three years to make the appointment. 
I have been having headaches lately, especially toward the end of my show but none of that compared with the headache I got today at the eyeglass shop in downtown San Francisco.

Don’t get me wrong…the people who work there, especially Carol, were incredibly kind and helpful.  But the hoops I had to jump through just to get authorization from the insurance company…omg!

I have been waging a losing battle for years over the use of social security numbers as a form of proof of identify.   With identity theft at epidemic levels, it’s unconscionable to me that many employers, HR Departments and Insurance companies are still dragging their feet on this issue. 

I have a vision insurance card with my name, insurance group number and subscriber number.  But none of that was enough to prove who I am.  What made matters worse, I had to wait for twenty minutes while the store manager haggled with some insurance person on the phone.  Despite being issued a subscriber number for the purposes of my card, they still needed my social security number.  I’m afraid I embarrassed myself by making an issue out of it…but honestly….something’s gotta change.

I had my eye exam, my vision is getting worse, I got a new prescription and Carol helped pick out new frames which bring out the green of my eyes.   After all the insurance discounts, etc, the glasses still cost me $378.00.

Now I know why my annual appointment took three years to make.
Yikes…..

Hope you’ve been enjoying our Blind Date Week on KDFC.  It’s an expanded version of a feature that Hoyt’s been doing on his morning show for years.  Basically, he gives you 3 historical facts and one piece of music all from the same year.  The idea is to guess the year.  Blind Date, get it?  Anyway, this week we’re giving you Blind Dates to guess every hour and, what do you know, I’m actually learning some pretty interesting things.  For example, do you know the origins of the expression “ok” or “okay”?  Check this out:

WORD HISTORY   OK is a quintessentially American term that has spread from English to many other languages. Its origin was the subject of scholarly debate for many years until Allen Walker Read showed that OK is based on a joke of sorts. OK is first recorded in 1839 but was probably in circulation before that date. During the 1830s there was a humoristic fashion in Boston newspapers to reduce a phrase to initials and supply an explanation in parentheses. Sometimes the abbreviations were misspelled to add to the humor. OK was used in March 1839 as an abbreviation for all correct, the joke being that neither the O nor the K was correct. Originally spelled with periods, this term outlived most similar abbreviations owing to its use in President Martin Van Buren’s 1840 campaign for reelection. Because he was born in Kinderhook, New York, Van Buren was nicknamed Old Kinderhook, and the abbreviation proved eminently suitable for political slogans. That same year, an editorial referring to the receipt of a pin with the slogan O.K. had this comment: “frightful letters … significant of the birth-place of Martin Van Buren, old Kinderhook, as also the rallying word of the Democracy of the late election, ‘all correct’ …. Those who wear them should bear in mind that it will require their most strenuous exertions … to make all things O.K.”

Kinda fascinating!  Listen for a ton of intriguing factoids this week on KDFC.

MONDAY 7/7
According to the ice cream industry, if vanilla is America’s favorite flavor and chocolate is second, what’s third?
BUTTER PECAN (Winner-Nan Schwieger, Campbell)

TUESDAY 7/8
Merriam-Webster is making its annual update of new words. They include dirty bomb, dwarf planet, malware and this word for a vegetarian who eats fish.
PESCATARIAN (Winner-John Goebel, Foster City)

WEDNESDAY 7/9
Three, seven, ten, eleven and twelve share something in common.
THEIR ONLY VOWEL IS “E”(Winner-Katie O’Sullivan, Mountain View)

THURSDAY 7/10
They poured the first one of these on this day in 1892 in Bellefontaine, Ohio.
CONCRETE STREET (Winner-Marie Permann, San Jose)

FRIDAY 7/11
According to Prevention Magazine, more than 40% of people who’ve had this procedure feel a compulsive need to do it again.
BOTOX (Winner-Marcello Dugatti, Foster City)

MONDAY 7/14
At Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, guests consume 18-million of these every year.
PACKETS OF KETCHUP (Winner-Barbara Sloan, Alameda)

TUESDAY 7/15
TV Trivia-According to the Austin Chronicle, I Love Lucy and this 70s TV show air somewhere in the world every hour of every day.
MARY TYLER MOORE (Winner-Bud Gawlik, Santa Clara)

WEDNESDAY 7/16
I played a montage of the top 5 movie villains as voted by moviefone.com. You had to guess the top four. The fifth was optional.
LORD VOLDEMORT, DARTH VADAR, WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST, HANNIBAL LECTER, THE JOKER (Heath Ledger)  Winner-Kevin Fisher-Paulson, SF)

THURSDAY 7/17
Walter Hunt perfected this handy item and then sold the patent for $400 in 1849.
SAFETY PIN (Winner-Scott Williams, Hillsborough)

FRIDAY 7/18
According to askmen.com, the Rhodesian Ridgeback is the manliest dog in America. Name one more from the top five.

BLACK LAB, BLOOD HOUND, GERMAN SHEPHERD, ROTTWEILER (Winner-Philip Hadjin, Emeryville)

Have a PERFECT weekend

Today on Lunch Box trivia, I asked a question about Earle Stanley Gardner.  The lawyer and author was born on July 17th.  Turns out he named his most famous character after the publisher of Youth’s Companion,  a magazine from his childhood: Perry Mason and Company. I went through a phase in the 90’s when I watched re-runs of Perry Mason all the time.  I think I must have been on maternity leave because they were always shown in the middle of the day.  Well, it’s just great stuff.  The black and white coolness of the late 50’s is actually quite beautiful.  And Raymond Burr with his eyebrows-to-be-reckoned-with, is so unflappable. Amazingly even-tempered.  I loved Barbara Hale as Della Street ,the faithful secretary and, perhaps, more.    That 50’s aesthetic is so “in” right now, witness the show “Mad Men”.  It seems to me that of all the TV shows that are being made into movies, Perry Mason is a natural. Who would I cast in the title role? Maybe Aaron Eckhart  or Patrick Wilson (google him!).  And naturally, I would play Della.  I wonder if anyone has the guts to make it in black and white.

MULCH
We had some trees trimmed on our property a couple weeks ago.   We wound up agreeing to having two loads of mulch dumped on ours and our neighbor’s driveways.  What a job it was getting it spread over 300 feet of our land and helping the neighbors.   And this was the 20th truckload in four years.  I’m exhausted but it sure feels good to work hard.

HOT TUB
I finally bought one. I had a hot tub for years when I lived in Marin County (of course I did…) and have been meaning to get a new one since the mid 90s. Obviously I did my homework. It was delivered a couple weeks ago and I must say that I’ve never appreciated a hot tub more than I do now. Especially my 51 year old feet.

DAVID SEDARIS

I am a relatively new fan of David Sedaris. My partner turned me on to him about 5-years ago, about the time we got tickets to hear Sedaris read some of his short stories at Zellerbach in Berkeley.  I remember him complaining that he was forbidden to smoke on stage. He went on and on about it.  I have since come to learn by reading his stories that smoking is a common-theme.   David was a recent guest on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart which prompted me to read his latest book, “When You Are Engulfed in Flames.”  It’s excellent (even though he repeats some older stories) and the entire ending of the book is about him QUITTING cigarets.  He went all the way to Japan to quit.   A fascinating journal/journey.

GREAT FOOD
Hey, how’s your garden doing?   We just picked most of the apricots and blackberries.
And we’ve been eating the best green beans we’ve ever had…not to mention onions, peppers, carrots and the last of the swiss chard.   The tomatoes are almost ready too as are the plums and peaches.  I love Northern California.

I have to admit, I was afraid we wouldn’t get a very big turn-out for our KDFC Kids Day at the Tech on Sunday.  After all, it was a beautiful day in San Jose and the Lance Armstrong Race promised to wreak havoc on the parking possibilities downtown.  But I should not have worried because our young fans came out strong to hear some great live music and to enjoy the Tech.

Dianne and the Sunrise Quartet at the Tech.

Thanks to all and Bach on!