Catalina:

Ever since I started visiting LA I was always mildy curious about Catalina, a dark shadow in the Pacific haze off the coast of LA. Seems most people either come here when they are kids or the never come here at all. Kind of like Lundy off the coast of North Devon, without Tarka the cowing otter.

I like to take photo's of places I've been. And I mean exactly where I've been. Here's the hotel. It's author Zane Grey's old house. All of the rooms are named after novels of his. I know you can't tell which one it is unless I point it out so it's that nice one, at the top of the small foreground hill on the right hand side, just down from that gazebo thing, which is actually a chime tower that didn't chime much. Got it? Good.....



And here's the harbor, including the spot on the far side of the quay by the red roof on the dockside where I took the picture of the hotel from above. This is a small obsession of mine. Once, me and my friend Scooby, flying on fresh, self-picked mushrooms (Fillongley in da' house!), spent the night walking from one side of a playing field to the other to see where we'd been (and to see if the trees were really smaller over the other side of the field as they appeared. They never were). I never really got over that.

For my birthday one year, Scooby bought me a brand new toilet brimming with brussels sprouts. He deserves credit for that. That was an original gift. We had to make our own fun back in those days - before nintendo and PS2. F*** guitar hero - give me a royal doulton full of sprouts any day.



Avalon (above) is a very pretty town. And very quiet. Hardly any cars, mainly very expensive-to-rent Golf Carts, which I liked. Must suck to be a teenager though - and I thought there was bog-all to do in Coventry....

There are semi-submersible tours. I went at night to see the spooky fish. I saw a couple of Lobsters and a bit of flappy seaweed. Nothing even a bit spooky, though. Not any halibut hauntings, shark stabbings or fishy frightenings or anything at all alliterative, late-night and creepy. Not like New York, I thought. Halibut Hauntings? I ask you...come on, Hattie.



The sub looked like a dodgy French club when we first got on (should I say 'Boarded'?) but I simmered down later when they turned the lights out and it got all A Life Aquatic. The best bit was seeing the phosphoresence in the dark....



Here you can see me actually thinking in Ringo. It's the submarine. That and the fact that the only rhythm I have comes from being raised Catholic.




Here's a view inside the hotel room. The room was named after Zane Grey's novel The Vanishing American. It wasn't that nice a room - kind of tourist vacation quality - but I liked it. I liked because it wasn't the usual kind of hotel I stay in on tour (they're nice, usually, very nice, nicer than me, mostly. But they do get a bit samey) and also because of the way the light fell on it, it seemed quintessentially Californian, especially as the sun set behind the hill out back. Gots to love the light in CA.





Mmmmm. Delicious California.

On Catalina they have Buffalo. In fact they're not really Buffalo (Buffalo live in Asia) they are Bison. They were intrroduced to the island by a film crew who were filming a version of Zane Gray's The Vanishing American. (Wheels within wheels, eh?) After filming the film crew left the Bison behind saying they didn't know how to round them up. Now there are up to 250 Bison yomping around the Island. They were cut from the movie. They are big and hard-looking.



The Wrigley Family (they of the Chewing Gum fame) were the first to try to develop the island for tourism (and to institute rules regarding its conservancy after they sold their shares). They have a ranch still in the middle of the Island called The Secret Ranch because you don't see it until you're on top of it. They still keep Arabian Horses there, which are beautiful. I guess they thought the same about me. Espeically this guy. I didn't know whether to be intimidated or flattered - I was both. I mean....crikey! Was Catherine the Great really into all this....? (Way to Go, Catherine. And I really mean: what a way to go...)



I had to sit down for a minute with some people my own age. Turned out nice again.



The road led up to the Airport in The Sky, which is a very small airport only capable of landing DC3's (which are still in use from Long Beach bringing the mail). They built the airport by leveling the tops of two mountains and flattening them enough to lay a runway between the two. This is the view from near the end of the runway.



A cute little airport - kind of like Long Beach or one of those Deco feeling airports (Burbank too, maybe?). I like airports and I like planes.

We were told under fear of God himself not to go out back near the rich people's planes. It was like being on a school trip. I think in America people worry about both litigation and liability too much and also about people doing dumb things like wandering on to a live runway, although you'd have to be pretty stupid to do that, no? I guess that's what irked me about the warning. By implication the guide was calling everyone a f***wit. Maybe I was just being touchy....?

It must be very nice to have a private plane to fly to Avalon of an afternoon. From the ramp you could see Palos Verdes Estates on the mainland through the afternoon haze. California is beautiful. I don't know anyone from PV or anyone who knows anything about it - it seems pretty luxurious to me. But then again, coming from Coventry, so does almost everywhere in SoCal.







And this was the view in front of the airport. Go on, tell me you wouldn't have had a look if you'd seen this. I showed my friend and he asked. "Did you take that picture because it looks like a penis?"
"Yes." I was quite proud of myself. I had a camera full of willy jokes.
"Oh." he said, not quite infected by my ebullience. He gave me a look full of love even though I was a dopey twat. In fact he sounded the same way my mum did when she found out I'd started smoking. I could tell he didn't think it was all that funny. I resolved there and then never to share my todger pictures again. It would be my secret hobby that I couldn't even tell my best friends about.

But then it was time to update my blog and...and....and they're funny, goddammit.



The ferry back to LA leaves in the evening. Even got back in time to feast. Delicious day, no?



I am listening to Keren Ann a lot. Too much. Soon, she'll be calling Gwen Stefani to get advice on how to get me to stop.
But until then....