Tonight, she skis with the trees..

The Laconic Australian, it turns out, is far less composed when you strap two elongated pieces of plastic to his feet and send him screaming down a mountainside. Me-time mark three was a stunning day of skiing in Lake Tahoe, at the Kirkwood Mountain Resort. There’s a superb ski shuttle company called the Bay Area Ski Bus that, for a mere $163, picks you up from Oakland or San Francisco, runs you down to Tahoe, includes lift ticket, ski hire, a day on the slopes, and then drops you home again with films and snacks to boot. 

The Kirkwood Mountain, from the parking lot.

 We got onto the bus from the Rockridge BART at half five in the morning. I was out cold instantly, on the shoulder of the bemused man next to me, and by the time I resurfaced we were in Tahoe. After the bus paused to put chains on the wheels we were heading up a mountain road- it had been snowing for two days previously and the trees were weighed down with a thick layer of frosting. Whenever you see ads for skiing or winter sports, it’s very easy to suspect the pictures are touched up, but out there on the mountain the sky really is that bright, china blue. Friends and family back in the U.K are sick of the sight of snow after a very bitter winter, but stateside the novelty had nowhere near worn off. 

Far side of the mountain!

The bus arrived at the resort at 9:30, and by 10am the Laconic Australian and I were making the first run of the day. A very fine, almost crystalline snow was still falling, and it was early enough that the runs were still very smooth. The terrain at Kirkwood is chiefly intermediate, with lots of blue runs full of unexpected inclines, and trees in every direction. It shortly transpired that the Laconic Australian’s favourite pastime was to vanish unexpectedly among thickets of pine. I’d never tried skiing among trees before, and for the first couple of runs followed enthusiastically in his wake, before eventually accepting that the narrow routes always left me face-down in a snowbank. 

The ski lifts run over to the far side of the mountain, which takes roughly half an hour, not including runs, and in the course of the morning the Laconic Australian and I skied as far as the resort’s border. A favourite route was the ‘Happiness’ trail, which had a perfect combination of wide runs and narrower twisted terrain; steep enough to get a decent speed without the imminent consequence of a broken neck. ‘Juniper’ and ‘Whisky Side’ saw us safely back to the base camp in the afternoon, and we spent the last couple of hours on the wider terrain that fed directly back to the mountain village. All in all we spent about six hours on the slopes, and looking at the terrain map I feel as though we barely scratched the surface. 

 Incredible value for money, a fantastic resort and a brilliant day. If time and money allow, I’ll definitely be going back. 

Laconic Australian, on a base camp run

A weekend in the City of Angels

Whenever I ask any fellow Berkeley students about Los Angeles I always get the same response- a sort of convulsive twitch that lingers around the eyes, and a question along the lines of ‘Why would anyone ever go there?’ The way it’s told, L.A. is a vast smog-filled nightmare of wide roads and stifling heat, and, as one classmate put it, ‘all the people there are assholes’. 

LA from the roof of the hotel on Sunset Boulevard

But as an outsider, there’s no escape from the romance that saturates Los Angeles. It’s the central hub of American filmmaking, it has the Walk of Fame, the opulence of Beverly Hills, and the Hollywood sign set firmly into the mountains. There are books, films, and my personal poison of Musical Theatre which revolve around the smoky City of Angels: and like Manhattan, San Francisco, or any other iconic American city there’s a pull to it that makes you think yes- I could step off the plane in this place and things would begin to happen. So, given the chance to spend a couple of days down there with my Dad I jumped at the chance, and flew down the coast on a clear Friday afternoon.

Coasting over the city towards the airport, then driving down towards Santa Monica showed me straight off: LA is huge. It sprawls in every direction from the ochre mountains to the bleached coastline. Oddly enough one of the places it really evoked for me was the roads that ran into Accra, the capital of Ghana. There was something so familiar about the wide tarmac roads, the dusty air and the constant gridlock, and it’s strange to think that, no matter how many worlds apart two places are they can ultimately end up looking very much the same. The shorefront at Santa Monica was like a scene from every coast-based sitcom ever made. Everywhere there were young, tanned beautiful people, jogging, rollerblading, exuding health and an overwhelming sense of my God we’re gorgeous. A late afternoon wind whipped sand up into the air, making the pier, with its Ferris wheel and dangerously rickety-looking rollercoaster look like a Polaroid photo.

I stayed on the Sunset Strip, much further uptown, a journey we foolishly chose to make during the rush hour. A fifteen-mile drive- in a straight line- took over an hour and a half as we crawled through the solid lanes of traffic. There was a lot to see as we went through, and the sudden contrasts in environment were amazing. Coming up on your left would be the turnoffs to Beverly hills, with palm trees and velvet lawns being thoroughly doused by industrial sprinklers; two minutes down the road on the other side would be a low concrete building, with a flashing neon sign advertising ‘GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS’ in lurid colours. Sunset Boulevard itself was much the same, different walks of life thrown into sharp relief against each other. There was a railcar-turned-restaurant opposite a hotel where scenes from Oceans Eleven were shot, a wooden-shack Mexican cabana and a glorified burlesque club all within a stone’s throw of each other. The sort of placed  that, if you lived in every day, would slowly strip you of any lingering grasp on reality. We ate on the front deck of  the SaddleRanch Chophouse- a saloon-styled steak joint with terrifying waxwork cowboys grinning down at you from the walls and a bucking bronco in the middle of the bar floor. Asked for spare ribs, received half a cow, which was followed by complimentary s’mores. We grilled them on the open brick fireplace, watching packs of Hells Angels go roaring down the strip.

The Universal Studios Globe

I was further removed from sanity the following day with my tour of Universal Studios. Described as the ‘home of entertainment in LA’, the studios have produced blockbusters such as Psycho, Jaws, Forrest Gump, Jurassic Park, and, notoriously, the Shrek franchise. As well as a working film lot, it is a thriving theme park, and one of LA’s biggest tourist attractions. I spent about four hours walking round the park, experienced some bone-shaking theme park rides (with non-existent queues); and the fascinating studio tour; which was ‘hosted’ by a televised Jimmy Fallon as we trundled around outdoor-sets and sound studios in open-ended trams. The whole experience was loud, bright, and left me feeling slightly hungover, but I couldn’t have passed LA by without seeing it.

Jaws looking washed up at Universal Studios

I don’t know whether I’d ever start twitching the way people in Northern California (NorCal) do; but then again I doubt LA would ever be a place I’d choose to live in long-term. Coming from a city like London where trains and buses can get you anywhere, the idea of a sprawling metropolis where a car becomes your lifeline is completely alien in concept. And I could see how living in an environment where the world of television, film and music bleed so closely into everyday life might start to drive a person insane. So, ultimately- as far as this year goes- Berkeley remains the place to be. 

A Little Time

After the mania of the weeks at Berkeley, the rushes across campus, and crushes on Sproul, it’s so easy to cut the weekends loose and let them drift. Last term I spent great swathes of time in my bedroom; feebly telling myself that I had far too much homework to go out, while still achieving very little. Some days I’d never see the outside of my halls, just sit and struggle through a dense essay or a dusty book, listening to the industrial carpet dryers wafting stale air down the hallways. Enough to do a person’s nut in. 

Having made it home and back again in one piece, and passing all of my classes with good grades, one of my top resolutions on my return was to take one day a week when academic work could stuff it. I would have Me Time: the only condition being that I used it to do new things, going across the bay and actually seeing something of San Francisco, or exploring parts of Berkeley outside of the four roads penning the campus. 

My first twenty-four hours of Me Time began at about 9pm Friday night, after singing with Perfect Fifth in the Welcome Back Acapella concert. There was an aftershow party, and the twenty-first birthday of a fellow choirgirl to attend. With the Irish Aristocrat, the World’s Greatest Lover and the Laconic Australian in tow I went steaming away, determined to show these Yanks how the British drink. Reckless bravado. 

Acapella parties are like stepping onto the set of Glee. Every time I went to the fridge to pull out a beer, I had to manoeuvre round spontaneous scatting sessions, and people were able to segue into a five-part harmony rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ with no apparent effort. I had a conversation with a theatre major in possession of a highly convincing British accent, ‘helped’ the birthday girl with tequila shots, and learnt that one of my friends had been raised in a religious cult. An enormous bowl of vodka gummy bears had been provided for general consumption, which were easy enough to pick at once every half hour or so- but after midnight the hostess decided they weren’t disappearing fast enough, split us into teams and threw us into an eating contest. I swallowed a large tablespoon of them, and remember nothing more of the night. 

 

The second phase of Me Time began with slumping on the bathroom tiles the following morning, shaking like a leaf and heaving radioactive-looking bile into the toilet. Not the most fortuitous of starts. But, by the early afternoon, when I could stand upright without feeling an invisible pickaxe in my skull, I took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) across the bay to visit the San Francisco Museum of ModernArt. 

'Guardians of the Secret' by Jackson Pollock

Architecture in central San Fran is fascinating- the buildings cobbled together like a five-year old’s collage, with old free-standing apartment blocks set against a chrome backdrop of skyscrapers. The MoMA is a two-block walk from Montgomery Street station, and costs eleven dollars for entry if you have a valid student ID. Eleven dollars well worth spending: the Irish Aristocrat and I spent a good two hours wandering through the exhibitions before the museum closed, and we barely scratched the surface. They seemed to have a little bit of everything- Picasso, Frida Khalo, Andy Warhol, even Damien Hirst’s petrified cow head, which in retrospect was not the best thing to examine with a hangover. And while I have no idea of the meaning behind a sculpture of brains, it was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and a success in my first attempt at taking a little time.

peculiar brain sculpture

Next weekend I’m flying down to LA, where I plan to stick my hands into whatever stretch of drying cement I can find. Good times ahead!  

New Year, New Plans.

Happy New Year to all my lovely readers! 

There are some things in life which even the most expensive cameras will never be able to capture, and the view from the top of the International house, or when you’re heading way up into the Berkeley hills, is one of them. The bay stretches out like a piece of hammered grey slate from Berkeley across the bay, and San Francisco appears collapsible, made of cardboard or matchboxes, bleached white in the sun or lit up like Christmas after dark. Alcatraz rears from the tiny island in the middle of the water, and the Golden Gate stretches between the mountains on either side; little more than a dim, hulking shape rising out of the water when the fog rolls in, but with clear skies the scarlet paintwork strikes out at the clouds. 

On New Years’ Eve I stood in the cold with the Graduate, several inches deep in mud, and watched the fireworks flower over Westminster and the London Eye, and as the rockets burst overhead I felt a twang for the bridge and the bay. It’s strange being back in Blighty. Previous experience has taught me that once you leave a new place for home all your experiences immediately take on the consistency of a dream, and dim within moments of stepping onto the airport tarmac; and while I’m still carrying the faintest of tan lines on my back, the reality of what sun feels like has escaped me. Falling back into the old molds of life has been a strange counter-displacement. England is entirely unchanged, grey and oppressively damp. Having kicked my brain up into a gear I’d been previously unused to, I now have too much time on my hands, and am starting to pine for the West Coast. 

I have a new roommate arriving in the spring term. The wonderful Amy is leaving me, returning to sunny Australia. Her spontaneous twirling moments, personal boundaries confusions, and ridiculous antics have become so much a part of my Berkeley life, things will feel empty without her, but at least I have the Laconic Australian, Irish Aristocrat and World’s Greatest Lover to soften the blow. In any case, I’m now halfway through my year, and feeling the need to really start immersing myself in the American Dream. As such, here are some of my New Years Resolutions: 

  1)      Become less of a hypochondriac: Maybe it’s a means of compensating having to shell out $891 a term for student health insurance; but the number of times I’ve managed to convince myself I’m suffering from a fatal disease in the past few months is ridiculous.

 2)      Get out and see more of San Francisco. I’m determined to better get to know the place, outside of the basic tourist walks. Planning to start with a drink in a pirate bar...

3)      Go skiing in Lake Tahoe to beat the January blues.

 

4)      Start thinking about my dissertation. Requirements are that my large paper for my final year has to be in some way related to my year abroad, and I’m completely stuck for any ideas. Berkeley being such a hub of history, literature and art you’d think it’d be fairly easy to come up with some sort of idea, but inspiration is not striking.  

  5)      Have an All-American Spring Break. Last week of March. Beach, beer, bad behaviour.

 

 6)      Rugby-tackle Barack Obama.

May 2013 be prosperous to us all!

Post Pending!

Obligatory apology for the lack of post! It's Finals Week, all the students are on lockdown, but I am writing as we speak and hope to get a proper blog up later today or by tomorrow at the latest. In the meantime, here are some photos I took in a rather extraordinary bar in Truckee: how many guns can you spot?

This is real America

Blogger refuses to let me turn the moose the right way up.

Bo Billy Bob was a happy little reindeer.. until he got shot.

Spot The Guns