February 6, 2005 - Volksmarch in Claremont,California

We had a final breakfast with Chris before he had to return to Los Angeles to get ready for the next week of work, and I used the opportunity to load him up with pancakes and my homemade jam. Then we went outside and admired his really pretty BMW motorcycle before bidding him adieu. His bike was a deep metallic blue and the fairing kind of flowed around the frame and engine so closely it looked like it had been poured on. It was beautiful workmanship and functional, too, and I tried hard not to be envious. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Monika surreptitiously snapped a picture of me staring at Chris's bike, and I must say I look for all the world like I'm drooling over it or something, which might not be that far from the truth!

After Chris left we gathered up our hiking equipment and also headed off in the direction of Los Angeles, but at a far more sedate pace than what Chris was doing. Our goal was Claremont, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles on the old Route 66. That, in fact, was what motivated us to drive the 120 miles westward; we needed to have a California Route 66 walk to complete the set of Route 66 walks that we had begun in the summer of 2003 during Wanderung 3. In return for all this effort we anticipated getting some kind of nifty Route 66 patch for our jackets, but that still might sound like a pretty stupid reason to drive 240 miles round trip to most folks.

But the way we figured, it was "now or never" so we drove down Interstate 10 to the Claremont exit. Along the way we saw a veritable forest of wind turbines, busily spinning around and generating electricity. There were so many, in fact, at least 500 by my estimation, that the effect of all the spinning rotors was somewhat disorienting. One curious thing I observed was that in a given field of turbines they would all be spinning the same direction, but different fields were spinning in different directions. Monika wondered why that was and I briefly convinced her that having different fields spinning in different directions was how they generated alternating current! Ahem. Truly, I had no blooming idea why they were rotating one way or the other, but there were surely more there than I have ever seen in one place anywhere in the world. I was curious if they were economically competitive with fossil fuels or nuclear generators, and whether they were subsidized as in Germany (see Wanderung 2), but those questions remained unanswered for the time being.

We also saw, of course, the world famous Los Angeles smog. It was blue-grayish rather than the brown color I remembered when flying in to visit Chris in 1986, but it stretched from L.A. proper all the way out to Palm Springs in the desert just west of Joshua Tree National Park. To be fair, I think it was partly so noticeable because we had just spent a couple of weeks in the southwestern desert with unlimited horizon-to-horizon visibility. As we drove in, we could still see the mountaintops above the smog, and it appeared to me to be about a 5 to 10 mile visibility. That would qualify for Visual Flight Rules flying, of course, but I always found those lower visibility days were unpleasant flying because I could not see the horizon. If you are not flying on instruments, seeing the horizon is an essential part of keeping yourself and the airplane correctly oriented in the air, and the lack of that reference point was always, to me at least, disturbing. In addition, when the visibility is marginal like that, you can only see a small circle of the earth directly below you and seeing landmarks to navigate by becomes increasingly difficult. As a result, I had typically avoided flying in that type of visibility unless, like when I flew into the L.A. basin to visit Chris, I absolutely had to. We won't go into my infamous landing at Meadowlark Airport that day, I certainly can't blame that on the poor visibility, but in the end I didn't hit any of the people eating at the café at the end of the runway and I didn't chop off anything with the propeller other than a 5 foot tall weed that spread green goop all over the airplane's fuselage in revenge. Meadowlark airport has been replaced by apartments or condos, I think, so the venue for this very different, not to say embarrassing, incident has vanished in the interim and maybe that's just as well.

In any case, we descended into the smog and ran the gamut of the Los Angeles traffic (not so bad since it was a Sunday morning) to find the start box at the hotel right off the Claremont exit. After signing up for the walk we drove over to the starting point, which was an old school located right on Foothill Boulevard, the erstwhile Route 66. The walk was arranged in 2 parts, an out-and-back west from the starting point followed by a ragged loop out to the east. Since Monika was still limping, we proceeded at different paces for the first part of the walk. I was looking for any signs of the old Route 66 corridor, but almost everything including the wide 4 lane street looked quite new. The only exception I might have found was an old trailer court marked by a neon sign that looked like it dated from the 40s or 50s.

Rejoining Monika, we stopped off at a hole-in-the-wall bagel shop that offered a shepherd's pie with garlic potatoes as the lunch special. While it was tasty enough, we were both disappointed at the California-sized portions that left us wishing for more. I had heard about the small portions in California restaurants, but that was my first direct encounter with the phenomenon. On the positive side, I expect those tiny portions help folks out there keep their weight down, but for a food Hoover like me it was just not enough calories.

After our meager repast we headed back toward the starting point and I then continued on the loop to the east. That loop turned out to run through the campuses of 4 different colleges, including Harvey Mudd and Scripps colleges, which was fun. The campuses were nicely landscaped and looked very nice indeed.

On the other side of the college complex, which seemed to be collectively called the "Claremont Colleges", the route curled back north to Foothill Boulevard. From there it was a straight shot back to the truck, although I was surprised that the colleges had neglected to install any type of sidewalk along an undeveloped strip of land on the north side of the street. This walk was essentially a city suburb type of walk, with the first segment along a commercial corridor and the second segment mostly through some pleasant college campuses. It was absolutely flat, paved walking (except for the missing sidewalks!) and I found quite a number of opportunities for meals or snacks along he way, but you might want to stick to national chains like Kentucky Fried Chicken or Burger King if you want a decent sized meal!

To compensate for our paltry lunch, we stopped off at a Taco Bell on our way back to camp and had another meal. Back at camp I settled in to bring the journal up to date, and since I had to write about several days that lasted until late in the evening. Meanwhile, Monika processed some pictures on Daddy, crocheted a jacket for Peanut, and then gave a concert on her dulcimer, all by the light of our two fluorescent camp lanterns. Forgoing our usual book reading, we retired early to get a good night's sleep.