Back from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi today, which is by no means a puddle jump, and I am reminded of how air travel has changed, for the worse, in my lifetime. Three decades ago (and even two decades ago on some airlines), to hear someone talk about a long plane ride was to conjure […]

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We had been out of California and the United States for nearly two years, and we weren’t sure what we would find when we came back. We became Old World-based tourists of our native state, and we did a lot of looking and rediscovering … and comparing and contrasting.

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During our peregrinations through California, we have spent 10 nights in the homes of relatives or friends. For which we are quite grateful. That’s a huge savings to the tourist. Our sleeping quarters have ranged from plush “nearly always unused guest bedroom” to an old-fashioned case of “one of the kid’s rooms while the little […]

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I can’t remember the last time I saw a televised baseball game from start to finish. Sometime in 2009, I guess it would be. I’ve seen stretches of playoff games, while in Abu Dhabi, but the time differences are so weird that I inevitably miss the start of a game or its finish. So I […]

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A plaque at one of the places we have stayed during our vacation in California summed it up pretty well: “If you are lucky enough to live by the water … you are lucky enough.” Certainly, a large body of water generally tempers climatic extremes. But life can get even better. You can be more […]

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By signing Robbie Keane, captain of Ireland’s national team, the Galaxy have made the biggest news in Major League Soccer since Thierry Henry went to New York to play for Red Bull. Granted, Robbie Keane may be close to washed up, but when a guy spends most of a decade in the Premier League, and […]

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Jim Thome hit two home runs in Detroit tonight to reach 600 in his career. He is only the eighth guy to reach six bills in homers. And this pleases me on a couple of levels.

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I wish I had known the inventor of the hammock because I would like to shake that gentleman’s hand. And I’m fairly sure it was a “him” and not a “her,” because women have never sat around much, at any time, in any society. Men, however, have been hanging around since the dawn of time, […]

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People who grew up mostly in one house each have their own version of this in their personal histories: The business strip/street/mall where they bought groceries, picked up a newspaper, saw a movie, shopped for clothes, filled the tank. For me, it was Second Street in Belmont Shore, and I spent the night back in […]

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  Second-to-last stop on our tour of California. From cozy Balboa Island to my hometown, Long Beach. And if this trip has been almost entirely about seeing how close we can get to the ocean, we have come to the right place. The windows of the condo we are renting afford a wide view out […]

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