Category Archives: USA 2013

April 12 of 12 …. Last Day in the US

Lucky I was still in the US this month as it gave me an extra day before having to remember the 12 of 12 as I forgot last month.

Today was my last day after a month flitting around the US from Reno, Los Angeles, Orange County, Oxnard, San Diego, Las Vegas, Austin, Port Aransas, Corpus Christi and San Antonio.

Not a lot on the agenda today which started with a couple of LPC (Lamp Post Caches) geocache finds around Anaheim before heading over to Signal Hill near Long Beach.

My visit to Signal hill was to see the private Fire Collection of Chan Brenard. Chan has been collecting fire related material for a long time and it is an impressive collection from helmets, fire truck models, books and a large amounts of fire equipment catalogs from over the last 50 years.

Another interesting thing about Signal Hill is that it is a small city of around 3 square miles that has refused to be annexed into the much larger City of Long Beach that surrounds it because of oil. There is a huge amount of oil underneath the hill providing good revenues to the city.

There are bobbing oil pumps everywhere including backyards of houses and even the drive thru of the local McDonalds. After having lunch at the Black Bear Diner at the bottom of the hill with Chan and Gill it was back to check out more of Chan’s stuff.

Time was getting on and I had a hour or so to drive up to LAX for one last time. Traffic wasn’t too bad so there was time for a meal at In ‘n Out Burger and watch a few planes land as the sun set on Los Angeles.

Dropped off the car then headed to the Qantas check-in with no issues regard to weight. I might have been saved as I upgraded the Melbourne-Adelaide leg to business which gave me extra privileges here as well. 🙂

Still had some time to wait so went outside and walked the terminals grabbing around 20 Munzee’s that were located here.

Managed to get through the TSA checkpoint OK and it was off to the gate which of course was the furthest away. It was fairly quiet here and it wasn’t long before it was announced that we were going to another gate – which was the one with the plane parked alongside I had passed on the way to this one.

We were all on board when the power started doing weird stuff with drop outs and the screens resetting and all this before the push back from the gate. An announcement came that there were issues – I guess we already knew that. Supposedly it was some sensors on the doors were not working properly and engineers were working on it.

An hour later and we were pushing back but it wasn’t for a further 30 minutes that we joined the queue to take off. At this point we were 1.5 hours late from taking off. It was going to be interesting at the other end with connecting flights if they don’t make up the time over the pond but that is another story …….

Barney Smith’s Toilet Seat Art Museum …

After spending the weekend down in Port Aransas for the Texas Challenge, I headed up to San Antonio to take in some of the local tourist attractions. There are the usual spots such as the Alamo and the Riverwalk which of course I did but the next main attraction after these is Barney Smith’s Toilet Seat Art Museum.

Barney is one interesting guy who in his former life was a plumber and a volunteer firefighter. He is now 91 years young.

Thirty years ago, while Barney was still plumbing, one of his suppliers was throwing out some toilet seats and he grabbed them. Now what to do with them. Why not turn them into art and this is what he did.

What started out as a bit of fun soon became an obsession. He told his wife that he would stop at 500 but when I visited he was at 1060 so I guess there will be no stopping him.

In his time, he has appeared on a number of TV shows like “The Morning Show” and “Today” and he is very passionate about his pastime.

Being an Australian and a geocacher visiting him was very exciting for him and since he is looking after his sick wife, I didn’t want to take up too much of his time but 2 hours later I was still there being shown the seats.

I was privileged to sign a couple of his seats – the Australian one and one of the many Geocaching seats.

He has asked for some material from South Australia for another seat so I had better get a package together.

San Antonio … 21 years on

It has been a 21 year absence but I have made it back to San Antonio. With an overnight stay here before moving onto Austin, there wasn’t a great deal of time to have a look around.

I did have a chance to revisit the Alamo (I always remember it being bigger) and the Riverwalk, with of course a boat ride on the River.

After a wander around the Riverwalk and Downtown it was then off to Barney Smith’s Toilet Seat Art Museum – undoubtedly the premier attraction in San Antonio. 😉

Off to Reno again …

It is that time of the year again, however this year it nearly didn’t happen. With budget issues, there was no guarantee I would be heading back to the US. I finally got approval last Friday so it was a mad panic booking flights (they were still cheap), accommodation and car rental.

So where am I going. This will be the fourth time attending the International Association of Fire Chiefs Wildland Urban Interface Conference – wow that is a mouthful. And for the fourth time it is in Reno Nevada but has changed locations to the Peppermill Resort.

As well as the conference, I have a pre-conference training course, Initial Attack Incident Commander and then a post conference training course, Blue Card Instructor.

It is not all work and I hope to have a chance to get some geocaching and skiing in on the weekends. 🙂

After rushing to the airport and arriving just in time, we were delayed 45 minutes due to issues in Sydney. We finally got off the ground and after some circle work around Goulburn it was into Sydney only to find that I had just enough time to get to the International terminal for the flight to Los Angeles.

We were loaded onto the big Airbus A380, only to be told that there was a problem with the APU and that our departure was to be delayed. With the power and aircon going off a few times, an hour later we were in the air.

The flight across the Pacific was uneventful but we had a spectacular sunset through the window.

Luckily I had plenty of time to get my connecting flight as there was only one bag on the carousel and eventually found my other bag merrily going around on another one. Through immigration and customs OK and dropped the bags off for the next flight.

This still gave me 6 hours so I grabbed a car and headed out to get some lunch (In-N-Out Burger) and also activate my phone. I finally got the phone activated on an unlimited plan with T-Mobile.

With a couple of hours left, I headed down to the coast to grab a couple of geocaches. It certainly wasn’t beach weather today and I had it all to myself. The weather in LA was cool (around 14C) and foggy. It must have been cold as the locals were wearing jumpers and jackets.

Back to LAX, onto the plane to Reno and 32 hours after leaving home I finally arrived at my destination with a few hour of broken sleep – starting to feel like a zombie.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get into the Peppermill Resort so was staying for a few days at the old hotel, Grand Sierra Resort before moving across. They must have realised that I hadn’t had much sleep because my room ended up being the one right at the end of a mile long corridor.

I got to walk these corridors a couple of times tonight as a supply run from the nearby Walmart was in order. It is always interesting there as you get entertained by the customers and what they are wearing as well as groceries.

There was a little issue for me when I went to use my credit cards they were declined. A call back to Australia to the Commonwealth Bank to be told that I hadn’t notified them I was going overseas. This is a first time for me as normally I get a phone call as soon as I use my card to confirm that I am actually in the US.

It was back down the long corridor, shower and off to bed for some well deserved sleep. 🙂