Category Archives: Travel

Was it REALLY twenty-three YEARS ago? Damn!

We did all of our exploring from the Canadian side, having driven over from Toronto, where the Worldcon was that year. It would be nice to do the attractions on the US side some day, as well as some of the other attractions, like the speedboats downstream running the rapids.

Over the weekend we stayed at the Hotel Fera in Orange, just a couple of miles from Anaheim Stadium. It’s next to the “Orange Crush,” a spot where the 5 Santa Ana Freeway, the 22 Garden Grove Freeway, and the 57 Pomona Freeway all meet. Needless to say, you can get there from here.

Overall it was a pleasant stay. I definitely liked it a LOT better than the two places we’ve stayed in previous years on similar trips. It’s a Doubletree property, which is a subset of the Hilton family, but despite that, and being just a couple of miles from Disneyland and many other tourist attractions in the area, it was remarkably affordable. In comparison, of course, not in absolute terms.

But there were a couple of minor “issues.”

The elevators were really fast and efficient once you figured them out, which really mattered since we were on the 18th floor. But figuring them out… I could have used a heads up, to be honest.

99.999% of the elevators I’ve ever used have buttons on the inside that let you pick the floor you’re going to. We got to the elevators, there was one opening and someone else getting on, so we followed and hustled on with our luggage.

And there were no buttons.

We went to the floor the other person was going to, and then the doors closed. The elevator didn’t move. We were trapped. I started pushing the “open door” button. Nothing. Again. Nothing. By this time I had figured that there had to be a way out in the elevator lobby to call and elevator and tell it where you were going, but we couldn’t get the doors to open to get to it.

After a few minutes the doors finally opened on their own, and I got out to put our floor into the computer panel. And the instant I stepped out, the doors shut, trapping The Long-Suffering Wife and our luggage inside. Surprise!

I entere our floor number, the elevator doors opened up on the same elevator again, and I found the elevator EMPTY. No wife. No luggage.

I called the hotel, got the operator, and asked them to give my wife back, along with the luggage. While playing a bit of “Who’s On First?” with them to get them to understand, a woman got out of one of the other elevators and said, “Are you looking for a woman in a black T-shirt with a car on it and some luggage? I think she’s down in the lobby looking lost.” I hung up on the hotel operator. As Han Solo said, “Stupid conversation anyway.”

I found the Long-Suffering Wife down in the lobby, retrieved our luggage, and figured out that, yes, the elevators were all computer controlled and you had to enter your destination floor on the panel and then it would assign one of the four elevators to take you there. Very simple, very efficient – once you figure out that it’s not the same technique used in the other 99.999% of all elevators.

Then when we get to our floor, we find that only one of the two computer panels for the elevators is working. For the other panel we have:

Coincidentally we had just watched “The Andromeda Strain” and the sequence near the end was fresh in my mind, when the guy has to put his key into a terminal to stop the countdown to nuclear detonation but they’re not working on that level yet… I was hoping I wouldn’t look back on this as some heavy duty foreshadowing.

The other thing that I found odd but I really liked was the funky carpet in the hallways.

As a rule, hallway carpeting in hotels tends to be dull as dishwater, but this was much more eye-catching and unique. That’s a good thing!

Very Sixties!

The next time we go down for an Angels baseball three-game sweep, I’m betting we’re at the Hotel Fera again. It’s cheaper and has better facilities than the other places we’ve stayed, and the other primary option is $300+ per night for a place right near Disneyland. And that will include rug rats with Mickey Mouse ears and Disney princesses everywhere. While I may or may not have pretty, pretty princess hair on that next trip, I would be just as happy to keep my distance from The Mouse.

As for those elevators, it occurs to me that I’ve seen that sort of system just once before. The difference was that it was a high security building, so security told the elevator computer system where to deposit you. And if they put in the wrong floor and you end up at the wrong party… Been there, done that, and while it can give you a great story, between that advanture and this one, I don’t think I’ll recommend the system.

Once I was here, one of the best trips ever and one of my favorite places to visit. (Prague!)

Now I’m not. Now I’m doing audits and bank reconciliations and monthly reports and dealing with malfunctioning software and broken computers and annoying medical systems.

I prefer Prague. How do I do more THIS and less of THAT?

Seriously!

In a rut? I leanred all the way back in high school (back when dirt was young and we had just discovered fire) that, “A rut is just a grave with the ends knocked out.” Still true.

I knew that it was about this time of year, but I didn’t realize until I went and found the pictures that it was exactly fourteen years ago today.

The Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, maybe a third of the way up the mountain. I had been trying to take a selfie and some wonderful woman grabbed the camera and took it for me. This is one of my favorite pictures of me in my travels.

I loved this trip in its entirety. Three weeks, three kids, three countries. Shanghai, Seoul, and Kyoto. One of my biggest adventures.

In particular I loved Fushimi Inari. I would go back there and visit in a heartbeat.

If you ever get a chance, go.