Palm Springs - Capital Retirement

So this story starts on Thursday last week. I was bored and Trish was only back on Friday so I had a Thursday evening to kill. Fortunately, Rachel wasn't busy. So we eat supper and decide to go watch Terminator Salvation. We guilt trip Adam into joining us. I mean, dude, you're not working so bedtime doesn't mean much!

So Adam joins us, we meet at Century 22. Now the name would have me believe that they have 22 screens there to show movies. That assumption would be wrong though. They have 1 screen. They have 3 theaters though, Century 21, 22 and 23. I think 23 has 2 screens. Anyways, I wasn't there to watch the theater, I was there to watch the movie.

During the movie they mention Bakersfield and show a bombed out desolate little place. Rachel leans over laughing and she says "It looks just like the real Bakersfield". Funny thing is, Trish and I are headed to bakers field on Saturday. So we watch the rest of the movie. After the movie I'm a little hungry, so we figure we'll hit Jack in the Box. I've never eaten at Jack in the Box, and I figure I should try all the US fast food chains while I have the chance.

We get to Jack in the Box, but it's closed. Well the drive-thru window is open, but we want to sit down. Why do they call it Drive-thru anyways? Thru is not a word. Would people get confused if they wrote it Drive-through, would they not know what a "throw-ugah" is or something. Are people that dumb that "through" has to be shortened to "thru". If we're gonna put stupid signs like that up, we shouldn't complain that kids can't spell worth shit. That reminds me of the movie "Idiocracy" hehe "Would you like a big ass fries with that?"

So anyways, Rachel says that she knows a place... the Mini Gourmet. So we head there. This place reeks of class. The bathrooms are outside and they're coin operated, but not any coin, they give you coins inside that fit in the hole for the toilet. Interesting. We go in and get a seat. Normally diners and greasy spoons are cheap, but hey, when you own the only place that's open past midnight you can jack up the prices. I wonder if they have a late night menu and a day menu. The same menu with different prices... who knows.

We're feeling cheap, so we split a sampler platter. Ten bucks of deep fried goodness. Well, the zucchini sticks were ok, the mozza sticks I'm told were edible. The onion rings were tasty but there wasn't very many and the jalapeno poppers were so awesome that Adam almost spat it out on the table. So really, we woulda been better off taking a bit longer and going to taco bravo or something.

Let's skip to Friday, I work, eat, wait around and go pick up Trish at the airport. Trish is jet lagged and tired so she's not the happiest camper. Also her bags are laced with lead or something, cus they're crazy heavy.

Saturday, Trish wakes up early (still jet lagged), I don't cus I'm like that. We packs and take off for Bakersfield! Woo vacation. So we drive for four hours to get to a piss ant town that pretty much looks like Bakersfield in the movie. With less explosive goodness. Which made it kinda dull. We got some sleep and ate breakfast at Carrows and then hit the road. A few hours later we make it to Palm Springs.

American drivers are in some ways worse than Chinese drivers. Chinese drivers worm their way in a very illegal and dangerous fashion towards their goal. But they are aware of their surroundings. American drivers are oblivious. They love to drive in the left lane, doesn't matter that people are passing them on the right, or zooming past them as they joy ride in the fast lane. It doesn't matter to them if people behind them are going crazy or whatever, who cares, they're driving along in their lane. Then the guys passing them are no better, they swerve around like idiots, cutting off big rigs, or squeezing into tiny spots. If they cause an accident and they aren't part of it, who cares. Americans are self centered drivers (maybe I coulda left the word drivers out, but whatever). Oh and for all you Americans reading this, I know I'm generalizing, but some of you are guilty of this very thing, so whatever.

We get to Palm Springs and the first thing I notice is that downtown is less than impressive. We find the resort (Telenav missed a turn... who the hell works on the merging... oh right, me). We check in... how many towel cards would you like? WTF? Towel cards? So you get these cards that you trade in at the pool for towels, then when you're done at the pool, you trade the wet towels back for cards. If you don't have the same amount of cards when you check out, they charge you $10 per card. Who the hell came up with this plan? So stupid. She tells me that for a one bedroom place I can have 4 towel cards, so I say I'll take 4. I then have to sign a paper saying I got the 4 cards, but the paper clearly states that you can only have 1 card per person. So apparently my two invisible friends can have towels too, cool. Then she asks how many room key cards we'd like. I say 2, so she says "Ok so I'll give you 3". They have one of the power saver key card things, you have to put a card in the wall for the power to work in the room. So she gives me an extra card to put in the wall, so I never have to take it out. Sound plan, right, leaving the card in the wall clearly saves power. Also the card does not control the kitchen or the AC, so the dishwasher and fridge still work without the card, as does the AC. Interesting.

So we get to our room, it's pretty nice, they say it's like a 5 star hotel, it's not. But it's still good, probably between a 3 and 4 star. No everyday maid service though, but you get a full kitchen and a mountain of towels. So everything is cool. At this point we decide that neither of us want to cook anything, not that we really have anything to cook anyways, so we're better off going to eat someplace and then grabbing some food to cook.

Trish finds an all you can eat sushi place that looks pretty good, and with our room card we get a 20% discount. So we head there... I don't remember the name of the place, mostly because that's what I do; forget the name of places or people. So we get there, and we grab a seat at the sushi bar because we'd have to wait for a table otherwise. Turns out that the sushi bar was a cool idea because the sushi chef asks us right away what we'd like to eat. So I order just a couple of pieces of salmon and a couple of pieces of tuna. The fish was really good. Now here's a question... where do you get fish from when you're in Palm Springs. I mean, there's no water anywhere. The town is pretty much an artificial oasis in the middle of the desert.

Anyways, we eat some good sushi... the fish must have been frozen on the ship and flown in to Palm Springs pretty fast cus it tasted pretty fresh. We head to Ralphs grocery or something like that. It's a Safeway, you even need a "Ralphs card" or something like that. I understand that people want to get some data mining information out of my purchases, but how relevant is tourist purchases to these guys? I mean I bought eggs, bread, orange juice and premade salad. I assume that my purchases will fit right in with the demographic of what normal people buy at 9pm on a Sunday. Yup, everyone buys that on Sunday night.

So we head back to the ranch, and put our food away. We were gonna go for a late night swim, the pool closes at 10, but we were tired so we just went to bed. Trish still had some of that awesome fun jetlag stuff! Woot. Due to said jetlag, Trish woke up really early and decided to make breakfast. She made eggs and dirty rice (that's rice with beans in it, get your mind out of the gutter). Monday was gonna be our day of slacking.

So we head to the pool for a swim after breakfast. I'm crazy pale and my arms don't match the rest of me, so I tried to even out my tan. We did kinda notice that there weren't very many attractive people there. You had a good selection of jailbait or old people, almost nobody in our age range. Tons of kids though. You gotta wonder why everyone wants kids. They look cute when they're babies, but they cry. Then you wait for them to become interactive, but once they hit "interactive" mode, they cause trouble. Then they get older and move on to the "know-it-all" phase and well, that's even worse. And by the time they're reasonable, they're moving out. I was a kid once, I realize how much trouble I caused my parents... well I guess if everyone thought like me, we'd be extinct by now.

So after a little bit of sun and fun at the pool, we head out to meet Trish's Lola (grandma) for lunch. Now this lady is around 80 years old. She's crazy short, maybe 4'10" on a good day. She made Trish look tall. But she seems to be in really good shape and really active. When I'm 80 I wanna be that active (or more active). She lives in Palm Springs (along with most of the retired population of the US) because it's warm and dry. Humidity and cold make her bones hurt or some such. She'd love Ottawa in the winter, that's for sure!

We head downtown, because she doesn't really know the restaurants around, she's more of a cook at home or go to Denny's type of girl. Downtown is small and not very exciting. Most of the outdoor patios have mist things that make a cloud of mist overhead. I guess it keeps people cool, but it pretty much evaporates right away so it never hits your table. We went to the Fisherman's Market or something named kinda like that. We look for someone to seat us, don't see anybody, ok... no problem. We grab a table and sit down. After a couple of minutes of wait, a waitress stops by. "Is this your first time here?" that obvious huh? "You have to go in the other building, order your food there and pay for it, then tell them your table number and then we'll bring the food out to you." Ok simple enough, but the menu's are in the other building too. Thanks lady, you were no help at all.

So I go grab some menus, most of the conversation is in Tagalog anyways, so I have no clue what's being said anyways. I come back with the menu and we start looking through it. Half the stuff has no price, cus it's seasonal or some shit like that. Everyone makes their selection and since I'm the honorary waiter, I head to the other building again. I walk in the "Exit only" door because I can't see the entrance door. The first time nobody noticed, but this time I totally freak out some poor kid. He's all "can I help you sir?" with a confused look on his face. Like it's the first time some tourist totally ignores their rules and walks in the out door. I look at him and calmly say "I'm here to order some food." The guy looks at me and then the light bulb goes on, "Oh, you have to line up here!" No duh kid, maybe you shoulda stayed in high school and improved your social skills. Or at least learn to fake like you know what's going on.

So I line up to order some food, I thought it was a long line, but it turned out to be one group of 8 people who were not organized enough to pick what they wanted to eat before heading to the cash register. It did take a while seeing as they had to ask each other what they were eating and then tell the cashier type chick. As if she didn't overhear your long drawn out conversation. Once those guys were out of my way, I order some food and head back to the table. Trish and Lola (I'll keep calling her Lola which means Grandma in Tagalog because I've forgotten her name). Anyways, Trish and Lola were chatting away in Taglish and assumed that I would understand. Thanks, really... throw in one or two English words every now and again and clearly I will understand everything.

Lunch was pretty fun though, Lola is pretty nice. I don't know that I would hang around with her in my spare time, but I'd visit her again. After lunch we dropped Lola off at home, she invited us to come up to her tiny apartment. We looked at some pictures for a bit and then took off. We headed back to the hotel and decided to hit the pool again. Like I said, Monday was to be a lazy day. This time there was a few good looking girls, and possibly guys if I'm to believe Trish, but not too many. Still mostly kids.

We got some sun, then Trish cooked some pasta. Supper was good. I wanted to head out for a walk, but Trish was tired. She went to bed, and seeing as I had nothing better to do, I went out. The adventure started with my keycard not working for the pool area. It kinda sucked because I wanted to see the pool at night, well up close anyways. Instead I got to see it from 20 feet away. I walked around, and there wasn't much of anything that was interesting. A few couples making out in the pool (I hope they clean it in the morning). A few workers cleaning out the trash and that was about it. I saw a couple rabbits, no hat-trick of rabbits though.

The next morning Trish and I went to the pool again. Huge difference, I guess the kiddies were just there for the long weekend. This time it was mostly adults (mostly old adults but whatever). We got a bit of sun, took a little swim and then headed in. We packed and left. We stopped by some outlet malls, huge place, lots of stores, I bought two pairs of shoes to replace the pair I had that was full of holes. Then it took us about 8 hours to get back home, traffic was light, drive was smooth, etc etc.

Now that I've been to Palm Springs I don't feel the need to ever return. I mean, it's nice and hot and dry. And well, there's nothing to do there really. Some people might argue that you could take the tram up the mountain. Woop. I'm sure it's nice and beautiful. But if I'm gonna go on a vacation someplace, I don't want to have to look somewhere for entertainment, I want it to be thrust upon me. So maybe Mexico will be better. Swine flu aside, I hear it's pretty cool.