Long Overdue report!

I am soooooooo far behind, it’s finally time to catch up with the events of the last 2 months!

So, last time I posted I was just back from America.  I promised to post about BOYCC and my trip. I have SO many photos I want to share, I’m going to split it all down into a couple of posts.

To say this trip was life-changing is no understatement.  I have met new people, met people I’ve know for years but not yet seen, made new friends, discovered new and amazing people, models, skills and places and I know that will be feeling the benefits of this for years to come, so to me it truly was that momentous!

My American adventures were broken down into three parts, as a result of a rather funny coincidence, so I’m going to report about it over three posts, provided blogger can handle all the photos I’m planning on posting!

This first blog post will cover my trip across the ocean, my time in La Jolla and my visit to UCSD CRCA (the Centre for Research into Computing and the Arts at the University of California, San Diego), it’s going to be a long one so if you usually follow my blog for the Model Horse related topics, you might want to skip this blog and wait for the next instalment which will cover the BOYCC show.

I flew out on 15th May, this was my first ride for the day, this enormous aeroplane took me from London Heathrow to Los Angeles;

The 10.5 hour flight went smoothly, I had a great chat with a German man named Stevie but we all ready to get off the plane as soon as it landed!

Then after a quick dash through Los Angeles’ LAX airport, this sweet little thing was my ride from LAX, 100 miles down the coast to San Diego, it only had about 25 seats in total, I thought it was a super little aircraft!

I really enjoyed the flight down the coast, we didn’t fly at a very high altitude and we were flying just off the coastline, I had intentionally booked a seat on the left hand side of the plane so that I could watch the land as we travelled South.  It was great seeing the layout of the land (I spent a while trying to work out where Joanie’s house was!), I recognised some of it from  my Google Earth searches as I prepared for the trip;

The day I travelled was a long one – we left home at about 7am UK time, after a 10.5 hour flight to LA and then a short flight down the coast it was about 4pm CA time, which was 2am UK time.  Joanie very kindly came and picked me up from San Diego airport and ferried me to my Travelodge in La Jolla.  She took great care of me and was very understanding of the gobbledegook I was coming out with, when Joanie took me for a lovely meal at a local Italian restaurant, it was only about 6pm but my body was telling me it was 4am and I had been awake for over 22 hours at that point – in all honesty I can’t remember much about our conversations over dinner!

One thing I DID remember though, was seeing this Bugatti Veyron car in a local gallery (?), which was itself next door to a Rolls Royce and Porsche car sales place.  Joanie had told me that La Jolla (pronounced “La Hoya”) was a lucrative area and she wasn’t wrong - it was extremely posh!

I was staying at the La Jolla Travelodge, a motel-style lodgings that worked out extremely cost-efficient especially considering the prices that the local hotels were asking in this very high-end area.  The room was lovely, it had a huge king-sized bed, all the mod cons (though I had a small panic when I realised there was no kettle!!), and although having never stayed in a motel-style place before (ie where the door to the rooms open to the outside, not to an internal corridor like at a hotel) and being slightly unnerved by it (you can thank Mrs Bates for that!), I was so tired when I got back though, that I slept heavily and soundly, regardless!

The following day; the Monday before BOYCC, was my own – I knew I’d need a while to adjust so made this my “tourism” day.  Before I did anything else I wanted to make a start on my contribution to the Goodie Bags for BOYCC.

First stop was Harry’s diner for Breakfast, as recommended by the Travelodge staff. I was feeling confident walking to the Diner, Joanie had shown me how crossing the road worked, which I was so grateful for, I felt like a child trying to cross the roads, having to point each way to work out which direction the traffic would be coming from and which pedestrian crossing button to press, I must have looked like I was dancing!

I got to Harry’s and it suddenly occurred to me that, having never stepped foot in a Diner before, I hadn’t a clue what I was supposed to do – should I go sit down and wait to be served? Should I wait at reception to be shown where to sit? So as I walked in and all this dawned on me I just froze, when the waiter saw me and asked if he could help, I just blurted out “I’m from England!”  Luckily this must have happened before, he said “you go sit down over there and we’ll come and serve you”.  Not the best start, if I’m honest!

Breakfast was all I’d been told to expect and more, I ordered blueberry pancakes with strawberries after a friend had raved about having this when she visited New York last year.  I was expecting the portion sizes to be larger than at home, but wasn’t quite expecting the mountain of food that arrived!  It was gorgeous though, I managed to eat almost all of it (I’ve been raised to eat what’s on my plate but even I had to admit defeat by the third pancake!).

Having filled my boots at Harry’s I took a walk up through La Jolla to the seafront.  I saw a couple of interesting building en-route including this Architects, which doesn’t look all that amazing until you notice the huge shard of metal cutting through it!

Another shop that tickled me was this one, just a boutique, but it had a great name!

I had a bit of a shock as I approached the sea, a bird flew over my head that I was certain was a pterodactyl!!!  It turns out it was a pelican and that they are quite common along this coast, but I wasn’t expecting to see anything larger than a seagull and the first pelican I saw had me grabbing for my camera!  Now, you’d think that a bird as large as these guys would be easily to catch on camera, but they are moving deceptively fast and trying to get a clear photo with the whole bird in shot turned out to be nigh-on impossible!

The coastline had more to offer though – La Jolla has several very beautiful and interesting little coves and a very pretty coastline.

Everything was very clean and tidy and I discovered a few interesting little details which I just had to snap photos of!

I’d picked a great time of year to visit, all of the flowers were in bloom and these gorgeous purple flowers were everywhere,

They are actually purple with white centres…

..and they were in huge swathes, I used the panorama feature on my camera to try to get an idea of the effect (click to view BIG);

It wasn’t just the flora that had me intrigued, the fauna was so interesting too!  These little squirrel critters were everywhere, zipping about and in some places, sunbathing!

The birds, oh the pelicans, they just had me captivated!  I got a little more luck in getting them in-frame, but throughout the entire time I was in America I didn’t manage to get the shot I really wanted.

There were seals, too, lots of them!  The story is that La Jolla, being the wealthy place it is, felt it should have a sandy beach to offer it’s residents, so they invested an enormous amount of money and created a man-made sandy beach.  However, the seals took one look at the new beach and thought “that looks like a great place to raise our babies” and moved in, so the locals are still without a sandy beach, each least while the seals are raising their young.  This is the lovely sandy cove that was man-made:

And here are just a few of the seals, the colours and patterns were beautiful and made for great camouflage against the wet rocks;

I spent a thoroughly enjoyable few hours watching the pelicans diving like torpedoes into the sea, the seals sunbathing and the little squirrels and their babies scurrying around on the sand and grassy areas.

On the way back to the Travelodge I walked through the residential part of La Jolla and my goodness there were some lovely houses and gardens!

This little detail made me chuckle – a window in a wall with no room behind it!

The gardens were all in full bloom, these foxgloves caught my attention though, I’ve never seen foxgloves with flowers all the way round them?  The garden they were in was in the style of an English Country Garden, several of the houses were landscaped this way which made me feel more at home, one garden in particular was bursting at the seams with Sweet peas in all different colours, the aroma was sensational!

I got back to my room and the jetlag kicked in, so I decided to finish making up my Goodie Bags and set to work making up the BOYCC Memory Books.  This photo shows the sort of thing I put in my bags;

The English Penny and the Euro Cent were a silly little idea I had – have you ever seen a model for sale with a US Cent against it for scale?  Well until recently I didn’t actually know how big a US Cent was, and it occurred to me that only UK hobbyists might know what size a British Penny might be and likewise with the Euro Cent.  So, I added one of each into each bag so that nobody who had attending BOYCC would have this problem.  I also added in some traditionally British bits and bobs, like the Limited Edition Twinings Royal Wedding tea, sadly I couldn’t get 50 so mixed in some other Twinings favourites.  There were also some little sweeties (candy) that are typically from the UK including some Cadburys chocolates and Swizzlers including my absolute favourite; Parma Violets, mmmm!  Finally I put in a small sheet of foam, in case anybody forgot to take a soft surface for the show (like I always forget to do!) – Clinky models need a nice soft place to sit!

The Goodie Bags were insanely full by the time everyone had added their contributions!  I’ll cover the full contents in the BOYCC post.

Here is the stack of Memory books I also assembled that afternoon and evening, whilst enjoying two bagels (lunch/dinner); one Rye with turkey, avocado and lettuce and one Pumpernickel with smoked salmon, lettuce and cucumber which were both lovely, although I didn’t know that English cucumbers are very different to the zucchini style cucumbers in the US.

The Tuesday before BOYCC I had made arrangements to visit the University of California, San Diego’s Centre for Research in Computing and the Arts. Quite a mouthful but also know as the UCSD’s CRCA which is much easier to digest!

The reason for this visit was a rather, the University I work at has strong ties with the CRCA regarding their Virtual Reality and 3D installations.  Apart from this though, they have an ultra-cool 20 foot tall stone teddy bear on the grounds, which I found hugely entertaining!

Sadly I can’t share the photos of the technology I got to see at CRCA, but I can offer a few links to more information on it, such at their 50 screen, 200 megapixel HIPerWall, the 5 (or 15, depending on how you look at it) sided StarCAVE and the simple yet effective and completely awesome HUVR device!

The next post will be my show report from BOYCC and all the fun things we got up to during the show, workshops and party-time (oh yes!!) of that fantastic week!