Chico, CA

Now that I've got the car, I'm moving around rather more often than previously, and so these blogs will become a little bit more frequent for a while. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Chico is a small and unremarkable town in northern California. (If anybody saw the title of this blog and thought "It's Chico Time!" then please do me a favour and never, ever speak to me again.) The reason I'm here is that it's host to the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company.

In my eyes Sierra Nevada comes second - an increasingly close second - to the Brooklyn Brewing Company in the ranks of the best purveyors of top-notch beers in America, and perhaps the world. It's now the seventh-largest brewing company in the USA, but it's still independent, being 100% owned by the founder, Ken Grossman. Every dish in the Taproom restaurant contains at least one ingredient home-grown in the Sierra Nevada Estate Garden. And the 90-minute brewery tour is free of charge.

I realise that most of my readers are not beer nerds like me, so I'll leave it there for today. All I'll say is that you can buy Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale and Torpedo IPA beers in any full-size Tesco; and that if you haven't already done so, well, you should. You'll never settle for Carling again. Life's too short for cheap beer.

Heaven is a place on earth

You know how there are some gift shops where you walk in...
...and it's not a question of finding something you'll want to buy...
...but more a question of finding something you'll not want to buy?

Edd vs Food #27
10oz bone-in wood oven pork chop, with parmesan and potato gratin,
Lacinato kale, estate carrots and apple cider reduction.
Washed down with Sierra Nevada Kellerweis. I've had this in the UK, in bottles.
It's available on tap here and, I imagine, in Heaven.

Edd vs Food #28 (next day)
Braised Sierra Nevada beef with San Marzano tomatoes, ricotta gnocchi and parmesan.
I think this is the grand champion of the Edd vs Food series so far.
From now on, I need all my tomatoes to be San Marzano tomatoes.

There's that rental car again!
(The disabled sign is for the next space along, OK?)
The motel put me in room 101. I hope they didn't mean anything by it.

Lake Tahoe, CA

After San Diego I went back to LA to pick up a car. Then I headed out east to take in a couple of National Parks, Joshua Tree and Death Valley. In my last blog I described the fortuitous timing of the Miramar airshow as 'one of Lady Luck's occasional little smiles': well, at Death Valley, I found myself subject to one of Lady Luck's occasional little silent-but-deadlies. Half of the park was closed due to flooding from heavy rains. In the world's hottest place! Bah, etc. But it was still worth the visit. See photo below.

Now I'm at Lake Tahoe, which isn't a National Park, it's just a very pretty freshwater lake straddling Nevada and California at 6,225ft above sea level. In the summer it's full of annoying holidaymakers and in the winter it's full of annoying skiers. Right now it's pretty quiet, apart from annoying English backpackers like me.

It was a long drive to get here - I did nearly a thousand miles in my first two days with the car. But in this part of the world, a long drive is a positive pleasure. Deserts gliding by; forested hills in the middle distance; snowy peaks on the horizon. Cloud-sliced sunbeams bristling like searchlights between the mountains as evening falls. Two years ago I had all this in Texas, then last year it was Utah and Colorado, and now it's California. And once you get the hell out of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, California is beautiful.

Oh, and did I tell you all about my rental car? I don't think I did tell you all about my rental car. All this talk of driving reminds me that I haven't mentioned my rental car yet. It's surprising that I haven't mentioned my rental car, because I'm very keen on my rental car. I think it's best to let everyone know about my rental car so that if anyone's interested in my rental car then they have the opportunity to find out more about my rental car. See below for pictures of my rental car.

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe

South shore of Lake Tahoe

Has anyone ever, in the whole history of the world, drunk Newcastle Brown with food?

Death Valley National Park

Edd vs Food #26
Three-egg omelette with bacon, fresh garlic, swiss cheese and tomatoes.
Topped with alfalfa sprouts and fresh cream. Hash brown and flour tortilla on the side.
Fresh garlic is a bit unorthodox for breakfast...
...but the dish is called 'Ed's Best Omelette' and so I had to have it.
At the Driftwood Café, 1001 Heavenly Village Way, South Lake Tahoe, CA.

The rental car.
For the next 10 days, this is how we roll.
In your FACE, bucket list!

At Joshua Tree National Park: another picture of my rental car.

It's a Chevy Camaro Super Sport convertible. 6.2 litre V8, 400bhp.

It drinks a lot of gas, but that's how it washes down all the Ford Mustangs that it eats for breakfast.

Midlife crisis? What midlife crisis?

Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, San Diego, CA

Miramar MCAS is the location of 'Top Gun’, one of the greatest and cheesiest films of the 1980s. By one of Lady Luck's occasional little smiles, the annual airshow just happened to be on the weekend I was in town.

Autobiographical details don’t often worm their way into this blog, but I think a bit of background information is needed here. You see, at the age of about 11 I saw ‘Top Gun’ for the first time, and straight away I decided that I was going to be a fighter pilot in the RAF. This ambition, or should I say delusion, lasted several years before it dawned on me that there was no chance of me ever becoming any kind of military man. Those of you who know me closely – OK, anyone who’s ever met me – will know what I mean.

But I still think ‘Top Gun’ is a classic, in spite of the pulsing, throbbing undercurrent of thinly-veiled homo-eroticism that runs through the entire film. (That volleyball game…all the steamy towel-slapping in the locker room… Cruise and Kilmer flirting like kittens and pretending it’s some kind of macho rivalry…Indeed at one point the hetero-façade threatens to break down altogether, when a frazzled air-traffic controller starts yelling “I want somebody’s butt!”). I still know every line from the script and I still love the soundtrack. And I still love to see and hear fighter jets streaking past, 100ft above the ground, at near the speed of sound. So there was just no way I could miss the airshow. Obviously I did the tour of film locations around the city too. See photos below.

It’s more than 20 years since I abandoned my RAF ambitions. The F14 Tomcat was retired from active service in 2006. Kelly McGillis turned 58 this year, and it turns out she was a dyke all along anyway. But a man can still dream. He can still watch the sun set over the California desert, and see the jets roar overhead, and he can don a pair of imitation RayBans and whisper ‘your ego’s writing cheques your body can’t cash!’ to himself, and from somewhere in his brain he can hear an electric guitar playing that theme tune…Yes indeed, a man can still dream, now and always.

MCAS Miramar, nearing sundown.
Harrier jump jet just rising from a low pass at left.

Breitling L-39 jet team, earlier in the day.

I'd never seen a hashtag in the sky before.
The whole of the message was literally 5 miles long and it was quite spooky to see.
Details about #skytypers are here.

The Shockwave Jet Truck.
Americans...

Radio-controlled flying Elvis. Really.
Drone Be Cruel!
The same guy does a flying Snoopy (video) and a flying witch on a broomstick (video).

Intersection of Laurel and Union, San Diego.
In the film, Kelly McGillis narrowly avoids a car crash here.
(The yellow fire hydrant is visible twice in this clip at about the 1 minute mark.)
  She then has a brief argument with Tom Cruise, prior to their first snog.
Cruise is presumably standing on a crate. And thinking about Val Kilmer.

102 Pacific St, Oceanside, CA 92054. About 30 miles north of San Diego.
This is the house belonging to Charlie (Kelly McGillis) in the film.
Derelict now, and boarded up to keep the sad tourists at bay.

Edd vs Food #25
Chilli cheese fries, washed down with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
Nothing too remarkable in that...
But this is the Kansas City Barbecue, 600 W Harbor Drive, San Diego.
It's where Maverick and Goose sing 'Great Balls Of Fire' in the film.