2. Proposition

The hotel--or Bed and Breakfast called Il Poggio (The Hill) is, or was-- since I don't know about it's present condition-- a fine ancient cut-stone building originally constructed by the Medici family on a sunny hilltop  surrounded by a small forest of pine and cypress. trees.


The main building had been a  country estate. When I discovered it the owner had converted into an eight bedroom hotel. 

The building, more solid than elegant, had heavy wooden shutters and massive front doors--a two story structure with mossy pink tile roof.

The owner, Elizabeth Studer, welcomed me warmly--as she did all her guests--and asked how long I planned to stay. When I said a night or two she said, "Perhaps you wold like to stay a bit longer, if you are not in a hurry to be somewhere. I would like to invite you to stay here to help out--you can work for me a half day and have the rest of your time for yourself. Your rent and meals would be free and I will pay you something to keep you in spending money. The work would never be very hard. Why not try it for a while to see if it would be enjoyable for you?"

.....

1. Il Poggio

I don't remember quite how I heard of Il Poggio, but I think it was from a couple of ladies who were starting a Bed and Breakfast in southwestern France where I stayed for a couple of nights on my way, slowly as usual since I was backpacking, toward Italy.


They told me that they were modeling their inn on one they had visited near Florence in Italy. They must have given me directions to find the place and suggested that if I was ever in the area I should stop and stay there.


Some weeks later I walked up to the very low-key  hilltop compound of the B&B "Il Poggio ". There was no sign announcing it. You had to know where it was and what it was to find it.

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26. Pool Party

Temecula Base Camp:

There is a big public swimming pool in a park near our apartment and we walk by there almost every day we are in our Base Camp.


There was a lot of unusual activity there a few weeks ago--three fifth grades from a single  public school across town were having an end-of-the-year-and-going-to-a-new-school-next-year party. Not exactly a graduation party, but a moving-on celebration for sure.


A disk jockey was there and the kids were strutting their stuff in bikinis and with wild abandon. Looked like good fun to me.


But I was also kind of wondering: THREE fifth grade classes in just  ONE of this rapidly growing town's SEVENTEEN elementary schools. I think they have a few over 30 kids in a classroom now, but lets just say 30 times three is ninety for short.


Ninety kids  about 13 years old in just ONE of the seventeen elementary schools in Temecula. 

They will all be getting their driver's licenses in about three or four years--that means about a hundred more cars on the freeway from this ONE elementary school and there are how many elementary schools in California?


And more JOBS needed  and HOUSING and, in about six or seven years, MORE KIDS from these kids.

Man, this is trouble BIG TIME.

It is time for us to "grab the bull by the tail and face the situation". 

So many more people so fast...

Something has GOT to change!

...

25. Pechanga Casino

Temecula Base Camp:

New in town, we are always looking for interesting work in entertaining places so we stopped in to take a look at the biggest employer in Temecula, California-- a casino on nearby Indian land--Pechanga Casino--about noon on a week-day

Well, Pechanga Casino is HUGE--billed as the second biggest casino in the United States--it is really awfully big--with several restaurants and showrooms and miles of slot machines and other gaming tables and such--and they must hire an army of people to keep it going--but it is not a place for us.

All big casinos always have a peculiar odor--have you noticed? Not exactly a stink, but not pleasant either---sort of a mixture of perfume, restroom deodorant, people, stale booze, fast food, carpet cleaner and I don't know what-all. Anyway, not something you would like to inhale all day every working day--not a scent that appeals to us.

Something else that I personally find unappealing are the casino's  customers---at this time of day mainly old people sitting or sprawling in the ultra-comfortable seats at the gaming machines--the marks-- losing, ever so slowly, ever so certainly, their money in the oh-so-ever-so-loose slots.

It bothers me that OLD people can  be so ignorant. Haven't they learned ANYTHING in all the years they have been alive?

So we satisfied our curiosity about the town's biggest employer and, tailed by a young plainclothes security man, walked back out to the parking lot to drive on to nearby Wal-Mart for some of the Chinese-made stuff we needed.

...

23. Ponderosas

Ponderosa Pine Pond

Between the world-famous Arizona town of Sedona where spiritual seekers go to spend their hopeful money on enlightenment and the Northern Arizona University town, Flagstaff, where students go to spend their hopeful parent's money on higher education, lies one of the prettiest drives in this state of beautiful highways: the Oak Creek Canyon.

This scenic highway, following Oak Creek through it's canyon, is very narrow and twisting--emerging at the head of the canyon on the Mogollon volcanic plateau. The canyon itself is filled with a mixed forest of green--so different from the deserty tans south of Sedona, it is wonderfully refreshing.

The highland--the Mogollon Plateau --is forested almost entirely with one of my most favorite trees--the Ponderosa Pine. 

I love the scent of the Ponderosa Pine forest and I love the waves-on-the-beach sound of the wind passing through the top pine-needle-leaved branches. (I REALLY love this piney sound. It is, to me, more satisfyingly musical than Bach--and THAT is my very highest compliment!)

Tanya Snapping Me

My Favorite Person in My Favorite Ponderosa Pine Forest.

...

22. Outlaw Village

Outlaw Desert Village. (Tomasito photo)

People do live in the strangest places.

Lucky for us tourists and travelers--because if some  people didn't live a sort of camp-out life beside the highway in the remote deserts--there would be no-one to pump the gas or sell the beer!

The above photo shows a clutch of the mobile-type temporary dwellings of today's free desert people--nothing wasted--nothing around but the most basic shelter and transport--it looks pretty jumbled and jivey but see? There's no trash on the ground or visible garbage (or people)--just the essentials for living. 

The residents are in the market/station peacefully looting the few stray travelers--like us.

I call them outlaws because they live outside the usual normal prosaic common lifeways of the crass majority. They make their own rules and are free to live as they choose  as long as they don't break society's big rules too blatantly. They are kind of like the hopeful weeds that come through the cracks in the pavement.

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21. Flagstaff Face-off

Flagstaff Face-off. (Tomasito photo)

The little green sub-compact Chevy Aveo is ours--the jacked-up yellow pick-up belongs to the owner of the hardware store next door to the motel where we spent the night in Flagstaff.

When I parked the night before, the pick-up truck was not there--but when I got up it was and placed nose to nose and as close as possible above our little car. 

Boy did HE show US tourists who rules in Flagstaff!

...