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Visit More “Favorite” Cities

Posted by golfkat on July 21, 2020
Posted in: Uncategorized. 3 Comments
A few days ago, I sent an email about the most visited cities in the world, along with a list of my favorite cities.  I now realize that just about any city that we visit and experience can be one of our favorite cities.
The Key: you must start with an open mind, and two, you need to walk or use public transportation to see the town or city.
First, many cities in the United States can surprise us with their charm and hidden cultural and musical talents.  I found this to be true of Memphis, TN.  I went ostensibly to see Beale Street and Elvis Presley’s Graceland.  But I also made my way to famous Stax Records, the famous Peabody Hotel with their ducks, and met their local blogger who works for the city paper.  Yet, Nashville, due to the Grand Ole Opry, Jack Daniel’s Whiskey, and Opryland gets the majority of visits and discussion.
Though hardly a secret, San Diego remains one of my favorite cities.  Not only is the weather ideal, the city is fairly compact, rich with public transportation, world famous zoo, great golf and beaches, and fabulous seafood.  Add to that, it is the home of dear friends, and a great place to see my Giants play the hometown Padres.  Mostly, it is not Los Angeles!
My cousin’s parents live in Columbus, Ohio, certainly not the hotbed of tourism.  Yet, I found the university community and city to be quite vibrant, and diverse.  They have a nice bike share program, and dozens of restaurants and bars within walking distance to downtown.  I could see spending more time there!
Many smaller cities, perhaps best called towns, can be appealing as well.  One of my favorites is Bigfork, Montana, a cute little town on Flathead Lake, and home to the great Candlewycke Inn.  Not far from Glacier National Park, and adventure capital, Whitefish, it offers the best of American small town charm.  Somewhat larger, Jackson Hole, WY and Colorado Springs, CO are home to both adventure, and a taste of the wild west.
Everyone who goes to Hawaii visits either Honolulu or Maui.  But Kauai is the best island in my experience.  Small, one road circles most of the island, and the people are the best!!  Interesting restaurants, Waimea Canyon, and lots of local culture.
Venturing out of the country, some favorites in Canada and Mexico come to mind.  I was in Mexico City in April, and found the city to be world class in terms of food, hotels, and nightlife.  Though I was ill from altitude sickness, it did not dampen my enthusiasm for this great metropolis.  And very bike friendly too!
In Canada, two of my favorites are Montreal and Vancouver.  Montreal is quite French in its culture and vibe, without the trans Atlantic flight to get there.  In other worlds, it is a friendlier version of Paris!  And Vancouver has many options, including outdoor adventure, farm to food restaurants (one of the leaders in this recent phenomenon), great shopping, and serves as a big cultural center for Canadians.
Further down, both Santiago, Chile, and Lima, Peru are gaining a foothold as tourist destinations.  I could also add Medellin, Columbia, and Quito Ecuador.  Both very nice cities to visit, though I do no need to go back any time soon.
Across the big Pacific pond, I love the city of Hanoi, as it retains its French colonial charm.  It is a young people’s city, full of energy, bars, and restaurants.  I would go back in a heart beat, even tough I was just there last October.  Less known to many is the little Malaysian island of Penang, home to what I would say is the best food in the world.  I have a only few left to explore, in  western Australia, and northern Japan.
In the Old World, I think Prague intrigues me the most, along with Istanbul to a lesser extent.  I am actually going back to two cities that I last visited almost 45 years ago, Berlin, and Amsterdam.  And many of you have recommended Dublin, Ireland, where I get a free stopover on my flight to Amsterdam.

July 11th Is World Rum Day

Posted by golfkat on July 11, 2020
Posted in: Cultures, Entertainment, Stories. Leave a comment
So, who really need another excuse to drink during this pandemic and shelter in place period?
Essence magazine says:  As if we needed another reason to celebrate summer with a cocktail in hand, July 11th is World Rum Day — a global celebration of rum and all of its distilleries. What better way to ring in the occasion then taste testing rums from across the globe when we can’t be there to taste them in person?
Truth be known, rum was the first alcoholic beverage I tried when I got to college.  My buddies on the 8th floor at Ehrman Hall at U.C. Berkeley were already “hard core” drinkers from high school.  So, they suggested starting easy with rum and Coke.  Bacardi rum was my first alcoholic drink.  No telling what happened later that evening!
Today, rum is often overlooked in the phantasmagoria of alcoholic beverages.  Seltzers have taken some of the niche that rum held for many years, in my humble opinion.
But I do enjoy a little Malibu Caribbean Rum with Coconut Liqueur (only $15) in some Diet Coke once every few months, or even at a tailgate party.  Though a bit on the sweet side, it serves its purpose, a sociable drink with some tasty interest, if you like coconut.
Moving to the higher end, I did not realize that rums can cost into the hundreds, and are aged from 6 to 25 years.  Such a rum is the Ron Zacapa Centenario XO Rum, at a mere $123.  And the bottle can be custom etched.  It is aged in French oak barrels that previously held cognac.
If you cannot decide, you can always rely on the Captain (not Kangaroo).  That is, Captain Morgan (no relation to Denise?) Original Spiced Rum at a mere $16.  If nothing else, the bottle is interesting with the Captain leaning on a cask of rum.
If all else fails, just sing the rum song:
Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
My conclusion, rum is a good change of pace, good as a summer time cooler, quite versatile, and definitely affordable.  Enjoy National Rum Day!  Bonzai or should I say, “Ships Ahoy!”
If your goal is to reach ninety (90) years of age, check this out!  The equivalent of 4-ounces of wine consumed per day offers the highest probability of reaching 90 years of age.  A study conducted at Maastricht University Medical Centre in the Netherlands has found that men and women who drank an average of one glass of wine or beer per day had a longer life expectancy than abstainers and heavy drinkers. The authors of the study emphasize that its results should not be used as motivation to start drinking.   So, if I have more than 4 ounces, will I live longer?
Did you hear about the new restaurant on the moon?
Great food, no atmosphere. (haha!)

The Best Photo

Posted by golfkat on July 10, 2020
Posted in: Cultures, Stories. Leave a comment
While I recently posted a photo of me and my Dad for Father’s Day, there is a better one.  You may have seen it before on my FB page.  It was taken by a professional photographer from NY back in the Fifties.  As I recall, it was published nationally, and may also have won some awards.
The photo is my paternal Grandmother, Yuki Kataoka, and my youngest sister Carolyn.
It was taken on the ranch next door to ours, then leased by my Uncle Sus, and eventually purchased by him when the owners finally sold.  The ranch had an old house, which is still standing, a tank (water) house, a storage shed, and a chicken coop.
The photographer was visiting his widowed sister (Mrs. Lawson) when his keen photographic eye caught my Grandmother carting my sister, Japanese style,
classic
around the various ranches.  It was during this difficult period, when our Mother was hospitalized up in the Sierra foothills with tuberculosis (which I firmly believe she contracted while incarcerated in the Arizona desert (Gila) after Pearl Harbor).  My Grandmother came to live with us, from across the street, to take care of us.  I was the oldest of four, at age 7 or 8.
It was a challenging time for my parents and grandparents.  But I never heard them complain.  This photo is a permanent memory of that period in our lives.  We missed our Mom dearly, perhaps nobody more so than my baby sister.
Today, July 10, is her birthday.  It was also my Uncle Sus (my Dad’s brother) birthday as well.  The original photo is in my sister’s home in San Francisco, in the original frame.  It is priceless, as is our sister.

Michelin Stars

Posted by golfkat on May 23, 2020
Posted in: Cultures, Food, Travel, Uncategorized. 3 Comments
Which country has the most Michelin-starred restaurants?
The Michelin guide was founded in 1900 by brothers Andre and Edouard Michelin as a way to encourage drivers to take more road trips. It included maps and recommendations on where to sleep, fuel up, and eat. The hope was that it would encourage people to put more wear on their cars and thus buy more tires from their company. Today, restaurants covet Michelin stars. Even a single star is a tremendous honor as it denotes a quality restaurant. Excellent restaurants are awarded two stars, and the crème de la crème receive three-stars. Despite France’s reputation for fine food and it being the home of the Michelin guide, France’s 600 odd starred restaurants only put it in second place. The most Michelin star restaurants can actually be found in Japan, which has around 225 of them located in Tokyo alone, so foodies are sure to be heaven when visiting the Land of the Rising Sun.
Here are the eight best:
Best Michelin star restaurants in Japan
  • 1 Sukiyabashi Jiro.
  • 2 Ginza Kojyu.
  • 3 Kyoto Kitcho Arashiyama.
  • 4 Hajime.
  • 5 Ishikawa.
  • 6 Joel Robuchon Restaurant.
  • 7 Usuki Fugu Yamadaya.
  • 8 Sushi Yoshitake.
Peter Lyon of Forbes:  As I researched the background for this story, I was surprised to learn that both France and Japan—at 25 restaurants each—have the same number of 3-star establishments. But look deeper into the figures and you see that while Paris has a total of 134 stars, it is Tokyo that holds the title of the world’s most highly awarded city with 304 stars. The late celebrity chef and host of CNN’s Parts Unknown, Anthony Bourdain, once said of Japan, “The first time I came here, it was a transformative experience. It was like taking acid for the first time, meaning ‘What do I do now that I see the whole world [of food] in a different way?’” I must say that as a 30-year plus veteran of life in Japan, I mirror his food experiences. My sense of taste is far more acute and heightened having lived here for three decades.
How do the Japanese feel about this new found attention?

But many Tokyoites grumbled that the guide gave high ratings to unremarkable restaurants, prompting wide speculation that the large number of stars was just a marketing ploy.

“Anybody who knows restaurants in Tokyo knows that these stars are ridiculous,” said Toru Kenjo, president of Gentosha publishing house, whose men’s fashion magazine, Goethe, published a lengthy critique of the Tokyo guide last month. “Michelin has debased its brand. It won’t sell as well here in the future.”

I tend to agree with Kenjo san.  I don’t think the average so called “gourmet” customer understands the Japanese cuisine, its subtleties, and the reasons why things are done a certain way.  For instance, the layer of daikon “grass” that sits under your place of sashimi is almost an art form.  Chefs in training take months to master the proper method to make the “grass”, so that it not only has the right texture, but also the proper sheen, so that it glistens under the sashimi.  Most people pay no attention to this when they order and eat a plate of sashimi.
The artistry of a Japanese chef extends well beyond sushi and sashimi, or the dreaded teppan yaki side show.  Even fairly obvious cooking methods require skills beyond most every day kitchen experts.  The tempura chef must have all the ingredient s at the proper temperature to handle the hot oil.  The broth for the ramen may have been handed down for several generations.  The apprenticeship in a Japanese kitchen is a time honored and important tradition.
And yes, I am sure the French has similar rules and procedures.  But we have been exposed to them for centuries.  Thanks to Julia Child, we can all prepare French food.
I have been fortunate to have dinner at one kaiseki restaurant in Los Angles, with two Michelin stars.  With our relatives from Ohio, we enjoyed a lovely evening at n/naka in central Los Angeles.  Kaiseki is a traditional multi course Japanese dinner, consisting of up to sixteen courses, along with an optional sake flight.  She offers thirteen courses at $275 per person.
Los Angeles-born chef, Niki Nakayama, is a proud pioneer in the modern kaiseki tradition, yet she’s humble enough to remain a constant in her dining room, checking in on each guest to ensure their every comfort. In this way, the much-lauded restaurant feels utterly personal, as though for this moment in time, you are the only diner that matters. Set in an attractive and neutral-toned dining room, the space holds a devoted, almost cult-like reverence. It makes sense: guests don’t want to miss a morsel of Chef Nakayama’s genius. Her clever creations are delightfully unbound by Japanese tradition.
If you are ever fortunate enough to see a master chef in action, at home in your own kitchen, you will marvel at what he or she can do.  A refrigerator filled with nothing but odds and ends, leftovers, and wilted greens can be transformed into a gourmet dinner in minutes.  It is truly a work of genius and creativity.
That said, I can’t wait for my next trip to Japan, maybe in 2021.

Gerry

​My personal thanks to Jon, Olive, and Shinsuke.

High Hopes

Posted by golfkat on May 20, 2020
Posted in: Action, Cultures, Entertainment, Food, Health, Stories, Travel. Leave a comment
From Trivia Genius:  “Jack’s the nation’s favorite guy, everyone wants to back Jack.” Those were lyrics from Frank Sinatra’s rewrite of his hit song “High Hopes,” tweaked to support John F. Kennedy’s 1960 Democratic presidential campaign. It’s unclear how Sinatra and Kennedy met, but the two were friends for many years before Kennedy made a run at the White House. They had mutual connections in both Hollywood and politics, and Kennedy’s sister Pat was married to “Rat Pack” member Peter Lawford. In February 1960, then-Senator Kennedy attended a Rat Pack concert where Sinatra publicly proclaimed him the “next president of the United States.” Kennedy’s father, Joseph, reportedly encouraged the friendship, hoping that Sinatra’s organized crime ties would help his son lock down the union vote. Sinatra often sang his “High Hopes” redux at concerts, and he later attended Kennedy’s inaugural ball in 1961.
Certainly, it is much different than what is going on in Washington, DC right now.
Or how about a sauna at a Burger King?  Travel Trivia:  We’ll take a Whopper, fries, and … a sauna session on the side? In 2016, Burger King opened its first ever spa inside one of its locations in Helsinki to cater to local customers in Finland, where saunas are an essential part of national culture. According to the BBC, there are more than three million saunas in Finland — about one for every two people who live there — and 99% of Finns use a sauna at least once per week. So it only made sense to combine one of the country’s favorite pastimes with the burgeoning popularity of fast food — and take “meat sweats” to a whole new level. On the ground floor of the Mannerheimintie location, you’ll find the BK Spa, a 15-person sauna where you can enjoy your meal, plus Burger King-branded towels, a locker and shower rooms, a big-screen TV, and even a Playstation 4 video game system.
But on the plus side, the air is cleaner.  Katie Couric:  Per a groundbreaking new report, carbon emissions plunged 17 percent this April as countries issued Covid-19 restrictions — marking the largest drop in history. By the end of 2020, experts expect to see the largest yearly decline in emissions since World War II. On the flipside, “we’ve reduced emissions for the wrong reasons,” a study author wrote. This is unlikely to have a long term impact on emissions, unless governments make big, climate conscious systemic changes…
Obviously, we are not driving as much, many factories are shut down or in reduced production modes.  Would you believe the wait to get my bicycle repaired is anywhere from TWO to THREE MONTHS!!!!!  All of the bikers-come-lately are messing with those of us who ride regularly, year around!  On one hand, it makes me happy people are re-discovering the bicycle.  On the other, I need my annual tune-up, and perhaps some upgrades for an anticipated great riding season with clean air!!!
Bike sales are surging around the country as people shun public transportation and look for new ways to exercise. In April, bicycle sales soared by 30% and have jumped 60% so far in May.
And for those with school age kids, Tag the Flag:  One of the most important aspects of allowing children to go back to school actually has to do with the parents. Those who work at home with youngsters crying in the background are less productive. Those who work outside the home can’t leave unless they have a babysitter. As The Economist points out, “In poor countries the costs are even greater. Schools there often provide free lunches, staving off malnutrition, and serve as hubs for vaccinating children against other diseases.” Stateside, with children out of the house, small business owners may finally get a chance to focus on items that will directly impact their ability to weather the pandemic. If parents can’t catch a break and they lose their jobs because they’ve become the 24-hour caretaker, that’s not good for them or their children.
It is obvious to me, this current Administration could care less about our health care workers, and acute care facilities.  Again from Tag the Flag:  “All the preparation has come at a cost, including in lost business from canceled elective procedures and sick people afraid to come in. Hospitals now face sharp falls in revenue; the AHA puts losses expected at health-care facilities from those canceled surgeries, and the costs associated with Covid-19 treatment, at about $202.6 billion so far.” On the bright side, maybe all this will make us better prepared for the fall and any oncoming second waves.”  Any future relief bills from Congress needs to help these facilities!!!
This is really scary:  Only 28 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) supplied to the country are manufactured within the U.S. while 72 percent of the APIs supplied to the U.S. are manufactured overseas, including 13 percent in China, according to 2019 testimony from Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Director Janet Woodcock.
 
And just for fun, on this day, many years ago:  

On May 20, 1873, San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth of one of the world’s most famous garments: blue jeans.

Every Darn Letter and QWERTY

Posted by golfkat on May 20, 2020
Posted in: Cultures, Entertainment, Stories. Leave a comment
What do you call it when a sentence contains every letter of the alphabet?
If you’ve ever had to type “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” you’ve already encountered a pangram. Pangrams are sentences that contain every letter in the alphabet. To create a true pangram, each letter is used only once; however, most true pangrams contain so many abbreviations that they become difficult to read. And just listing words doesn’t count; a pangram must be a full sentence that makes grammatical sense. Pangrams can exist in any language, but their length varies by the language’s characters: For example, while an English pangram must include 26 letters, a Russian pangram needs 33, and Khmer, a language spoken in Cambodia, requires use of only 12 characters. Pangrams can be fun to create, but they also have practical applications in testing keyboards and fonts.
Speaking of typewriters:  Typewriters have made a comeback within the past few years. People still enjoy using them and collecting them, and some even enjoy cleaning and repairing them to keep them typing (like us!)
If you think that you’re the only one crazy enough to want to buy a typewriter, you are most definitely wrong.
On my personal quests to find typewriters, I have lost track of how many times I have asked an antique store owner or someone running a garage sale, “Do you have any typewriters for sale?” and they think for a second before informing me that they did a little while ago, but it sold. As a buyer, you have competition. There’s also evidence of this online. You can see some extreme bidding wars on eBay over typewriters. That good “Buy it Now” deal you saw newly listed a few minutes ago may be gone the next few minutes if you don’t decide in time. Before this site was setup so you could purchase directly off of the website, I used to have multiple people ready to pay for the same machine, but I had to deliver the tragic news that the typewriter was already sold. So in the end, If you see a good deal, you’d better snag it before someone else does. 
 
QWERTY (/ˈkwɜːrti/) is a keyboard design for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( Q W E R T Y ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to E. Remington and Sons in 1873.
 
Why QWERY?  The reason dates back to the time of manual typewriters. When first invented , they had keys arranged in an alphabetical order, but people typed so fast that the mechanical character arms got tangled up. So the keys were randomly positioned to actually slow down typing and prevent key jams.
 
The QWERTY layout is based on the keyboard design for the original typewriter.  So the story goes that he (Christopher Sholes) arranged the keys with the most common letters in hard to reach spots, to slow typists down and try to avoid this problem.
 
I once knew how to type.  I learned during the summer before my freshman year of high school.  I am hardly the typist I was then.  Then again, I am hardly anything I was then!!!

Speak to Me!

Posted by golfkat on May 19, 2020
Posted in: Action, Cultures, Entertainment, Stories, Travel. 4 Comments
I have never been very good at languages.  I took Latin in high school, from the teacher who probably invented it.  Then German at U.C. Berkeley, which I enjoyed but could not dedicate much study to.  My grandparents across the street spoke mostly Japanese.  Since we grew up with them, we have a decent vocabulary, and know the correct pronunciation of much conversational Japanese.
And I have studied numerous online Japanese language courses prior to our visits to Japan.  I enjoy Pimsler the most, very straight forward, conversational and interactive.  No hangups on grammar.
But Japanese, German, and English do not compare in difficulty to the five most difficult in the world.  What are they?
Turkish is the 5th hardest, perhaps most prevalent in its agglutination, in which multiple individual words are pushed together to create a single word with a more complex meaning.  Great!  The week I spent in Istanbul revealed absolutely none of this to me!
Polish comes next, with challenges in pronunciation and grammar.   Polish has Slavic roots, which creates a challenge to English ears, quite possibly because we cannot distinguish between two Polish words with similar sounds.  Word orders are also structured the opposite from English.  And nouns change their form depending on what is said in each sentence!  During the four days I spent there, I did not learn a single word in Polish!  Shame on me.
Intuitively, I always figured Arabic to be difficult.  It is one of the ten most spoken languages in the world.  Arabic words sound very different than English, very guttural from the back of the throat.  Plus the written language looks “Greek” to me!
I figured Russian was the hardest, but it is second.  I had a horrible time in Russia when I took the Trans Siberian Railway across all of Russia in 2014.  My cousin’s father (Dr JW) took Russian in college, and is still quite literate.  And I did learn a few words, along with a very basic ability to read their Cyrllic alphabet.  Signs in Russia are very seldom in English.
Hardest language, as you might have guessed is Mandarin, spoken by over 873 million people.  But it is very challenging for English speakers.  Likewise, it is difficult for Germanic and Romance language speakers.  There are five tones, one neutral, and four basic tones.  Tones can change the meaning of the word.  There is no alphabet, but instead, 50,000 characters.  Some very interesting conversations occur when different dialects meet, or rather, clash.
For those of you, like my friends in Cambodia, or Katy from England, languages are no problem.  Katy is a professional translator, and has also taken to learning Russian, via Skype!!  For me, I must have deep seated scars, from my high school Latin teacher.
Sidebar:  Funny story.  On my very first trip to Germany, actually Munich during the Oktoberfest, I was using the WC in the Bahnhof.  A couple of Japanese tourists, asked me, in Japanese, where the Oktoberfest grounds were located.  Since I was in German mode, I answered them in German.  Can you imagine their shock?  Perhaps they expected English or even some Japanese.  I had to explain to them I am an American, but speak a little too much bad German!
But I firmly believe in learning some basics in each language of the country plan to visit.  Greetings, thank you, basic directions, polite phrases, and always something funny, but politically correct!
Just be prepared!

Why the Barber Pole?

Posted by golfkat on May 18, 2020
Posted in: Cultures, Stories. Leave a comment
I always wondered.  Now we know, thanks to Trivia Genius:

Back in the 16th century, the majority of Europeans couldn’t read. In fact, an estimated 61 percent of men in Norwich, near London, couldn’t even write their own name! For shopkeepers and craftspeople, this widespread illiteracy was something of a marketing problem: How could they advertise their businesses to a public that couldn’t read?

One solution was craftsman, or guild, signs. Above the doorway of most medieval businesses hung a metal emblem clearly illustrating the shopkeeper’s profession: A pair of scissors indicated a tailor; a key indicated a locksmith; a fish indicated a fishmonger. As for barbers? A red or blue candy-striped pole usually did the job.

Speaking of barber poles, did I ever tell you about trying to get a haircut as a youngster in my little, mostly Swedish hometown of Kingsburg (near Fresno in the great San Joaquin Valley).  People of Japanese descent could not haircuts in town, so we either had to drive a few miles up to Selma to get a haircut from a Mexican barber, or have my grandfather “butcher” me with a pair of hand clippers.

Finally, when I reach junior high, my Dad became friends with a nice, Slavic fellow through the local Lions Club.  He said he would cut my hair, as well as my brother’s.  It turns out the other barbers in town would not cut hair of Japanese people!

His name was Eddie Pastircak, who had a lovely wife, Pauline, and three daughters, who we grew up with.  Bless his heart!

Of course, during the quarantine or shelter in place, many of us have resorted to “home cuts”, or the “quarantine cut” as I have heard.  This may start a new trend.  Why pay anywhere from $10 to $65 for a simple haircut?  Or, just do as I do, wear cap, or a cycling helmet.

Is there a lesson here?  Of course, immigrants, and people who looked like foreigners back in the 50s, and EVEN now, are not treated well.  But hey, we are American citizens!!!  Yes, the lesson is still trying to get across!!!b poleThe First Barber Shop Hair Cutno japs

Ten Fun Things in Scottsdale

Posted by golfkat on March 9, 2020
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a comment

I wrote this back in 2009.  Let’s see if Scottsdale has changed much in a little over ten years.

 

On a budget, but have plenty of time?  Tired of golf, fine dining, and mall shopping?

In no particular order, here are some fun activities in the Scottsdale area:

1.  Cracker Jax Family Fun and Sports Park, water fun and arcade for kids of all ages.

2.  The Heard Museum, the best in southwestern art and artifacts. (Still a nice museum)

3.  Taliesin West, the living memorial to the great Frank Lloyd Wright (not related to Wilbur and Orville Redenbacher). (worth a visit if you love architecture)

4.  Penske Racing Museum, the cars, trophies and memorabilia of one of racing’s most successful dynasties.

5.  Arcosanti Project, an urban laboratory and experimental town designed to improve urban living conditions.

6.  Desert Botanical Garden, where edible cacti can be found.

7.  The PING Golf Factory, but make a reservation and be prepared for the ghost of Karsten.

8.  Rawhide Western Town, for you wannabee cowgirls and cowboys, moo moo buckaroo! (only if you have kids with you!)

9.  Fiesta Bowl Block Party, only $15 for fireworks and the Doobie Brothers.

10. Have a nice dinner and a quiet evening, like us! (Always a winner!)

So, fast forward to 2020, can I even find ten things to do?
  1.  Go to a San Francisco Giants spring training game.  After all, hope springs eternal!
2.  Enjoy our favorite Mexican restaurant, Los Sombereros.
3.  Have a Chicago beef at the Portillo’s (now in Scottsdale)
4.  Take Lexi on numerous walks in the warm desert sun.
5.  Walk around Old Town Scottsdale, and refrain from overpriced souvenirs.
6.  Revisit the Musical Instrument Museum
7.  Try the Scottsdale Wine Trail (wine in Scottsdale?)
8.  Penske Racing Museum (after all, I went to the Indy 500)
9.  Try to find the Gila River War Relocation camp where my parents were incarcerated in WW2.
10. Find McAlpine’s Soda Fountain, founded in 1938.
This list should keep us busy!
Or, just relax and do nothing?