I receive a lot of  comments from people who are trying to be helpful with our Blog. To be honest this blog really is only meant for our close friends and family. Naturally it is in the public domain so anyone could view it and probably assume we want to build a following. Actually we don’t. It is fun to do and we hope our friends and family enjoy our travels and for those of you who just happen upon it, well, what can we say…it just wasn’t meant for you but read on if you find anything interesting.

The Christmas Gift!

Berniece gave me 8 laps in a stock car through the Rusty Wallace School of Racing.  (For Christmas it usually is just a piece of coal under the tree for me!). I may not be a loyal Nascar fan but I am a guy who loves speed so she certainly hit a home run on this one!  Since we were going to be in Phoenix for a while she booked it at the Phoenix International Raceway, an official Nascar circuit course.

First a little interesting history, Rusty Wallace is a very famous and successful stock car racer with the Nascar circuit, I am sure that  you may have heard of him but just in case you hadn’t. He is, in a very roundabout way, a distant relative of Berniece’s and no we never get Christmas cards and if you asked him he would probably say..whaaat, never heard of her! Anyway it is true, she has met his mother at a family reunion in Alberta, ( she was her mom’s cousin), although that is not the story today it does add a little flavor don’t you think? Well…. partly because of this very distance and probably obscure connection Berniece took special interest in the school when her brother Allan called about it so she booked it knowing that I love SPEED.

Ok.. normally when you sign up for these events there is a pilot car keeping everyone safe and the speed down a bit. However not at the Rusty Wallace School, you drive on the track  without coaching at the highest speed the car will go PLUS there are others on the track that you can pass if you are fast enough and have a lot of guts. (I did and it was exhilarating!)

But first there is an one hour racing school, going over the rules of the track and the safety procedures in the car; seat belts, neck and helmet support, etc, and of course how to get in and out of the car through the window, (which is no small feat if you are 6-1 and 215 lbs!). There are spotters located around the course and a communication system in the car so you can stay in touch to receive any instructions during your race, just as they do in the actual races. For example; we were only allowed to pass when the spotter informed the car in front of you to pull to the left and you to pass on the right. After the lesson you “suit-up” and get a helmut that fits. My first suit looked great but unfortunately it was two tight, I assume it was made for a smaller guy, not because I was too big, which is why in the pictures I have two “looks” if you know what I mean.

During the school the instructor encouraged all of us to take a few laps with a pro who was on site, (some people just pay for a ride around only and don’t engage in an actual driving experience), to get a feel of the track. I had already signed up for it and the instructor was right because you do get better feel of the track and how fast you can do the corners.

At this point in the program you wait until they match you with a car; some cars were built for smaller drivers so the cage would be too tight for a guy like me. Actually as it turned out it was very tight anyway. The car looks like a car from the outside but it in fact is much different in the inside. Simply put, you sit in a cage somewhat like a dragster with a car body of sorts welded on. They strap you in with a 5 point seat belt system and a neck brace that your helmut is attached to which in turn is held tight to your shoulder with a by the seat belts. The steering wheel is removable because you can not get in or out with it attached. After you are settled in they hit the switch, you fire up, wait until the spotter says ok and off you go.

8 laps which are 1 mile long and your speed is 130-140 MPH on the straightaways and maybe 90-100 in the corners. Do the math….at that speed you just feel like you are getting the hang of it and you are given the checkered flag ’cause your done! Brief but sweet!

It was a blast, especially overtaking another car and passing! Hopefully one day I can do it again, but the next time Berniece is going to do it too!

We have been very lazy the past few days but in spite of that we have done the usual; I have golfed and Berniece did a little shopping. Today is our last day here, tomorrow we drive to Phoenix AZ where we stay for a longer period of time.

On Monday, Berniece’s birthday, we went to Roy’s for supper. Normally going to a restaurant would be hardly mentionable but this was different. First, I had asked the reception desk to book the dinner for us and of course it was discussed that it was Berniece’s birthday. They made the reservation for us immediately while I was on the phone so they must have access to the website Roy’s use for that at the desk. When we got there they greeted us and in particular they greeted Berniece recognizing her birthday. Very classy but it gets better as her menu had a cover inside page that wished her a happy birthday, custom printed with her name, (spelt properly)…very cool. Throughout the evening the staff came around wishing her a happy birthday…no loud sing song just a very classy acknowledgment.

We were both very impressed and the food was delicious so we give Roy’s a 5* rating.

Tonight we are going to Burton Cummings down at the McCallum Theatre so this should be a good way to finish off this years visit to Palm Springs.

We  arrived in Palm Springs Sunday and the temperatures were 76F, it feels so good to be where it isn’t cold and wet! So far nothing to much exciting has happened but we are settling in by watching some movies at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Yesterdays movie was a very moving picture made in New Zealand by a startup writer/director who attend the showing. It was about a couple who had lost their son in an accident because the father had left the boy in a pickup truck and the young 5 year old had released the brake and died in the crash. The husband and wife became separated and lost their relationship so, to mend the situation, the husband kidnaps a 5 year old. “Everything We Loved: is a must see as it challenges your belief system about a criminal, particularily a child kidnapper which has to be the worst crime of all, when you are given a set of interesting circumstances.

Today we are going to hits some balls, relax, have a cocktail and enjoy the sun!

Yup, it all has to end sometime. We arrived home midnight the 24th and just got our bags today. We left La Paz, Bolivia at 6am, Lima to Miami ,  Miami to Seattle, very long day.

We feel kind of empty after being on the go for 5 weeks but it is nice to be home.

Stay tuned for our next adventure!

This is the site we wanted to see the most because of the precision of the rock work cuts and the buildings. This is different than anything that we have seen so far and the fact is it predates the Inka by some 200-500 years. The local guide said they believe it was the Tiwanaka but they are just guessing because they seemed to have dispersed around 1500 AD and while they believe they dispersed there really is no concrete proof of that either, just some similar pottery found in the Amazon region of Bolivia. Fact is they built a Temple that is beyond explanation and my argument is that everyone, including the locals, want to explain this based on our own paradigms but the reality is that most theories have a high probability of not being true.

We have taken many photos some of which I will share in this blog but the majority I will share later, the ones I have chosen are to simply challenge your curiosity.  Let me start by showing you the sunken Temple, it has 175 different faces built into the walls and faces that appear to be people that they have visited or people that had visited them. Archeologists agree that these are different faces representing guest or visits and when standing in a certain marked spot, (by a different foreign rock introduced into the wall), the Temple sees the Southern Cross perfectly..hmmm.

So here we go with some photos to get you going:

The Island of the Sun was our destination today, unfortunately it was just the three of us plus two guides as one of our group, Helen, is really suffering from altitude sickness. The doctor here said to get back to Lima, (sea level) as soon as possible but that is difficult to arrange at this time. Her husband John came with us and he isn’t doing all that well either mostly trying to deal with the shortness of breath.

We took a boat to the north end of the island and disembarked at a small village where we visited a very rough museum with some of the artifacts of the pre-Inka period and pictures of Jacque Cousteau when he visited the lake for a exploration of the deepest parts, searching for the giant frog. From there we took an Inka trail to the top, or almost to the top, where they had a temple to worship the sun and the earth. There is a huge rock that resembles a Puma, a sacred animal representing their life on earth. It was a wonderful walk and the scenery was splendid. I will admit that at this stage we getting a little “templed out” if you know what I mean. I am not saying that it wasn’t worth it, quite the opposite, but we have been hearing a different version of the same Inka story for 3 weeks now. Still interesting because this comes from another tribe called the  Ayamara who are indigenous in this region.

Jacque Cousteau came here in 1970’s to search for this giant frog that lives in Lake Titicaca. It is 55 cm long , can survive at 90 m below the surface and never needs to come up for air.  We saw some picture and the local guide told us that there is a farm locally that is raising them and putting them back into the lake. So for a few bolivianos we could visit the farm and see them first hand, no surprise Berniece wasn’t interested nor John but I thought, what the hell, I am here and why not go see them. Well that was a waste of time, or at least the frogs were, the trip to see them was a real adventure. We went down a dirt road through a farm, then walked to the lake were a local pulled a wooden boat, which could have used a little bailing, close to a slab walk ramp about 12 inches wide and 6 ft out into the water, (good balancing practice), which we boarded, (or fell into whichever you prefer), and then he rowed out to a raft that was equally unstable to show us this little frog which he claims was an immature one.  It was a bust but the frog is quite interesting if you look at it closely; well ok, it is just a frog but it was fun.