First few days in America

Well here we are in Sacramento. It’s big and it sprawls.

USA immigration were reluctant to let me into LA where I was taken aside by their officers to join many others, who were not being let in, in a dingy interview room to be further processed. Poor old Filo, was left stranded at the baggage carousal, to wait hopefully for me. I had the ongoing tickets so she was stranded as well. The result was that we missed our connecting flight to Sacramento whilst I just sat around waiting to be processed, all the time hoping that Filo was OK. Fortunately, she had the nous to make friends with a pleasant lady who let her use her phone to let her son know what was going on. My further processing consisted of being asked two questions which I had already answered at the original officers station and I was let go. We had missed our connection and were put on a later flight free of additional charge. Whether I was randomly selected for this treatment or the first officer was just an as…..le I will never know. This process took four hours, which was pretty disturbing after we had been travelling for some 20 hours.

Well, as expected, America is brash. Sacramento is very flat and is the centre of acres and acres of wine grape growing; I have never seen the like. Historically it was subject to flooding which means that the banks of the Sacramento River have been raised considerably. When you drive along the river side banks you can see grape vines disappearing into the distant horizon.

Spent the first couple of days being entertained by Shobna’s friends and relatives. It would seem that our arrival coincided with leaving dos and birthday parties. This meant that we had to mix with drunken, and in some cases, maudlin individuals but also met some very nice characters.

So, the 29th is the first day we have been free to find our way around. It is remembrance day here and everything is shut. Koroi took us for a drive into down town and it was then that I realized that Sacramento seems not to have a distinctive city centre. We shall walk around tomorrow to familiarize ourselves.

Have noticed that a lot of people here have large cruise boats and spend their free time cruising up and down the river. Petty mind numbing.

Went to a noisy restaurant come gaming place (Chuck E Cheese) to have a bite and to entertain granddaughter. Koroi spent $50 on the machines which churn out lots and lots of tokens in the form of a chain of bus type tickets. On using up your allotted $50 you feed these tickets into a machine which counts them and gives you a receipt slip that you can exchange for prizes. Value of the prize I estimate to be about $2-3; a bit like the old fairgrounds. Anyway the whole rigmarole takes a lot of time and the child has been entertained, I guess.The food was bad.