Month: December 2020

Dec 20: Started Christmas shopping this week. 

Never gotten such an early jump on this, thanks to the sabbatical…!

Off to the mall again now, with all the other dads.

Happy holidays everyone!

At the start of this sabbatical I had hoped to do a little bit of world travelling.  Nothing like a good walkabout to gain perspective on life and find greater meaning. While COVID restrictions have unfortunately, but understandably, limited global travel, the good old US of A was still open for business for a carefully planned and socially distanced getaway.  So I packed my bag, got on a plane to San Francisco, and rented a car to embark on a 2,000 km one man road-trip around California to see what I could see.  Safely.

I should also note that I decided to make it a full “left”-coast liberal experience, as I had the Obama audio book downloaded to serve as the soundtrack to the journey.

The week-long agenda was designed to cover a lot of ground and knock off several bucket list items.  I think it was also subconsciously a prospecting trip to scout out potential retirement locations for down the road…

Day 1: San Francisco

• First stop, a quick visit to Stanford University in Palo Alto. Great campus.  I might have been a bit presumptuous to have tried to book my daughter a room in residence for 2026…
• Alcatraz island prison tour was kind of cool.  Would have been more cool with real prisoners.

Day 2: Napa

• Crisp but sunny weather and bright red leaves on the vines provided a stunning backdrop for this idyllic leg of the journey to St. Helena.
• Stopped at Joseph Phelps’ scenic property for a small tasting of several of their wines that I can’t afford by the bottle.  And popped into The Prisoner Wine Company for a tasting of their unconventional reds, some of which have been my favorites this past summer to take the edge off the pandemic.

Day 3: Yosemite Park

• Living in the Rockies you tend to take spectacular mountain views for granted.  However, driving though the Sierra-Nevada mountain range down into the Yosemite valley was breathtaking.
• Thought about attempting the second ever free-solo ascent of El Capitan after watching the movie (that guy is nuts!).  Settled for a nice long hike up a well-traveled trail towards Half-Dome mountain amongst waterfalls and giant sequoia trees instead…

Day 4: Carmel

• Back to the coast for a round of golf at Spyglass Hill at the Pebble Beach Resort.  Didn’t slice any drives into the ocean, but I wouldn’t say my game is in top form since our course closed for the season at the end of Sept.
• Then into the car for a drive along the Pacific Coast Highway past Big Sur and down to Pisco Beach and San Luis Obispo for a spectacular sunset then dinner (btw, at this point I was no longer embarrassed asking for “a table for one please”)

Day 5: LA

• Admittedly I originally had bigger plans for LA, but as the day got closer, L.A. became the hotspot in California for COVID so much was shut down. 
• Settled for visiting a few outdoors sights.  First a quick visit to Venice Beach.  I thought it would be scenic but edgy, more “real” than Santa Monica.  Turns out its too real.  I was scared to get out of my rental car.
• So I headed up to the Hollywood hills where I was more likely to find the beautiful people.  Hiked up to the sign, just to say I did, then headed on out of town into the desert.

Day 6/7: Palm Springs

• Unfortunately the big event that I had planned for Day 6 was cancelled at the last minute… you guessed it, due to new Covid restrictions.  Was scheduled for a session at the BMW Performance Center test driving their new cars around the track.  Had to settle for driving my rented VW Passat at moderate speeds to Joshua Tree National Park instead.  I thought on a hot sunny hike in the desert through traditional native lands I might find my spirit animal and have great revelations of self.  Just found Joshua trees.
• Finished the trip in Palm Springs with another round of golf and a bit of time relaxing by the pool before my flight home.

Back in Calgary now and have cleared quarantine after my airport COVID test has come back negative. That was a lot of Jonny Gould time. But all well worth it. Not quite what it could have been given the current situation, but I’m fortunate to have had the opportunity to safely get out and experience another little corner of the world beyond my usual horizons.

Time to turn my attention to Christmas (whatever that looks like this year) and then back to work in a month…

One of the projects I wanted to accomplish on this sabbatical was to get myself a cool new commuter car.  Not necessarily a mid-life crisis car.  But something a little more sophisticated than the Jeep, and fun to drive.  Having enlisted my oldest son as my automotive advisor, we spent the better part of a month trying to narrow down what the right car for me would be, and would be acceptable to a car snob like him… We finally agreed on the ‘07/’08 Audi RS4.  Sleek yet conservative styling, practical 4 doors but not an “old man sedan”, and most importantly, a manual transmission with 425 horsepower – REAL driving.  And at about the same price as the Jeep.

Only problem is that it’s a car collectors’ car, rarely available in good condition, and if so, it gets snapped up quickly.  A couple were immediately for sale in Calgary but my mechanic had a look and suggested we walk away from both of them. We continued watching the market for a few months, but nothing surfaced and we began slowly losing hope.  Then one popped onto our radar this week. Only problem was it was in Vancouver 1,000km away.  Knowing we had to act quickly, and after a little back and forth with the owner, a car purchase road trip came together the next day.  Fly there, drive it back.

With my trusty car advisor sidekick in tow (happy to ditch school for 2 days…), we met the owner, looked under the hood, nodded our heads and made some comments like we knew what we were talking about (“looks really clean”, “nice new fuel injectors”), advised him that we would take it, and were on our way. We were told the car had some drive shaft issues but took a leap of faith that they weren’t too bad, or at least would survive the trip home. 

Stop #1 was to buy some winter tires on the way out of town, as it was a Vancouver summer car that had to get back to Calgary via the Rocky Mountains.  Stop #2 was when we were pulled over by the police, who saw us driving a little bit fast (425 horsepower remember), ran the license plate and thought the car was stolen because the plate was registered to a Jeep…

Long story short, we made it but it still sits at my mechanic waiting for a front axle replacement.  Its already become a passion project money pit, but glad we got a chance to make this happen.  Definitely wouldn’t have come together without the sabbatical…