Admire Beauty

We wouldn't be discussing the merits of the Tour of California otherwise,

It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.

I don't travel anywhere without the PS3 and XBox. There's nothing better to do on long bus trips while on tour.

I suddenly realized I was in California. Warm, palmy air - air you can kiss - and palms.

Like so many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts--census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway.