Day 28 - The Winner Takes It All

We awoke today for our last morning in Marin County, with Bob and Mary. We had a fair bit of packing to do, but bearing wind-down regulations in mind, we decided to go for a moderated start - just after 9am for one J, and substantially after 9am for the other. Mary made us a great breakfast as always, and we once again enjoyed sitting down in the lounge, enjoying the fantastic bay-area view (the appearance of fog this morning was the major weather development), and having a good ol' chinwag. We showered, had a bit of primping time (Joe took this to a new level today by trimming his nails), and then packed up our suitcases. The latter job was not the extreme task that it will be tomorrow, as quite a lot of our souvenirs and clothes were still at Alicia's place. So, we got our suitcases ready by the door, and said goodbye to our outstanding hosts.



Alicia then kindly picked us up, and drove us over to her place in Orinda, where it's always nice to return to. From earlier negotiations, and to our delight, she also managed to time picking us up in with the conclusion of the Murray - Nadal semi, which started at 1pm in our current time zone. We settled down in front of the cinema-style facilities, and were ready. Annoyingly, a stream of (American) Football highlights were shown first, but this was soon over, and we welcomed the sight (ahem, watched in full HD quality) of Murray and Nadal strolling out onto the court at Flushing Meadows - Nadal playing it cool, but visibly concerned. As many of you will know, Murray played a stunning game to come out on top, and though Nadal fought well (taking the 3rd set), and had the support of the considerable crowd, he was simply blown off the court by the 'great Scot'. Ok, so perhaps Nadal was physically spent after a long season for him, but there really is nothing that can be taken away from Murray's performance; it was incredible - don't rule him out against Federer in the final.

Having spent a few blissful hours enthralled by a great sporting display, we felt inspired to get out and do something active ourselves. Being slightly more involved in the disc world than that of racquet sports, and knowing of a disc golf course local to Orinda, the choice was obvious, and so we trekked out for an intense 9-hole round. The course was within a local park, and, once we found it (which seems to be half the challenge of disc golf anyway), we got going on the cruel, desert/wasteland/wilderness terrain that was the setting. The desert was harsh, but despite the sweltering heat we managed to pull a few respectable shots out the bag...but also struggled to pull a few respectable discs out of various trees and bushes (the other half of the challenge of disc golf). We improved our collective golfing quality by hole 9, and were satisfied that we had neither got lost, struck down by desert raiders, or, worse, thrown wildly over par. We're freestylers anyway - a fact that we reminded ourselves of by having a quick jam session, when finished with the golf.





However, we couldn't really concentrate to well on any of that, as we were simply bristling with excitement about our evening's entertainment. Along with Alicia, we established a plan. We would travel back to her place, take brief showers, eat (a dish of exemplary spaghetti), and then head out to a nearby 'movie theatre' to see...take a deep breath everyone...'Mamma Mia'. And not the regular version, oh no. If we were going to do this, we were going to do it properly, and so we followed the plan, arrived at the movie theatre, and purchased three tickets for the Sing-a-Long extravaganza. For those who have not been following the Mamma Mia craze of late (which will surely be the minority of the population), it's an Abba-themed Musicale, which, for some reason, all our families back home have been raving about. Despite our reluctancy to actually watch the film, we've been somewhat 'encouraged', and so went along with fairly open minds (though perhaps not with regard to Pierce Brosnan's singing voice), and with our sense of humour fully engaged. This was required, but through the silliness the film won us over, and from a criticial standpoint we appreciated that, in the same vein of High School Musical and others, it had acheived what it had set out to do; be a thoroughly entertaining feel-good treat for the eyes and the ears. The latter was provided by a good dose of (mostly) well sang Abba classics, and the former, for us, by the commendable performance of Amanda Seyfield, playing the young lead.



We'd taken a chance, spent some money money money, and it paid off. So, gimme gimme gimme A-man-da after midnight.

Blogging from California State for the last time,

AJJA