We went to to see a show - Love Janis. It was a very small and intimate theatre and we had the very front seats, so the music - and the performance by the actress playing Janis Joplin - was very much in-your-face. I think Jo was a bit shocked.
One image from that time still haunts a little:
This is World Trade Center Plaza where Ross and Kelly are walking and we're about to enter one of the Twin Towers. The date is Friday 13th July, 2001. Just over 8 weeks later, there was nothing but a scene of devastation here.
We flew down to Florida next, staying at Marriott's Cypress Harbour:
We did the full Disney/Epcot/Animal Kingdom thing of course - and Universal too. The Tower of Terror and the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster held no fears for us - afterwards anyway:
We also went back to the spot where we'd taken a photograph 12 years earlier, on our first ever trip to USA:
Kelly and Ross were a little unprepared for the Florida sun at the height of summer - both managed to get burnt a bit, but that didn't stop Kelly from enjoying yet another cocktail - or two:
They may have been 22 and almost 18 by now, but they were just kids really, judging by the delight in their eyes as they went on the Buzz Lightyear ride:
We ate at Fulton's Crab House, Bennigan's Grill and Kobe's Teppanyaki Table, amongst others. Ross and I played golf at Faldo's International course, but, after a week, it was time to head across to the West Coast.
We changed planes at Denver for our onward flight to San Francisco, where we were going to spend a couple of nights before heading up to Crescent City, where Scott's parents lived.
We crammed in a few of the usual touristy things - Union Square, Pier 39 and, of course, the famous cable cars:
Bill and Karen had plenty of room for us in Crescent City - and plenty of land too, where Ross played on their quad bike. We went on a jet boat up the Klamath river. Everyone has this image of California always being sunny - and generally it's true inland and down south - but when it's the coastal north, it's a whole different ball game, as we'd previously experienced in San Francisco - and even more so in Crescent City. The haar, as we call it, or, more commonly, coastal fog, is a regular feature. Generally, it rolls back as the day goes on and it heats up. This picture at the Klamath Basin shows it clearly:
I got a game of golf at Del Norte with Tim Harrison, the pastor who conducted the ceremony at Scott and Lucy's wedding. We did a little bit of local sightseeing, which included a visit to the Trees of Mystery, the entrance to which is guarded by giant statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox, where we had our first ever sighting of Amish tourists:
The wedding was inland at Patrick's Creek and we stayed there for a couple of nights. Cade was now approaching his first birthday:
The wedding went well and the Scots girls were well turned out:
Here's the full wedding party:
The only slight mishap was the plan to release the butterflies - half of them were either dead or, like the rest of us, zonked out by the heat:
Back in Crescent City, Ross was first to leave as he had to return to work, but Jo, Kelly and I then went over to Redding with Scott, Lucy and Cade, who was glad to see Ryan and Bailey again:
Perhaps as a portent of things to come in later years, Kelly and I went on a cycle:
We'd crammed a lot in to our 3 weeks' vacation, but it was now time to return to the UK.
Back home, more of my job was migrating northwards - the core activities were mostly now in Fraserburgh, but the group still had a processing factory at Bridge of Don, in the north of Aberdeen and that was where the Directors - including me - now spent most of their time. It wasn't as easy to get to as when we were based in the south of Aberdeen, but it was a better option than travelling to Fraserburgh every single day. Parts of the business were doing well, but things were starting to get a bit tricky in some of the companies, notably those in primary processing and vessel management, where the added value content was lesser.
One very small perk to compensate a little for the days when I had to travel to Fraserburgh was the fact that the company had free tee times at the local golf course - the 7th oldest in the world. I imagined I would make regular use of this facility, but, in reality, it was little more than once a year when I used to invite some of my pals up from Banchory for a game.
Come September, Ross turned 18. He was working at Wm. Wilson's, then still a family owned Aberdeen business involved in plumbing and electrical supplies. Just a few days after his birthday, I got a frantic phone call from him. I was in Fraserburgh and Ross said "Dad, Dad - quick - switch on the TV!" It was the fateful 9/11 and the TV was showing the awful scenes from the World Trade Center in New York on endless loops. It was like watching some kind of CGI disaster movie - you couldn't believe what you were seeing. Ross and I remembered being there just a few weeks before. It was spooky.
After all that, the rest of 2001 kind of petered out quietly. All of our children were now officially adults and Jo and I were both in our 50's. Tempus fugit.
No comments:
Post a Comment