Only in Ojai

Very freakish, Philadelphia getting bombed with almost two feet of snow less than a week before Christmas. So the first order of business Sunday morning, before I could go anywhere, was grabbing a broom and sweeping snow off our three cars, defrosting the cars, and then shoveling out. Figuring to find mayhem at the airport, I left about four hours before my flight to LA.

Sure enough, flights were canceled all over the departures board. Stranded holiday travelers were sprawled out or slumped over, bleary-eyed zombies at most every gate. My flight got pushed back from 2 to 5 p.m. in a case of a missing pilot. Then his plane landed but could not reach a gate for all the snow plowed into small mountains. Next came the dreaded tarmac delay. We were on board, buckled in and going nowhere. The pilot, with a soothing British accent, explained only one runway was operating, alternating take-offs with landings. Finally we were airborne about 6 p.m. for the 6-hour flight cross country. The plane’s cabin of course was crammed to the max, not an empty seat. Across the entire nation a little dog yapped, yapped and yelped, trapped in a cage stowed in the overhead luggage rack.

The most disorienting and dangerous part of a trip I find is getting a start in an unfamiliar city after the dark, when you’re in a rental car you’ve never driven before, making seat adjustments, mirror adjustments, deciphering the dashboard, trying to follow typed directions handed over by an automaton behind the counter at Avis Rental. I’m leaving LAX, scanning for street and interstate signs, discovering the directions are flat-out ass backwards wrong, and dealing with a zooming flow of traffic to the right and left. I do believe the highest risk for some kind of rental car road collision is always within the first 10-15 minutes when you’re trying to figure out both the car and where the hell you’re heading.

That critical juncture for me came at Sunday night about 9:30 in LA. Of course the freeways are flooded with streams of red and white lights across 12 lanes like rush hour in most towns. I take I-405 to North 101 and try to center myself if you will listening to a CD of raw gut-bucket Clarksdale, Mississippi bottomland blues by Terry “Big T” Williams and Wesley “Junebug” Jefferson. This deep-down thumping blues, totally at odds with the fast LA tempo, is what I need.

An hour and half later around Ventura traffic has thinned way out and I make a right to head up Route 33, which narrows to a twisting two-lane mountain road. It’s nearing 2 a.m. east coast time and a world away from shoveling snow in the driveway this morning. The key to my hotel room is in an envelope taped to the office door at the Blue Iguana Inn. Described by a tourist magazine as “hip and stylish,” the inn is designed in a Mexican motif by a local architect and decorated by his wife, who owns the place. All that matters to me after a day shoveling snow, waiting out a 4-hour delay, then the 6-hour flight and that damn barking mutt, and the 2-hour drive up to Ojai is that a beautiful bed takes up almost my entire room, with giant fluffy pillows and a cushy, soft mattress to die for.

Come 7 in the morning the alarm is beep, beep, beeping away. I set it early to leave sufficient time to chug vast quantities of java, clear my head, and think about what it is that I want to see happen at my 9 a.m. meeting. Also need some extra time to find the meeting place.

It’s an overcast Monday morning driving along Ojai Avenue past a running/bike trail, the town’s Spanish-style arcade, a bell tower supposedly reminiscent of one in Havana, the pergola, which is a walkway beneath a series of connecting arches, a skateboard park, small parks and plazas, small art shops, craft stores, restaurants and bars. Everything in Ojai is on a small scale. The town, two hours north of LA, has only 8,000 residents, most living in tidy cottages and ranchers in leafy blocks off the main drag. There is a lengthy list of Hollywood celebs who’ve retreated here to slum in disguise and hide out — Tim Burton, Julie Christie, Johnny Depp, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anthony Hopkins, Diane Ladd, Malcolm McDowell, Bill Paxton, Ted Danson. Johnny Cash and his wife June Carter had a place up in the hills in nearby Casitas Springs, where every Christmas John would put speakers on his deck and blast the valley with Christmas tunes, until a neighbor finally got him to shut it down. That’s John, sentimental, romantic and a pain in the ass at the same time.

The CEO and the Board Chairman were chatting, waiting for me when I arrived pretty much on the button at 9. The ice was broken by my being completely over-dressed for the occasion; wearing jacket, tie and pullover sweater. The chairman was in sneaks, jeans and a corduroy shirt. The CEO, a Brit, wore business casual shirt and slacks. He had been in Oslo, Norway last Thursday, stopped over in London on Saturday, and was here in the plush and comfy chairman’s office Monday morning. The chairman, an older man, was yawning, complaining he still couldn’t shake off the jet lag after a three-week trip to Taiwan, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Management consultants like these two make their living on the road, flying off to clients, conferences, training seminars and speaking gigs around the globe.

Our meeting was scheduled for Christmas week for the simple fact it’s one of the few times during the year both of these globe-trotters can be found in the same room at the same time. They’ve scheduled me for two hours and we take it down to the last minute. The casual conversation and open-ended brain-storming is laid back. The one exception to this relaxed atmosphere is the statute of a large, threatening gargoyle that dominates the chairman’s broad, clean desk. “Where’d you get that?” “My wife gave it to me to ward off evil people.” “Does it work?” “Why yes, I believe it does.” Not interested in learning the details, I bring our talk back on track.

We decide on two projects I’ll go forward on, shake hands, and part ways with smiles all around and Merry Christmas send-offs. I lunch for two hours with the communications manager, who fills me in some more about the projects I’ll be working on and the culture of the organization.

By 2 pm I’m a free man, feeling good about making a decent impression after Sunday’s long day and night. I head to Ojai’s public library to use one of its free Internet-connected computers to check emails. My magazine, the editing of which is my occupation aside from independent contracting, is winding down production on the January 2010 issue and there are usually last minute glitches and changes and questions.

The temperature is in the high 50s, the sun finally breaks through, and I get an idea of how the valley, running east-west about ten miles long and three miles wide, traps light all day long, inspiring Ojai’s colony of artists. Nordhoff Ridge, towering over the north side of town at more than 5,000 feet, is now clearly visible and stunning.

Stuart Rupp runs a shop where he makes prints of his wife’s delicate Oriental brush art — depending on the strength and balance of line — coupled with calligraphy and Zen seals ‘Laugher,” “Unique,” “Cherish the Moment” and “No method.” He explains to me how Ojai’s mountains and looming trees humble locals, an odd diversity of Hollywood intelligentsia, redneck farm laborers, retired millionaire industrialists, and new-age spiritualists. The sun’s day-long radiance, the famous pink glowing sunset, the absence of shadows, the mountainous confines and stands of forests put residents in what Stuart describes as a state of “Quiet Excellence.”

My conversation with Stuart, a short, gregarious man with shaggy gray hair who’s got a rep in town as something of a maverick, runs past an hour. He recounts how his wife Nancy’s life was cut all too short at age 57 in 2001 when she was struck in the leg by a car on Ojai’s Main Street, not 50 yards away from the shop. She died when a blood clot broke free in her leg 11 days later. Stuart keeps her spirit alive in the small shop, crammed with prints of Nancy’s art: the Buddha’s 12 barnyard animals printed on cardboard packaging boxes, tee-shirts, sweat shirts, night shirts and “Sanity Bites” framed reprints of mixed Chinese calligraphy and brushpainting. Stuart, who retired as a physicist and oceanographer at 45 to let Nancy do her thing, and I carry on about transcendent physicist Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Obama, the New England Patriots, “global weirding,” health care reform, the computer software and hardware industries, junior chamber of commerce carpetbaggers, the country’s energy oligarchy, the demise of conversation, Johns Hopkins lacrosse, the 57 churches Stuart counted on his paper route as a boy growing up in Ojai, his father the doc who made house calls until he was 80, the orange groves to the north that benefit from the full day of sunlight to deliver product a month after the rest of the state’s groves are harvested. “Embrace life,” Stuart smiles at one point. “It’s all we have. We’re all in this together, after all.” I forget what we were talking about.

I run into a peppy young blonde woman with rosy cheeks sitting behind the counter at the Trowbridge Gallery who says people call her Sunshine because she’s always had a bubbling, giggling energy. She’s from the far northeast of Philadelphia and we talk about places in South Jersey. She looks like a native but has been out here just less than a year. It was time to “gain her footing,” she explains, vague about where her traction will lead. “You’ve got to learn California,” Sunshine says. “It takes a while. You know, it’s the west out here. People think different. More open. In the east people think more in boxes.” As I walk out the door she greets two friends and I hear her talk about “the good energy” to be found in something or somewhere. She’s right: back east you hear little about embracing the good energy.

Another dose of positive energy came my way at dinner Monday night at Azu Mediterranean Restaurant and Bar on East Ojai Avenue. Eric the bartender had set me up with a couple of generous shots of Woodford Reserve bourbon and a draught of something called Wildfire beer. I had retreated from the bar to a couch to talk on the cell to Kate, my daughter who was spending the night at her boyfriend’s in Delaware. No one had picked up when I called home, and son Steve and Kate hadn’t picked up cell calls to them. After 30 years of travel I still get nervous when no one answers the call at home.

“Everything OK?” a fellow asks me when I sign off with Kate. “Sorry, I talked too loud.” “No, not a problem, glad to share a couch with you,” he smiles. Ron is his name. He introduces a cute young blonde woman, Desiree, his best friend, he says. Desiree reminds me of other SoCal girls or women, attractive, fit, and seemingly somewhat bored and weary of it all. Turns out Desiree is 32, doesn’t look it, was born in Ojai, hates LA, there’s no culture there, loves New York but couldn’t live there, might end up in South Carolina, likes the pace, like country music.

Ron says all the money in the world couldn’t buy a friend like Desiree. Ron’s blind in his right eye, going blind in the other one. He’s 62, doesn’t look it, is tanned with his hair parted down the middle and a diamond in his left ear. Ron smiles constantly. He asks Desiree are they OK with time, can he have another 5 minutes? He was born in Manhattan and runs 4 massages parlors in Ventura he bought after getting sick off looking in his mirror each morning hating his work as an account manager for high-end men’s fashion accessories, belt buckles he mentions in particular. It was his father’s business he got into after 7 years working for CBS behind the camera in production, where he tired of kissing ass to get anywhere. “I was making $300,000 a year, now I’m making $35,000. I had a lot of money, I spent a lot of money. My life’s complicated like you wouldn’t want to know. But I can get up in the morning and look myself in the mirror.” As he leaves he shouts across to Eric the bartender, “We’ll be back. This is Desiree. We love this place.”

I’m back at the Blue Iguana by around 10. Read newspapers in bed to decompress and then wake up around 4 a.m., earlier than I wanted and before the alarm goes off. Grab some heavy duty Costa Rican java at a shop, Full of Beans and Fuel, and it’s off to LAX at 6 in the morning darkness to beat the dreaded LA rush hour. To bypass some of it, I take the Pacific Coast Highway outside of Oxnard and watch the sun rise over the Santa Monica Mountains at about 7:15. Make a point to drive to Zuma Beach and wade into the Pacific. A couple of men in sweatshirts walk large dogs. It’s cold and wind, and the sea is churning and roiling.

The security line at LAX three days before Christmas is out the door at 8 a.m. But it moves along. My flight gets delayed an hour — a case of a missing aircraft. Then we’re stuck on the tarmac again when the pilot announces we’ve either got a fuel leak in one of the wings or it’s goo leftover from a de-icing. “Keep your fingers crossed,” he says. He advises passengers who will miss connections to stay on board and hope for the best because there’s not an empty seat on any flight out of LA until Friday.

Holiday time is amateur hour for infrequent flyers. They bombard gate agents with anxious, edgy questions: Is the plane here? The pilot here? I’m going to miss my connection. When will we board? How long is this flight? A cell phone chorus makes the rounds: “We’re delayed, delayed, delayed.” Finally, when we get into Philadelphia at about 8:40 p.m., two hours late, one of the attendants grabs the PA: “Any passengers to Tel Aviv or Madrid, you’ve got to run to your gate. Please make way. The rest of you poor bastards who missed your connections, see the agent at the podium.”

I’m not moving, stuck in the last row by the window, seat 33A. The woman next to me sounds exasperated: “Dad, dad, I just landed. Dad, didn’t you check online to find my terminal. C’mon dad, you can do it.” From another row: “Brendan, did you find what you needed? Is that our bag? Where’s our other bag?” From behind me: “Hi, mom, we’re on the ground. Just getting off the plane. Huh? Huh? Can’t hear you. See you soon.” A small girl wanders off dragging a pink blanket, holding a purple stuffed dragon.

Walking through Terminal B, I see small tight clusters of lost travelers surround besieged gate agents, hands out waiting for hotel vouchers for an unwanted stay-over at the Marriott. Flights to Boston, Tampa, Charlotte, State College, are taking off at 10 and 11 tonight, unusually late for Philadelphia. Passengers, tired and blue, will roll into beds not as comfy as the Blue Iguana’s at 2 or 3 a.m. Adding to the irritation, the muzak in Terminal B’s is playing possibly the most ridiculous holiday songs, “ding-dong, ding-dong, Christmas bells are ringing.” Stressed-out travelers have already been dinged and donged. How about, “God rest ye merry flyers, let no delay dismay, air traffic is our saviour, our only ticket home, just save us all from winter’s power, when plans have gone astray, O tidings of comfort and joy, that’s what we seek, may departure boards bring comfort and joy, on-time flights, may departure boards bring comfort and joy.”