Well, that's one less escape route.
Over the weekend, Allegiant Air, an airline I'd never heard of before, quietly discontinued flights from the sad, little local airport to Las Vegas. They had only just launched them in November, with much fanfare, but there just wasn't enough demand to justify them. It would appear that while the Bakersfield locals have no problem gambling with their health by living here, it's a different matter when it comes to their cold hard cash.
Back in the Go Go Boom Days at the turn of the century, Bakersfield took a gamble of their own, investing millions to upgrade the airport into something approaching respectability. The end result... Meadows Field. It was going to be a great, big, beautiful tomorrow and Bako was going to be the next great megalopolis and needed an airport to support that pipe dream. I gather that at one time it actually hosted a fair number of airlines and flights.
But then everything came crashing down and now the airport sits mostly vacant. Every time they show it on the news it just looks so forlorn. They really need to see if they can rent it out for filming. Maybe a zombie movie. Might as well try and get some use out of it.
At any rate, they still have a handful of flights, mostly connectors to cities that have flights that actually go somewhere. Your choices are Denver, Phoenix, Houston, LA and San Francisco.
As far as choosing an escape route goes, I think we can safely scratch Houston. If there's one place I can imagine hating to live more than Bakersfield, it would be Houston. Actually, all of Texas... just scratch it.
And now that I think of it, Phoenix too. The Arizonans have shown themselves to be a little too wacky in recent months.
I hear Denver is lovely, but I'm a little too old to learn how to operate a snow blower.
So that leaves LA and San Fran.
Now you would think that with all my whining on the blog that the obvious choice would be LA. And who knows? We may yet end back up there one day. But over the past couple of months, out attitudes have... shifted. The longer we're away, the more we seem to be adopting a "been there, done that" mindset in regards to the City of Angels. Nothing personal. "It's not you, it's me..."
See, here's the thing. To try and divine the future, some people read horoscopes, some people are into astrology. Or numerology. Or other ologies. But we recently discovered something about our own lives. It would appear that hints to our future...
Hang on our walls.
Years ago when we redecorated the living room at our townhouse, (and by "we", I mean "the boyfriend") we couldn't find exactly what we were looking for to hang on the wall over the couch. So we decided to make our own art. We were both fans of mid-century architecture and hoped one day to own one of those houses. So we painted and abstract vision of a Neutra house and put it up. And wouldn't you know it, within a few months we found just such a house and bought it.
And then a few years ago, the boyfriend gave me a framed Fortune Magazine cover as a Christmas gift. The covers of the magazine in the 30's and 40's were each beautiful lithographed work by famous artists of the day. A boss had given me one as a gift and I had started collecting them. Unfortunately, around the time I discovered them, so did everyone else. I had collected four of them before the prices got out of control. The one the boyfriend gave me made five. And this is it.
I have to be honest... I wasn't a fan. Don't get me wrong, it's nice in it's own way, but it certainly isn't one of the best. But it was given in love and soon joined the others on the wall. I think what I disliked about it was that it was such a bleak desolate vista...
Just like outside of Bakersfield!
Seriously, it looks just like all the wasteland south of town. And north. And east. And west.
It would appear that what we choose to hang on the walls determines our fate.
So with that in mind, when it came time last week to finally finish decorating our bedroom we once again ran into the issue of what to hang on the walls. None of our existing art or prints really worked and we hadn't found anything else that we liked. So once again we decided to make our own. I'd find some photos or graphics on-line and trick them out and we would get some cheap frames. As I sat down at the computer I asked the boyfriend what our theme was and then we both realized that whatever we chose might determine our fate.
"What's it to be?" I asked.
"San Francisco" he replied.
So we now have prints of the Golden Gate and Lombard Street hanging in the bedroom.
Let's hope that the third time is the charm for this drywall voodoo spell.
