Where Tigers Belch and Monkeys Howl : "Where we goin'?"

“The Lego Convention.” (Pictures below this blog post.)

We cruised down I-5, Daughter Darling, Baby Darling, Bear, Peaches and me. The truck’s repair wasn’t complete, so we opted for the Prius. After filling the space between the driver’s front seat and the car’s back seat to leavel it off for Bear, we loaded our stuff and Daughter Darling's 150 pound dog and took off.

“Where we goin’?” asked 3-year-old Baby Darling.

“The Lego Convention.”

We branched off I-5 on freeway 152 somewhere south of San Jose California and drove through Gilroy where the fragrance of garlic wafted on the breeze, and the desire for roasted garlic on sourdough bread stung in my nostrils for the next 3 days. Being spring and green, the area looked like the landscape around Roseburg Oregon. Three quarters of the year, the oak-tree-dotted areas around Roseburg Oregon are brown, but in the springtime they turn ten thousand shades of green. So it was with the Gilroy area.

“Where we goin’?”

“The Lego Convention.”

We made it to the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara where for the first time ever we were excavated from a Hotel due to a fire scare. “Do not take the elevator,” boomed the voice over the loudspeaker. “Take the stairs.” So we traipsed down 7 flights of stairs were poured out into the rain, were given coffee and hot chocolate and soon released with the explanation of, “A little short to the system due to the rain.” Another explanation: it was caused by a little short. (Person.)

Peaches, our poodle, was legal in the hotel being under 50 pounds, but Bear, carrying that 150 pounds, was not.

We had planned to leave Bear in the truck for just that one night since the convention was in that hotel, and we didn’t know what time we would arrive, but temptation was there staring us in the face. A side door was left open due to the fire excavation. Ah ha—entrance into the hotel. Smuggling Bear into the side door and up those 7 flights of stairs, we closed the door on our contraband, just as Daughter number one and grandson from Oregon arrived.

Morning though, hum, how to get Bear out? No open side door. The elevator dumped people virtually into the lobby. Daughter Number one suggested we could throw a blanket over him and walk out. Or take the Star Wars tactic, "This isn’t the droid you want.”

We took the droid tactic. Daughter Number one, Bear and I walked out. No problem. I don’t think anyone saw us.

The convention consisted of exhibits by Lego aficionados, and a few vendors—the boys loved it. The people were wonderful. The local Lego store, offered 30% off for attendees so we took advantage of their offer by spending Sunday shopping, and playing in the Lego store.

While sitting in the lounge I met a charming young woman who worked at the Monterey Bay Aquarium who told me that in September the Monterey Bay Aquarium exhibits a great white shark for 55 days. They cannot keep one longer than that and if it shows any signs of distress it is immediately released. She told me about the California Academy of the Sciences located at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco where they have an aquarium, a natural history museum, a planetarium, and a four-story rain forest. That was a planned visit that never materialized.

That night we moved to beautiful a pet-friendly hotel, the wonderful Cypress at Cupertino CA, decorated whimsically exquisite, where they loved dogs, didn’t charge a deposit fee, catered to us, served delicious coffee mornings in the lounge, and where I became the chief dog-walker, and the dogs became the chief world-sniffer, and where poor Baby Darling spent two miserable nights with a flaming cold, sicker than I have ever seen him, and the reason we didn’t go to San Francisco.

Tuesday, after sleeping for about 7 hours on the drive home Baby Darling was ready to be home and build a Lego Rube Goldberg contraption.

Here is my favorite Lego built image from the convention--these are not from kits.