Big Bear

We went to Big Bear Lake which is a town, which is near to, but separate from Big Bear City. It's also right next to the lake, which is also called Big Bear Lake, but it's a lake, not a town. It's all very confusing, but if you call it Big Bear, everyone seems to know what you're talking about.

We went there, so that Alex and Dan could play in some snow. And so that they would understand the true meaning of 'cold', and not say 'I'm freezing' because the temperature has dropped below 15 centigrade (that's about 60 in old money).

Anyway, rather than write one really long post, I'm going to write more than one (how many? We'll have to see) shorter posts, partly because I suspect that you don't have the attention span to read them, but mostly because I don't have the attention span to write them.

The main winter attraction of Big Bear is snow for skiing, and the like, but it's also reasonably attractive. The picture below shows the lake, and the solar observatory. (For reasons I forget, but I'm sure you could find out with 5 minutes worth of Googling, Big Bear Lake is a particularly fine place to put a solar observatory).

Having been in Los Angeles for a year, all the boys winter stuff is a) ineffective and b) too small. I went to a shopping to buy some winter boots for them - they wouldn't come, so I had to take a too small boot for comparison), and found some in a supermarket. (I also had to buy some for me - I took some boots, but somehow managed to take two left boots.**) The boots were something like $25 a pair, for thickly padded snow boots. At the cash register, the person serving was shocked by the price - "Are you sure you want to pay that much?" she said. I said "Hahahaha, you mad woman, I'm paying 12 pounds and 50 pence for a pair of boots, and you think it's too much." Actually, I didn't, I said "Is there an option?" and laughed.

When I left, I found out there was an option, because there was a K-Mart just down the road, where I imagine they would have been much cheaper. (I was in Vons, think Sainsbury's 20 years ago; for K-Mart, think a really grotty old, really big, Asda, then take all the friendly people out, make sure all the trolleys don't work, and make the aisles just a little too small).


**If you wondered, a few years ago, Vegetarian Shoes announced that they would stop selling Doc Marten's Boots, and as I'd worn nothing but, for the past few years, this was potentially traumatic, so (much to Susanne's annoyance) I bought all they had in stock, in my size. So I have something like 4 pairs of identical boots, hence the two left boots mistake is easy to make. (They almost immediately started selling a substitute, which is almost exactly the same).