I flew from Uluru to Cairns and drove to Oak Beach. What a transformative experience, thoroughly rewarding, with extremes from a cold, red desert to a tropical, lush coastal habitat.
Lemme be honest, the driver’s seat is still on the wrong side, and the indicator functions as a windshield wiper, especially when I am in a rush. But I make do.
Cairns is not meant to be a transitional city; it ought to be experienced with the clock at a standstill. I was there for all of 15 minutes, longing for 15 days.
The drive to Oak Beach is a slow, sinuous coastal road with frequent roadwork interruptions. It is gorgeous, though, if I had a skilled driver, I would love to enjoy it.
The sunlight fell to the floor, writhing between the wildly swaying trees that densely canopied the road. The light and shadow dance vied for attention, but the heavily trafficked road, with frequent blind spots, demanded full attention.
I stopped at a viewpoint, Rex Lookout, to enjoy a majestic panorama looking at the bay. The feisty winds have stirred the waters that swallowed the shoreline sand and assumed its color.
The Thala Beach Reserve Resort is a doozy. It is a tropical paradise that one would expect in Kauai.
I came here intending to hike; however, the receptionist laid out the lay of the land, and the snakes on the trail were an effective deterrent. I have been not only coaxed but coerced into decadence; the Great Barrier Reef it is.
Walking on the beach, part of the resort property, I befriended a rather forward older beauty. At 12, she retained amazing agility and insisted that I keep throwing her the wooden stick, which she would unfailingly catch in an acrobatic jump. She didn’t tell me her name, a canine and kind one.
I enjoyed the dinner at the resort restaurant, admiring the changing colors of the setting Sun on the tropical jungle, embroidering a tumultuous sea.
The retreating Sun’s blush crimsoned the mountainous clouds on the far horizon.
The decision to travel to Australia bore all the classic hallmarks of my decision-making process: a spontaneous impulse followed by an afternoon of furious logistics. By dinnertime I had airline bookings, six hotels scattered across the southeast, the Red Centre, and Tasmania, multiple car rentals, and a lattice of domestic flights. And voilà — I was ready to trade the baking heat of Bakersfield for the winter of the southern hemisphere. An Australian summer has never tempted me; an Australian winter, on the other hand, is my kind of season.
Sydney — Arrival
I landed in Sydney at seven in the morning and, defying jet lag with the stubbornness of a man who has paid for the day, dedicated it to the city: the fabled Opera House and a climb up the storied Harbour Bridge.
The Harbour Bridge was completed during the Depression for about six million pounds, and it exemplifies the unyielding resilience of the Australian people — a chapter of lore embedded deep in the national psyche, much as the Empire State Building, another child of the Depression, stands as testament to American grit.
The Opera House, famously, was conceived by its Danish architect, Jørn Utzon, who arrived at those soaring shells while contemplating the segments of a peeled orange. Now, I am from Kern County. I have seen my share of oranges, and a fair number of their peels, and not once have they whispered architecture to me. I don’t know what Utzon was smoking, but it was mighty good stuff. The ledger tells a more familiar story: a budgeted seven million dollars ballooned to over a hundred million, and the planned four years of construction stretched to fourteen — a virtual certainty in today’s construction business, where timelines and budgets are rough estimates deployed chiefly to bait the investors.
The Park Hyatt, a perennial stomping ground for British celebrities, offers pretty exclusive views of the majestic Opera House, while the ferries below continually shuttle enthralled tourists to the surrounding attractions.
The Blue Mountains — Katoomba
Early the next morning — technically Day One in Sydney proper — I headed to Katoomba, a town of natural beauty nestled in the lap of the Blue Mountains. A pilgrimage to Katoomba mandates three rites: viewing the Three Sisters, carved by wind and water from the sandstone escarpment; admiring Katoomba Falls (the name itself derives from an Aboriginal word for shining, falling water); and an up-and-down on the Giant Staircase, some nine hundred steps descending nearly eight hundred feet into the Jamison Valley. My quadriceps registered a formal complaint on the way back up; it was overruled.
The two-hour train ride back to Sydney became a minor adventure when, halfway through, the train stopped dead — a “network failure,” the announcement said. Such failures, I am told, are not unusual, a product of aging infrastructure and long-running labor disputes. Every country, it seems, has its own version of deferred maintenance.
The Red Centre — Uluru
After a two-night stint in Sydney, I boarded a three-hour flight to Ayers Rock in the Northern Territory. The 2,500-kilometer journey offered a monotonous, mesmerizing view of the land below: a Mars-like surface, red and cracked and inhospitable to life. Then, descending, I caught my first aerial glimpse of the sacred behemoth the Anangu people have revered for some thirty thousand years. Uluru rises about 1,140 feet above the plain, runs nearly ten kilometers around, and continues for kilometers more beneath the surface — an iceberg of stone in an ocean of desert.
I rented a car at the airport and drove to the hotel with a fair amount of trepidation, this being my inaugural attempt at driving on the left side of the road. The rental car and I reached an uneasy truce somewhere around the second roundabout. That evening, the desert rewarded the effort with a spectacular sunset at the Dune Top viewing area — the rock smoldering orange, then crimson, then a bruised purple as the light died. Early the next morning I drove some fifty kilometers to Kata Tjuta for the Valley of the Winds, a hike of a couple of hours through domes of conglomerate rock that make a man feel agreeably small. On the way back, I paid my respects at the base of mighty Uluru and took in its majesty up close — a thing photographs flatten and presence restores.
Tomorrow, I head to Cairns, Queensland, as the adventure continues.
We drove uneventfully to LAX and boarded the flight to Copenhagen, joined by the Khannas, our dear old friends. The flight itself was routine; my campaign to sleep through it, waged to preempt jet lag, was routed entirely.
Then came Bergen, where our adventure acquired its permanent prefix: mis. The flight from Copenhagen landed forty-five minutes late, vaporizing our connection to Tromsø. What followed was a masterclass in institutional arrogance. The airline and airport staff — generously supported by taxpayers, travelers, and tourists — have cultivated a culture in which gratitude flows backward and the customer experience has been reduced to a slur. We lost our luggage, missed our connection, and watched employees treat our misery as a spectator sport. One agent, fortified by the small power of his post, came close to open assault on travelers who had no cards left to play; Dinesh, wiser than the moment deserved, walked away from the provocation after my gentle urging. I have spent forty years at bedsides where kindness is the last currency that matters. I know what it looks like when the empowered turn on the powerless, and I saw it in that terminal. We had long harbored a nearly divine respect for Norwegian hospitality. We stood corrected.
A taxi driver named Yacub fleeced us on the way to an unplanned night in Bergen, where we paid — again — for a flight to Tromsø. For the record, the breakfast at Hotel Norge was a delight. The restrooms at the fish-market restaurants, however, carried a stench that made rotting fish smell like roses.
July 5 — Tromsø and Senja
A propeller plane carried us through Arctic skies on a laborious two-and-a-half-hour flight, and we landed in Tromsø sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, and disillusioned about the purported Norwegian decency. Then we met Earl. Our driver for the next few days, a thoroughly pleasant gentleman, Earl single-handedly renewed our faith and unfurled before us the jewel that Senja is on this planet. We wandered from fjord to fjord, took easy walks, and gorged on views of endless beauty — gray peaks wearing scarves of cloud, water the color of polished pewter.
Our hotel, Hamn i Senja, was an upgrade on a regular cabin, though the toilets carried the repulsive odor of the potties on the trail to Mt. Whitney. The twin beds were a third the size of a typical American twin, but comparisons lose significance when sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, elderly bodies, staring into relentless twenty-four-hour sun, can do all but fume. Just kidding — insomnia won that battle, hands down. It is not an ordinary day that has sunlight running circles around the clock.
July 6 — Senja
We woke as sleep-hungry zombies and toured the fjords and salmon farms of Senja. An attempt on Segla was aborted in the planning stages — a summit for another lifetime — and we consoled ourselves decadently with delicious Thai food in Finnsnes before heading back to Hamn for drinks and dinner.
July 7–8 — Bergen, redeemed
An uneventful flight returned us to Bergen — the city, this time, not the airport — and we checked into Opus XVI. After ceremonial cheers we walked the old town, dined at the hotel, and I stole away for a quick evening hike up Fløyen, the top of Bergen. The next morning, after a relaxed breakfast, I went up again with Dinesh; at the summit, the resident goats lounged among the tourists with the unhurried confidence of landowners. Dinner at an Indian restaurant, ice cream at Olivia’s, and Bergen was forgiven. Mostly.
July 9 — Loen
Our new driver, Agnis, all of twenty-five, picked us up for the scenic drive to Loen — a delightful fellow, energetic and knowledgeable beyond his years. We checked into Hotel Alexandra, its windows full of fjord. The Skylift hauled us up a nearly vertical kilometer of cliff to a platform where the valley floor fell away beneath our feet and Lovatnet glowed turquoise below, and we had dinner at the restaurant overlooking that majesty. Back at the hotel we had to request fans — Norway, it turns out, does not believe in heat, and therefore not in cooling either.
July 10 — Geiranger
Agnis took us across to Geirangerfjord, reputedly the prettiest fjord in the world, and the reputation is not marketing. From the overlook the fjord lay far below like a ribbon of blue-green glass, the Seven Sisters spilling down the far wall in silver threads, ferries reduced to toys. We took to the water by boat, small beneath walls of rock a thousand meters high, then drove back past snowfields and a high mountain lake so still it seemed painted. By evening, my party had reached what can only be called scenic overload and began agitating, without shame, for a metropolis.
July 11 — Flåm
Agnis delivered us to Flåm. I did a small scenic hike up the valley — a waterfall came braiding down the cliff as if the mountain had sprung a magnificent leak — and then I forced a boat ride upon my reluctant co-travelers. Zipped into neon survival suits and goggles, dressed like a highway crew that had lost its highway, we flew down the Nærøyfjord between cliffs that closed overhead like cathedral walls. The fjords of Flåm are breathlessly pretty, and even the reluctant were quietly converted.
July 12 — To Oslo
An early ride on the Flåm Railway lifted us out of the valley past waterfalls and switchbacks, and we changed to the Oslo train. The ride was beautiful; my party, by now fjord-proofed, was serenely uninterested. We reached Oslo after three into mildly tempestuous weather that cleared promptly, and the party grew appreciably animated in the pretty environs of a proper city. A stroll to the castle, a small detour home, and then the Eight Bar atop the Grand Hotel, our abode for the final two days. Dinner at the hotel restaurant.
July 13 — Oslo
A taxi to Vigeland Sculpture Park after breakfast — hundreds of granite and bronze figures wrestling, embracing, raging, aging — followed by a city stroll to admire the local houses and a tram ride back. A drink at the Eight Bar, then Indian food that shall remain uncelebrated.
July 14 — Home
An early breakfast, sweet goodbyes, and our sojourn concluded. Back to the airport and the mundane.
Just kidding. Hell was waiting to be unleashed all over again.
The flight from Copenhagen left an hour late, making the Chicago connection tenuous, and Chicago answered with delays of its own — thirty minutes, then hours. Seated at last, we were abruptly rushed off the plane for “severe weather” and commanded to seek “shelter,” though no one ever specified where this shelter might be; only the fear was amplified, loudly and repeatedly, while directions were withheld. The severe weather failed to meet the meteorologists’ exalted expectations, we re-boarded, and ten hours beyond schedule I stood at a carousel waiting for luggage that had been quietly rerouted to another flight — attended, with fail-safe consistency, by the rude indifference of the unconcerned.
Air travel connects the world and has somehow become its least human experience. The contrast was the true lesson of the trip: a landscape of overwhelming grace, bracketed on both ends by institutions that have forgotten what grace is. In medicine I have learned that kindness costs nothing and is worth everything, especially when offered by the strong to the stranded. Norway’s fjords needed no such instruction — they were generous without being asked. Long after the boarding passes are recycled, that is what remains: pewter water, silver waterfalls, the sun refusing to set, and Earl and Agnis, who reminded us that a country’s beauty is ultimately vouched for by its kind.
Day 1: A delay by American Airlines while waiting for soccer fans almost cost us our connection in Vancouver, but with hustle and the help of friendly Canadian Airport staff, we were able to catch our flight to Whitehorse. We stayed at the Raven Inn, where Shashi quickly affirmed the appropriate christening, watching a gull fly by. We had dinner at Taj, an only Indian diner, and headed to bed.
Day 2: After a morning run/walk along the scenic Yukon River in Klondike Park, we drove to Haines Junction and checked in at Alcon Inn. We headed for the Sheep Mountain hike soon afterward and missed the trail sign, but practiced creek crossings before being redirected by a passing hiker from the UK.
Day 3: We took a two-hour sightseeing tour of majestic Kluane Park, witnessing awesome snow-covered cliffs, mighty glaciers, and the towering Mount Lodan with its huge glacier-covered plateaued summit.
Afterward, we hiked King’s Throne to its seat. I was tentative and returned earlier because of the scree-covered, steep ridges, which failed to instill confidence in me. The reckless warriors Shashi and Baj continued undeterred, making their insurance carriers nervous.
Day 3: We hiked at a moderate pace and headed towards Carmacks. A jaywalking bear provided the thrill of the day.
Day 4: After the morning walk/run, we headed towards Dawson. We enjoyed a quick hike to Five Sisters on the way. The Arctic highway had its usual maintenance issues, adding to choke points and smothering dust. We ate at our hotel(El Dorado, (same chicken sandwich and fries every night).
Day 5: We headed to Tombstone Park and were fortunate to have favorable weather for hiking to Grizzly Lake, nestled majestically in Canada’s Patagonia. This 14.2-mile hike is considered strenuous, with steep sections of talus and boulders making the ground underfoot precarious. According to the information board, the hike takes 7 hours one-way. We hurried along and finished the back-and-forth in 10 hours. We reached the hotel a little after 10 pm in the blazing Sun, but found the eateries closed and had to observe a coerced fast.
Day 6: We carried a little fatigue in our legs but pushed through the Golden Side hike, followed by a walk along the Klondike River, interspersed with a trip to the Tombstone Interpretive Center.
Day 7: We packed and headed back to Whitehorse with a short but hard Plume Agate hike squeezed along the way. We ran into an intrepid bobcat crossing the highway, and a wayward moose running too fast for our cameras to capture. In Whitehorse, we had Indian food again at the Taj and headed to bed.
Day 8: Mild workout/walk/run and a short drive to the canyon to see the mighty Yukon squeeze through the canyons before boarding the flight back to Vancouver
Some interesting Canadian facts
90% of the population lives within a hundred miles of the US border.
Less than 1% of the area is inhabited.
The three territories have 40% of the land and 0.3% of the population at 136,000.
Canada has the largest area under glaciers in the world.
It has the largest percentage of Sikhs in its population outside Punjab.
Returning after a long hike. Grizzly Bear Lake hike. 14.5 miles and 4700 feet. Rated among the top five hikes in Canada.
It is located in Tombstone Park in the Arctic Circle with blazing midnight Sun.
Now for the photos.
Dawson is a town of 2000. It looks like a 1800s gold rush town, with unpaved streets and potholes. We are staying at “the historic Eldorado” with “antique” furniture.
When we came back last night, the restaurant was closed, so I enjoyed a glass of milk for dinner .
Long enough for a nation to reinvent itself again and again.
What has been a forever … a constant… is the story of possibility.
America’s belief that a person’s future should not be determined by where they were born, what resources they inherited, or the circumstances they faced along the way. It is the enduring idea that the American Dream should be within reach for everyone.
Few institutions embody that ideal more fully than community colleges.
Community colleges are a uniquely American invention. They were created on a simple premise:
Higher education should not be reserved for a select few. It should be readily available to all who seek to learn, grow, and contribute.
As we navigate an era shaped by artificial intelligence, climate challenges, economic transformation, and rapid social change, community colleges continue to stand at the intersection of opportunity and hope. Yes, we prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow, and perhaps more importantly, we also help them develop the judgment, resilience, and civic responsibility needed to strengthen the communities they call home.
America’s 250th is an invitation to recommit ourselves to the values that have always moved our nation forward: opportunity, service, innovation, and the belief that every person has something to contribute.
Across California’s 116 community colleges, I see those values alive every day.
I see them in the student veteran walking into a classroom after military service.
I see them in the working parent taking evening classes after a full day of work.
I see them in the first-generation college student who dares to imagine a future different from the one they inherited.
I see them in the California Community College faculty member, the classified professional and the administrator who refuses to give up on a single student.
I see them in communities that continue to believe that education remains one of the most powerful forces for individual opportunity and collective progress.
If the first 250 years of the American story were about expanding the boundaries of freedom and opportunity, then let the next 250 years be about ensuring that opportunity reaches every community, every family, and every learner.
The American experiment remains unfinished, renewed by each generation through learning, innovation, and service. Every day, across California Community Colleges, in classrooms, laboratories, apprenticeships, libraries, learning centers, and online, millions of students are writing the next chapter of that story.
As we celebrate 250 years, may we have the wisdom to learn from the past, the courage to meet the challenges of the present, and the imagination to build a future worthy of those who come after us.
That is the work before us.
That is the promise of education.
That is the mission of the California Community Colleges.
Our time is now.
Join the California Community Colleges in marking America’s 250th Anniversary and celebrating the students, graduates, and communities building California and the nation at https://www.cccco.edu/America250 –
My TGIF’s lazy morning was challenged by Fareed Zakaria’s article about liberalism that invites the revolution to move to the center. It got me thinking. Here are some of my nomadic thoughts.
In Adrian Wooldridge’s new book, “The Revolutionary Center,” a brilliant intellectual history of liberalism from the Enlightenment to the present, Wooldridge reminds us that liberalism was once the most radical force in politics. It attacked inherited privilege, monopoly power, censorship, aristocracy, clerical authority, and closed guilds. It was not the ideology of the establishment. It was the battering ram against the establishment
Socialist democrats, a political gadfly, are putting an emphatic stamp on the Democratic Party. Its ascendancy is under scrutiny and anxiety-provoking among most centrists and moderates.
The philosophical core of classical liberalism since the Enlightenment has encompassed individual liberty, limited government, private property, religious tolerance, social pluralism, accountability, free markets, reason, progress, and the rule of law.
Since the 1990s, the laissez-faire approach and the erosion of the essence of liberalism as originally conceived have manifested in corporate consolidations, legacy admissions, meritocratic “aristocracy”, homelessness, obesity, and NIMBYism, among other salient symptoms.
The failure is most glaring at the K-12 level, where union, political, school board, and foundation interests prevail at the expense of the next generation.
The Centrist approach to address this problem, perhaps harshly labeled Paternal Liberalism, is an attempt at reform that seeks to elevate the little guy to a level playing field and connect it with accountability.
The Leftist approach seeks transformation and not reform. The left seeks a system-based redistribution, identity-based politics, and outcome-based liberalism, if it can still use the liberalism label.
At present, the discourse is animated, loud, and contentious. Hopefully, it remains civil. Stay tuned.
My introduction to you happened in the late 1990s.
I arrived in Los Angeles, a foreign graduate student, trying to understand America through textbooks and LA’s RTD routes.
And then I met you.
An institution built on virtues I could not quite comprehend.
Infinite hope. Untiring patience. Radical non-judgment. You met people where they were.
Not where they should have been. Not where someone thought they ought to be. But where they were.
You were born long before I met you in the Central Valley, where community colleges first took root in California soil. Practical. Accessible. Close to home. Built for possibility.
And then you spread.
From the Central Valley – Fresno, Bakersfield, Merced you reached into the Inland Empire – Riverside, San Bernardino out to the eastern edge of our state – the Coachella Valley, Palm Desert, Indio up the North State – Chico, Redding across the Bay – Oakland, Hayward, San José down the Central Coast – Monterey, San Luis Obispo into Los Angeles – every corner, every neighborhood in LA and all the way to the borderlands – San Diego, Imperial Valley.
Across the Sierra foothills. Along Highway 99. Down the 5 and the 101.
Into farmworker towns. Into port cities. Into rural mountain communities. Into urban corridors. Where opportunity needed a doorway you became that doorway.
You evolved.
You empowered people. You improved constantly You innovated for students. You added programs. Added pathways. Added chances.
And over three decades, I have watched you love Californians by taking action in real tangible ways.
I have seen the foster youth who carried everything they owned in a backpack walk across a commencement stage because someone at a community college refused to give up on them.
I have seen the formerly incarcerated Californian who found purpose through education, completed a certificate, earned a degree, and now gives back to their community.
I have seen the veteran, resilient, carrying both visible and invisible weight, find a Veterans Resource Center and a faculty member who said, “You belong here.”
I have seen the student with a disability navigate hallways that were once barriers and find accommodations, allies, and a future not defined by limitation but by capacity.
You do not ask for perfection. You ask for effort. You do not require pedigree. You require courage.
Over two million students a year.
Two million stories of trying again. Starting over. Leveling up.
You are accessible. You are practical. You are relentless in your belief that Californians deserve more.
On this Valentine’s Day, I say it plainly:
I love you, California Community Colleges, – for your open doors. – for your stubborn optimism. – for believing in people before they believe in themselves.
You are California at its best.
And after three decades of watching you in motion … through reform, recession, innovation, and renewal,
I am convinced of this:
If there is an institution built on hope in America,
It is you!
With gratitude, admiration, and love Your chancellor, sonya
.
