The Bear's Progress
SkeptoBear's trip to James Randi's Amazing Meeting 2004
Day Three
Pills, prestidigitators and and a lot of Pacific between them
Day three started with another dose of beautiful southern California winter sunshine. After another extraordinarily cheap breakfast at the local bakery, the party set off again for Tijuana. Yesterday had been a scouting mission, but today it was business. We were going to visit Hulda Clark's Mexican clinic, a place where people had been charged up to $15,000 per week to be cured of AIDS (luckily it only takes three weeks) and where cures for cancer were regularly dispensed. (You can read some more about the disgusting Clark here.) Navigation is always difficult in a strange town (and there was a consensus in the party that Tijuana was a very strange town), so we walked in this time. To get to Clark's establishment you go through the turnstile at the border, walk past the taxi rank and bus stops, turn right away from the tourist part of town and walk into what could politely be called a slum. If you click on the picture at the right you can see some more pictures of this salubrious neighbourhood.
One of The Bear's companions observed that while pharmaceuticals were freely available in Tijuana, drug sales in this area would probably be made through the windows of cars. In fact, the street outside Clark's pink house of horrors was used as a location in an episode of the television show The Shield, and it was certainly plausible that a gunfight between police and drug dealers would go unnoticed in this street. It was the only place in the entire World Tour which made any of the travellers uneasy. Did I mention that sick people were asked to pay many thousands of dollars to spend some of their last few days here?
To relieve the depression brought on by seeing this fraud's palace, the team decided on some shopping therapy and set off to buy some souvenirs. The first thing sought was a bottle of genuine Mexican tequila, but when we tried we came up against another quaint local custom. It was Sunday, and the bottle shops were not allowed to open until 10am, apparently so that booze vendors and their clients could attend church. Strangely, however, the large clock on the arch in the centre of the tourist trap district was many minutes fast, allowing shops to open slightly earlier than perhaps the authorities or the bishop intended.
While waiting for the tequila vendors to open, we bought the other essential Tijuana souvenir. How would it be possible for people so horrified by the blatant sale of dangerous drugs in Tijuana to go home without buying prescription drugs without a prescription? And what choice of prescription drug could be better than Viagra? A suitable pharmacy was found and the transaction started. It was then that things became unravelled. 
In an attempt to make small talk, the male traveller who was doing the buying said to the pharmacist that he was buying the Viagra as a souvenir for his wife. Taking a metaphorical mattock in his hands, he then started to dig a metaphorical hole by pointing to his lady travelling companion and saying that this lady was not his wife. Eyeballs were rolled skywards, and the mattock was swung harder as futile explanations about the location and state of knowledge of various wives and husbands were offered. It was pathetic and horrible, and was like watching a car crash in slow motion. From inside the car. He has vowed that if he has to do it again, he will just point and pretend that he speaks neither English nor Spanish.
By the time that the embarrassment had subsided the bottle shops were open, so a suitable bottle of tequila was acquired, we walked back out of Mexico to the car, and set off back to the motel to collect our clothes and computer. (You didn't think we were going to leave the stuff in plain sight in the back of a small station wagon in a car park near Tijuana, did you?). There was one thing we had to attend to on the way, and that was to visit a psychic. 
SkeptoBear had been complaining about how difficult it was to get his palm read in San Diego, but we had seen a large sign which was just off the freeway. Up and down the freeway between San Diego and Tijuana we went in the rental car with the sign on the sun visor which said "Do not change direction suddenly. Vehicle may fall over". The Bear's handlers were getting more frustrated by the minute, trying to find the exit to the palmistry place (even though the forgotten passport had given them the opportunity of an extra reconnaissance trip). Finally, the correct exit was found, the roundabout was negotiated without the vehicle falling over, and a parking spot was found which did not require too much reverse parking on the wrong side of the road. And the place was shut! What sort of a psychic would not know that customers were coming?
Before starting the long drive back to Los Angeles, we decided to spend the money saved by not buying palmistry and not getting into the Museum of Creation and Earth History to visit a real museum. If you are ever in San Diego a visit to the museum precinct is essential. The area is located next to the zoo and contains several museums dedicated to different purposes. There is one devoted to space flight and aeronautics and another which features the history of the American car industry, but the one we were interested in was the Rueben H Fleet Science Center. As it turned out, we didn't have to pay to get in there either. The museum was featuring a display of Australian Aboriginal art and artefacts at the time, and they let us in for free because we were Australians. It is an excellent science museum, although quite small, with lots of hands-on things for kids to play and learn with. SkeptoBear loved the tornado generator, and now wants to go to Kansas to see the real thing.
In a book by a famous American author, it says that the drive between Los Angeles and San Diego is probably the most boring car trip in the world, except perhaps for the drive between San Diego and Los Angeles. He is correct. You do eventually arrive in Los Angeles, however, and if you are lucky you don't get lost. (If you are driving a strange car on the wrong side of the road in a strange city and you are a man you don't get lost, but it might look like it.) If you get lost you can still be lucky and find that if you take the next road to the left it will take you to Hollywood where your hotel is. If you get even luckier, you find that your hotel is one street away from Hollywood Boulevard and immediately behind Grauman's Chinese Theatre. A quick shower and a change of clothes and we were off to The Magic Castle for a night of entertainment and mystery.
SkeptoBear is partial to to the occasional magic show. You can imagine his disappointment when he travelled half way across the world only to be told that he could not get into The Magic Castle because he didn't have a coat. The closest he got was to sit on a gryphon outside and be forced to listen to his handlers' tales of their adventures within. One memorable moment was the collapse of a mentalist act. The magician on stage had asked someone in the audience to think of what they might be shopping for if they were in a supermarket. Upon receiving the answer "Vegemite" he made some remark about obtuse Australians and offered the clue that it was breakfast food. The word "Weetbix" caused blank looks and the abandonment of the trick. The magician did a good recovery and there were no hard feelings. Another magician was flummoxed when he asked a bear companion if she had tickets for a show which was about to start. She reached for his left ear and produced the tickets from thin air. The look on his face was worth the price of admission. Also worth the price by herself was the invisible ghostly piano player whose repertoire is so immense that she has never failed to meet a request. Her versatility was shown by her magnificent renditions of Smoke on the Water, Summertime (she has three versions) and a wonderful fourteen-minute performance of Rhapsody in Blue. If you are in Hollywood, forget the tourist traps and lie your way into The Magic Castle (it is a private club and we were guests of one of the directors). The food is as good as the entertainment, but remember to bring a suit.
And what was SkeptoBear doing while his companions were off enjoying themselves? He was back in the hotel, sitting under a picture of a magician who he was going to meet in real life in a few days and idly flicking through the channels on the television set in the room. Was he unhappy about missing the magicians? Of course he was. Was his unhappiness increased by the knowledge that the other members of the team were there and he was not? Of course it was. Is he a bear who can become quite spiteful if he doesn't get his own way? Sometimes. His clicking finger stopped at the pay-per-view "adult movie" channel. "Forget the Viagra story" he said to himself. "Let them explain these credit card charges to their spouses when they get home". Plus the bucket of honey and the jeroboam of Krug that had already arrived from room service.
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