Breakfast: Just the gentle rustle of the Los Angeles Times, the sight of Chester and Lily snoozing in their respective dog baskets and a brilliant blue sky framing the palm trees outside.

I took a sip of tea and placed my new favourite super sized mug down on the table.  “You know I can’t for the life of me remember what we did on Thursday” I said to no one in particular. Han glanced up from the Calendar section as Eric exclaimed: “The Integratron! How could you forget?!”

Indeed how could I.  We’d driven miles out into deepest Mojave desert, through one horse towns on a Spring So Cal day with the temperature hitting around 28 degrees. Parking up amongst our fellow ‘time travellers’ we wandered into a cute garden.  Hammocks, delicate trees just coming into flower, a font type structure on top of which lay various sized stones, and other paraphernalia prettily decorated a stoney dusty fenced-off area.

Outside, in desert sunshine we took it all in.  A short distance away from the garden stood The Integratron; a gleaming white dome with a small door facing out where our pop-up sound bath awaited us. “I think it’s gonna be great today” said a lady with exhuberantly painted pale pink lips. “Be very careful of your intentions ladies, we’re at a particularly magnetic time right here, right now.”  “And” she went on, “There’s a full moon tonight – you can’t really beat that” she said chuckling as she batted her lengthy thick black eyelashes.

Twenty minutes later and we were lying down on the upper level of this parabolic shaped structure:  All wood inside, it was quite something. Our instructor took us through the drill:  A bit of crystal drum playing would be followed by some soothing music.  But I was too busy thinking about George Van Tassel (Architect of the original Integratron) contacting the extraterrestrials to take in much more of what he was saying.

I think it’s fair to relate after the loud ringing noises produced by our guide’s playing, the whole dome nodded off.

An hour later we were blinking in the blazing sun outside again. A group of people stood chatting next to me as I put on my trainers.  One of them emitted a long low whistle followed by: “Jeez, it got pretty rough in there at one point.” “Oh yeah!  For sure…I was just floatin’ all over that place, holdin’ onto my mat!” his friend replied. Further exclamations followed with the occasional soft chuckle.

I looked out across the desert: Nothing for miles.  I tried to imagine a space ship landing and figured if I spent much more time out here I might just see one too.