Day 1
Well, on my way. Made it to Santa Cruz. Car holding up so far. Driver holding up so far. Weather is pretty miserable up here, cold and raining.
I’m listening to the book “Wild Shore” by Kim Stanley Robinson, my favorite sci-fi author. The book kept me pretty occupied and relatively stress free bobbing in and out and around cars and semis as the book characters survive post apocalyptic America.
I catch up with my entourage in Hotel Solares at Santa Cruz. We walked over to downtown for dinner at Betty’s Noodle House, one of Max’s local favorites. I had a delicious spicy curry vegetable noodle soup that still has me stuffed. Oh my, I fear for my girlish figure.
We tried to walk a little bit in downtown. There are too many homeless people hanging out under the awnings and door ways. It is depressing. Some unshaven guy walks by with his pants around his knees. I want to smack him upside the head even though i’m sure he is not playing with a full deck. The girls want to go for ice cream but the rain worsens and we opt for a short night out and early evening. Just kicking back in the room now.
Hope you are having a pleasant weekend too.
Day 2
Hey, how ya’ doin’?
Another dark, rainy, gloomy day. Standing on the beach watching a pounding surf batter the rocks the spray jetting skyward in failed attempts to touch the low grey clouds. Admiring the natural bridge, an island arch with a short cropped pelican do daring the waves to run up its steep thirty foot side to muss up their perch. A seagull tries to unzip an unattended backpack. Onlookers watch the surf arms crossed in jackets or holding umbrellas to fend off the drizzle.
What does a college kid want from his dad? A visit to Cosco to get his own Cosco card and to stock up on: Parmeson cheese for bland spaghetti, laundry detergent so he can stop mooching off his roommates, frozen strawberries for smoothies because i tell him fresh strawberries will go bad in days, a 50 pound bag of rice that should last him for the rest of the year if he doesnt let bugs or rodents get to it and a case of beer that i have to smuggle into his apartment because, afterall, he is still underage. (What kind of dad am I?) i draw the line at the 70 inch flat screen.
Son back to school to write an ethics paper on abortion, the rest of my entourage took off early for Monterrey, I stop off at Henri Crowell Redwood State Park for a hike, before catching up with them. The grey clouds drift through the high canopy of the redwoods. The deep woods make a dreary day even darker. I follow the trail to the big grove and beyond taking time to admire the massive trunks that fade into a mystical patch of grey cloud that drifts through the bows like it is a single ethereal entity. I scan the brownish red needle carpeted forest floor for photogenic mushrooms in the droplet dripping ferns, oxalis, moss covered fallen logs. A white coral fungus! Pancake mushrooms, shelf mushroms, plenty of mushroom models to pose for me. It is so dark, miserable for taking pictures. I hope some of them turn out.
I know Sunday is a busy day for you. Hope you get a chance to catch up.
Day 3
Hey, hope your not working too hard.
Decided to hike into Monterey. The clouds have cleared and the pounding of the surf has abated somewhat from the 10 foot swells and the twenty foot geysers of last night. Looking across Monterey Bay, I see fisherman’s wharf and cannery row a couple of miles as the fish swims or the pelican flies but 4.5 miles as the hiker hikes. Its a cool but sunny day. I decide to hike there.
The trail is a bike path that follows the curve of the bay. It cuts through sand dunes that are roped off for rehabilitation protecting buckwheat, primrose and sand verbana to name the few flowers that I can readily identify. The bike path takes a turn for the urban when it merges with Del Monte avenue passing an auto repair place before cutting into a park of large cypress with their wedged branches and eucalyptus trees with their pastel colors of shredded bark.
I find a path that takes me back over to the beach. Beach walkers, paddle boarders, and pelicans each move to their own rhythms and tempo. Seals bark in the background.
Fisherman’s wharf cuts off the beach. I cut through its parking lot to rejoin the bike path that leads into cannery row, the inspiration for John Steinbeck’s novel of rougher times when men harvested the ocean’s for a living rather than plying tourists with an experience and cheap trinkets to boast of their travels.
Past the shops, the restaurants, old cannery buildings, and the famous aquarium. Past kids plying their parents for treats all too willing to accommodate them to keep them happy. Past German and Japanese and Indian and Californian tourists. Past people taking selfies of themselves with the bay and the shops and the streets as a backdrop. Past people with babies strapped to their chests and on their backs and pulling them along in carriers attached to the back of their bikes. Until I rejoin the gang to become part of the scene that i just passed by and one of the tourists I just mocked.
Hope everything is well.
Day 4
Yo!
Hiking at Pinnacles National Park. Two condors disappear through a break in the pinnacles soaring well overhead as I start the two mile 1200 foot ascent. An hour and I half later, I join them at the top of the pinnacles, having ascended on a cool, mostly sun-shaded trail, still dripping with the morning dew. By the time I get to the top, the condors have long since vanished.
But the High Peaks Trail that cuts from the Juniper Canyon Trail to the Tunnel Trail is a special treat. The trail affords long vistas of craggy mountains and the canyons that cut them to the east. The steep and narrow trail traverses up and down the sides of the pinnacles, toe-holds cut into the rock about a quarter the length of a foot and tubular steel railings for handholds. I make my way down a fifteen foot “stair case” wedging my heal into the toe holds, hanging on to the rail, stop for some pictures, traverse under an overhang, and then back up another “staircase”. This stretch of trail quickly becomes one of my favorites.
I start my descent back down, heading down the tunnel trail. The trail cuts through the heart of a pinnacle, the tunnel easily accommodating my height. Then back down to the parking lot collecting photos along the way.
See ya’ soon
Day 5
Unfortunately, the ride takes long enough for me to finish “Wild Shore”. I am not the least bit surprised, in fact, relieved to find out that this book was originally published in 1984. It simply has to be one of the slowest, most painful, books I have ever read or listened to. The action is so, so slow, even slow for an eight hour trip through even more painful LA traffic. How do people day in and day out sit in traffic that moves slower than the idle speed for hours at a time. Fuck LA. Fuck its traffic. And fuck Siri for not finding a better route. But the book progresses steadfastly along, like the Martian hikes where he walks us through every crevice and cranny on the damn planet of Mars. And he ties it together nicely. It is a well-crafted piece but please, please pick up the action. The book is a stream of word pictures, the attention to detail putting us perhaps a little bit too much in the moment.
The traffic gives way. I have a headache. Pain shoots through my left shoulder from an sports injury. My ass bones feel like I’ve been sitting on a wood plank. I step out of the car shivering uncontrollably. I didn’t realize it until just then, I’m not just miserable, I have the flu!
Home!