Big Surf Comes Rolling In

Today, even as the sky shined bright warm blue and fall colors shimmered in the trees, mayhem descended upon the entire Monterey Bay shoreline.  A tall rolling swell coming from north-northwest and big pounding waves conspired to tear kelp beds, beaches, and any hesitant creatures in tide pools completely apart.

There is a muffled roar that is constant, but it has a crescendo-decrescendo of booming lower notes that tell you breakers are hitting the coast.  The surf is very dangerous, accompanied by a rough chop and steady breeze that is sending salty mist high into the air to drift to the treetops of coastal hills.

There is a kinetic intensity to big surf.  It looks like a living thing energized with a wild spirit and magnificent power.  If you watch for awhile, you'll see huge tall plumes of whitewater blooming upward as an especially big roller hits a granite rock outcrop.  There is constant action, incessant movement that has continued for hours and seems to show no signs of waning.

The royal blue sky, leaping plumes of whitewater and roaring sound distract everyone who drives anywhere on the coast.  It's far safer to park and walk, too easy to swerve your car or wobble or stop in the roadway when a big set of waves comes bashing to the shore.  If the swell continues tomorrow, I'll be out there with my camera, dazzled to my heart's content by the big bold free show.

Her Attitude is Golden

We drove into a lot, paused, and up walked a young woman.  She gave us a stub and told us how the lot worked.  Validate and get two free hours or go longer, without validation, and pay $10 for the day.  "Have a nice morning," she said and we drove off to find a space to leave our car.  We instantly forgot her.  And then, I couldn't stop thinking about her.  Parking lot attendant.  $8 an hour.  No benefits.  Full time.  Handing out parking stubs, taking payments or validated stubs back.  Who knew that person in that insignificant job could be significant to me? 


I wondered what it was about her that gave me a good impression.  It must have been her open attitude, a sort of approach that is simple, straight ahead, pleasant and respectful.  In a phrase, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  Treat others the way you wish to be treated.  The simple, perfect Golden Rule.   


A couple of days ago, I read a quote from the San Francisco Giants baseball player Barry Zito (who is paid many millions of dollars a year to do his job) who was asked what he felt like not being able to play in the World Series, and he replied, "You always have to maintain your character. That's all you got. The game is a phase of our lives. Your character is something that sticks with you the rest of your life." 


The parking lot girl must have known that.  It mattered to her to do her job and "put a little mustard on it," as an old coach used to say.  It makes a difference to do whatever it is you do very well.  It attracts in-kind positives right back to you.  Look at me, I'm still thinking about that moment many hours later, and you're reading about it.  I hope I see her again, and I hope she's really busy - spreading the Golden Rule around, showing us all how it's done.  

The Heart of San Juan Bautista

Mission San Juan Bautista State Historic Park is beautiful and so is its little town.  It's simple, old and lovely in a way that authentic old towns are.  If you look very closely; if you jab, poke and look look for flaws, you'll see lots of them.  But, the flaws, when you step back and look at the whole of it, become the exact thing you hope to find when you travel:  Authenticity.  

I don't want to see manufactured happiness or hear recorded messages.  I don't want to be what corporations have calculated I should be or see what they want me to see.  I want to see places like San Juan Bautista that have survived and endured all that its citizens and weather have conspired upon it, and I want to see the streaks of its tears, the laugh lines, the sagging roof lines or the gnarled old trees whose roots bend the sidewalks.  I want to see places that were built out of human necessity, not a corporate calculation to maximize profits and homogenize and neutralize my perceptions.  

San Juan Bautista is old and lumpy and sags at the corners.  Its slip is showing and its shoes are worn, but it is lovely and sweet and more than a little proud.  It surrounds on three sides an old Spanish mission built more than 200 years ago, and the little town moves to and from the mission grounds like the tide flows to and from our shore here in Pacific Grove.  They fill it with joy and sadness, anger and indignation.  As they should, the emotions and ideas of its people appear in its storefronts and along its streets in colors, textures and signs.  

What is most remarkable about this littlest of small old towns in busy, roaring, overpopulated California, is that it retains its charm and authentic character year after year.  Get to know it, and go with an open heart.  Be ready to meet it and sit with it awhile.  Give it time to slow you down to its pace and style.  You'll be the richer for it.  

Cuisine and Romance: Roy's at Spanish Bay

In a state of self-indulgence, we took ourselves out for a very special dinner at Roy's in Pebble Beach this evening.   It was our anniversary, after all, and what better reason to break the bank than love?

We were seated by a window at a table for two and were presented with a menu specially printed with anniversary wishes, a very nice touch.  The staff greeted us and showered us with happiness and salutations.  We smiled and loved it all.  Then, as hoped, the sky presented us with a glorious sunset filled with gold, scarlet and dramatic clouds.  Surfers beyond the Spanish Bay links were catching beautiful curling waves in an unusually consistent set of breakers.  At about 6:30 the traditional bagpiper played for everyone outside on the patio that extends out to the links beyond the restaurant and hotel.  It's not required, by the way, to pay to hear him play.  One of the most romantic and unique experiences one can have on the Peninsula is to include sunset over crashing surf and bagpipes playing.  Of course, a drink and a bite to eat out there is even better.  

We had quail with mango chutney as well as kobe tataki for starters and then moved on to a complicated tower of various things comprising a delicious salad.  Edamame kept us busy as a complimentary nibbler dish, welcome change from bread or chips.

Roy's specializes in Pacific Rim cuisine with many island touches including bequeathing shell leis to celebrants like us.  Main courses consisted of sea bass with crab crust on swiss chard and seared ahi tuna, wasabi sauce, ginger and bok choy.  Dessert rounded us out - literally - with a plate of homemade cookies from the dessert chef and pineapple compote with coconut ice cream set in a small cup of crisp pastry, served with coffee.

Dinner was special, just as we knew it would be.  Roy's has a fine reputation for gracious service, a very romantic setting on Spanish Bay, and inventive foods made with products from the sea right out there beyond the window as well as the agricultural riches from all around the county.

Love was the theme of the evening, for obvious reasons, but was also felt in the staff's gracious attitude and intelligent presentation of very good food.  That special ingredient elevated the evening and added a rare serendipity that good restaurants make look effortless.  Cheers!  

Rain Coming

The shifting clouded sky looks haunted, distressed.  It's streaked with tattered shreds that look like dreams and nightmares, vaporized and drifting aimlessly.  Ominously fantastic clouds are stretched from one corner to the other of the heavens.

There is a heavy swell piling up on rocks and shoreline, overwhelming tidal pools and then draining out in gurgling rivulets.  Long heaving rushes of water, each one going further up the shore than the last, have interludes of silence between them, as if they are pausing to consider staying or returning once again.    

The air stinks of guano and rotting seaweed, nearly palpable in its density, at lower tidal zones, in areas shielded from currents and waves.  When the breeze blows, it's edge is cool and sobering.

An encounter between warm, heavily moist clouds from the south west and cold impatient currents from the northeast are meeting at the shore, high overhead.  Today the sky is haunted with sad memories, sagging with regret, weeping with remorse.  Teardrops of rain are flowing, running, trickling down the hillsides, eventually joining the salted depths of ocean waiting at the shore.  The swells gather them into their arms, forgiving, grateful.