THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE MORN’

A nice, easy trip up the coast to Morro Bay.  Simple.  No Drama.  Relaxing piece of cake.

Not.

Last Tuesday we brought Albatross home from storage and loaded it up with food, clothes, Sea Eagle kayak, and all the usual paraphernalia that we lug along on our trips.  We were off for two destinations.  First, to our old (college) friend Paul’s place in San Luis Obispo for a visit and fine wining and dining.  Faithful readers know that this blog should be subtitled “Eating Our Way Across America,” and Paul’s kitchen and wine cellar would rate three stars from Guide Michelin any day.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

We finished all the interior loading, ran out an extension cord to get the fridge going on electric to keep things cool, and buttoned her up for the night.  We planned to leave Wednesday morning, with the only significant thing remaining being to load the scoot.

CUE MUSIC (turn on your sound, then hit “control, click” on this link) 

We have loaded the scoot over a hundred times.  Yes, o.k., so I shot it off the end of the rack once.  That was early on.  We’re pros now, right?  Right?

When loaded, the scoot sits on a tray and leans slightly forward towards the rig, resting against a vertical post.  We then secure it with cinch straps for travel.  What could go wrong, you say?

Well, for starters, it helps to be parked on a level street.  We had to position the rig in front of our neighbors’ driveway as the street is too narrow in front of our house.  The street here has a very slight – nay, imperceptible, I say! – slope up.  We get the scoot up the ramp, lean it against the post, walk around to fasten the straps, and, well the arrow tells the tale.

  

This, of course, is an old photo.  We had not yet attached the straps.  I was fiddling with the strap down by the bumper when all of a sudden there was this tremendous BANG and I stood there stunned, staring at 344 lbs of Vespa now on its side in the road.  Apparently, because of the slight incline of the street, the angle of repose had not yet been accomplished.  We were right on the cusp of balance, and the cusp failed.  Damn those cusps!  I was so ticked off that didn’t think to get a picture of the carnage on the pavement.  Loni and I wanted to get it upright immediately to prevent a fuel leak, or something.  We got it up on the wheels, cringed at the mangled sidepod, scraped trim, bent brake handle, and busted fender reflector.

On the hoary theory that if you fall off, you get right on the horse again, I mounted up and drove it down the block, expecting it to crab sideways and throw me into the gutter.  But no.  All hail the mighty steel Vespa!  The darn thing actually ran straight and true.  So we loaded it up, with Loni this time pushing it against the post while I made fast with the straps.  Hmmm.  Think anyone can tell we dropped it?

Sniff.  I need to put a band-aid on it.  So much for looking fine while tooling around town.

This was not an auspicious start to our trip.  And it was not the only thing to go bump in the morn.’  (I’ll spare you further music cues.)

The trip up the coast on Highway 1 through Malibu and up to Oxnard, and then on 101 to SLO, was very pretty, the air being very clear and the Channel Islands popping out like they were a stone’s throw away.  Many times you can’t even see them through the sea mist air or fog.  As we passed all the gas stations advertising $4+ gas, I was happy I had refilled three weeks ago at “only” $3.53.  This RV stuff is starting to look a bit doubtful at these prices, and we’ll probably see $5/gal. before much longer.  We’ll have to camp out in the storage yard.

Chez Paul, we forgot our scoot woes and settled in to oh-so-fine wines and delicious food.  We started with shrimps dipped in Paul’s excellent homemade cocktail sauce, some yummy cheese and crackers, and a bottle of Anglim Roussanne 2007, a very nice white with a great mouthfeel and plenty of fruit.  Anglim is a Paso Robles winery, just up the road from SLO.  Paul gets almost all of his wines directly from the many wineries in the Central Coast area.  Then it was off to the grill for marinated flank steak, grilled potato slices (with olive oil and seasonings), and grilled artichokes, a first for us. 

  The meal was paired with two outstanding old vine Zinfandels that we drank side-by-side to compare as the evening went on.  The first was from the 1880 label of Saucelito Canyon winery there in SLO.  The vines for this wine actually were planted in 1880, are dry farmed, and produce an intense wine.  The winery considers it to be its crown jewel.  I’m sure it was priced accordingly, and all but a small portion was available only to members of its wine club, like Paul.  The second wine was from the Zin Alley winery in Paso Robles, dry-farmed as well from grapes sourced exclusively from the Nerelli estate.  If you could find either of these in a restaurant, they would easily be $100 a bottle.  So, THANK YOU, PAUL!

The food was great, even if we all had a hard time finding any flesh on the artichoke leaves.  The grilled meat was a perfect accompaniment for the wines.  We all started out liking the 1880 best, then after 10 or 15 minutes, the preference shifted to the Zin Alley.  After that, each of them kept changing as they opened up more and more.  It was amazing how the flavors shifted around, but always utterly delicious.  We grinned like demented satyrs (and satyress!) throughout.  We finished the evening with a Late Harvest Zin dessert wine that was supposed to be paired with the flourless chocolate cake I had made before dinner.  The cake was not a success. I couldn’t find my favorite recipe, and had to settle for one from Joy of Cooking.  Came out grainy and bitter.  A sweeter chocolate, or more sugar, would have helped.  Whipped cream and a raspberry coulis helped some, but the Late Harvest Zin just about had to go it alone, which it did in fine fashion.  3 1/2 bottles for the three of us was just right, as we started about 5 o’clock and ended at 10.  Chez Paul did it again!

We took our leave the next morning and motored on over to Morro Bay State Park Campground, only 15 miles away.  This was to be a non-Caravan Club gathering of any Lazy Daze owners who cared to make the trip.  Ultimately, we had 34 rigs show up, with 60+ people attending.  Kudos to Larry W for organizing this for the past few years.  We get to meet not only old friends, but new faces as well.  Lots of folk from northern California, Oregon, and elsewhere that we seldom see or have never met.  We made a beeline shortly after we got there for lunch at the Bayside Cafe, which fronts the small boat harbor across from the entrance to the campground.  We’ve eaten there before, and it’s ridiculously good.  I had clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl, and Loni had a combo of the chowder with a ladle of spicy pepper soup floated in it.  Both were delicious.  We went back for dinner.  Slipper lobster tail pasta for me (excellent), and sole for Loni (overcooked, not so good, a first at this place).  We finished with a huge slice of homemade carrot cake.  Urp.

We now interrupt this idyllic account with, well, read on!

We crashed somewhat early as we planned to get up, do our morning walk, and get the kayak inflated and on the water before the winds came up.  “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft agley.”

We did get up early, and were actually starting our walk when we saw Renee and Nancy scurrying furiously from coach to coach, banging on doors and saying something to the occupants.  They came to us and said, “Did you hear about the earthquake in Japan and the tsunami warning?”  Uh, no.  When they said it was an 8.9, and that a tsunami was expected to hit California in 30 minutes, we did a bit of gulping and ran back to the coach to watch the t.v. news. 

 It was all local.  We couldn’t get a national feed, so we were stuck with inane reporting bordering on hysteria or camp.  What was clear was that the embarcadero portion of Morro Bay had been evacuated, as were many other coastal communities.  Our campground is about 10 feet high, and is across the road from the bay.  On the theory better safe than sorry, we, along with four others, moved to higher ground.

That’s us, behind the car.  The rest of the rigs stayed put, perhaps having gotten better intel than we did.  Anyway, we waited the half hour, watched t.v., saw it was much ado about nothing, and returned to our site.  Most of those that stayed had hiked to the top of a hill that overlooks both Morro Bay and the small inlet that forms the boat harbor across from the camp. 

That’s the view towards Morro Bay, which is north of our campground.  The Bay is protected by a miles-long berm, with the only inlet being right in front of the Rock.  The water enters there, then fills the bay down to the south where we are.  From this view, all one could see of the multiple tsunami episodes was that the tide seemed to rise and fall every half hour or so.  From the other side, you could see the south bay and the inlet to the Cafe boat harbor.

At the time of this picture, the water had flowed out, leaving the mud flats you see in the distance, and a small current that flowed into and out of the boat harbor (to the left, out of the picture).  When the tsunami tide started rising, the mud flats got covered with water, and a strong current started to flow into the boat harbor.  The result was that the dock that held the rental kayaks broke off and pivoted around.

As you can see, this harbor is a “dead end,” closed at the far end on the left.  As a result, the water flowing in from the tsunami tide rising (only about 4 feet) has a magnified effect in this confined space as it rushes towards the back.  It sort of rebounds off the end of the boat harbor, and created problems for one older cabin cruiser that broke loose from its mooring.

The Coast Guard was milking the situation for all the training hours they could get in.

But that was pretty much the extent of the damage and the “excitement.”  We didn’t get to kayak, as the bay was closed to all boating because of the waters moving back and forth.  We didn’t find out the extent of the tragedy in Japan until we got home, days later.

We decided to walk into town to get the exercise we missed that morning.  The town’s main harbor seemed completely unaffected, with everything neat and orderly.  However, the place was a ghost town here at the embarcadero area, as most everyone either evacuated or stayed away.

The local wildlife was blase about the whole thing.

That’s an otter, in case it isn’t clear.  Considering the devastation across the Pacific, it seems almost embarrassing to be in such an idyllic spot.  This is part of the path back from Morro to the campground.

The rest of the stay was completely uneventful, and we had a good time visiting with everyone, attending rig maintenance sessions, having “open house” for viewing others’ modifications and gadgets, and, of course, chowing down enormous quantities at each of the two potluck dinners.  We also got a very nice gift from Barbara A.  She had treated us to a waffle breakfast at a previous getogether, using a nifty stove-top waffle iron.  We admired it, and she said she’d keep an eye out for one for us.  She found one and very generously gave it to us.  So, we invited her for breakfast on Sunday departure day, and feasted on blueberry waffles, bacon, and a fruit bowl.  It took Loni a waffle or two to master the technique, but they tasted great!

The later ones popped out just fine once the griddle got seasoned.  This will go with us on all our future trips.  Thanks, Barbara!