ADVENTURES IN PARADISE

ALOHA!  Considering the general state of the world, and the U.S. in particular, we’re pretty darn lucky.  We’re still alive, not yet completely decrepit, blessed with good friends, and reaping the meager rewards of decades of living below our means.  So, party till you drop!  We just got back from a week in Maui, at the Wailea Elua condos just below Kihei (southwestern shore).  We were “helping” our old friends, Chuck and Alice, to celebrate their 40th anniversary.  We had the good fortune to introduce them all those decades ago, and have enjoyed the benefits ever since.  They “won” the bidding at a charity event for this private condo, which was absolutely super.  Of course, we’ll go;  what are friends for, eh?  (Chuck’s a transplanted Canuck.)  The above photo looks north towards the Lahaina/Kaanapali end of the island, and shows part of the walk path that runs for a mile or so in front of the beachfront resorts and condo developments, including ours.  Loni and I rolled out early each morning on the path to take our daily speedwalk, and what a setting. 
The condos occupy 24 acres of beautiful grounds, stretching from the sand up to the main road leading in.

Yes, we could get used to this!  Groundskeepers scurried around constantly removing any fallen leaf or frond.  Everything was immaculate.  The condo itself was perfect.  I guesstimate our 2br 2ba to be about 900 sq. ft., and it felt very spacious.  This is part of the living room looking towards the dining room; kitchen (better equipped than our own) is to the left of the dining room.

It had a large lanai-balcony from which we could see the ocean horizon and the island of Lanai (to the right, below).

Our flights over & back were on American, probably my least favorite airline due to their historical culture of being in the forefront of screwing passengers every way possible, thanks to former CEO’s Casey and Crandall.

  We decided to cram everything for the both of us into one suitcase to minimize the checked bag charge at $25.  We did take carry-ons, but made sure they fell within the limits set out on American’s website.  We needn’t have bothered.  They were letting steamer trunks on as hand luggage.  The idiocy of a checked-bag fee combined with lax or no enforcement of carry-on restrictions should be profoundly evident to even the dim bulbs at American, but I guess not.  It was amusing to watch those who boarded after us try to force oversized valises into already-stuffed overhead compartments.  It wouldn’t have been so funny had we boarded after them.  That being said, I really can’t say that I have any complaints about the flights.  They left and arrived on time, the plane was reasonably clean, and the attendants were seasoned pros.  Actually, one was the most, er, mature attendant that I’ve ever seen.  Keep on truckin' gal, keep on truckin.’  The movies were lame (“How Do You Know”) to unbearable (“Gulliver’s Travels”).  I watched the first, if only to break up the 5 1/2 hour flight, but had to turn off the second.  Awful.  They did have a very decent jazz channel, and with the Sennheiser noise-canceling earphones it actually sounded quite nice.  I switched to my iPod Touch later and it sounded even better.
Landing at Kahului,

we collected our bags and jumped on the shuttle to the Budget car rental.  I’d gotten a decent deal using Cosco’s links, which saved us the “extra driver” daily fee of $13.  Budget proclaims that it features Fords, and trumpets the Fusion in its ads, it being the “full” size car it pictures.  Having had one of these when we visited the Big Island a couple of years ago, we opted for it again.  Not.  Despite their ads, despite having “reserved” that specific car, oops, Budget doesn’t even own any Fusions on the whole island.  So, we got “upgraded” to a full size car:  a Mercury Grand Marquis, only inches shorter than the Queen Mary, just as maneuverable, with unlaughable gas mileage.

  Uncomfortable seats front and rear.  The only saving grace was we could get our luggage for four into it with careful squishing, despite the trunk largely being occupied by a full-size spare.  The design of this boat predates Ford’s current nascence, and it truly is a child of the 80’s.  I mounted our GPS (carefully toted from home) and we took off.  Uh oh, red light glowing from the dash, but absolutely no indication what it is for.  Not wanting to risk being charged for a new engine, we circled back and informed the nice girl at the desk.  She came out, puzzled a while, looked in vain for the manual, went over to another copy of the heap, played around there, came back and cheerfully announced that it was no problem.  The other one did it too.  What is it?  Dunno, but don’t worry about it.  Oh, kay.  I noted it on the damage checklist for our car, relying on that to shift the blame if we fried something.  We wound our way south to the condo and settled in.  A quick trip to the market for essentials (read: booze).  The sun definitely was over the yardarm in Los Angeles, so we welcomed ourselves to paradise.

We first visited Maui with C&A over 35 years ago.  None of this development was here then.  Kihei was almost the end of the road.  Time has changed all that, but one tradition remains from that visit:  home made ersatz pina coladas!  Coconut flavored rum, pineapple juice, crushed ice, and vanilla ice cream.  Blend well.  It slides down.  Oh yes, it slides down.  This scene was to be repeated throughout our week.  And thank you to the condo owner for stocking an incredible array of glassware.
My main objective here was to snorkel every day and, except for arrival day, we accomplished that, even on departure day.  The beach right in front of our place was a gorgeous crescent of sand, with a rocky jetty that segued into a decent coral reef that went out quite far.

Notice the windmills snaking up the old volcano to the north.  It’s the Kaheawa Wind Farm, consisting of 20 windmills, each 180 feet tall.  I think it is a visual blight, but it’s claimed that they provide 9% of the island’s power needs, enough for 11,000 homes.  Can’t argue with the need for alternative energy, but I wish they had painted them in browns, to blend in better.
Anyway, we established a pasties-only beachhead,

and decided to gear up with our “rashguard” shirts (for surfers, you know) with their 50-SPF rating to avoid burning our milky bodies while we snorkeled.

Yeah, yeah, hold the smirks.  I look like a blue-footed Booby (Sula Nebouxii for youse Audibon types).  At least I managed to find a mask that doesn’t fill with water, but I hated the mouthpiece of the snorkel.  It felt like one of those “dam” thingies that dentists use these days when doing extensive work on you.  I launched, and started exploring. 

This is a nice reef, and there were plenty of fish to see, including whole schools just hovering motionless except for swaying back and forth in the wave surges.  I have a thing for the weird tube fish, and there were a number of them.  I managed to get into the rocky area, which is not a particularly bright idea, as the wave surges raised and lowered the water level by a couple of feet at a time, making navigating over shelves a little tricky.  Timing is everything.  My rash guard shirt wouldn’t help if I got dropped onto the reef.  I was in a near fully enclosed pool, pondering my next move, when I glanced to my right and was almost eye to eye with a giant sea turtle.  He/she was at least 3 feet long at the shell, and caught in the same enclosure as me.  We swayed in the surges together, and I moved a few feet away so as not to get raked.  It started to swim out and over a ridge, so I followed, fortunately on an upsurge.  I then followed it through the rocks for a couple of minutes, before it finally went where I dared not.  But it was quite an experience.  On the way back I saw a large moray eel slithering into a hole, then popping its head back out and giving me the eye while its jaws were opening and closing.  I kept my distance, and swam back to shore.  As I was sloshing out, I met a guy who asked if there was anything good here.  I assumed my best Cousteau impersonation, and gave him the benefit of my vast experience.  Notice the enthralled audience.  (Why are they all grinning?)
  
All this work takes it out of a guy.  Fortunately, the condo boasted a very nifty library, and I found a Ruth Rendell that I hadn’t read.  Let’s see, page 1, . . . .

I guess I’m at that age where an afternoon nap cannot be denied.
We spent 7 nights here, ate out 5 and grilled 2.  There was a nice grill on the deck, so we bought some marlin steaks, veggies and potatoes and set to work.  Couldn’t find the switch to the porch light, so the camping headband light came in handy to see how things were progressing.

And they progressed quite nicely, thank you.  That’s a homemade orange pepper, cucumber, sweet onion and tomato salsa on top of the fish.  Yum!

Chuck is an accomplished amateur photographer and had just purchased a new camera he wanted to try out on a sunrise over Haleakala.  This is one of those must-do things when you visit Maui, but only once.  We had all done it before, so Loni and I slept in while he and Alice got on the road at 4:30 a.m.  It’s quite a drive, with a 10,000 foot elevation gain, so it takes a while.  Can you imagine the gas that MGM pig was sucking on that climb?  Yikes.  Anyway, they had the good luck of hitting it on the only morning of the week when the peak wasn’t shrouded in clouds, and got some very nice shots.  Here’s one:

While C&A were bagging these views, we moseyed on down to the beach to snag views of our own.  The condo property owns a beautiful little point of land that is fenced off from the public by those hedges at the left.

They place lawn chairs out there so we poshies can lounge in comfort and watch the little people on the beach.  Ah, so THIS is how the other half lives.

Although our little reef was fine, there are more spectacular places to snorkel around Maui.  The diving guidebooks say that little Molokini, an almost entirely submerged volcanic half-cone a few miles off shore, provides the best snorkeling in all of the Hawaiian Islands.  You can only get there by boat, so we signed on with the Boss Frog outfit to take us there.  The trip leaves from Ma’alaea, which is up the coast, just about where the darker shadow mountain line reaches the sea in the picture above.  Check-in was at 7:15 am, so we rolled out in the pigmobile at about 6:30.  Good thing we did, as the parking was extremely limited since all the dive boats leave from this small harbor.  We were on the “economy” cruise, so no double decker for us, just a basic boat.

It was more than adequate.  The bigger boats serve a barbeque lunch, but the cold-cuts sandwich bar we had was just fine.  They serve decent pastries, fruit and drinks on the way out.  It took about an hour to get to Molokini, which is entirely unremarkable above the water.  No trees or significant vegetation.  But it’s shaped like a crescent, and the bay formed by the arms is sheltered from the prevailing winds and currents, resulting in relatively still, clear waters with average visibility of 100 feet.  The boats all set out long anchor lines to stay in position, then we were off down the ladders and snorkeling in the cove.  Molokini is the smaller dark island in the foreground; behind is Kahoolawe.   

This was great stuff.  Brilliant fish, a whopping moray eel, and pretty nice coral.  The visibility was as advertised, which was pretty cool.  We spent about an hour paddling around, which was plenty.  Although the water isn’t cold, it was cool.  Definitely not bath water.  No underwater shots.  We don’t have a waterproof camera, and opted not to spring for the $30 it cost to rent one from the boat.  After we left Molokini and the other dive boats behind (above pic), we headed for one of the spots loosely described as “Turtletown.”  I thought this was one specific location, but it turns out to be a meandering line that varied from 100 yards to 300 yards off the Kihei-Makaha shoreline, running parallel to it.  The turtles for some reason congregate along that “path,” and there are “cleaning stations” where the remora feed off the detritus that clings to the turtle shells.  We didn’t see any of that action, but we did see two turtles swimming along the bottom, which is two more than most people reported.  These were about 30 feet below us, so not the close encounter I had with the one on our reef.  All in all, the trip was well worth it and we’d recommend it if you have a free day.  Cost us $60 each for a five hour excursion, including food.
We were pooped when we made it back to the condos, so we flopped down on the private point and just enjoyed the view.  Ahhhhhhhhh.
 
We really got lucky in our choice of restaurants, and we ate them in the proper sequence.  I had been taken aback a bit in researching the dining scene online, finding description after description of “expensive but once-in-a-lifetime worth it.”  Hmmm, not for us.  During one of our morning walks, we passed a signboard for one of the resorts down the beach that featured one of Puck’s “Spago” restaurants.  The menu showed no appetizers below the high-20’s, and entrees ranging from $38 to $84.  Double yikes.  Sorry, but food just doesn’t taste that good, unless Thomas Keller is personally manning the range.  Our body clocks were slowly adjusting from California time, so we were ready to eat at earlier hours anyway.  Hey, early bird specials anyone?  It appears that most of the standalone restaurants, not associated with a resort, have such deals, and we found that they were terrific.  Full portions, no skimping. 
Our first night we didn’t want anything fancy, as we were tired from the flight.  We ended up at Alexander’s, which was billed as a fish ‘n chips place, but was much more.  There is NO ambiance here, unless low-rent island shack is your thing.  Do not be discouraged.  Three of us opted for the grilled mahi plate (rice & veggie & salad).  For TEN bucks (!) it was just fine.  But the winner was Alice, who chose calamari strips.  Good night!  These were thick, tender, non-chewy, and delicious.  Flip-flop your way here for the best low-cost meal on the island.
Our second nite we moved up a bit in style, and hit the early special at the Big Wave, with a two-for-one deal.  So, for $25, we got two meals of excellent fish, substantial portions.  A nice outdoor area to eat in, but again nothing fancy, although a definite step above Alexander’s on the ambiance scale.  Like a lot of the restaurants in this area, Big Wave is in a strip mall, so there was plenty of parking.
After a home grilling nite, we opted the next evening to start getting a little fancy, and we hit a winner in the 808 Bistro.  This place would be a bargain anywhere, but especially in a ridiculously priced resort area like Maui. We ate off the early bird menu, with three courses for $25! Even without the early (5-6pm) menu, the same dishes on the regular menu are hardly any more. My brined grilled pork chops ( boneless, thick, juicy, and perfectly cooked medium rare as ordered) with caramelized onions with fruit, were delicious. C&A loved their falling-off-the-bone braised shortribs. Both dishes came with garlic mashed and grilled asparagus, a generous mixed greens dinner salad and choice of dessert. We tried all three: sweet hawaiian bread pudding with ice cream, fudge brownie sundae, and two scoops of local-made ice cream. Oye. We were stuffed.

We liked the ambiance of this place, as it had a “Hawaiian” feel to it.  Outdoors eating in a garden setting, either on an open air patio or under a covered lanai.  We preferred the latter.  We decided to make this our final night’s dinner spot as well.
In between, went to a superb restaurant called Cuatro.  This place would be a standout anywhere.  They serve sushi-grade fish in all their preparations, and the seared Ahi was melt-in-your-mouth succulent.  We grinned our way through the entire meal.  A nicely appointed place, again in a strip mall, but not as much Hawaiian ambiance as 808.  More white tablecloth.  This was undoubtedly the best dinner we had, and it would stand up foodwise to the best Los Angeles has to offer at any price.  But, even they had an early special, so we delected while saving.  Good wine list.  It’s a small place, so reservations are almost a must.  We got lucky and just walked in, but I wouldn’t count on that working.
Our last night, back at 808, we took advantage of their BYOB policy (they sell no alcohol, but encourage you to bring it).  We didn’t want wine, but rather more pina coladas!  But how to get them there?  We had the will of the dedicated lush, so there had to be a way.  I mixed up a couple of batches at the condo, found a funnel, and poured them into an empty Sprite mega-bottle that Chuck had finished (he’s our teetotaling driver).  When we got there, we asked for an ice bucket, and voila!  They brought glasses, and we poured scrumptious pc’s from the hilarious green bottle.  We were the envy of all.  Or, the object of ridicule.  We didn’t care.

So, our adventure in paradise ended in an alcoholic stupor.  But that’s one mental image I can live with.  Aloha, and Mahalo!

THE GRATUITOUS CRITIC, vol. 1

Lord, will this guy ever put a sock in it?

Nope.

If you read Metacritic or any similar compilation of critical commentary, it’s pretty obvious that the opinions on any particular work range all over the map.  Who’s right?  Well, no one.  It’s opinion, rooted in each reviewer’s personal history, phobias, fetishes, prejudices, etc.  The best you can do if you’re using someone else to help you make a choice is to generally follow those who, historically, seem to match your own predilections.  Not foolproof, but you gotta start somewhere.  For instance, in movies, I tend to agree often with Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal, which I used to get for a special rate; now I read it at the local library or peruse his reviews online.  He usually found small, quirky movies (often foreign) that appealed.  Lately, not so much.

Books are not much different.  You’d think that getting nominated for, or winning, a Pulitzer or a Man Booker award would ensure a worthy read.  Only maybe.  Again, it’s the prejudices, etc. at work, this time of a small committee rather than an individual reviewer.  Take for example, “Wolf Hall,” winner of the 2009 Booker prize.  Great reviews.  Absolutely hated it.  I couldn’t stand the arrogance of the author virtually NEVER identifying who it is that was speaking during her dialogues.  It drove me crazy. And, sorry, I just didn’t find her recreation of Cromwell’s life all that compelling.

So, in revenge or arrogance, I now inflict upon you my own world view of what I have liked recently.  You can take these opinions to the bank!

MOVIES

Well, this one was easy.  We saw it well before the Oscars, in Indy with Mom, and we all loved it.  Excellent overall, with great acting.  I think Geoffrey Rush got jobbed for Best Supporting Actor.

This was a surprise.  While we have a thing for English costume dramas like King’s Speech, we didn’t know what to expect from this.  It was a wonderful film about a not always likeable character.  Sorry, Colin, but it’s hard not to say that Paul Geamatti got jobbed for Best Actor!  Dustin Hoffman finally gets a decent role and makes the most of it.

Saw The Social Network on Netflix the other night.  The acting is great, but the editing is superb.  Lots of jumping around in time and place, but all logical and easy to follow.  A weird subject for a film, but it worked.  I loved the thrashing that Harvard gets throughout the film.  Smirk.

BOOKS

 

Sometimes best sellers deserve the popular acclaim.  This is one of them.  A great story (how do authors dream these things up?) with fleshed-out characters.  It’s being made into a movie that comes out April 22.  I think it will be a tough translation as it’s really a character-driven novel that could be painted too broadly on the screen.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Now here’s one I never would have stumbled upon but for a recommendation (and loan!) by our daughter-in-law, Alia.  Very neat structure, fictionalizing as a centuries-long mystery the history of one (real codex) of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illustrated with pictures.  Sound dry?  How about romance, death, a harem, Nazis, forgery, and mysterious clues to unravel?  Brooks won the Pulitzer for an earlier work, which I’ll have to check out.

Loni’s become a history buff, so I scour the press for reviews of that ilk.  This is one I found for her last birthday.  When she was done (and loved it), I read it on our last RV trip.  Absolutely fascinating.  This is an amazing piece of history and it boggles the mind to see how it came about, starting with the French effort under de Lesseps.  It’s funny/tragic how the politics of that era look so much like our own.  La plus ca change . . .

SERIES ON THE TELLY

Appropriate to use the British slang as it seems what we like the most comes from the BBC (via, of course, Netflix).

I wholeheartedly second the blurb you see on the cover above. 

“Doc” Martin is General Practitioner, Martin Ellingham, formerly a brilliant and highly successful vascular surgeon at Imperial College London until he develops haemophobia (extreme fear of blood) that prevents him from performing operations. After retraining as a GP, he applies for a post in the sleepy Cornish village of Portwenn, where he spent childhood holidays with his aunt. Despite his surgical brilliance, Ellingham lacks vital social skills and any semblance of a bedside manner.  With this set of rurals, that leads to much mischief.

There are four seasons available on Netflix, but each consists of only 6 to 8 episodes.  A fifth season will start filming this year.  I can’t wait for it to hit Netflix.

If you’re a fan of Masterpiece Mystery, you’ll love this series, which the Netflix algorithm told me I’d like based on my previous rentals.  Hey, it worked!  Don’t know how it missed getting picked up by MM, but I’m glad we found out about it.  Done in the usual, reserved BBC fashion of don’t explain everything at every step, and with complex and troubled characters.

We started watching this years ago, again via Netflix, although I’ve noticed this past year that it’s appearing on some PBS stations.  Best to use Netflix, and start at the beginning, as the character relationships develop over time and some characters are replaced.  This is another “village ensemble” cast, and I got similar vibes to the old “All Creatures” series, only this time set in Ireland rather than the Dales.  This is one of those “comfy slippers” series where you settle in with your fictional old friends.  No broad strokes or slapstick, it’s character-driven comedy that we liked a lot.

Don’t touch that dial!  We’ll be right back.

WHAT’S COOKIN’, GOOD LOOKIN’?

This food blog went to Nirvana this week. 

That’s right, the glutton geeks were invited to a private tour of the L.A. Times’ Test Kitchen!  Only three newspapers in the country still maintain such a facility, and we readers of the Times are lucky that it is one of them.  The Food section is a must read for us, and is an unfailing source of great recipes (that actually work!) and interesting articles on all things food-related.  We have cut out hundreds of recipes over the years and, yes, actually have made dozens.  I particularly love their method-comparison tests, like the “best way to cook a turkey.”  Dry brining won hands-down, and we and the boyos have used it for the last few Thanksgivings to great results.

So, how did we, along with our old friend, Sara, and our new friend, Pebble (she had an older sister nicknamed “Rocky”), get this boon?  Connections, friend, connections.  It so happens that Loni’s oldest niece, Noelle, is the Test Kitchen Manager!  Boy, her “office” is a lot nicer than any I ever had.

They do all of their photo work here and in an adjacent studio.  This end of the kitchen is traditional-homey, while the other end is more high-tech modern, and they shoot at whichever end suits the mood of the article.  Doing food photography is not easy, and is harder here because the newspaper forbids any tricks in the pictures (e.g., no clear marbles at the bottom of the soup bowl to push the goodies to the top).  Noelle oversees a staff composed largely of interns from various cooking schools.  That helps keep the overhead down and the Food section alive.  They hadn’t yet arrived, so we first got a tour of the editorial and old executive areas.  That’s old as in the Times was purchased years ago by the Chicago Tribune organization, which shut down the exec offices here and consolidated in Chicago.  And promptly went into bankruptcy.  But that’s another story.  Anyway, we saw the “bullpen” pressrooms that looked like my sons’ college dorm rooms, endless corridors, the circular seats of boardroom power, and an old linotype machine.  It was clear that there was a lot of unused space due to the cutbacks that all print media are undergoing.  The long corridors are lined with copies of articles and exposes that won Pulitzers and other awards.  They’ve earned a ton, and it was a sharp reminder of how much we absolutely must have a robust Third Estate.  We won’t get that from online blog sources that steal from the wire services and newspapers.  So subscribe to your local paper now!

 

The main entrance to the Times has been closed for some time, probably for security reasons.  It’s a shame, because it is a beautiful lobby, anchored in the center by a large revolving globe.  Even though the entry is closed, the world still turns. 

We made our way back through the corridors and newsrooms to the Kitchen, where the interns had arrived and gotten down to work.  The Times sources its recipes from old and new cookbooks, restaurants, in-house concoctions, and wherever.  But nothing goes into the paper until it has been modified for home cooks (all the kitchen gear is what would be found in upscale homes) and tested, tested, tested.  I think Noelle said that the record was 17 consecutive tests on a dish before it was ready for print.  There were several things being tried out today and the interns were beetling away.

One of the recipes under development was for butterscotch brownies.  They saw me coming.

To no avail.

I declare the recipe a success!  I also had my eye on some half-full bottles of wines that had been tasted earlier, but no glasses were handy and even I won’t drink straight from the bottle.  Not in public, anyway.

Thank you, Noelle, for the very neat tour, and thank you faceless management of the Times that recognizes the value of the Food section and Test Kitchen.

We had some time to kill in the afternoon, and I had yet to find the guayabera shirt I’ve been looking for to sport at son John’s wedding this summer in Puerto Vallarta.  If there’s one thing we have in L.A., it’s a garment district with plenty of Hispanic storefronts.  So, we hopped the Dash bus (all of 15 cents for we senior types)

and we beetled off to the Alley.

English is definitely the minority language here.  That’s what I get for having studied useless French in school.

We walked up, down, over and around.  At least 40 blocks worth of shops.  Do you think we could find one lousy classic Mexican shirt?  Noooooooo.  Everything but.  Only one store had anything close, and their quality was awful.  So where did I end up buying a very nice one?

J. C. Centavo, anyone?

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!

iPod Test

I thought I would test out posting via my iPod. Looks like it will work fine with text, but I'm not sure how to load pictures. And, it looks like the formatting might get screwed up. Just have to post this and see, I guess.