After a short detour to explore caves and implore cows at Pinnacles National Monument, a pleasant if oft-overlooked park in the range separating the rather plain Salinas Valley from the even more drab Central Valley, we stopped for a bite to eat at a taqueria in Soledad. While Patricia checked on her ill mom's health, I munched on tongue.
NOT cat tongue!
She checked in the Hotel Bohème in San Francisco's North Beach, a district once replete with Beat poets and wannabe poets, before the 1960s would bring another lively crowd to town. Sandwiched between a populous and tumultuous Chinatown and a touristy Fisherman's Wharf, it is home to lots of European-inspired delis, cafes and restaurants. Not that bugs present too much of a problem in the City, but the hotel saw fit to equip each bed with a net, from behind which Patricia could find refuge from indiscrete stares.
The trip north provided an excellent opportunity to nab my other friend and hiking partner Peter. After successive relocations to Eureka, Calif., then Eugene, Ore., and finally Bellingham, Wash., within sight of the Canadian border, he decided to shorten the space between his Santa Barbara origins and a new hometown when he picked Windsor on the outskirts of Santa Rosa in the North Bay. The man may relish tall trees and year-round greenery, but he also admitted that 364 days of rain gets old and moldy quick. When he pulled in from of the Sequoia Theater in Mill Valley, he was wearing shorts for the first time this year. It was 27 May!
Check out the pale legs climbing up the Hogback on the way to Mount Tamalpais, a southern Marin landmark overlooking pretty much the entire known world.
We paused on the east side of the summit, sheltered from the blustery howls coming in from the Pacific. I met a group of people from France - including some from the Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean - who questioned the concept of our mythical California weather. I confirmed it is indeed a myth..
We finished the day on another French note by attending a hilarious modern adaptation (screw the rich then, screw the rich now) of Molière's "The Miser" ("L'Avare" in the original) at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. I blame you, Monsieur Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, for indoctrinating my young impressionable teen mind with distaste for greed and ridicule of financial idolatry. Imagine what I could have achieved, what my generations and those that preceded me down this infantile respect for core human values could have achieved, if instead you would have written a play venerating money? It is not too late. For the sake of future generations, our children, I beg the French (and European, for that matter) educational authorities to reject Molière and his ilk, these leftists miscreants, and shower us with prose and rhyme that venerates our true God.
(And because we had a puttanesca that forgot to include spicy peppers, olives and anchovies at a restaurant before the show, I have volunteered to perform my interpretation of the classic Italian sauce for Patricia tomorrow..)
While I had to fly back home to attend to my official city duties (!), Patricia eventually went on to Point Reyes National Seashore, where I was introduced to the concept of wilderness when I was 16. This picture of Limantour Beach was taken in December 2005. A magnificent place, possibly because it sits on the Pacific Plate and not on the American one...
In that spirit, also check out the awnings of City Lights Bookstore, coincidentally half a block from the Bohème Hotel.
The Hinduism concept of dukkha explains the pitfalls of being ignorant of ignorance. Sometimes I wonder if we, smug in our earthly paradise and oblivious to all but the first inches of our immediate vicinity, could not use a refresher course.
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