The Best of Both Worlds, Part One

Saturday, March 6. With only two full days left before Steve returns on Monday, Phil and I each chose one excursion for today. Luckily they just happened to be only a few miles apart. I chose to visit Tor House in Carmel and he chose to take a look at the Lodge at Pebble Beach. So we had the yummy cherry cream cheese danish from Gayle's, a bagel and a hard-boiled egg with juice and coffee. I'm trying to watch my cholesterol, but hard-boiled eggs are such a neat and tidy breakfast, they're hard to resist. I throw away part of the yolk and use Spike for flavoring, but still feel a little guilty. I must say, I have not used any of my leisure time for exercise or other health-related concerns during this pretirement experiment. Phil's hypertension has not improved much either despite the lack of a commute. We have given time and thought to meditation, which we hope to continue once we return to Long Beach.

Before setting out for our destinations to the south, we took Dixie for a short walk. She wanted to go out again for a drive, but was a good sport about it when we put her back in the house. Phil called Katherine and Kevin to check on his mother's condition, but didn't connect with them.

The drive down to Monterey is becoming pretty familiar, but there always seems to be something new each time that catches my eye. This time I enjoyed the signs in a few fields telling the crop being grown with colorful 50s style characters holding produce. I always like to guess about the crops in the fields I pass, so I hope this is a "growing" trend. We stopped to stretch our legs in the Carmel shopping district and were bowled over by the prices at some of the galleries, not to mention home prices listed the realtors' windows. Phil has many memories of visiting here, but for me it is always a freakish place where people have all agreed to pay too much for everything.

We had a little trouble finding Tor House. After having read about it and heard it mentioned from time to time, I was surprised to discover the old stone cottage and rustic tower built by poet Robinson Jeffers for his wife and family is not on some remote hill overlooking the sea. It's smack dab in the middle of the million dollar plus homes we'd been reading about in the Carmel realtors' windows. There's even one imposing plate glass conglomeration that looks right down into the rose garden. We hadn't made a reservation but the tour guide very nicely made an exception for us and we didn't have long to wait before the tour began.

The design of Tor House is every bit as romantic and eccentric as you'd expect something built by a poet to be. Actually, Una Jeffers, Robinson's wife, seemed to have as much to do with the planning as he did. Their mascots, the hawk and the unicorn, appear all over the house, which is handbuilt of native stone rolled right up from the rocky shore and low-ceilinged because it was heated only by fireplaces until the 40s. Our tour guide had wonderful anecdotes to share, like when Una would thump the ceiling with a broom handle when she heard Robinson pacing too much, and she even read several poems that related to specific parts of the house. I found it inspiring that the poet would write every morning and then put in several hours each day on building the house. Sort of like the Winchester house, he kept adding on rooms and additions.

The most spectacular part of the place is a freestanding tower he built with an outside stairway and a "secret passageway" so narrow you have to go in shoulder first. The three story structure offers several striking views of the roaring surf and rocky coastline from Pebble Beach all the way to Point Lobos. Standing on top in the salt air breeze with pelicans soaring by only a few feet above our heads gave a little hint of how remote the setting must have been when the Jefferses first began to build their house there. It was by far the most memorable tour of a historic home I have taken in a long time.

Out of this World -- in Santa Cruz and Beyond

Tuesday, March 2. We woke up to heavy rain this morning which escalated to a downpour. I settled in to write some blog posts while Phil had a telephone interview. With the rain pelting the windows and hammering the roof, we began to feel a little stir crazy. I got the assignment of finding a place to go for lunch. After surfing the Internet for a while, I came across the Saturn Cafe. It had great reviews and the website was a treat for the eye.

By the time we drove to Santa Cruz, the rain had let up to a drizzle. The Saturn Cafe is at 145 Laurel on the south end of the downtown shopping district. It's part of a row of stores with parking in the back, but its circular exterior sets it apart from the average minimall. The interior design is truly kooky, quirky and one of a kind. Many of the globe ceiling lights have pink rings around them like, well, Saturn, and lots of the furnishings, like the fifties era refrigerator near the entrance reflect the pink flamingo color scheme. The booths around the outer ring of the dining room have plexiglass tops over shallow display areas with kitschy knick knacks from bygone eras. Our table had butterflies and flowers and doves in assorted day glo colors.

The menu features vegan and vegetarian comfort food. I had corn dogs and Phil had a Tuno Melt -- both of them soy based imitations of the kind of thing you'd expect in any diner. We also had thin fries which wer delightfully crisp. Our waiter was happy to explain to us about the origin of Tuno and how the Saturn had a special recipe for its tuno salad to make it even more fishy tasting.

Phil had a phone interview, so while he talked in the car, I went for a little stroll up Beach Hill to get a view of the ocean and check out some of the glorious old Victorian homes along Main Street. The most glorious of all is Golden Gate Villa, an imposing multi-gabled beauty with an equally ornate carriage house behind it. It's so large I assumed it must have been built as a boarding house for vacationers, but it was actually a private residence for many years and now appears to be up for sale for a mere $8,500,000. What a time to have forgotten my camera.

By the time I got back to the car, Phil had finished his interview, so we headed for home, stopping off at Aptos Coffee Roasters for a couple of cups to go and some low fat oatmeal cookies. After a while, we put Dixie on her leash and headed for Hidden Beach again. Because of the downpour earlier, there weren't many people out so we walked all the way down to the beach. The breakers were phenomenal, cresting about ten feet above the water's surface in row after thundering row. The water was so churned up that frothy clumps of foam lay scattered over the beach like huge meringues. We walked along the water's edge for a while, but the surf was so loud that having a conversation was impossible. We climbed stairs labelled "No Trespassing! No Loitering! Observe Leash Law!" over a massive molded concrete sea wall and into a gated community.

Lucky for us, this enclave of million dollar homes carefully tiered row after row up the palisade to maximize the ocean views just happened to be the terminus of Club House Drive. We trudged up the hill, across the train tracks, and around the bend, braving the seemingly endless stream of SUVs and minivans blythely doing 50 in a 25 mile an hour zone. Everyone, even Dixie, was relieved to finally make it to the actual club house so we could detour into the relatively quieter limited access streets and finally home.

We thought Dixie would be exhausted by the long walk, but she was more energetic than ever, circling the living room as break neck speed and barking up a storm. Before our "little glass of wine," we had a meditation session and Dixie seemed disturbed by our sitting so still. She had a couple of extended barking spells and needed a lot of petting to reassure her after we were done. With our wine, we had a nice dinner of Greek salad and salmon, ratatouille and pita bread with bread pudding for dessert. We talked to Phil's aunt and Drew and Tony after dinner and settled down in front of Steve's toasty stove for an evening of emails and Sudoku.

Rainy Days and Sundays

February 28. It was a little sad waking up Sunday and realizing that Drew and Tony have to leave today. We had a very healthy breakfast of oatmeal and bran muffins, and then they started packing and even fitted in the extra set of golf clubs Phil had brought up for Peter. The weather was fine, a brisk wind and blue skies with dramatic billowing clouds. We drove two cars to Pacific Grove and stopped at Toastie's for brunch. It's got a great country kitchen decor and generous servings and the place was bustling with the after church crowd.

We walked around town a bit and then went down to Lover's Point to watch the surf. Maybe is was the aftermath of the earthquake off Chile or maybe it was storms at sea, but the breakers kept thundering in and booming against the rocky coastline. We walked from one location to another and took lots of photos of course. Silly us, how can you possibly make a wave stand still? Phil got a call from Peter and learned that his mother was doing better and would be able to go home on Monday.

Around 2 pm, Drew and Tony got in the Mitsubishi and headed south, and Phil and I got in the Honda and took the coastal route by the golf course and even drove through Asilomar. We decided if tomorrow was not rainy, we'd return to Pacific Grove. Phil hoped to get 9 holes in and I wanted to see the butterfly grove and the Pinos Point Lighthouse. We had put off a special Valentine's Dinner (we had thought Peter would be visiting us that weekend) so we decided to find a nice restaurant in Pacific Grove and have a dinner out there.

The drive from Aptos to the Monterey area is much less hectic than the drive north. The road passes massive sand dunes and acres and acres of cultivated fields, strawberries and artichokes mainly. Now and then, there'll be a farm stand with piles of brilliantly colored fruits and vegetables, and glimpses of farm towns like Castroville and Watsonville in the distance. It's just a thumbnail of all the growing that goes on in the Salinas Valley and the San Joaquin further east, but it's very restful and reassuring taking a Sunday drive in the country--a throwback to childhood.

As we passed the huge towers of the power plant at Moss Landing, a long-legged crane stood right by the side of the road, watching us pensively as we passed. The Elkhorn Slough is a well-known bird sanctuary and has become a kayaking mecca of sorts. It was fun to think we'd bagged a birder's trophy from the comfort of our car.

Back home, we took Dixie for a long walk all the way to Hidden Beach. She was in high spirits, prancing ahead of us on her leash. We met a Pekinese mix (with an owner attached) and the owner explained "parallel socialization" to us. If two dogs are confrontational meeting head on (as Dixie and the Pekinese were), they may slowly accept each other if they walk side by side for awhile. We tried it with excellent results for the humans. The Pekinese's owner had lots to tell us about his trips to India and the care and feeding of small dogs. Sad to say, the two dogs were still a little snippy with each other as we parted ways at the intersection of Los Altos and Dolores.

The pathway into Hidden Beach, hemmed in by two steep hills, is always a little spooky to me, made even spookier by the shadows among the towering eucalyptus trees and the ominous hooting of an owl. Phil had heard the owl when he walked the golf course, so he knew what hole we were near. Most of the families at the playground were packing up to go home, and we passed several dog walkers heading home too. We did make it to the crest of the path by the park benches for a look at the surf. Thick cloud cover made the sunset pretty murky so we didn't linger. Dixie is such a little trooper. She made it all the way home on her own steam and gobbled up her dinner.

We had a more leisurely dinner of fat free refried beans and tofu burritoes and rice with half a beer. We have been reading passages from the Jon Kabat Kinn book and wanted to be relatively clear-headed for a meditation session. It went well. Dixie sat quietly on the sofa between us, like a miniature Buddha. (Hats off to Ron Burgundy) Then we finished watching Hitchcock's Vertigo and I got curious about the San Francisco locations. Phil said we could stop by San Juan Bautista on the way home if the timing was right and the rain wasn't falling.

Oddly enough, having spent most of the day away made Steve's house seem more like home to us. We settled in to a nice deep sleep. We can't figure out why we're sleeping so well. Is it the quiet or the cold or pushing back our sleep schedule to 11 pm or is it pretirement?