The Weather Report Says Its Sunny in California
I woke up on Monday morning in the Highlands Inn in Carmel at 6 a.m. because the sun was on the ocean and seagulls were up and making noise. Everything seemed perfect until I realized that I couldn't swallow and my throat had completely closed up. A tan California room service came down the stairs through the cypress woods with a pot of tea and lemon wedges and a tub of honey. I sat on my porch looking at the waves and the rocks and the cypress trees and drank the entire pot of tea in my bright white bathrobe. I knew I had to get up to San Francisco to our office there and start working, and in theory I was expected by 10 a.m. or so. My throat was still closed and my head was pounding. I was in no driving shape. I wondered where I got this cold -- the ancient vents at the Riviere in Palm Springs? The agricultural dust in the rose farms of Wasco? The sudden change of temperature from Joshua Tree to Hollywood? Bottle brush pollen at Cara's house?
Eventually I made it out onto the Pacific Coast Highway in my Kia Amante in search of a drug store with medicine, preferably one near a Starbucks. I pumped up with Cepacol and Sudafed Severe Cold and a venti latte in the town of Seaside (above Monterey) and hit the road north. I took the fast road north, through Gilroy and the Santa Clara Valley. Some of you may recall that I have written about Gilroy before. Gilroy is the Garlic Capital of the World and has yearly garlic festivals in which every food product available is made from garlic. Garlic soup, garlic juice, garlic ice cream, etc. If you drive through Gilroy at the right time of the year the road is awash in papery garlic skin and the fields are glowing white - like the cotton fields way down south in 'Bama. Gilroy is a maligned town - a haven for migrant workers and a bedroom community for service industry workers in Monterey who can't afford to actually live in Monterey. The next town over, Watsonville, is the Artichoke Capital of the World and they do similar things with artichokes there. The hub of all these agrictultural towns is the Mother of All Aggie Towns, Salinas, birthplace of John Steinbeck, setting for his novel East of Eden and his collection of short stories called hte Long Valley, and the site of my speeding ticket the day before. Gilroy and Salinas give way in about half an hour to Mountain View and Sunnyside and Burlingame and Redwood City. These are the corporate headquarters of Yahoo, Oracle, Google, etc. The two-lane road becomes a 6 lane California highway. Within 2 hours the cypresses and rocks and waves of Carmel have been replaced with Interstate 280 and the Embarcadero and the Bay Bridge.
I went straight to the Mandarin Oriental to continue treating my throat. I checked in and the hotel gave me a pot of "Welcome Jasmine Tea." I asked, "Who's Jasmine?" Nobody laughed. My room has a triple exposure. I can see the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Headlands, Sausalito, Alcatraz, Coit Tower, Angel Island, Treasure Island, and the Bay Bridge, all from my desk window. Many of you will recall that I spent about a year staying in this hotel every month. This is by far the best room I've had here....
Since then about a third of our our team from Palm Springs has reassembled here in San Francisco for a week of meetings with varrious prosecutors. The work load is fairly light, relatively speaking for us. We've made it out to dinner every night so far, which is more than we can say for the average work night in DC recently. For the current and former C&Bers on this list, last night we found Deb Volland who has gone in-house at Morgan Stanley and ate at Plouf in Belden Alley. That's the closest thing you can get to Les Halles in San Fran, complete with appallingly bad service. Tonight, Rittenberg and Steven Anthony and I charged off into Chinatown in search of a place recommended by Zagat's. We were starved and jumped out of our cab as soon as we saw the sign for where we were going. We get in and sit down and think silently to ourselves, "Wha's the big deal about this place? It's like every other Chinese restaurant you've ever been to." We eat. It's fine. I had Kung Pao Chicken, as usual. We drink Chinese beer. It was okay. We leave. On the way out we pass a really nice Chinese restaurant next door with a waiter in a tux and a wall of fishtanks and a window full of reviews from not only Zagat's but Food & Wine and Frommer's and Gourmet.... We had gone into the wrong restaurant. The three of us stood out on the street in Chinatown and laughed. We coulda had a really nice meal! We coulda been contenders! We consoled ourselves by going to Tosca in North Beach to have a few hot chocolates shot with brandy. We felt better. I told Rittenberg and Anthony that Ted Voorhees made me come to Tosca one freezing cold night about three years ago, and I've made a pilgrimage to the place every time I've been in town since then.
I should mention that I have been out here in California for a week now and I have yet to see a single cloud. The weather in SF is not freezing cold and cloudy, as expected. It is 75 and sunny. All the way from LA to Palm Springs to Joshua Tree back to LA to Grapevine and Wasco and Paso Robles and Salinas and Carmel and Gilroy to here -- almost 700 miles and not a single cloud in the sky. I don't think I'm coming back East.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Stories from the Road
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