Oregon Coast to Vancouver, B.C.

I spent last weekend with Tom Harvey and Jean Spraker in Manzanita, on the Oregon coast. Tom was my first grad student, and is now the Chair at Portland State University. He and Jean live in a small condo in the (now) very upscale Pearl District in Portland. When they moved in years ago, they were urban pioneers – most of the Pearl was still industrial, and the infrastructure for upscale, cosmopolitan living for which the area is now known had not yet been developed. Today the Pearl is one of the premier neighborhoods of Portland, and boasts amenities such as the Performing Arts Center (the repurposed Armory where we saw Crazy Enough – see earlier blog) and Powell’s Books, not to mention lots of eateries, boutiques, and the like.

As nice as living downtown is, one of the reasons people reside in Portland is to enjoy the spectacular natural environment that extends in all directions, from the Columbia Gorge to Mount Hood to the Oregon Coast. As the economy has boomed, so has the development of the second home market, and the coast is a particularly desirable area. Tom and Jean managed to find a lot in Manzanita, and recently built a house there with views of beautiful trees, and a bit of the Pacific. Manzanita is interesting – unlike most of the coastal towns, it seems to have vehemently eschewed anything smacking of touristic kitsch. There are almost no tourist-oriented establishments in the small community. Instead, it’s nearly all homes – mostly deserted during the week, and bustling on the weekends. Only an hour and a half from Portland, it’s a reachable (if not necessarily affordable) location for coast houses and cottages. And it’s within reach of some stunning beaches, state parks, and trails.

My GPS serendipitously routed me to the coast via Oregon 53, a narrow, twisty road that ends up following the Nehalum River down to the bay of the same name, just south of Manzanita. The temperatures dropped as I approached the coast – it’s often extremely windy here, making this stretch a destination for kite flyers and kite-surfers (they surf while being pulled along by kites that look more like parasails). At Tom and Jean’s, after unloading the bike, we immediately went down to the beach, and saw firsthand why the trees in the area are leaning at rather alarming angles (blowdowns are common, and there have been some rather spectacular wind storms that have devastated large areas of forest). The next morning we got to explore even more. We spent the morning on the beach at Oswald West State Park – named after a visionary governor of Oregon (1911-1915) who declared the coastal intertidal zone a navigable waterway, thereby permanently preserving public access to the entire Oregon coast. We had timed our visit for low tide, and we got to explore wonderful tide pools, filled with clams, mussels, starfish, sea anemones, and the like. There were also some spectacular uplifted and tilted sedimentary bedding planes, graphically illustrating the processes of subduction and metamorphosis that have shaped the geology of the area.

After spending the morning on the beach, we headed north to Cannon Beach (named after a ship’s cannon found there – there are a lot of shipwrecks on this stretch of the coast, thanks in large measure to Neahkahnie Mountain, a basalt feature that is the highest point on the Oregon coast. We ate lunch at Moe’s – specializing in seafood, of course. After lunch we explored the galleries and boutiques of Cannon Falls (of which there are far too many – this is major tourista-land. However, one place – NW by NW Gallery – actually was worth a visit. They represent a small but very select group of artists – Christopher Burkett (photographer – google him to see some stunning work), Lillian Pitt (native American sculpture), Ruth Brockman (glass) and others. (The gallery’s website is nwbynwgallery.com) Tom is a serious and very good photographer, and he particularly wanted me to see Burkett’s work. I hadn’t heard of him, but was very, very impressed.

On Monday, after saying goodbye to Tom and Jean, I headed north on US 101, the Pacific Highway. I stopped for an hour at Fort Clatsop, where Lewis and Clark overwintered in 1804/1805. A plan of the fort survived in the notes from the expedition, and it has been reconstructed and is now one of the two major interpretive centers associated with the set of parks commemorating the Expedition of Discovery at the mouth of the Columbia. After crossing the Columbia, I headed up through Washington. I had decided not to travel on I-5, but instead to enjoy the scenery on the Washington Coast and the Olympic Peninsula. Much of the Washington Coast consists of giant sloughs – tidal wetlands and low-lying meadows. I motored up the west side of the Hood Canal, the southern extension of Puget Sound, sandwiched between the Olympic range and the Cascades. Here, too, huge sloughs are home to some of the best oyster beds in the country. I stopped at the Hama Hama Oyster Company, where I purchased a half-pint of oysters and some cocktail sauce for ten bucks. My late lunch was a 17-oyster cocktail -- absolutely delicious.

I got to Port Townsend around 4:15, and purchased a ticket for the ferry to Whidbey Island. With 45 minutes before boarding, I took a quick trip through Port Townsend, which has been very heavily developed with tourists in mind. It’s reminiscent of Stillwater – but with ocean views instead of the St. Croix. Oddly, the ferry I took across was the Pierce County. Cotton Mather, formerly of our department and one of the founders of the Pierce County Geographical Society, would have cocked an eyebrow.

Whidbey Island is beautiful and windswept. The blasts from the Strait of Juan de Fuca made for challenging motorcycling. The agriculture of the southern part of the island was soon replaced by the heavy industry of the oil refinery in the north, at Anacortes, and the roar of the jets from the naval air training facility. It was a bit disconcerting to have low-flying bombers buzz the highway, especially because their din usually preceded seeing them. Past Whidbey Island, I headed north through Bellingham on I-5, crossing the border around 8:30 p.m. I finally pulled up to the street next to Jim Glassman and Thitiya’s new condo in North Vancouver around 9:00 – just as they were driving by. I heard a yell – “Is that Roger?” – and followed their car into the garage.

Jim and Thitiya are selling their place in Minneapolis, and Thitiya was leaving the next morning to take care of some of the business associated with that. Jim, one of a number of former grad students from our department who now make Vancouver their home, is on the faculty at UBC. Thitiya has just finished working for the Minneapolis School District, and after a number of years of living in two locations, they are back together in the same place. They just bought the condo in North Vancouver three months ago – it has views across to downtown Vancouver, and up to the Lion’s Gate Bridge and beyond.

Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities in North America – and also one of the most culturally interesting and diverse. The culture is Pacific Pan-Asian – the mix of restaurants, ethnicities, and lifeways is astounding. What’s odd about Vancouver is that it manages to be absolutely beautiful despite the fact that its architecture is unremarkable at best, and often downright ugly. Like Hong Kong (which it emulates to some extent), there isn’t a lot of developable land in comparison with the number of people who want to live here, and the result is a proliferation of high-rise residential towers, not too dissimilar to what one sees in the iconic views of Hong Kong. Many of these are unlovely concrete constructions – and yet the overall effect is quite fine. Vancouver conveys a sense of cosmopolitanism mixed with an almost nervous energy and a sensitivity to the environment that I haven’t really seen anywhere else. It’s not that there aren’t issues – gang activity is a real problem, poverty and substance abuse are quite evident, and congestion is omnipresent – but the overall impression is of vibrance and healthy activity, and a really booming economy. There is a huge amount of building associated with the development of the facilities for the upcoming Winter Olympics in 2010 – a gigantic area of what eventually will be condos east of Granville Island is being constructed for the Olympic Village, and new heavy rail public transportation systems are nearing completion. As Jim pointed out, although the economic recession has slowed the frenzied increase in property values in Vancouver, development continues apace, and the housing market is still very tight.

Years ago, back in the earIy 1970s, Heidi Oxford and I had driven from our home in Kirkland, WA, and gone up to Simon Fraser University, then a brand-spanking-new institution built on the top of a mountain in Burnaby, surrounded by even taller mountains. I think we camped in a parking lot up there. I used to think SFU was one of the most amazing and beautiful bits of architecture in the world. I visited it again, and was surprised to find that my opinion had changed dramatically. I suddenly realized that it was built in a style that I now know as Brutalist architecture, that its immense, formalistic open spaces and quadrangles are not human scaled but instead are neo-baroque (the architecture of power!), and that it is a rabbit-warren of un-navigable passages and stairways that make it extremely hard to find anything. Jim told me that when the X Files folks wanted a setting that conveyed menacing bureaucratic activity, they usually filmed at Simon Fraser University.

In the afternoon, once Jim had taken Thitiya to the airport, we went to Gastown and then down to Granville Island, where we visited a couple of very high end First Peoples art galleries. The objects are stunningly beautiful -- museum quality (and with prices that put them well outside of my range)-- but I'm content just to look, anyway. In the evening we headed over to the east side, to Commercial Ave, where we ate at Café Kathmandu, a really wonderful Nepali restaurant. I haven’t been a big fan of this cuisine in the past – it seemed like a somewhat bland version of Indian food when I’ve had it before – but Jim told me that this would be different, and he was right. The food was much lighter, with great spice combinations, and a freshness that is more reminiscent of Thai or Vietnamese food than Indian. We started with Bhatmaas, a salad of toasted soybeans, quick-fried with fresh ginger, garlic and chili and garnished with fresh coriander, and served with hot chili paste sauce and powdered rice flakes. Then we had Bhende Chili “ savory marinated chicken cubes sautéed with onions and green peppers.” Our last course was Khasiko Maasu, goat meat in curry sauce. All of this was washed down with endless cups of Nepali chai. The owner, Abi, was amazingly friendly – he’s a friend of Jim’s, and an activist from Nepal. All in all, a great evening out.

Yesterday I also had a chance to use the much vaunted Canadian health system. I’ve been having a problem with a swollen calf and persistent pain in my lower leg, the result of a fall in the garden in San Anselmo a week and a half ago. I decided that since things weren’t getting better on their own, I’d see a doctor. The whole process was disarmingly simple and easy, even for an "out of system" American! $68 for a 45-minute office visit at a walk-in clinic, and $25 for a week's course of antibiotics. And I'm now in the system, so even if I need to see a doctor in Prince George or Dease Lake, they'll have my info. Total waiting time from getting to the clinic to seeing the doctor (no nurse) -- about 15 minutes. We’ve heard for years about how inefficient the Canadian system is, but it’s pretty clear that this is just American insurance companies protecting their own interests. Jim told me that the monthly cost for health insurance for himself and Thitiya is $32 (and that’s Canadian dollars – even less in US currency).

Tomorrow I head north, and may be out of contact for a bit, at least until I get back into areas where cell phones and the internet are available. (Or perhaps I’m making assumptions here – I have no idea what things will be like north of Vancouver.) In any event, I’m going to be riding several thousand miles through very sparsely settled areas. Stay tuned!

Five relaxing days in Portland

I spent the week in Portland relaxing, visiting with Nancy, Dakota, and some of their friends, and seeing a few of the sights of one of my favorite cities in the US. If going to the Fairfax Farmer’s Market with Marybeth was a quick toe-dip in the river of the 1960s, seeing Portland was like skinny-dipping in the ocean! Portland defines alternative culture – proudly, aggressively, but sort of sweetly, too. At every turn I was reminded that there are alternatives to the homogenized, corporate-driven path that we’ve taken in most of the country – and that the results are often far more satisfying.

I had blasted single-mindedly northwards so that I could be with Nancy and Dakota for Dakota’s eight-grade promotion – the transition from Middle School to High School. His school was rather small, with a tight-knit class, and close relationships between families, teachers, and kids. Dakota and two of his friends were not only participating by being promoted, but had been chosen to play their first formal gig as a band at the end of the ceremony. (In the picture, Dakota is in the middle – he plays drums.) They were great – and were clearly crowd-pleasers.

On Wednesday, after work, Nancy and I headed to one of many McMenamin brewpubs, Kennedy School. This is one of 55 sites operated by a company founded by two brothers that creates family-friendly, neighborhood-based gathering spots around the brewpub concept. What distinguishes these (and much of what seems to be happening in Portland, one of the most innovative cities in the country in terms of planning) is the creative use of older buildings and institutions – the idea of adaptive reuse. In this case, an amazing school from the ‘teens of the last century has been turned into a series of pubs, a movie theater, a concert space, hotel rooms, a cigar bar – all of them crowded on a mid-week night with entire families, young singles, and pensioners. We were there to see Sunshine Cleaning, a movie that had played in first-run theaters about six months ago. The theater was the old school auditorium, but the seats were couches, settees, and armchairs, with small tables for drinks, snacks, and even meals. The beer is produced on site. The halls are festooned with art – historic photos associated with the school and its staff and students, murals recently painted, and decorative work in a variety of media. There were literally hundreds of people in the various venues in the huge school building – one of the most successful examples of adaptive reuse that I’ve seen. (The movie was okay, but rather slight. I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it.)

Thursday was Nancy’s 55^th birthday. She was on her cell phone nearly the entire day. In between calls, however, she took me with her to visit her friend Robyn, who is finishing her Shaman class with Nancy. Their task for the day was to work on their spirit costumes for their final class ceremony in a couple of weeks. Robyn is an artist who works in the Portland area, and is remarkably creative. After a great lunch, I left them to their costume-making and headed over to Hawthorne Avenue, one of many pockets of counter-culture businesses in the city. Mixed in with a smattering of national chains (Ben and Jerry’s, for instance) were wonderfully anachronistic shops – bead stores, fair trade crafts, coffee shops, brewpubs, the Baghdad Theater (another McMenamin site, reusing a 1920s movie palladium), and a large branch of Powells, Portland’s iconic bookstore.

After collecting Nancy and Dakota (returning from an overnight class trip to a water park in Centralia, Washington), we changed for dinner. I took Nancy out for a birthday dinner at an amazing Peruvian restaurant in the Pearl District – Andina – which has received national acclaim. The food was outstanding, the dinner was relaxed (Dakota was off with friends), and we had a great time. One of the highpoints was a cocktail. Here’s the description from the menu: SACSAYHUAMÁN -- habanero pepper infused vodka shaken with passion fruit puree and cane sugar, served up with a sugar rim and a cilantro leaf garnish. (Glen – I hope you’re paying attention!)

Nancy’s acupuncture school, the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, was having a celebration to mark the relocation of the school to a spot next to the Classical Chinese Garden. They had taken over the Garden for the evening. Nancy is the secretary of the alumni association, so we went over for a few hours. After getting needled, I wandered and talked to a number of her former classmates and teachers. It was a great, low-key crowd.

Friday was spent helping Nancy get prepared for a trip with Dakota to San Diego and then on to Costa Rica. Nancy hasn’t done all that much foreign travel over the past few years, so it takes a while to get things together. In the evening, though, she had bought tickets for us to see a remarkably good theater production in Portland’s old Armory, now Portland Center Stage (another great example of adaptive reuse!). The show was Crazy Enough, a one-woman show written and performed by Storm Large (I kid you not), a local rock singer/legend, detailing her life. The performance was really amazing – look it up if you’re in the area.

So today it’s off to the coast to see Tom and Jean in Manzanita. (I managed to have an hour with Chris – so I’ll be seeing two of my favorite former grad students here in Portland!) All in all, Portland has more than lived up to its reputation as the laid back, counterculture capital of America!

In the Bay Area Part II and on to Portland

I wound up spending two days at Jaime’s in San Francisco. On the second day, after I finished my blogging at the local Peet’s on California Ave, and she finished her work, we headed to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to see a couple of exhibits. One was a comparative look at the photography of Ansel Adams and the paintings of Georgia O’Keefe – two different mediums and artists, but a lot of overlap in terms of subject matter and attitudes towards New Mexico landscapes. Many of the works were stunningly beautiful, and the comparison was interesting, if not always compelling. The biggest difference, of course, is that O’Keefe’s works are in color – brilliant, sharp-edged tones that are a distillation of what we might see in nature. Adams’ work has a similar clarity to it – he pioneered techniques that created sharpness, detail, and tonality in black and white photography that is almost unmatched. Some of his iconic pictures – like Moonrise over Hermosillo or Moro Rock literally change the way the viewer interacts with nature. Both artists seem heavily influenced by the Transcendentalists.

The second exhibit was a retrospective of the work of Swiss photographer and photo-documentarist Robert Frank, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of his The Americans – a path-breaking photo essay that captured the country trying to deal with its issues of racism, classism, and increasing corporatization in the mid-to-late 1950s. I had never been a big fan of the book – it had always seemed to me that Frank had been extremely negative and critical, and had elicited similar reactions from the people he photographed. This time, though, with an excellent commentary by the curators and a better understanding of the scope of the project (the project took more than two years to complete, with support from the Guggenheim Foundation), I began to understand what a seminal work The Americans was. Both Jaime and I found the two exhibits extremely thought-provoking, and I recommend them highly. (By the way, these two exhibits will be supplemented by a third after July 10th – a major retrospective of Richard Avedon's work, organized by Louisiana Museum of Denmark, with SFMOMA the only American venue showing it. It’s very rare to have a chance to see three photography exhibits of this caliber at one go!)

After morning coffee on Saturday, and a tour of the Presidio, Sea Cliff (a tony residential area of SF), and part of North Beach, Jaime and I had espresso at Café Trieste, one of the best (and most traditional) cafes in the city. We even got to hear a mandolin orchestra playing traditional music – I felt like I was in the restaurant scene in De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves! Then I hopped on the bike for the trip over to San Anselmo. Trying to negotiate the hairpin turn up to Paul and Marybeth’s house, I dropped the bike at the bottom of their driveway. I managed to get the bike back up, and make it up the steep slope, but I found that I had broken the front left footrest. Given that it was Saturday afternoon, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to replace it. Fortunately, Marin Motorworks was still open, and they had the part in stock. It wasn’t even all that expensive – around $42 with tax (the woman in parts wondered aloud whether it was possible for a BMW replacement part to cost so little!). It didn’t take much time to get the bike back together, and then Paul and Marybeth took me to a party on Portrero Hill in SF, where I got to meet several very interesting artists. Then we zoomed back over the Golden Gate Bridge (my third trip across it of the day), and stopped in Corte Madera to see the movie, Up – playing in 3D. Although I liked the movie (it was good, not great), I didn’t think 3D added a whole lot. It seems to be the “gimmick du jour.”

My last blog seems to have stirred up deep feelings. It’s not a good idea to allude to (or mention explicitly) the aging process, even when the point you’re trying to make is that people don’t seem to have aged, and that there is a complete disconnect between how they seem, and chronological reality. I think that part of the problem is that we rarely have a self image that corresponds to how others see us – I know that my own picture of myself is probably frozen in the late 1960s. (Sadly, the corporeal reality, like Dorian Grey’s picture, has continued to, uh, mature . . .) Anyway, such musings aren’t going to get me out of the deep hole I’ve dug for myself, so let’s leave it and move on.

On Sunday, Paul and Marybeth and I headed out to Point Reyes. We bought three dozen oysters at the Drakes Bay Oyster Company (formerly Johnson’s Oysters), and then took the portable Weber grill and our blanket and drinks to the beach. We spent nearly two hours barbecuing oysters and eating them, washing them down with excellent beer and wine. (Lagunitas Imperial Stout is worth searching out!) I commented several times that this seemed like the typical Flyover Land stereotype of how Californians spent their time. As Paul and Marybeth said, “We should be so lucky!”

On Monday, I managed to roust myself early, say goodbye and thank-you to Paul and Marybeth, and get on the road by 8:00 a.m. I was headed for Portland, OR, and couldn’t face taking I-5 the entire way. Instead, I drove up to Eureka and Crescent City on US 101, but with no photo stops or side trips through the Avenue of the Giants. I got to Eureka by 1:00, Crescent City around 2:30, and then followed US 199 to Grant’s Pass. The temperatures away from the coast rose to nearly 90 degrees, but then the sun settled lower in the sky, and the comfort level went up. I finally made it to Portland around 9:40 p.m., after 660 miles and 14 hours of riding, with only a few stops, perhaps totaling an hour. The Corbin people did a good job – I wasn’t the least bit saddle-sore!

I’m staying with my sister, Nancy, and her son, Dakota. More on them tomorrow or the next day, after I’ve had time to interact with them! For now, some well-deserved sleep seems in order.

In the Bay Area

Spending a few days visiting friends in the San Francisco Bay area has been both relaxing and rejuvenating. Paul and Marybeth’s house on the side of Mount Tamalpais in San Anselmo is my idea of heaven on earth. Set on a hillside replete with live oak, laurel and redwoods, they overlook a lovely valley facing the morning sun. The road up to their house is one of the most challenging of the whole trip – the hairpin turns and steep grades mean coming almost to a complete stop before negotiating the curves. Their driveway is the worst part – and once at the top, it requires the topographical skills of William Powell to find the surface with the lowest degree of slope on which to park the bike to keep it from tipping over.

Setting is only a small part of what makes visiting here so wonderful, though. The real benefit is the conversations with both of them – hours of talking, catching up, hearing about old acquaintances, and where we are in our lives. I’ve known both of them so long that it came as more than a shock to hear that Paul had retired from his adjunct position teaching creative writing at SF State, and was contemplating the end of his writing job with a Catholic health care organization as well. When they brought up some photographs on the computer to show me a party they had attended recently to celebrate Jim Kittson’s birthday, I was agog when I heard it was his 70th. All of these former hippies and flower kids had suddenly turned grizzled, and I realized that I was on the cusp of the same transformation. I still can’t look at Paul and Marybeth and not see them as they were 35 years ago – and I know my image of myself is not one that corresponds to what I would see in a mirror.

In the morning I rode over to Berkeley and visited the Geography Department, still on the 5th floor of what used to be called the Earth Sciences Building (I think it’s now Moran Hall). I visited for a bit with Natalie Vonnegut (who had to ask my name, although she remembered my face). I was touched to see a nice memorial to Allan Pred in the lobby of the building – his premature death is still a shock to me. I had lunch with Paul Groth, a grad school compatriot, who is 50% in Geography and 50% in Architecture. We had a fabulous time reminiscing, and he caught me up on multiple years of gossip and news. There’s nothing quite like two semi-old-farts playing catch-up to engender really choice character assassination.

Back across the Richmond Bridge to San Anselmo. After a quick stop at the BMW motorcycle shop in San Rafael (they had just relocated – and their clientele is a bit tonier than that in Minnesota, with one customer driving up in a bright red Ferrari race car), I headed back up the hill to Paul and Marybeth’s. Marybeth took me to the Fairfax farmer’s market, and as she promised it was like journeying back in time. Plenty of kids, tie-dye tee shirts, long hair, beards, and multiple forms of organic and home made food. It was nice to know that the 60s still live on somewhere, even if it’s not where I live. For dinner we went to a new sushi restaurant in San Anselmo – “69” – which they promised would be excellent. They were spot on – everything from the flight of cold sakes we ordered to the wild Japanese fish nigiri was tip-top It was a small restaurant, and quiet – perfect for conversation. We spent hours there.

The next day I hopped on the bike to ride down to Hollister, south of the San Francisco Bay and east of Gilroy (Garlic Capital of the World). Hollister holds a special place in the hearts of motorcyclists – it’s the site of the famous post-WWII “town take-over” by motorcycle gangs that was later sensationalized in the film, The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin. It remains an important agricultural center, and it’s also home to the Corbin Manufacturing Corp – purveyors of fine motorcycle accessories, especially saddles. I wanted to have my Corbin seat cut down in the front a bit so that I could get more of my feet on the ground at stops (I don’t have the requisite inseam to do this on a BMW – these are tall bikes, better suited to six footers than to those of us closer to the norm). Hunter, the man who took care of me, cautioned me not to take too much off the saddle – “You’ll start sliding forward, and it won’t be nearly as comfortable. Better to live with it and learn to compensate.” We compromised on a small amount of reduction, and he set to work. He invited me to tour the huge factory, which I did. It’s an impressive operation – over 150 employees, making seat pans, saddles, and storage boxes for literally hundreds of different bikes – everything from production models to one-off custom jobs. I asked Hunter why this facility was still located in the US, and he told me that they had thought of moving production to China, but that instead they had opted for a form of “just-in-time” manufacturing in which each order was produced as it came in. They don’t have any inventory, and instead have a one-week turnaround to produce the seats as the orders are received. The small numbers of any given mold that are used would make manufacturing in China economically unfeasible, as would the fact that each seat is essentially customized for the rider’s size, weight, and riding style. After spending an hour on my saddle, it was ready to go. Much to my surprise, there was no charge – they were interested in having the saddle fit me as well as it possibly could. This was some of the best customer service I’ve ever encountered! Incredibly nice people, and the saddle is still comfortable and I can get more of my feet on terra firma.

Back to San Francisco, where I would be staying with Jaime, whom I’ve known since we were graduate students together. After getting the bike unpacked, we went out to dinner at Ebisu, one of my favorite sushi restaurants in the world. They recently reopened after many months of renovations. We had gone early, which was a good strategy, as a huge line formed shortly after we were seated. We ate some amazing nigiri, ordered two different flights of sakes, and settled in for several hours of leisurely eating and talking. Among the incredible food we ate: thin slices of halibut grilled on a cedar plank and covered in a delicious ponzu sauce with scallions and ginger; tempura cherry tomatoes (fabulous – chilled to facilitate removing the skins and then lightly battered and flash fried!), and something called a “49er roll,” which included avocado and tabiko (crunchy flying fish eggs) and a shizo leave inside a rice roll, with delicious salmon on top covered with paper-thin slices of lemon. The combination of the spicy shizo leaf and the lemon was incredible.

Jaime and I finished up at her local Trader Joe’s. I know we have the chain in Minnesota, but there are such huge variations from store to store that it’s like being in a completely different emporium. (Jaime told me that hers is the number one producing store in the whole chain.) The variety of produce and goods was amazing. There’s something to regional variation, after all! We spent the rest of the evening talking – again, the best part of seeing friends. I came in for my share of grief about living in flyover land, of course – and it’s hard to counter those barbs when you’re basking in the atmosphere of San Francisco.

Eureka to San Anselmo

Today was planned as a day for meandering through the redwoods, and working my way down to the San Francisco Bay Area, where I was going to stay north of the Golden Gate in San Anselmo with my friends Paul and Marybeth. I’ve been on the Redwood Highway (US 101) many times, but always on my way somewhere else, except for two years ago when I did my first post-Jonah long motorcycle trip to the Left Coast. This time I promised myself that I’d take my time, explore some of the byways and oddities, and soak in some of the atmosphere of one of the most spectacular places imaginable.

Heading south from Eureka it was cool – almost cold. The coastal fog makes mornings chilly; some days it never quite burns off, but I wasn’t going to be around long enough to see if this was one of those days or not. About 25 miles south of Eureka I was riding alongside of the Eel River on 101, and I turned off for the Avenue of the Giants. I’m pretty sure this is the old 101, the one that meanders through the small towns of what once was one of the great lumber industry areas of the continent, rather than bypassing them. As I crested a hill, I saw a beautiful green bridge spanning the Eel, along with a gigantic lumber processing facility. I pulled off, and began exploring Scotia and the surrounding area. Scotia was home to the Pacific Lumber Company, and was a company town. What had arrested me initially was the view of the uniform worker bungalows neatly aligned in rows above the mill. As I explored a bit, I found more interesting architecture, including a former bank (now a museum) designed in neoclassical style, but with giant redwood logs serving as its Doric columns. There was also a fanciful Union Church, obviously shared by multiple denominations at one point in time (and perhaps even today).

I crossed the Eel to get a picture of the green bridge, and stopped near a hillside on which a couple were doing some landscaping. There were fresh scars from a set of large redwoods that had been cut down. When they saw me taking pictures, the couple came down to talk, and told me that they had had the redwoods taken down because they had become unstable. They told me that despite their size, redwoods have shallow root systems, and are susceptible to blowovers. The area where they are located gets winds up to 75 mph, and they were worried that the trees would fall on the hillside house. “They’re beautiful, but they’re really just big weeds. You can’t kill them off. These were just cut down earlier this year, and look at all the shoots they’re putting out!”

After Scotia I motored through the redwoods, stopping often to take pictures. At Founders Grove I spent a bit of time walking around some of the largest of the trees. People often talk about the cathedral-like nature of the redwoods – the immense height of the trees, and the way they block light contributes to a feeling of being in the nave of a gigantic church. What struck me most, though, was the almost complete silence in the groves. Perhaps because the trees so completely block the light from reaching the forest floor there isn’t much in the way of understory vegetation. Although birds proliferate at the margins of the groves (they’re often located along river banks), in the groves themselves there isn’t much evidence of them. The stillness is eerie and beautiful. The vegetation is low-lying, and often quite verdant.

The Avenue of the Giants exists both for closer access to the magnificent trees and for the somewhat less transcendental tourist traps that form the current economic backbone of many of these towns. Trees of Mystery, The Indestructable Tree, The Drive-thru Tree (there are three of these), the Single Log House – these are remnants of an auto-touring culture with its roots in the 1930s, and they still retain that slightly breathless, carny-like flavor of hucksterism that used to be such an integral part of American roadways. This area still retains that earlier flavor – there is much less evidence of the franchise culture that has homogenized so much of our national landscape.

After savoring the redwoods, I decided to have some fun on my way south. Instead of heading directly to San Anselmo on 101, I decided to pop over to the coast on CA 1, going through Fort Bragg and Mendocino (one of my favorite spots in the world), and then taking CA 128 back over the coastal hills (mountains?) back to US 101. Ideally I would have spent at least a few hours in Mendocino, but I was doing this for the fun of riding some of the most interesting roads in this area of the northern California coast. Filled with switchbacks, sharp curves, and amazing scenery, this is motorcycle heaven. It took slightly more than an hour to ride 40 miles –when the signs on these roads say “15 mph curve,” they’re serious. My bike was laden down with luggage, and I’m not a great sport-bike-style rider to begin with. I thought I was doing quite well until I was passed by a Prius, who proceeded to disappear in front of me! (Granted, he was someone who was local and knew the road intimately, but . . . a Prius? As Kurtz might have said, “The horror, the horror . . .”

I arrived at Paul and Marybeth’s around 7:00, after 10 hours of riding and sightseeing. After a shower, I felt fantastic. Paul and Marybeth are some of my oldest friends – I met Marybeth when we were taking a course on The Rise of the Novel as undergrad English majors at Berkeley back in the early 70s. They live in a stunningly cool house on the side of Mount Tamalpais, above San Anselmo, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, and west of San Rafael. Built as a hunting cottage or lodge in the 1880s, their house has been added to over the years. They have a spectacular view out over the valley, and a wonderful garden (fenced, as part of the ongoing war with the deer). The road to their house is even twistier than the one I took to the Shoreline Highway north of Fort Bragg – I was in first gear almost the entire way up. And their driveway almost requires Sherpas to negotiate. But they are incredibly welcoming, as is their house, which they’ve been renovating for the past 20 years. I was a bit shocked to find that they’re both talking quite seriously about retirement –Paul has already retired from his adjunct position at SF State teaching creative writing, but still has a job as a writer for a Catholic health care organization. Marybeth has had numerous careers, but is thinking about giving up her dental one – and all of this talk suddenly made me realize that I, too, have aged (probably less gracefully than they have).

After an amazing dinner of grilled seared tuna steak with mango glaze on a black bean chutney salad, we gave up the ghost and turned in. Really, one of the best days in recent memory!