w/ann marie out driving around all of my ann's favorite spots in the desert southwest, it's been hard keeping my ann from having a jealous mind. she really wants to get to her beloved deserts soon, if not right now. i tried our usual quick, easy, reliable distraction a couple of weekends ago: a trip up through napa & then back down through healdsburg & santa rosa. it probably would have worked but flat tires just seem to follow me around & on a sunday w/only one of those silly toy spare tires that can only be driven at 50mph for maybe 50miles, it just became a joyless, stressful experience. it's harder to laugh about misfortune when it's a repeat of a previous near exact joyless, stressful experience. you start feeling like the powers that be have picked you for whimsical experimentation.
we made it up to pt.reyes station in time to lunch at the pine cone diner. ann admired the place's credo emblazoned across the t-shirt backs of the servers: "good food, prickly service"(not as good as the outrigger's "sun & scum" but ok). the food was good. i continue to ignore my post surgery symptoms & ordered the chicken fried steak w/eggs & hashbrowns("sorry, we're out of biscuits"). chicken fried steak can be tricky, if not inedible, mainly due to the breading, the thickness of the meat itself, & the accompanying gravy. the problems usually arise because most versions are sysco frozen breaded steaks w/sysco powdered gravy. not at the pinecone. i didn't care much for the actual breading(breadcrumbs, not flour. think about it: real fried chicken is flour coated)but it mostly worked. ann had a sensible mixed greens salad. they were fresh.
we really didn't have a solid itinerary for the afternoon. i wanted to see nick's cove, the place opened by chef mark franz & designer pat kuleto. i knew it was somewhere up here. stupidly, i didn't bother to check where. i figured we'd just stumble on it. this was territory i'd covered quite a bit back when i was at the nyingma institute. either as sunday getaways or trips up the odiyan monastary, i drove up this way a lot.
one place i hadn't been was bolinas. i think neil young or van morrison live somewhere near there. i'd heard what a hippy town it was & how locals made every effort to keep tourists out(e.g., tearing down highway directional signs). i will attest to there being no signs directing you there & i guess if you think "hippy" when the bridge is painted psychedelically & many houses fly peace sign flags, then it's a hippy town. otherwise, it was kind of dingy, w/no charm whatsoever. since we'd already eaten, we had to pass on the coast cafe(which got thumbs up from some online sites). after we'd walked around a bit, ann said, "if i lived here, i'd have to smoke a LOT of pot. it's way too damp." it's right on the pacific & had surfers out & i wondered what it would be like during a heavy winter pacific storm. many of the houses were built on pilings that were thicker & heavier than the pilings that hold up the p'cola beach fishing pier that extends out into the gulf of mexico.
one thing i did find charming: we went into the only bar in town(as far as i could tell)for ann to use the bathroom. for that service, & not wanting to arouse the locals, we sat up at the bar & ordered a round of drinks. while we sat there the phone rang & the bartenderess listened for a minute or two, said thank you into the phone, hung it up & announced, "that was bill higgins who says there's a highway patrolman up near the exit stop sign & that there's a sherriff's car posted near the bridge." everyone nodded knowingly. the announcement provoked quite a bit of conversation amongst the locals: "did he say which sob patrolman it was?", "they only got a few places to catch anyone...", "that redheaded fucker got me last year!", etc. we left soon after.(the dog sitting on top of the pay phone was actually the highlight for us in bolinas. we stood admiring him(which he enjoyed)& his owner came up, slapped his chest, & the dog jumped down into his arms. i almost felt like giving them some money.)
back up the coast & to inverness where i thought nick's cove was. i definitely knew manka's lodge was out there somewhere(it is). inverness is on the western side of bodega bay, or more precisely, bodega bay's smaller channels. the point reyes lighthouse is out that way. it's a little more spread out & not as dingy as bolinas, more open to wide views of water & the fog shrouded mountains across the bay. however, there was no nick's cove. there was a giant map of the whole bodega bay area painted onto the front of a closed gas station. nick's cove was actually across the bay, over on the mainland on the shoreline hwy(hwy1). we'd already been up that way twice but just hadn't gone far enough. w/nowhere better to go & nothing better to do, we headed on up a third time.
the geography over most of this drive is pretty typically north californian. large rolling grassy hills & meadows, odd rock formations jutting up haphazardly. lots of cows, sheep, & horses. the road follows along the bay & across it are rougher edged mountains. actually, mountains also rise up to the east too, tho more gently. nick's cove has property on both sides of the highway & sits at the beginning of an elevation in road. the restaurant & 6(i think)of the cabins are on the water side. the larger cabins(another 6 maybe)sit on the other side of the road at the bottom of a large grassy hillock.
ann was dismayed to discover most of the menu at nick's is seafood based. seafood is something she can't abide. on the other hand, i ordered oysters. every time i eat oysters, i think back to high school when no one ate them except for philip. during our run on hemingway's work, we all felt compelled to at least TRY them. in a moveable feast, hemingway's descriptions are so vivid & appealing that we'd have eaten shit on a shingle if he'd mentioned it. none of the p'cola girls ate them(to which, i'd charmingly demand: "why the hell not, you swallow cum, don't you?")but, in college, i got di eating them by covering them in extra hot sauce(a trait she has in common w/ann). nick's cove oysters were fresh & cold, their brininess determined by where exactly they were havested in the bay. as usual in cali, they were served w/mignonette sauces. no horseradish based red sauces out here. ann's french fries were just ok. barely. personally, i can't see how a place like this can survive. even w/o the recession, they're way out in the boondocks, the food is just ok & priced on the high side, & the overhead has to be tremendous(including a surprizingly large staff for a late sunday afternoon).
they have a dock that stretches out into the bay. much to ann's horror & extreme discomfort we walked out onto it into a stiff bracing wind. this had been a gray, foggy day all day w/the winds whipping up off the pacific, slashing across the bay w/flagellating force. i love this kind of weather. it always feels like a storm is coming even when there's no storm within hundreds of miles. it's one of the odd & wondrous tricks of california weather.
in keeping w/finding some silver lining in this cloudy meandering trip at every stop, i went into the bathroom & was rewarded w/this amazing talisman: a beautifully framed collection of old condom tins. this was before my time but i do vaguely recall the silver coin version. i believe bobo caught chip w/one in his wallet. much was made of this illicit possession. at 8yo, i couldn't make head nor tails of it or the ensuing ruckus.
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