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At last I seemed to have made it to the California I wanted to visit! I followed the Pacific coast bike route, sometimes right by the beach but more often on the bluffs overlooking the sea. The weather was glorious, the water was blue, the waves foamed and seethed as they splashed against rocks and piers and beaches. All along the trail, joggers were exercising, mothers were pushing babies in strollers, white-haired men were walking dogs, and people were staring out to sea. Especially staring out to sea. At one overlook, so many people were staring out to sea that I wondered if they were watching gray whales migrate down the coast, or a flotilla of tall ships, or something equally exciting. But no, a middle-aged lady told me, they were just watching the surfers.
Yup, surfers! I wasn’t in LA yet, but all along the coast, men (and an occasional woman) in long-sleeved black wetsuits could be seen frolicking in the surf like so many seal pups. At one beach, a yellow road sign warned of surfers crossing. On the streets near the beaches they could be seen trotting along, carrying their surfboards from distant parking spots to the water. If I’d had my wetsuit with me, I'd have been in the water too - to hell with surfing, I just wanted to be out in the sea!
The next day I left Santa Cruz and continued to Monterey. Aside from the famous aquarium, I didn’t know what I’d find there, but I liked it at once. A helpful man at the tourist office referred me to a city-run campground right in town, and gave me the name of the coffeehouse that all his friends liked. The campground proved to be a low key place with none of the emphasis on rules and regulations that bedevils the state parks, so I signed up for two nights on the spot. The coffeehouse was even better; a choice of twenty different beans, ground to order, and brewed to order in an individual cone filter. All this, and free wifi too! I was set, I had my home in Monterey and my home away from home in Monterey - what else could I ask for?
So I left my van behind and headed out on my bike to see what I could see. It was delightful. Maybe it was the weather, but the town just seemed charming and friendly and relaxed. The sun was shining, the ocean was blue, it was warm, the bike routes were fairly flat, and I cruised along by the sea. The path took me up past the aquarium – maybe tomorrow it would be cloudy and I’d want to be inside? – and along the coast. It was busy with people; elderly couples in “Monterey Bay” jackets and cameras, a girl on roller skates hanging on to the |
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arm of her more stable mother, teen-aged boys with their pants falling down tearing around on bikes way too small for them, joggers with water bottles strapped around their waists, serious cyclists in yellow lycra printed with the advertising and photos of mountain roads, middle-aged women marching briskly as they chatted about their jobs or their friends or whatever we talk about, us middle aged women.
In the bay, harbor seals sunned themselves on bits of rock protruding from the swells, balancing in improbable poses with their noses and tails suspended over the water. In the air, a string of pelicans flew past, their huge beaks and angular wings flapping every which way. On the rocks, a flock of seagulls perched sedately, sunning themselves, preening their feathers, and peering in the water for tasty morsels. On the water’s surface a pair of harlequin ducks, the male brightly painted with stripes and flashes of white, bobbed up and down with the waves. |
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