Jack's Peak, Saturday hike

Another beautiful Saturday morning hike in Monterey.  Papa B and I went to Jack's Peak and had a great hike.

When I was in highschool, my cross country team would regularly race there.  It was one of my favorite places to race because I loved being in the solitude of nature, boiling with competitive juices and adrenaline, not to mention the gorgeous view of the Monterey Bay.

We did our cross country course, backwards and then some.  We walked and talked and laughed.  There is one section that has switchbacks, it makes the really steep incline seem not so steep.  I kept telling Papa B, we used to run here and there and that was the start and there was the finish.  At the switchbacks I told him, we used to run this!  He said (switching to English, which he does for dramatic emphasis), "used to is in the past tense, Sally, you need to think in the present."  Woah!  He's totally right.

We hiked along, enjoying the scenery, smelling the pine trees - slightly green and sour smelling.  In the background you could hear the concert that was happening at the Fair Grounds.  Also occasionally we would hear planes taking off or landing, Jack's Peak is just up the road from the Monterey Airport.  There were bugs glistening in the sun light and if you pay attention you could hear the woodpeckers high up in the trees.  It was a really wonderful hike.  I hope you get there someday. 

We unfortunately did not see any mountain lions

View of the bay

Monterey bay through the trees :)

The trail

A fallen tree covered in moss and pine needles

A banana slug!!! Hi buddy.

Spider web

After our hike we came home and had lunch with Mama B.  Life is good, isn't it?

 

Lunch! Green beans with garlic, olives, red cabbage and sesame salad, cut vegies

Point Lobos with Papa B

It was a gorgeous Indian Summer day here in beautiful Monterey so Papa B and I decided to go down to Point Lobos for a hike. (For those of you who unfamiliar with the concept of Indian Summer - it's a phenomenon that occurs in the Northern Hemisphere marked by warmer than expected weather in late-September-November, we definitely experience it here in Pacific Grove).  

Point Lobos is a State Natural Reserve a bit down the coast from Monterey.  We headed down and parked just outside of the park and walked in.  There were many people out today, it's Saturday and a clear day - it's great to see so many people out! 

We walked through the trees, it was a bit cooler than out in the sun and a little darker.  After some time, we saw blue and turquoise through the trees.  Although I have grown up on the Pacific Ocean, I find it amazing how diverse it is - it amazes me every time.  It's completely variable depending on the weather, the lighting, the time of day, the tide, the wildlife, etc.  Today was especially spectacular.  

The ocean through the trees 

Gorgeous cove!

Looking across to Carmel, Pebble Beach and Pacific Grove

p-r-e-t-t-y

We admired the ocean, told jokes and "hello-ed" people as we passed them on the trails.  Going around a little cove made me think of "Island of the Blue Dolphins" a book we had to read in the 4th grade.  It's about a Native American girl that lives on an island off the coast of California.  I haven't read the book in over 10 years but I guess the imagery stuck in my subconscious.  

This is what reminds me of "Island of the Blue Dolphins"

There were scuba divers preparing to go out - how cool!  I wonder what all they see down there?  

We were lucky enough to see a vulture fly by overhead, its wings spread magnificently with the ends sticking up like fingers.

The water was pretty calm, when the waves were well behaved, the water looked super smooth and the sun reflected brilliantly off of it.  

It looks like glass, doesn't it!

At one point we sat on a bench and admired the coast.  There were rose petals all around the bench and Papa B said there must have been a girl here reciting "he loves me, he loves me not."  

I love seeing the crushed abalone shells in the ground, their metallic color always catches the light just right and reflects up at you.  It's like a silver, green, pink, purple color.  

Broken abalone shells, can you see the metallic coloration?

Eventually we came upon a little cabin with whale bones around it.  One rib was about the length of my height!  There was also what looked like the hip bone of a whale and the vertebrae of a whale.  On the side of the cabin was framed baleen - the filter in the mouths of baleen whales.  (S)He consume a huge volume of water that hopefully has lots of krill in it, the whale then pushes the water out but the krill are trapped in the whale's mouth - dinner! 

Whale bones!

It looks like where the vertebrae would connect, but I'm not too familiar with whale anatomy...

Whale ribs, vertebrae, fin and baleen 

Next we went around a different bend and encountered some deer.  It is rutting season for the deer here.  That means they are mating.  This usually happens right before daylight savings time and there is a drastic change in their hormone levels.  They behave abnormally, more agressive, and if they don't move out of your way - you should get out of theirs.  We saw three young males and clapped at them, they looked at us a bit and didn't budge, we went down a different trail.  

We came upon another bench overlooking another little cover.  There were three seals resting on the rocks.  

Seals on the rocks! Can you see them?

Looking across to Carmel 

We admired from afar and eventually had to get down to the water.  Luckily there was a bonafide trail and we slowly made our way down to the rocky beach.  I quickly lost my shoes and socks and tried to run to the water, it was difficult to do on a non-sand beach.  The water was refreshingly cool.  It was low tide and so there were uncovered rocks filled with sea anemones.  You can't really see them unless you're looking because they are closed and have bits of sand and rocks stuck to them.  I touched them just to watch them shrivel back - I hope I wasn't harming them, they're just so amazing, and I couldn't help it!  

Rocky beach :)

Sea anemones!  They close up during low tide

More sea anemones 

We eventually walked back to the car, retracing our footsteps.  If you are observant enough, you can notice slight changes in the light, coloration, etc. in the trails that you walked in not too long before.  There was the same creaking noise from a tree when we walked back as when we had walked past the first time.  It would stop as we walked by and pick up again after we were past the tree.  I therefore am convinced that it was an animal but my dad claims it was just the wind causing the tree to creak.  

Gingerbread Latté

The other day I had a gingerbread latté at East Village Coffee Lounge.  It was delicious.  I guess it's one of those things that is truly "American" or "Californian."  It's actually really cool to see how seasonal things become advertising tools.  You know it's fall because Starbucks Coffee and Peet's Coffee and Tea are advertising for "Gingerbread Lattés" or "Pumpkin Spice lattés."  Well I was going to have my usual tea but a little chalk board caught my eye, advertising for gingerbread and pumpkin spice lattés.  This is beyond the marketing giants of Starbucks and Peets, this is little locally owned and operated East Village.  So I ordered a pumpkin spice latté but they were out so I went with the next best thing, gingerbread.  It was great!  Beyond the flavour being delicious, the foam of the milk was nice and thick and mixed just enough with the espresso.

Anyhow, it's a lazy Saturday and I woke up from a nap wanting a gingerbread latté so I set out to make one.  I turned to my trust friend, the internet for a starting out point.  I found one recipe that called for "Gingerbread syrup," right, because if I want to make a gingerbread latté at home, I of course have gingerbread syrup.  Next.  I found a recipe that called for actual ingredients that I had around the pantry.  I messed around with it and came up with the recipe below:

Gingerbread Latté

• 1/8 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 tsp. black strap molasses
• 2 tsp. honey (you could use any sweetener you like, sugar, brown sugar, etc.)
• 1 shot of espresso 
• 3/4 of a cup of milk - heated, steamed if you have the capabilities to do so 

Make your espresso in a percolator, what the Italians call a moka (a stovetop coffee maker).  While that's brewing, heat up your milk and set it aside.  In a mug mix the rest of the ingredients, pour the espresso over it and mix it really well so that all the spices get blended and the molasses and honey melt.  Add to that the hot milk.  If you wish, you can sprinkle cinnamon on top or add whipped cream for decor (and deliciousness!) 

Voila! 

Good morning

Today as I was leaving the gym, I sneezed.  An old man carrying a water bottle turned to me and said "Bless you!"  I thanked him and he held the door open for me.  As we walked out together he said "do you know why they say that?"  I told him my understanding was that it was because one's heart stops when (s)he sneezes, he said "EVERYTHING stops," with a swoop of his hand.  I thanked him for the knowledge and told him to have a good day.  He said "everyday is a good day, if my feet touch the ground, then I know it's going to be a good day." 

What a great attitude.  Words to live by :)

Nature Tax

I was on a morning walk the other morning and I walked past a tree full of apples.  I went over and picked a couple and went along on my walk.  After I got a reasonable distance away, I inspected them. One had a big hole in it and there lay a fat, black momma worm and several of her young.  I threw it to the side of the road and inspected the second one, it was spotless.  I stuck it in my pocket and continued on my walk, pondering this situation.  One could remedy this by spraying some type of pesticide on the apple tree, but I immediately refuted that idea as we're all aware of the harmful effects of pesticides on other wildlife, the environment and ourselves.  I thought of something my friend in Spain had told me.  She had a whole bunch of fruit trees in her yard - cherries, walnuts, plums, apples, pears, figs not to mention the vegetable garden!  I remember walking around her yard with her, going from tree to tree, admiring her crop.  I saw that some of the cherries had bird pecks in them which prompted to me to ask if she sprayed her yard with any sort of insecticide.  She answered very matter-of-factly, "no."  She went on to explain that that was just the price it took to have a fruitful yard.  All the while on my walk I thought of this...I thought when you make money, you pay taxes to a government for it to give you good things, to take care of you, so to speak.  In some parts of the world you pay more taxes than others and in various places you get more goodies for your taxes than in others.  So couldn't animals having at your crop be thought as a tax that you pay to nature?  I mean nature is giving you something good - fruit or vegetables, cereals, etc.  In return, just like you pay taxes to your government for "life goodies," you pay tax to nature for "real goodies" - food!  

Tour of the BBC

We came back to London from Kettering on the train.  There were lots of kids riding the East Midlands train  home from school which just blew my mind!  I grew up in a small town and to think that these kids are riding public transport to go to school at such a young age was so unusual to me!  I'm sure kids in SF, NY, etc. do it all the time but not kids from PG.  

It was awful on the tube getting to our hotel during rush hour.  We are only traveling with backpacks and mine makes me 3x as wide as I normally am so I turn around and push people or knock them over and it's rather embarrassing and I get lots of looks.  Anyways, we made it to our hotel, checked in, dropped off our stuff and RAN to meet up with my friend.  

My friend works at the BBC and offered to take us on a tour!  How cool!  

We met my friend and got visitor passes, (which now resides in my trusty journal) and went up to the different floors to see all the different sections, or departments of the BBC.  It's amazing, it felt so, happening.  Like everything that is happening in the world is being covered there.  There were so many languages being spoken.  It was also super cool to see how people's looks changed when you went to the different language regions.  We got to go into BBC Arabic and they were just getting ready to go on air, make-up-ing the reporter.  The teleprompter was even in Arabic!  

The building has cutting edge technology, which you would imagine for the BBC.  There are booth-style tables kind of set apart from all the work stations for people to go and talk and have a little bit of peace, as you approach the tables, the lights turn on via a sensor mechanism and depending on the language that that table is dedicated to, there is a background photo of a city in a country which that language is spoken.  

My friend told us that it gets pretty loud there, too.  Reporters are calling people all over the world to do interviews and maybe the country they are calling has a bad connection so they are shouting and the person next to them then has to shout too to hear her/his interviewee on the other end of the line in say, Timbuktu, this results in a very loud building which I imagine to be multilingual shouting.  I think it would be rather chaotic but in the best possible way.    

the new addition to the BBC building 

the BBC!

view from the BBC building, overlooking Regents st., All Souls church and at the end is Oxford Circus tube stop

Recording studio for radio shows 

a picture of Jerusalem at the BBC building in London

Switchboards 

After our tour, my friend took us to Samarqand restaurant for Uzbeki food (they served some Russian and Georgian food, too).  It was lovely.  Afterwards we walked around the chilly evening streets of London and had ice cream, the perfect end to a perfect day.  

And I'm off...

Most of you know that after several months of planning and plotting, I am going on my trip to Georgia, Armenia and the UK!

I don't really know what lies in store for me.  I don't speak Georgian, Russian or Armenian but that's OK!  It's not the first time I have traveled to a country not knowing the language.  And many people have done it/do it all the time.

I do know that it will be amazing.  Every time you struggle, you learn something.  Sometimes what you learn is just, I don't ever want to struggle that way again. Other times it's, I sure do appreciate _______ (fill in the blank).  

So I'm leaving drippy, grey Monterey en route to....I don't even know!  This is rather exhilarating 

Follow me, if you wish, I promise to post photos and write about my adventures, pending internet connections.  

Midnight heartburn

Sometimes I like sleepless nights.  I toss and I turn, unwilling to succumb to the insomnia until finally I relent.  It’s usually a result of some bad culinary decision I made in the evening.  This time it was popcorn, beer, chocolate cake frosting and 2 bites of extremely spicy Szechuan food. 

I got up, had a glass of water, responded to some pending e-mails, checked facebook, wrote in my journal, read an old journal, text messaged some friends.  I really hope I didn’t wake them; it was 2:50 am after all. 

I heard a tap-tap on my bedroom door.  I knew this would happen.  I had woken up my light-sleeper, super sensitive roommate, AKA, my dad.  “What’s wrong?  Are you ok?  Why aren’t you sleeping?  Aren’t you tired?  How long have you been up?  What did you eat last night?”  I answered his questions, reassuringly.  He followed me to the kitchen as we chatted politics.  Appropriate 3 am conversation.  He went back to bed and I stayed on the computer, chatting with friends in different time zones. 

I contemplated making lifestyle changes; I do enjoy sleeping the whole night through and not having heartburn.  But if I did that, when would I write?  What would be my inspiration for these quirky blog posts?  Then I laughed to myself, if something is going to happen, it’s going to happen.  If you want something bad enough, you will make it work.  I am inspired by all sorts of things, late night heartburn and sleepless nights are fine and dandy but I could use some healthier inspiration.  

A Lemon

A beautiful poem I came across today, I hope you enjoy it.  

A Lemon

By Pablo Neruda

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

Cacti, cookies, coast and condors

I went down the coast again with the ladies, this time it was with my mom and the aunties.  Yesterday was one of my aunties' birthday and so naturally we needed to celebrate.  The plan was to drive down the coast in the morning, to Big Sur, have a treat from the Big Sur Bakery, go for a hike and then have lunch at Nepenthe.

Well, we got a later start that expected - which is to be expected.  On the drive down, we stopped at Save-Mart, one auntie had forgotten her sunglasses and as she says "fashion first."  She ran in and bought cheap-o sunglasses as my mom, other auntie and I plotted how we would liberate the tri-tip being BBQed on a grill outside the store, unattended.  Seriously?

We parked at Nepenthe, we were going to eat there after all.  But first we had to stop at the Phoenix Shop.  It's a shop below the restaurant that sells great books, stationary, jewelry, clothing, cosmetics and all sorts of home accessories.  Sampling hand cream, leafing through books and perusing the clothes sale rack really works up an appetite so up the stairs we hiked to eat lunch.  So much for hiking...

We waited to be seated, admiring flowers and making quite the scene.  The weather was gorgeous and it was nice to see so many people out enjoying the sun and the scenery.

We were seated on the back patio, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  The view was breathtaking.  I have a picture below but it doesn't even begin to do justice to the beauty that we had the pleasure of admiring.  We had a slow meal sharing each plate, family style.  A woman walked by with a baby on her hip, wearing just a onesie and had a fountain of hair coming out of the top of her head.  I stopped my story mid-sentence and began my well-versed baby flirtation.  Within minutes the baby was on my lap and she had all my attention, I was in heaven.

After our 3-hour meal, we decided we were tired and we should probably head to the bakery for birthday goodies before going back home.  The Big Sur Bakery is nestled in The Big Sur Spirit Garden. How beautiful!  We walked through the cacti and sweet peas, among other flora.  There was a man watering the garden and the smell of wet plants on a hot day is unmistakable - it gets etched in your scent memory pretty vividly.  It reminded me of watering plants in the summer with my uncle on his land, north of Damascus.  He taught me how to syphon water out of the well despite being on an uneven surface.  What nostalgia!  For a moment your psyche transports you to that time and place.  You are who you were when you were there.  The smell is the same in these two place, where you are in actuality and the place in which you have olfactory memories.  I guess your soul, if you believe in souls, is the same, but your body has changed; what we remember in our mind fails to point out the differences, the pain, whatever.  You are simply existing in two places at once - in your memory and in the present.  It's truly phenomenal.

We were disappointed, as the bakery was in transition from lunch to dinner and there were no pastries left, it was 3:00 in the afternoon, after all.  As we piled back in the car, my aunt pulled out a little bag of coconut, apricot cookies and a bar of dark chocolate.  She is always prepared...take note.

While attempting to nap in the backseat on the drive home, I was startled by our abruptly pulling off onto the shoulder.  I naturally jumped out of the car as my aunties did - they were armed with a camera and binoculars.  After a great deal of binocular focusing and oohing and aahing we decided that we were in the presence of 2 California Condors and 2 vultures.  Cool!  We took turns passing around the binoculars.  One auntie is a naturally trained biologist.  And I mean naturally in the literal sense of the word, like in nature.  She explained the difference between a condor and a vulture and as she did, a third condor flew in and joined the other birds in circling their dinner - and putting a show on for us.  She explained that condors have up to a 9 foot wingspan and that they have white on top of their wings and below, whereas vultures are smaller and don't have the white on top of the wings.  We marveled at their magnificence in the mid-afternoon sun until they were through and flew off.  It was really the perfect ending to our day.

cool picture from the deck of Nepenthe as we waited to be seated, not too patiently

view from our table...oak tree + Pacific Ocean + fog

deck at Nepenthe, sweet checkerboard that these kids were playing some form of hopscotch on :)

Grapes!

Cacti