But Sunday was perfect. We breakfasted at Squat'n'Gobble in West Portal, which tends to be the restaurant I eat most at whenever I'm in San Francisco. There are places I like the food better, but Squat'n'Gobble has the hangout atmosphere, and it's easy to get to without a car. So, for friends who are mobile, it's a natural choice.
All of that is apropos of nothing, since I'm staying at Kar's house and we could've driven anywhere. What can I say - it's familiar and we like it.
They'd changed the menu since last time, so she had one of their new crepes, and I had a salmon sandwich with fries and a coffee. Then we went home, grabbed our bags of clothes, blankets, food, and what-have-you, and headed down towards Half Moon Bay, to this amazing itty bitty beach Kar had discovered long before, and had never been able to find again. Before we went she was like, "well, we could search for it... but no guarantees! We might have to settle for just being in the South Bay." But she found it.
You'd never know it existed if you didn't know it existed. You park in a nondescript parking lot, and walk down a really long straight path, with a tall fence on both sides, so it's kind of a commitment. The path is sprinkled with little yellow flowers, which at this time of year had apparently gone into their puff-ball seed pod phase, so the edges of the path were all full of seed tufts. And at the end of the path is a port-o-potty, which we used, and then there's a long staircase carved into the wall of a pretty shear cliff. Warning signs alert people that there's no safe footing at the edges of the cliff, and I counted three signs prohibiting dogs from being anywhere in the vicinity.
Down at the bottom of the cliff was the beach! It was bordered at both ends by large, natural rock formations, so the whole thing was just a crescent of sand with no way out except by the staircase or the merciless Ocean. The whole thing was maybe 500 yards from end to end, and probably only 100 yards from cliff to breakers. Additional signs warned of tsunami.
Over at one end, for some reason, was a couch, just above the wave line; and someone was walking around over there. Over in the middle were a couple of guys who seemed to be fishing with nets. And a woman sitting farther up the beach, watching them. She glanced over at us as we picked our spot. Some kind of sea birds were also fishing; bobbing around out on the surf, diving down over and over; and a sea otter, or maybe a seal, was also out there fishing. Something was going on, right at the shoreline where the waves broke in. Maybe some kind of turtle that had been using this beach to lay its eggs for millennia; something like that.
So we sat, and talked, and read aloud to each other, and were amazed by the beach.
Actually, the beach sand was pretty hard on the feet. The sand crystals were just slightly bigger than normal, and they ground together under the feet as I walked, and really just sort of sanded my feet down. It didn't take long for it to become pretty painful. The complaint of the city-boy. "Oh! The beach is hurting my feet! Oh!" But no kidding, it was a new experience. I'm used to sand feeling soft.
The basic pattern was, Kar and I would sit on the blankets, relaxing and basking in the glory of the beach and the glory of each other; and then we'd walk down and stand at the edge of the water, to let the waves lap over our feet. We'd cool down that way for a bit, still basking, and then go back and sit some more.
There were also seagulls out on the beach, and one time as we came back from cooling our feet, we discovered one dragging Kar's bag - the bag with the berries and crackers in it - away from our blanket! It had gotten it several feet along, and had actually managed to turn it upside-down enough to tip out the container of berries.
After that, this particular seagull was never more than 20 feet from our blankets, and watched us closely. If we went to cool our feet off, it would walk closer and closer towards the blankets as we walked closer and closer towards the water. It had no fear, because humans running on sand are at best a silly sight, and no conceivable threat to a seagull. So it was just a question of how far away we got. Sometimes it would try to fool us, pretending to walk away from the blankets, and then backing towards the far cliff wall so we couldn't see its head from down by the water; and then it would scurry back to the blankets, thinking it had fooled us. But I was able to just make out the top of its head as it tried this stratagem, so I wasn't fooled.
There wasn't much they could do, really. We didn't have very much food. After a few times coming back to put Kar's bag back on the blanket, I took out the berries and Kar and I ate them. But the sea-gull still kept going after the bag, and eventually got hold of the crackers. They were in a ziplock bag though, out of danger, so the seagull just kept grabbing it with its beak and shaking it against the sand, to little effect. Eventually I went and got the crackers too - the bag was too heavy to fly off with - and Kar and I ate the crackers.
Actually we didn't eat all of them. Some of them we'd toss to the seagulls, which resulted in a large flock of seagulls standing around us waiting for crackers. The social structure of a flock of seagulls is pretty intense. God forbid one of the smaller gulls gets a cracker. Between the time it takes them to scoop it up in their mouths and then to swallow it, the head gull rushes over to peck at them. Once the prize is swallowed, the head gull resumes his position of looking at us for more crackers. I tried to give one just to him, but it's hard to aim a cracker. I typically gave each cracker a spin as I threw it, which did increase the accuracy, but only enough to add some distance to the throw. The wind would still carry it to the gulls on something of a random vector.
After a couple of hours at the beach, it started to be past lunch-time - I guess our Squat-n-Gobble experience had been a breakfast/lunch type deal - and we decided to head over to Half Moon Bay proper, and shop, and maybe get some tea or something.
So we did that, and played a game where each of us would take turns coming up with an idea for a novel. We told about six of those, and I think it'll be a game we come back to.
At Half Moon Bay we found a bookstore, and I got Kar a copy of my favorite biography, "Wilde" by Richard Ellmann. The store owner looked for it for us, but came up empty; but apparently she was one of these bookstore owners who has special powers, because she had some kind of recollection that the book really was somewhere. The random book I happened to ask her for. And after a few minutes she came up with it inside a box somewhere else in the store. Kar and I were appropriately awe-struck at her talents.
So I got it after all! It's such a great biography! Kar's pretty busy, but I think I got her hooked on the idea, at least. And I'll read her a bit of it, to get her started.
After that it was getting late - somehow two hours passed at a coffee shop talking about ideas for novels - so we raced back into San Francisco to go to the Wine Club, so I could get a bottle of wine for my old boss who had his whole collection of wine stolen by a neighbor. So we got there and were helped by this really nice, large, bearded man who had done geographical computer technology for years until he decided he liked wine better. So we picked out a nice bottle of 2000 Pichon-Longueville. I hope he likes it, and I hope he is unaware that I've started a new blog. I don't think he tracks me that closely, since I left the job.
Then we went to eat at Universal Cafe, on 19th Street. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere on Potrero Hill, but it's this fancy shmancy restaurant that is turning out to be a tradition for Kar and me. Whenever I come for a visit, we always try to find it again. Each year we get better at finding it, but this year, like usual, we couldn't remember the name, or whether it was on 19th or 20th or 17th or suspended from skyhooks, or where along the street it would be. Last year we had to drive around for a good while before stumbling on it. This year we did better, and found it right away. Next time I'm sure we'll remember the name and place with no problem, at last.
Just as we were finishing up with dessert, Kar's boyfriend James called to ask if he should start watching an X-Files episode, or wait for us to come home first. So we raced home and all watched X-Files and ate cheese and crackers, and I had chocolate peanut butter ice cream. After X-Files, we watched an episode of West Wing; and after that it was bedtime. A long and successful day.
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