On The Road Again

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

This will be our seventh January spent at the same rental house in Carmel. And, the answer to the question: do I know how lucky I am? is yes, I do. Although sometimes, even in the midst of your luck, you have to pay for your pretties.

Billy and I left our home in the northern end of Los Angeles at 3:45 on Sunday, January 2nd, en route to spend dinner and the night with our friends who live in Santa Barbara. Now, we live close enough to Santa Barbara that we have often spent a Sunday gardening, then showered, dressed, and climbed into the car to drive to Santa Barbara for dinner. After a day of digging around in the dirt, Brophy Brothers used to be our go-to spot until we had a couple of off-experiences there. Anyway, with all of that aside, we were counting on a seventy to ninety minute drive to our friends' home. Our travel time was generously estimated, or so we thought. It was, after all, the Sunday after a long New Year's weekend which included both the Rose Parade and Bowl game both held in the greater Los Angeles basin. So, in light of that, we conservatively tacked on about twenty minutes to our usual ETA.

Twenty minutes? LOL! Again, we left home at 3:45 with an expected arrival of 5:00-ish. Instead, we arrived at 8:15 pm after four and one-half hours traveling the seventy miles north on Highway 101. Now, I need to underscore that we did not take this experience personally. My friend and pilates trainer, Cathy, was stuck in New York for almost a week just after Christmas. And we heard a horror story or two about people basically camping at Heathrow in a similar nightmare. So, with all of that, as well as our ultimate destination in mind, we sucked it up and tried to make the best of our ten-mph commute at the commencement of our month away from home. We listened to a 2-CD set called Ultimate Broadway. It began with Oklahoma. By the time we made it all the way to Rent, I would have paid rent on a restroom for just a few moments' use. All along the highway, men had no such issue as they pulled over to use the side of the road. After the show tunes, we went to salsa music on my iPod, and finally ended up listening to The Rolling Stones, wishing we had some of Keith Richards' substances to abuse.

But it did will out, and we made it to Santa Barbara, to our friends' lovely home. While we were stuck on the road and after we let them know of our situation, Gwen phoned us frequently to check on our progress. She was making a risotto, so there was no problem holding dinner -- it would be made after we arrived. Henry told us that the wine was set out waiting for us, and we confessed that vodka would be our beverage of choice after this ordeal. Eventually, we arrived. Bathroom: done. Vodka: check. A good dinner, and our January retreat had begun.

We left Santa Barbara the next morning, and arrived in Carmel late Monday afternoon after the rain had swept south through central and southern California. We caught the sunset at Carmel beach. We celebrated our first night, as we always have, at Rio Grill. We are now unpacked, and our larder is stocked. And, we are in Carmel, which in many ways feels like we are home. I never anticipate this feeling when we are in the throes of removing holiday decorations, and packing up what always feels like much too much, before making this trip. In recent years, I find myself increasingly burned-out during that transition, and I often feel that I am sorry we have made these plans. But we push through the pre-trip travails, then travel up the 101 which approximates what was once, in the old mission days, called the Camino Real. We cut in at Salinas towards the Monterey area, and as we approach Highway 1, I finally see a stand of cypress trees. Not all, but a lot of my accumulated stress diminishes in one heavy exhale. Le sigh . . .

And so, from my kitchen table/desk in the little house that we rent here, and at the end of our first full day in Carmel-by-the-Sea, I start my year, by wishing you a happy new year. May it be a year without gridlock. A year without grief. A year to remember for all the beauty and cypress trees it may, perchance, bring to us. Welcome to 2011, and, thank you for reading my blog.