Seal Beach Daily is off to a wonderful start. The mailboxes runneth over with goodness, good wishes, good contacts, good news. And I have to admit, although it is a lot of work, I am having a good time. And the SBD has hit a nerve in Seal Beach. Readers e-mail that they want this site, with this approach, and that makes me want to be part of creating it for them. I can’t help it; at some level, isn’t it every journalist’s dream to have a little hometown operation?
Been wondering where in the world is Kate Cohen? Sorry for the blogging drought, but I’ve been busy building Seal Beach Daily with Val and Donna. It’s been a full time gig for four weeks and tonight we are good to go! Seal Beach Daily is our little web team’s foray into the world of hyper-local blogging. More about that soon. Tonight, I’m just too beat from the pre-launch crunch to write about it. I hope you will visit the SBD, patronize its advertisers and watch us grow in the coming weeks.
Over at CaliforniaAuthors, we’re running another cool book lotto. We’re giving away a signed copy of Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant named Isaias Hellman created California by Bay Area journalist Frances Dinkelspiel. It is an interesting and personal history. From californiaauthors: “Frances is a former newspaper reporter who has spent the past EIGHT years researching a book about her great-great-grandfather. Isaias Hellman was a California builder and financier in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who played a pivotal role in creating one of the world’s most dynamic economies.” Learn more and enter the drawing at californiaauthors.
at the Will Rogers Middle School in the affluent Marine Stadium/Belmont Shore area of Long Beach. The weather: California Fall perfection. I walked right in and picked up my ballot. It was great to be able to cast my vote for Barack at last. And to say NO on Prop. H8 and phooey to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (who may represent OC, but never represented me), by voting for dark horse Dem Debbie Cook.
Headed back to the video wall to sweat Indiana, which at this writing is too close to call according to MSNBC. Below, my polling place. And be sure to click here to see Val’s cool voting pix.
City of Ten Thousand Buddhas and the Avenue of the Giants.
OCT 12, 2008 12:52 AM BY KATE
An ethereal, gently warm fall day. Leaving the famous vine-lands of Sonoma under sunny skies, rolling north and into the NorCal leg of the trip, we headed for Ukiah on a chowhound tip. We were looking for The Sagely City of Ten Thousand Buddhas — a Chinese Buddhist monastery — and its Jyung Kang (To Your Health) Restaurant. The monastery was founded by Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, a prolific founder of Buddhist institutions and the teacher of the Six Great Guidelines: not contending, not being greedy, not seeking, not being selfish, not pursuing personal profit, and not lying. The restaurant is of course entirely vegetarian; its emphasis is on “the love of fresh organic ingredients and the well being of all living beings.” They use no MSG, onions, garlic, chives, scallions, leeks or eggs. Still, we’ve heard their food praised for its flavor and the savory deliciousness of their tofu and gluten dishes.
The monastery is not a tourist attraction, but a quiet, contemplative working religious community and school. All visitors are asked to sign in at the visitors center, where we parked, signed in and set out across the campus to the restaurant. A peacock wandered by and as we walked along, passing the Instilling Goodness School, we were struck by the stately institutional architecture of the many buildings on the large park-like compound. It seemed late 19th/early 20th century, with Arts and Crafts dignity, and it spoke of a previous purpose for campus. Later, we were to learn what this was.
But on our visit that morning, we walked through the peaceful campus and by the great hall adorned with fantastic and gigantic painted figures, heavenly kings shod with curling slippers, surrounded by curling clouds in the Chinese style. Monks and students were gathering at the hall for midday devotions. We passed one small procession, lead by a bell ringer and accompanied by chanting students. Up the path an older nun walked with a younger companion who shaded the elder woman’s shaved head with a parasol. They talked softly. A school girl tagged alongside.
The small restaurant is in a pleasant but plain lunchroom with large windows. It reminded me of a classroom from my country grammar school in Ohio. When we arrived, a large three-generation Asian family was sharing a feast at a table in the middle of the room; the food looked great and the smells were enticing.
We sat near an open window and made our selections from a large menu filled with unfamiliar dishes, but thankfully, with many pictures. The friendly woman who took our order suggested the stir fried broccoli and house special fried rice, to which we added Vegetable Dumplings, Hot and Sour Soup, Seaweed Soup, Golden Balls with Ginger (savory fried gluten balls). Now, I thought the broccoli and fried rice might not be the most exotic things I could try, but she was so friendly, and so sure we would like them, that it only seemed polite to accept.
And, they were so good, the distinct flavor of each ingredient still fresh tasting, bright. The big bowls of soups were tangy. The seaweed soup tasting of the ocean. The hot and sour broth was light and complex with tender mushrooms and a delicate bean curd mesh. The dumplings were tender with a yummy mixed veg filling. And the Golden Balls were golden! These were little balls of salty savory wheat gluten fried and served with thinly shredded ginger. Nice texture, not too chewy. Very snacky. Very easy to pop one after another.
All this was served to us in giant portions, easy enough to feed four off any one plate and two on our “small” soup orders. So we feasted and packed up plenty of leftovers for dinner. $32 dollars for two meals of impeccably fresh, local and lovingly prepared food. Perfect.
On our way back to the car, the doors to the great hall were open to let in the day and we stood with our backs against an outside wall to listen to the resonant chanting, and then we peeked into a side hall filled with hundreds of golden and gilt porcelain Buddhas smiling serenely into the quiet. We visited the bookstore and then headed out the Mountain Gate, north for the great redwood forest.
As I drove for the Humboldt woods, Val iPhoned up the history of the 400+ acre campus and found that it was once a State Hospital, opened as the Mendocino Asylum for the Insane in the 1890s. Many buildings were being added to the site through the 1930s. The hospital was closed in the 1970s during a drought which made its further operation impossible. Venerable Master Hua purchased the property in the late 70s and used his “wisdom eye” to find a well that now feeds the whole complex.
In two hours we made the Humbolt Redwoods State Park. Humbolt is the home of one of the Great American Car Touring Roads, Highway 254, The Avenue of the Giants. The road leaves the busy 101 and winds gently through the spectacular redwood forest. It is lined with turnouts and parking areas, where visitors can just pull off, hop out of the car and in a few short steps be in a quiet grove of ancient and enormous trees, shaded by the high canopy, walking on trails carpeted with fallen needles and lined with sorrel and fern. So idyllic, you expect the fairies or your spirit guide or the leprechauns to show up and take you on some sylvan adventure. There are also the roadside attractions, like artifacts of vacations gone by: the tree you can drive through, the chimney tree, the house made of one tree, the eternal tree.
We took the Avenue and rolled along at 40 mph, stopping at this grove or that, as the day wore on. There’s no explaining the feeling of being in the presence of these trees; their scale throws off your perception, giving you an off-kilter other-worldly feeling. Each curve of the road reveals a wowing view and and you drive through the forest open mouthed. We pull off mid-afternoon and walk a trail down to the stony bank of the Eel River. We sat on the stones, shared big bites of Healdsburg Farmers Market marionberry pie and watched the river roll silently by. Birds fussed from the trees towering over far side of the river. Tiny fish darted in the shallows at our feet.
Then it was back up the trail that winds under fallen giants and through verdant underbrush to the car. Back onto the road. It was almost twilight when we got to the Founders Grove, a most spectacular and easily accessible old-growth grove that has been a preserve since the 1920s. It is the home of the Dyerville Giant. One of the forest’s largest trees, it was more than 370 feet tall — that’s 30 stories or as tall as Niagara Falls — and 1600 years old when it fell in 1991. It is more than 50 feet in circumference. A burl on the fallen tree is expected to sprout new growth, in keeping with the species name: Sequoia Sempervirens, or ever living.
Walking through the grove — alone, in the late of the day — was like being in the nave of a great cathedral with soaring ceilings, sacred perfumes, dappled lighting, velvet quiet. And when the sun was getting low and we knew we could linger no longer, we headed back to the car and walked up on a doe and her two fawns grazing on sorrel and stepping silently through the sword fern. We stood still, breathing quietly and watched the little family until they moved off into the deeper woods. Then we walked quietly back to the car.
^ On the Eel River trail
^ In Founders Grove
^ With the Dyerville Giant
^ Fallen trees become home to thousands of species
^ A fawn in Founders Grove
We stopped for the night at Rio Del at the very humble, but perfectly fine, Humboldt Gables Motel. We got there just before the fog started to roll into the spaces between the hills. There in our little room, we laid out a left over supper of our Jyung Kang food and our salads from Bangkok Cuisine in Berkeley. Then we cuddled up in the cool night to dream our woodland dreams.
Motelling Sidebar: We love the old 50s motels, but they share one problem: tissue thin walls. At the Humboldt Gables, the German guy in the room next to ours was snoring an aria from the Gotterdammerung and it sounded like his head was on the pillow next to mine. A 21st century solution: my iPhone app, Ambiance that lets you select from a menu of sounds to drown out noise in your environment. To counteract a German tourist snore, I found rain on a tin roof to be perfect. Soon I dropped off and was probably snoring the harmony like a Rhine maiden.
^ Humboldt Gables Motel, Rio Del CA
Click here for a map of this day’s locations.
Big Graze Road Lesson 1: Watch your pungent acquisitions
OCT 10, 2008 5:21 PM BY KATE
Last month, while we waited for the skies to clear over Hollister so we could go up for our breathtaking glide, we drove up the road to see what was on offer at the locally famous Casa de Fruta. The Casa is a fruit stand/roadside attraction on steroids with an overwhelming amount of stuff. The whole place was hung with new garlic braids. A new braid was on our shopping list for in this area — which is famous for its garlic production — and, the price was right, so we found a nice one and checked out.
We put the braid in the back of the truck and headed off to soar through the now-clearing skies. But when we got back to the car after our glide, the heavy garlic smell hit us as soon as we opened the door. Whoa! Val wrapped the braid in two plastic bags, put the package in a brown paper bag and then tucked it deep into the kitchen stuff in the very back of the Element.
A short time later, we were on our way to Berkeley and I had to roll down my window for some fresh air. Pew! Afraid to leave it to embed its essence into the car, we took the braid into our room at the Berkeley Rodeway Inn. We stored it in the little alcove off the bathroom and we opened our window onto the courtyard. But as I reclined in bed, blogging our day, I could still smell the garlic and it was starting to get to me. Finally, I’d had it. I took the garlic out to the parking lot and put it under the front wheel of the car, where, Val pointed out, it looked like a suspicious package. A stink bomb, I said. By then, I was crabby about it — I don’t care what happens to it, I just can’t stand to smell it anymore, I said. Let some fool steal it, then it will be his stinky karmic problem. Val said he thought it would be better if he bungeed it to the roof of the car, which he did.
Back in bed, I was thinking I didn’t like the way the weird little package called attention to the car. I knew I couldn’t breathe its perfume for another two weeks. We have to get rid of it, I told Val. Cut our losses. We couldn’t mail it to ourselves, because our mail was on hold at the post office for three more weeks and you can get yourself in trouble by stinking up government workplaces. Then it came to me: we’d mail it to Laurie with instructions to hang it in one of her out-buildings, where its scent would not offend. And let me just say: you know you have a good friend when you can mail your stinky problems to them. (Thanks, Laur, you’re the best!)
So the next day, with great relief, I slid the braid into a Priority Mail box and handed the stink to the USPS. What a free feeling! In a couple of days, Laurie reported the package’s receipt and the braid is now hung safely in her garage, where the dogs give it an occasional curious sniff, but human noses remain unassailed. This weekend the braid will finally come home to Covina. It will be stored in our garage, where we hope it will mellow, or at very least, inhibit termite colonization.
Was it only two weeks ago? September 23. It was our second day in Sonoma County, CA. We started with a quick cruise through downtown Healdsburg and then off to Geyserville for a tasting at Locals. We asked where we could set up a picnic lunch and the friendly guy behind the bar suggested Quivera winery — an organic, biodynamic and solar-powered winery that has a nice picnic area used by wine tours and random visitors, like us. He gave us a map and traced out a route up the pretty Dry Creek Road.
At Quivera we purchased a drinkable and robust organic Zinfandel which we paired with creamy, delicately goaty and yummy Cowgirl Creamery chevre, the last kitchen garden tomato, olives and radishes.
^ Quivera Winery
Then it was back to Locals for their delightful vertical tastings, where we enjoyed Zinfandels from four different wineries tasted side by side — and four Pinots and three Sangioveses. What a great way to taste wine! It’s not about finding the best, but about using one to taste the other, to make comparisons, to find our what you like and to find the wines that fit you. That kind of tasting opportunity is not to be had at an individual winery’s tasting rooms. We bought several bottles from Portalupi, Dark Horse and Ramazotti wineries.
And Carolyn Lewis, the Locals owner who was pouring for us, took a look at a my biz card and a few of my paintings on the iphone and invited me to see her nice new gallery space up the block. She’s interested in the work and wants me to keep in touch — if I ever build up some inventory! A very unexpected and very nice turn in the day.
Then we were off to the Healdsburg Farmers Market for some dinner ingredients — Val found garden fresh long green beans and he suggested a big dinner salad of beans, potatoes, eggs, tomatoes, arugula — a take on a purslane salad we’ve been eating based on a recipe from our favorite Cretan cookbook. We picked up the ingredients. Plus, for Val, some smoked black cod that the fisherman-vendor said was “caught in 600 feet of water, 30 miles out in the Pacific” and smoked by the fishermen themselves. And of course, some pie — marionberry.
We headed out Sweetwater Springs Rd. — one of the trip’s most twisty and beautiful roads — in the low afternoon sun, to the Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve, where we cooked dinner in a grove of soaring redwoods. Beautiful. Quiet broken by the tapping work of woodpeckers. Val made his delicious egg and potato salad and served it up with smoked fish, luscious figs, Quivera Zin — all in a truly grand dining room.
As the light faded and I washed the dishes, bats fluttered overhead feasting on sunset insects. They were so high up, they looked like butterflies. We headed back to the hotel via the easier River Road drive, just as night really took hold.
Faithful readers of The Night Note will know that Rita Matassa is a frequent commenter here, a Friend of the Night Note, and many will know that she is an important part of the M&M/NightNote blog-munity, being responsible for bringing one M — Mark — into the world. So Rita and I met in the cyber world a while ago, when our latest burst of blogging was just taking off. And although we hadn’t met each other in “real” life, Rita always has something to say to make me smile.
Today, as I was cruising through Oregon on the way home from The Big Graze Road Trip, I got to stop in Eugene and enjoy a very nice meeting, lunch (yum! brownies!) and conversation with Rita at her cozy house. The afternoon rolled by and we could have chatted on through the evening and I got to have that wonderful feeling of ease that comes with being good friends. We giggled a lot, shared histories, admired M&M, talked about newspapering and cooking and traveling and writing and making art, about getting to sleep, enjoying life and playing the cards you are dealt. Is there a better way to spend an afternoon?
Thank you Rita for my great afternoon! And for my little lunch bag — I am eating my brownie midnight snack right now. Don’t you love the internets? I do!
Yesterday was Val’s last day on vacation. Back to work on Monday. This is how we worked it: he flies back from Seattle, so he can have the most fun-time on the road and I drive the little Element back to the barn in nice easy stages. I’m due back home mid-week.
This morning, it is pouring buckets! For a SoCal girl, this is a feature not a bug. Rain! Good hard rain. It sounds so good. Smells so good. It’s great. Mark mentions how it is great for sitting in pajamas and blogging, but not so great for cross country driving. So, he invited me to delay my return by a couple of days and keep my little nest of a room in Seattle until the really bad weather moves off my route home. He’s so nice and I am so comfy here, the company, the pace and flow of the day, suiting me so well. So, I’m keeping an eye on the weather and we’ll see what happens.
Yesterday: a leisurely morning as Val packed his things and arranged everything in the Element so it would be easy for me (thanks, sweetie), and then out into the delightful drizzly Seattle day. We went with M&M to Alki and got fried fish and oysters at Sunfish, a have-your-money-ready-and-know-what-you-want fried seafood place with a great water view and hot, juicy fried oysters. [Click here for Mark's funny Sunfish tale.] Then a stroll along the pebble and sand beach, enjoying the great grays, steely water, city buldings, dramatic sky, dark logs on the shore. M&M told us the local stories and it was a nice wrap for Val’s Big Graze.
^ Val on the beach at Alki
So it was off to Sea-Tac for Val and the Jet Blue jet home. Hated to see him go. Wii miss him! Things have been so charmed on this vacation, I could wish it to go on and on. We were already planning our next trip on the first day — the West Coast is so bountiful, so beautiful and so big, we could only savor the smallest slice in our three weeks. Now, it’s just about over and the new year of work about to begin, and even that is good, because I live in the land of plenty.
After we dropped off Val, Mark headed out to play cards and Michelle and I hung out at the house until dinner time. We went to the Junction, to The Matador, the West Seattle location of a nice local chain of swank tex-mex restaurants/tequila bars. We came in out of the chilly rainy night into the warm atmosphere: high cielings, golden lighting, dark scrolling metal work, deep red curtains. We were seated at part of a shared table that wrapped around a little fireplace, cozy, perfect for the weather. We talked over tall margaritas and big plates of enchiladas. Michelle’s=tomatillo/chicken, mine =habenero/carnitas. And the food was good, especially my habenero sauce, packing exactly the right amount of zing. Of course, the portions were big everything’s-bigger-in-tex-mexican-sized. To clean the plate would have been to suffer, but I really enjoyed what I did eat, including nice black beans and guacamole. It’s best that I didn’t realize while I was there that the bar served over 80 kinds of tequila — a tasting would have definitely been in order. And, we know how that sort of thing can get out of hand when you are paying attention to your conversation and not how much you’re drinking. But another time, earlier in an evening when it is all about tasting the liquor, I’d like to visit this place again.
^ Warm and bustling: The crowd at the Matador and our neat fireplace table top.
This afternoon, a real wind storm has taken hold of Seattle and the air is filled with wheeling eddies of fall-colored leaves. Michelle and I went out to get the Element some new windshield wipers. The search took us into downtown where we accomplished our mission and Nik gave me a nice driving tour of the neighborhoods as pretty tornadoes of leaves whirled around us. On our way home, after a stop at the SafeWay for sausage for tonight’s red beans, Michelle asked if I would like to try Seattle’s best shakes. Mmm, said I. Old timey shakes, malteds? Yeah. SMS Mark. He’s in. We take the turn for Luna Park Cafe where our friendly tattooed and pierced waitresses whipped up real-deal, made with vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup, chocolate malteds. Whipped cream on top. Yum!
^ The shake: note the ribbons of chocolate. The shakers: The malt makers of Luna
^ Luna Park Cafe, West Seattle
Now we’re home again, snug, warmed by laptops, pot of red beans simmers on the stove, Blackeye Peas on the iTunes, and the wind rushes down the street. Fall is here. (And I am missing you val. xxo)
After Wii-ing ’til the wee hours, we lounged around over coffee and laptops all morning, Wii-ed a little more and then Val and I were off to the famous Pike Place Market of Seattle. On a misty day we wandered through the covered market tasting and selecting ingredients for tonight’s dinner for our hosts Mark and Michelle. In the meantime, we also snagged some fresh and fried oysters at Jack’s Fish Spot. Dee-lish.
On the menu: Fresh Washington chicken, roasted and served with an Oregon huckleberry reduction, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, sauteed french beans and Val’s glazed ginger carrots. For dessert: Moostruck chocolate with chilies. Update: I forgot the lovely Fresh Alaskan Halibut sashimi, served with a slice of jalapeno, Pasolivo Olive Oil and a glass of White Wall Sake. Wine with dinner = Foxen Tinaquiac Valley Cabernet Franc, 2005. Exceptionally delicious with the chicken and the chocolate.
^ The oyster tanks at Jack’s Fish Spot — Fresh Quilcene oysters waiting to be shucked for Val
^ Val selects beautiful green beans for dinner.
^ Fresh-shucked oysters at Jack’s and our yummy dinner ingredients prepped and ready to go
Update below: Michelle’s picture of our dinner plates.
Hopped the streetcar and spent a pleasant morning looking into the fine art galleries in Portland’s Pearl District. It was a fun day to visit the galleries, because they are all hanging their new shows for the First Thursday Gallery Walk. So the art was new, the galleries uncrowded and the people hanging the shows were friendly enough to let us poke around as they worked. At the Elizabeth Leach Gallery, I was admiring a big landscape by Stephen Hayes when the Assistant Manager of the gallery, Nathan, stopped his work lighting the new show and came over to talk to us about the artist. When we told him about the locavore food theme of The Big Graze, he suggested we visit the Park Kitchen, which was only a few blocks away.
^ Val and our great Park Kitchen lunch
And, are we indebted to Nathan! After we roamed around the neighborhood a bit more, visiting galleries and the Museum of Contemporary Craft and taking pictures of the cool Portland architecture, we headed for Park Kitchen and were treated to a lunch of delights, delightfully served. Val had a Sazerac. We split a bowl of Green Pepper and Hazelnut Soup, garnished with Wedding Salami. Complex. Soothing. Special. I had the house-made hot dog, a delicious and mild sausage sandwich served with PK’s own ketchup. Val’s entree: the terrine of the day, a pork terrine, with pickled beets and coarse mustard. Subtle. Savory. Beet pickle vinegar balancing perfectly with the richness of the terrine. For dessert, we split a Fennel Cake with Blackberry Ice Cream and Candied Fennel Slices. This was great: a coarse, delicately fennel-flavored cake topped with tangy and not-too-sweet berry ice cream. The candied fennel — sliced see-through thin — delivered a nice punch of licorice and sweetness that married perfectly with everything else on the plate.
Each dish was beautifully thought out. Gracefully balanced. Intriguing and still simple. the portions were perfect. So our lunch was a highlight meal of the trip. Now, we’ve changed our plans to eat at Le Pigeon tonight and are returning to the Park Kitchen for dinner. We are still definitely interested in visiting Le Pigeon — but we’ve become very wary of overeating, of literally biting off more than we can chew — and we just decided that the Park Kitchen’s menu offered more light-dining options. On the menu tonight at Le Pigeon: rabbit, lamb, fois gras, beef bourguignon, more. Very, very tempting, but a little dangerous too. Also, we’d need to be at Le Pigeon at 5 p.m. to sit at the chef’s counter at the popular five-table restaurant — and, it just ended up feeling too early to eat. So it’s Park Kitchen at eight. Many thanks, Nathan!
PS: Portland’s public transit is very nice. Riding the streetcar in the cool gray morning, I might have been in Amsterdam. Plus, our hotel gave us free train tix, so the transport was on them. (I really like this place.)
Wow! I started to work on my backed up blogging and it turned out a had a couple thousand photos to look through. So I spent the evening looking and making notes for some future posts. Of course, it is embarrassing, I’ve actually been lapped by the vacation. I’m writing about last Tuesday and here it is Tuesday already. Sigh! Shouldn’t have spent so much time talking to Mark about the bailout. A traveling girl does what she can. For now, some pix from tonight.
^ Our cheery-chic digs at the Inn @ Northrop Station.
^ Our kitchen at the Inn
^ Dinner tonight a la Val: Tagliatelle with Grants Pass Farmers Market Chanterelle mushrooms and cream topped with Piave Vecchio. Broccoli rabe. Mmm!
I see our country being able to represent those things John McCain and I have both been discussing in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.
Lazing in bed in our super-cool Portland hotel watching the disgusting House Republicans make excuses for not getting the bail out bill passed. Boehnaer and Blunt — whose job it was to get the house Republicans to pass the bill — on TV whining before the microphones: It was a speech by Pelosi, it is so very hard for Republicans to vote for bail outs, and the best excuse of all — it was the Jews. We all have to be home by sundown! That jewish holiday messed up the clock, made the time frame too short to get their votes on board. Pathetic.
Well shanah tova to you losers. I think John McCain should suspend his campaign permanently — since he did such a good job getting his party’s most fanatical trolls to line up. And, I hope the shit really hits the fan before Nov. 4, so Great American Voter can see clearly that the Republicans have trashed the entire country in the last eight years — and so, kick the bastards clear out.
Over at CaliforniaAuthors, we’re running another cool book lotto. We’re giving away a signed copy of 
A short time later, we were on our way to Berkeley and I had to roll down my window for some fresh air. Pew! Afraid to leave it to embed its essence into the car, we took the braid into our room at the Berkeley Rodeway Inn. We stored it in the little alcove off the bathroom and we opened our window onto the courtyard. But as I reclined in bed, blogging our day, I could still smell the garlic and it was starting to get to me. Finally, I’d had it. I took the garlic out to the parking lot and put it under the front wheel of the car, where, Val pointed out, it looked like a suspicious package. A stink bomb, I said. By then, I was crabby about it — I don’t care what happens to it, I just can’t stand to smell it anymore, I said. Let some fool steal it, then it will be his stinky karmic problem. Val said he thought it would be better if he bungeed it to the roof of the car, which he did.
We headed out Sweetwater Springs Rd. — one of the trip’s most twisty and beautiful roads — in the low afternoon sun, to the 
