Mondays with Mike: Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire

I was treated to a whole bunch of this.

Our trip to Mendocino, California, occupied us so fully and so well that I’m only just now writing this post today (Monday) on a 737 flying home.

Only last Wednesday we were on a 737 to San Francisco. On our flight out, a young man with long blonde locks took the aisle seat of our row. Beth and I usually sit together center and window to keep a two-seat wide space for Whitney in front of us. We take window-aisle so that we don’t have to roust Whitney when our row mate gets in or out.

Eventually the young man opened his laptop and navigated to a long NY Times Magazine story called “Losing Earth, the Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change.” It’s an exhaustive and, to my mind, painful account of  how we missed the opportunity to stop climate change, even though pretty much everyone—the fossil fuel companies, Republicans, Democrats, and policy makers—knew it was a problem decades ago.

I’d read the story and eventually, I tried to engage him. I told him I thought it was well reported but also somber. He just looked at me like I was an alien. When I saw the sticker on his computer: “D” for “Dartmouth,” I got it. I’ve never met an active student or alum from that place that didn’t act like he or she had a broomstick shoved up their ass. OK, it’s a small sample size, but it’s my bigoted view and I’m sticking to it.

We landed at around 3:30, but it took forever to reach our rental car and we headed north in the midst of the Bay Area rush hour. The Golden Gate Bridge sure helped break the drudgery—its magnificent and impossible self, in golden sunshine, no fog.

I’d been tracking the California wildfires all week. Fires are burning all over California, but the three of concern to our route were called the Mendocino Complex Fire. Since we were headed to Mendocino, well, I thought it was worth checking. In fact, the Complex fires were and are concentrated in eastern Mendocino County and east of that, in Lake County. That’s a good distance inland from coastal Mendocino-Fort Bragg, our destination.

But.

Our drive would begin on U.S. 101, we’d head north, and then cut west. We had two choices—cut over early and end up on a stretch of the famed California 1 north through Mendocino and on to Fort Bragg, where we would be staying.  Or go farther north on 101 and then turn west, a half-hour shorter ride. That made more sense—we’d get there faster at night, return in daylight on the more scenic route.

The only hitch: The shorter route took us closer to the fires. But at the rental car counter, I asked whether I should be concerned and they shrugged it off.

As we got nearer the fire area, it started getting hazy. Eventually we smelled it. Coming out of San Francisco, Highway 101 is a ten-lane commuter monster. Up in the hills, it’s four lanes, and it runs twisty and up and down. As we approached a blind right-hander, a sign said the right lane was closed ahead. I heeded, and as we rounded the turn, I saw why the lane was closed. Four fire trucks occupied it. Fire fighters were chatting with one another—I looked up at an enormous black patch that ran from the road up around 80 feet high. There was a thick cloud of smoke. I had a brief moment of panic and figured I’d really made a bad choice. But then I realized they’d just extinguished a brush fire. You know. Just a brush fire.

Our car passed through the smoke and I sped up again, relieved. Then two cars in front of me suddenly pulled to the shoulder. Then a third. I looked right and saw this eerie, giant halo of flames high on hillside. I don’t know how far it was—safely afar, but it was mesmerizing and terrifying.

Maybe a half mile later, what looked like the biggest thunderhead cloud I’d ever seen (and having lived in Central Illinois, I’ve seen some) rose behind some peaks. But it was a scary dirty color—it wasn’t a cloud, it was smoke from the big fires a few miles east.

I made haste and we headed west. By then it was dark, and this road—route 20—was a roller coaster, serpentine ribbon of a ride. Tired and in a rental jeep that handled, well, like a Jeep, I took my time, taking the occasionally available pullout shoulder to let faster traffic pass. On top of that, there were three deer en route—that I saw, anyway—one partially in my lane.

We slept really well that night.

After that, I shuttled Beth to her workshop every morning and back again each afternoon. In between I hiked and took in the half dozen state parks, reserves, beaches and overlooks along the drive from our place to the Mendocino school where her workshop met. The scenery around Fort Bragg and Mendocino…I can only describe as gaudy. Beautiful. More beautiful. More beautiful but now with crashing waves. Now add wisps of fog and white caps.

Our young bartender, weaned on iPhone playlists, gets a lesson in how to play a vinyl record. First time for her.

Each drive was like a flip board of picture postcards. And the air always crisp. Windows down. Chilly in the morning, fog burns off, warm sun and cool breeze.

Other impressions:

• There is no place like California. Of course, state designations and boundaries are arbitrary. But the range of terrain, climates, microclimates, crops, livestock and cultures we experienced—just from San Francisco to Fort Bragg—was dizzying. What a remarkable place, regardless of all the fruit and nuts stereotypes.
• Lots of really good coffee and really good beer. They have great, funky coffee shops, plus drive-thrus in re-purposed old Fotomat booths or other little shacks. We made it to North Coast Tap Room and sampled some wonderful brews, including not-over-hopped IPAs.
• The area has long harbored alternative lifestyle communes of one sort or another, and those folks are still around. As are what appear to be young homeless people with dogs. We see them during the summer in Chicago; maybe this is where they come from to get away from the tourists.
• More restaurants and bars do not take credit cards than those that do. They make that clear up front, and they point to the ATM in the corner. We asked a friend who grew up in the area whether that had anything to do with the long-standing illicit marijuana business up there. He said probably, but that it also had to do with lots of people scratching out a living who couldn’t qualify for cards.
• We were treated kindly—but not obsequiously–by friendly down-to-earth people, everywhere we went.
  

  You know you’re eating fresh crab when….

• If you ever get to Fort Bragg, drive down to Noyo Harbor. There’s a little corkscrew of a road that takes you down to this little village of fishing boats, seafood shacks, charter boats—it’s a little world on an inlet from the sea. Go to Princess Seafood. Order from today board at the cash register and they’ll bring it out. We got a crab roll that was to die for. And we learned why: As we sat on the patio and ate our crab roll, we watched a woman send more Dungeness crabs to their ends in a big steaming pot.
• At one local tavern, we struck up a conversation with a vivacious 20-something bartender. The jukebox had gone quiet and one of the few other customers said something about vinyl.

  Jacqueline the bartender told us she’d lost her phone a few days ago and with it her playlists.So she made her way to our end, where behind the bar were shelves of old albums. She bent down with a flashlight and looked at them like museum relics.She pulled a pile out, laid them on the bar and started lifting each, looking at each with a kind of fascination. Beth asked her to read the names aloud. She did, and we voted yay or nay. Led Zeppelin. Jimmy Cliff. Tom Waits came up—she looked at us for help. “He’s great, but it might not rev people up.” She uncovered “Songs in the Key of Life,” and didn’t recognize it. “It’s great,” we said. She said she liked Stevie Wonder. Then “Gene…Kruppa,” she said. It’s pronounced “Kroopa,” Beth said. “Great jazz,” I said. “I’m not crazy about jazz,” Jacqueline replied.

  She disappeared for a minute, and then returned with a heavyset guy with an apron who looked like George Wendt from Cheers. They huddled with their backs to us around the turntable on a ledge. He was giving her a lesson in playing an LP. He was kind and soft-spoken. “This is the best way to take it out—pull the sleeve out with the record in it,” he demonstrated. He then let her remove the record and hold it by the edges. He helped her place it on the platter. “Each band is a new song,” he said to the enrapt young woman, pointing to spaces between cuts. Finally the tone arm, and Jimmy Cliff rang out.

• They have the best radio station ever. Ever. Ever. KOUZ. Nicknamed The Coast. I’m serious. It’s like all the best music geezers like Beth and I love, plus new artists, plus great DJs who are selecting the music.
• The best thing about that radio station and the whole area? Constant concern and monitoring of the fires and the well being of those affected. The DJs broke in with updates from local authorities—they’d get choked up some times. They had constant updates about shelter sites for evacuees, and useful information about things like getting FedEx shipments that couldn’t be made—“Come to the Safeway at so-an-so between so-and-so and so-and-so.” I learned more about containment percentages and fire fighting techniques than I thought I ever would.
• Living with these monster fires is a way of life for Californians. And it’’s clearly getting worse, scientifically and anecdotally. The people we spoke to and the DJs on the radio were astounded by the size and the earliness of these fires. There is a state department called Cal Fire. It’s an enormous statewide fire department. Our roadside motel was an R&R stop for those who needed a break from the front lines. Cal Fire trucks were parked at our place every afternoon and they were gone by dawn.
• For lots of Californians, climate change isn’’t a theory or a political football; it’s an existential threat.

We had a great trip. I’’m looking forward to getting home. But amidst all the nonsense going on right now and our inability to rise above it, I can’t get that old saw ““While Rome burns”” out of my head.

Note: Thinks have only gotten worse. Hot weather and high winds have made the Mendocino Complex Fire the second largest in California history, and it looks like it’ll be number one soon.