Just soggy, not actually rainy. I almost didn’t wake up in
time for yoga, given the part where before you can get going you have to make
tea and eat cereal and play some words with friends, but I did get there in
plenty of time. After yesterday’s practically SRO class I was concerned about
getting there early to get a space further from the fireplace, but then it
turned out there were only 2 other students, so no worries. We did some pretty
intense hip stretches. Some of them were so intense that I actually had to stop
and go in to child’s pose before we were done with them. It’s good to be
challenged. Oh, and I wasn’t sore at all. I did make a very interesting
discovery, which is that it’s way easier for me to sit with my legs crossed if
I put a block under my right knee – in fact I can sit that way for a very long
time. So I need to remember that for my next Nia intensive.
One of the other participants was the long-time proprietor
of Laurel’s Wine Shop (and ex-mayor of Cannon Beach), Laurel Hood. We’d gone in
to her shop yesterday looking for wines from the Priorat region of Spain, so
after class when we got to chatting I reminded her of that and she said she had
some friends in Seattle who were importers of Spanish wines and have a very informative
website– Classical Wines of Spain. When I used to go to Curves all over the
country I always found it was a good place to get breakfast restaurant
recommendations; apparently yoga is a good place to find out about wine.
Meanwhile Dave had gone for a walk around the sewage
treatment lagoons (a well-known scenic destination) and John Rose had called and
left a message chiding me for not answering my phone. He was most impressed and
contrite when I told him I was probably in the middle of a downward dog when he
called. He’s been living in Dallas for a little over a year taking care of his
parents; his dad has passed away and his mom is happily ensconced in a nursing
resort and he’s on his way back to PDX. He wanted some recommendations for
things to see in Joshua Tree National Park, but we were both stunned to
discover that it’s been over 25 years since we were there. He’ll be spending
the night in Santa Cruz on Sunday – I told him to look Tim up.
After yoga Dave read quietly in a corner while I did the
first 5 songs of Canta with Carlos, and then Sufani and How to Get Ahead on my
own. They’re pretty much in there. I am looking forward to getting going on Open
Sesame. My legs were about done for, so
I stopped dancing and showered and we headed to Pizza a’fetta, where the pizza
has never been as good as it was when we went with Ben and Joan and Tim but it’s
still really good. I need to remember to order red bell peppers and garlic on
the standard Italian sausage (which comes with onions and olives). Dave had the
pepperoni supreme.
After lunch we went to look at the menu for Sweet Basil’s Café/Wine
Bar. It looked interesting but maybe not very tasty, so we decided to stay with
our original plan of Irish Table. Then there was big excitement, they were
actually making taffy at Bruce’s! It was the vanilla with the peanut butter
filling, and we watched from the time they mixed the filling until they had
filled an entire container with finished product. We had samples of course –
now that’s fresh. Dave isn’t all that fond of PB filling, but he managed to eat
it. The great part is the 1949 wrapping machine. It only had to be bashed a little
with a large screwdriver to get it started, and then it ran without a hitch. That’s
impressive, because their older machine basically broke down every 20-30
pieces. It is amazingly fun to watch the machine for two reasons – first, it is
clearly a mechanized version of how you would do it by hand, unlike many of
today’s machines which are efficient but don’t have the cams and rollers and
springs that this one does. And also, this was manufactured before anyone knew
anything about safety, so all the parts which would now be covered to keep
people from getting body parts stuck in them are out there where you can see
them sliding and spinning and grabbing. It’s a crowd pleaser.
Eventually we tore ourselves away from it and went to the
Cannon Beach Distillery to see if the whiskey is ready yet. It’s not going to
be ready until next November, and we’ll be on the ocean! Apparently everybody
has been coming in and asking about it. Since we were thwarted in our quest for
alcohol there, we headed down to the Wine Shack to taste their 90 point wines
for under $25. They were tasting
upstairs, which used to have a really odd and slightly unpleasant smell to it.
The new owners (it sold a year or two ago) remodeled and the smell is gone, which
is nice. What hasn’t changed is that the new owner has the same taste in wine
as the old owner, and it’s not our taste. We tasted 5 wines, none of which
would have gotten even 80 points from us. The 5th, the house
labelled Puffin Malbec, was downright unpleasant. I’m sure we’ll continue to
stop in and taste there, but I’m not sure why.
At this point it was either misting heavily or drizzling
very lightly, so we went back to the room for a break. Low tide was either at
4:30 or 5:30, and we wanted to go back to Cave Rock and see if we could walk
all the way around it at low tide. We couldn’t – just wanted to get that out of
the way. No point in building up the suspense. But we had a fantastic time.
Dave brought a flashlight, and we crawled into 2 of the caves. The both go back
very far, but the one further west goes back really far – I got down and belly
crawled until it got too narrow to go any further, and I still couldn’t see the
end of it. Given the way the sands shift, we will definitely be coming back
during summer low tides to check on it. Maybe bring some string to measure how
far back it goes. We continued walking along the beach and found another
waterfall, and this one was even bigger than yesterday’s, and fun to climb up alongside.
So we did, and it was sweet.
Once we climbed and slid back down, we decided to continue
North as far as we could. As I said, I’ve walked from Indian Beach to Ecola
Creek, and I knew that at a -.2 (or-.1, depending on your website) it wouldn’t
be possible to go all the way there – not to mention sunset at 4:30ish. But
there are many cool things to look at at the north end of the cove, so we
enjoyed the walk. Eventually we got to a place where there was a need for major
scrambling, and as the sun was about to set (not that you could tell through
the thick clouds) we decided to turn around. Then things got a little ugly, because
the miszle (mist/drizzle) was now being blown into our faces by a rather stiff
headwind that made forward progress a little more challenging. Not like the
gale we walked into this summer, but noticeable. Once again, we had not turned
around when we should have, and the walk back to the car was something of an
endurance event. Especially since a major point of the expedition was to get
around the west side of Cave Rock, which you already know we didn’t.
Also let me pause a moment to talk about relative sizes. I
am shorter than Dave, and have to take about 3 steps to every two of his. So I
contend that I walk 1/3rd farther if you count in steps. He says he
is heavier so he is doing more work. But I say his lever arm is longer so that
cancels it out. Anyway, we were both pretty beat and damp when we trudged up
the dune that was between us and our car. Somehow it seemed to have gotten much
taller. We were both glad to get back to the room, turn on the fireplace, put
on dry comfy pants, and bury our faces in our electronic devices.
For dinner we went to Irish Table. We were worried that it
might be too sad to be there without Tim, as it’s one of his favorite places,
but it turned out to be fine. I had the wild mushrooms and butternut squash in
puff pastry instead of my usual mussels, but other than that not much to
report. It remains one of my favorite places, although the service is often
slow and was made even slower when the table in the center had not one but
three wine glasses break in the space of about 5 minutes.
Way back on Wednesday we bought a cribbage set in case we
got bored, and tonight after dinner even though we were not bored I decided we
should play it. The “condensed rules” that came with it could not be more
confusing, so we spent the first half hour reading them and then having Dave
read them aloud while we tried to figure out what they meant. Then we played
one game and that made us very bored. All of my KenKen skills make me very good
at making 15s and 31s, but I think we missed the point of the game. Or
something. It was enjoyable doing an activity together that wasn’t eating, so
we tried to think of games we like playing that would work for 2 people. We
came up with Trouble and Farkle, including a variation on Trouble where each
person plays two colors but you can’t honk yourself.
So tonight’s blog ends with a question: what two player
games are out there that are fast paced and relatively quick?
No comments:
Post a Comment