Mark Twain's California

There is a supposed Mark Twain quote that says, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." Snopes claims Twain never said this, but whoever did was onto something. I arrived in Monterey on Saturday, a beautiful seaside town in the Bay Area, entirely under-prepared for the frigid weather. Maybe frigid is an exaggeration. But I am a cold person who frost bites easily and I struggled along the coastline in my poor excuse for a long sleeved shirt.

I came to California as a favor primarily to myself but partially to my cousin who is moving from Monterey to Washington D.C. He and his wife wanted someone reliable to transport their car across the country after previous failed attempts with shipping companies. The trans-American wanderlust is an adventure I have had in mind since I first traveled alone to Washington state from Philadelphia as a 12-year old in 1997. Flying over the United States, bypassing all that land, I wondered what lay below. Somewhere along the line, since that first trip, I got preoccupied with the idea that the only true and meaningful adventures were those that occurred outside North America. In addressing a myriad of health obstacles this year, I began to see that an adventure can be as simple as one you have at home amidst complex personal challenges. This road trip is an opportunity to meet and be with the land in my own backyard, a place that I claim to know, but have actually never fully experienced.

Yesterday I drove from Monterey stopping at the Point Lobos Reserve where I had every intention of taking an epic bike ride through the beautiful coves and waterside cliffs, but couldn't get the tire pump to work--I learned in hindsight that this was a user error. Ah. Well. I walked instead. Starting to feel the icy air creeping in, I returned to the car and made my way down the winding roads of Big Sur, stopping at Nepenthe Cafe which was one of my Dad's favorite stops back in the day; he used to drive his motorcycle down the California coast, frequenting these types of hippie communes. My lunch stop was in San Luis Obispo where there's an old Spanish-Catholic missionary from 1772--thank God someone was converting the savages back then. I drove the rest of the way to Los Angeles via an unintentional detour that took me an hour out of my way, but into a grand mountain pass along the coast.

Here's a clip on Road Trips:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/node/3104?bypass=true