Experimenting on Kraleek

Experimenting on Kraleek
April 16 - 26, 2001
about the first victim of our hospitality.



	California's orange poppies on the Pacific Coast



	Sid at the spot where it could have happened

After half a year of honeymooning (and devoting ourselves practically entirely to each other), a change arrived. Our first visiting friend -- Lesley, who's internet nick is Kraleek, a Czech word for rabbit, with an English spelling -- came to us this week. Poor girl, she had no idea she would become a guinea pig. We were quite eager to experimentally test, how a visitor would accept accommodation in our living room, how one would deal with our food system "be quick or starve" (in a household with Hippo you have got to be quite fast; you miss the proper moment, and face an empty fridge), and how one would adapt to our driving skills.

On a weekend before the visit, we rushed to one of our favourite trip areas. Sid found an interesting cache at Bodega Bay, and also wanted to show me a spot, which we kept as a backup location for our wedding ceremony (until bureaucratic reasons crossed our plans forever), should Crater Lake have proven inaccessible for snow. The alternative place is on the coast north of San Francisco, where beautiful cliffs climb high above the ocean, and grassy slopes compete with pine-topped hills. I wonder how it would have been there, probably quite blown out of proportions, as the spot is awfully windy.

Lesley flew in from L.A., her itinerary included five visits, almost evenly distributed between Los Angeles, CA, and Seattle, WA. It seems that I had expressed so much support for her long-planned intent that I managed to marry right into the largest gap in her original row of stop along her route -- now she had everything arranged for a smooth tour along the West Coast.



	There's an ordinary park bench in the lower right corner, for scale...



	There's an ordinary Lesley in the middle, for scale... :-)

My first test run was scheduled for Monday, the day of her arrival, as I took Lesley right from the airport to Borel Hill (that's the hill where the other day, on one of my first rides on the winding roads, a halibut that I had had for lunch, wanted to jump out of the window and explore the landscape...). Lesley must have applied an established method during our ride, just "close your eyes and remember you're doing it for England", well anyway she survived and eventually seemed to enjoy the view of the ocean on one side, and the Valley on another. Later she also insisted that the hum of our refrigerator and of our server seems completely quiet, after having spent her vacation in Dubai. She stayed on a busy street and listened from early morning to calls of muezzins. To share the Moslem atmosphere with us a little bit, she brought us a awesome Arab alarm-clock, which wakes you up by sounding a call to prayer.

I let Lesley relax on Tuesday, there was no particular guinea pig testing (no Kraleeks either), and I simply kept depositing her in various shopping centers, on my regular way between college and climbing gym. She wanted to do some shopping, which I don't care for. Towards the evening, we were invited to have coffee with Martina. Surprisingly, George was already at home. After we mentioned that we intended to go to Monterey, both "local experts" overwhelmed us with instructions, what all places we absolutely MUST see. It amounted to approximately a week of dedicated tourism - we planned one day. Ultimately, George overcame my resistance to his lending us keys to their Monterey apartment again, when he said that I would not go to school if I had a fever, either. Martina added that Sid managed to live for thirty five years without me and he would certainly endure two days with me out of home. We were leaving, clutching their keys and a resolution to remember that we should IN NO CASE touch the heating controls, as George would regulate the heating remotely, over the phone. Since last fall, they have installed a miracle of modern technology, which allows to heat up the apartment from far away, before they arrive there.



	Shore between Pacific Grove and Monterey. Another shore of the Bay can be recognized on the horizon

We sent Sid to work in the morning and took highway seventeen, with a stop at a redwood park. Some trees that grow there reach almost 300 feet and age up to 2000 years. Redwood seeds need very specific conditions to grow, about one out of a million succeeds. Redwoods had to develop some other system -- they also sprout. After the original tree has died off, the strongest one of the "offspring" takes over. Yet to kill a redwood is not that easy -- the wood is almost fireproof, a tree survives in most cases even when its trunk core burns through.

Weather in Monterey is peculiar -- the ocean keeps relatively cold (54°F) throughout the year, which keeps cool air over the surface. A hot mass of continental air lays above that like a lid. We could see it from a distance -- a gray cover of fog. At least it was decent enough this time, to hover over the open ocean, so that Monterey Bay stayed in sunshine. It was cold and damp in Pacific Grove, at the westernmost point, where we stopped for lunch, and I suddenly longed for my sweater and my windbreaker, though just a moment ago I was baking.



	Not even ugly weather could take away the beauty of Point Lobos

From Pacific Grove, we took a road along the coast to the Monterey Aquarium. It is impossible to take a picture take that does not end up looking kitschy - especially now that everything is abloom.

The Aquarium is dedicated to Monterey Bay. Its underwater canyon reaches all the way to the shore, which is a rarity. Steinbeck's Doc (from Cannery Row) used to look for various creatures, the sea sometimes disgorged jellyfish and other slimy animals, distorted beyond recognition by the drop in pressure. Besides the above mentioned (and many other) sea life, there is a sample of a kelp forest at the Aquarium -- suddenly it appeared very familiar and not even a bit spooky, as it seemed during my visit last summer, for I know it now from scuba diving. Then there is, of course, a sea otter pool. The Aquarium people take in orphaned otter babies, try to bring them up and eventually release back to the ocean (while diving, we could see a trainer in swimming in front of the Aquarium, showing a little otter how to "hunt" for food). Not all otters make it all the way, so the most famous nursling often poses for tourists in front of the exhibits. There are some jokes about his employment contract with the city of Monterey, fixed worktime, and paid national holidays



	Seals watch the short, and soon will conclude they have nothing to fear from two strange looking tourists



	Lunchtime...

Stumbling out of the Aquarium by evening, we were glad to fall back into our temporary home. Martina urged me not to forget to open a bottle of Chardonnay that was in the fridge, which I gladly did. Lesley let me easily convince her that we did not feel like going out for dinner, and we had ham and bread. She went to take a nap soon, with her jet lag, and I was delighted to sit down in an easy chair with the most beautiful view to the Bay, sipping wine, and read a bit. This is, ladies and gentlemen, my idea of a perfect vacation :-) !

I told Lesley about Jerry, but she was not afraid of him. Maybe that's why he did not come to haunt us that night. At five in the morning, our heating kicked in, to keep us comfortable when we would wake up. Lesley suspects George to be remotely controlling even the spider in our bathroom -- it would crawl out exclusively when she was there, while it ignored me altogether.



	Lesley as a fashion model



	Monterey Bay was always divers' paradise

Another part of our tour was coming up. I took Lesley to Point Lobos, which misbehaved in terms of weather (cold, damp, foggy). Lesley did not bring her windbreaker, and so we ended up like two poor kids -- she was getting lost in my jacket, while Sid's coat (good that he leaves it permanently in his car) reached all the way to my knees. Perhaps that's why all the seals decided that we were harmless clowns -- seal mothers pushed their children up on a small beach under a cliff and nursed them without worrying about us.

Carmel and its mission still remained on our list. The mission was founded in 1771 by Franciscan Padre Junipero Serra (1713-1784) -- original buildings were made of wood and padre probably suffered when it came to food. In time the parish grew (by 1836, over four thousand Indians were baptized) and the locals helped to build a church and other structures from sandstone, and produce enough supplies. End of 18th century was the mission's best time. Unfortunately diseases imported by Europeans decimated local Indian population down to one third, and the land was taken over by Hispanic immigrants. Gradually the mission fell to ruin. In 1846 USA took over California, but restoration did not start till the beginning of 20th century. During his visit to USA in 1987, pope John Paul II visited the Carmel mission - as you can see, it is very well known and a quite a popular travel destination. In springtime, still not under siege of summer tourist crowds, it has a unique atmosphere.



	We did not spot any otters at Point Lobos, but we caught this deer



	Carmel mission

We left the mission just before it closed at four p.m. -- at half past five at Kren's, when we were returning the keys, I had to force Lesley out of their seductive hospitality -- we had a dinner planned with Sid, and wanted to get to bed early. We were to deliver Lesley on Friday to her next stop -- Cottonwood, California, which is about four hours drive north of where we live. We wanted to get up early, as it is possible to drive through San Francisco until about seven thirty -- later you may spend uncontrollable number of hours sitting in a traffic jam, without ever getting anywhere.

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