Pea Soup
As part of my “Getting Busy” program, we have managed to squeeze in a short mini-break before we head off to the Pyrenees for a motorcycle trip in five days. That’s a little more tight than we might have wanted, but the occasion should be well worth the rushing about. We are spending this weekend in the mid-coastal region of California, that area between Santa Barbara and Monterrey which is some of the most beautiful part of the state coastline, but also very remote and not at all close to much of anything. I suppose that is what makes it so interesting and what makes it the spot where William Randolph Hearst chose to build his San Simeon hilltop castle set amongst his then 300,000 acres of California coastal ranch land a century ago. I have written a good deal about Hearst Castle over the years since we had a big birthday bash for Kim there four years ago. We are back there this weekend on the occasion of my buddy Frank’s 85th birthday. Specifically, we came for a special event for Hearst Castle Foundation Members. It’s called the Neptune Swim and it is a sunset swim in the Neptune Pool at San Simeon combined with a catered cocktail reception.
It should be a spectacular event since the sky is crisp and clear blue and we should be getting into the pool at about 7:30. We anticipate it will be chilly with about a 60 degree ambient air temperature and God only knows what kind of water temperature in the Neptune Pool. But we are all treating it as a once-in-a-lifetime event so we have all promised to suit up and more or less go into the water to be able to actually say that we went for a swim where the rich and famous swam. In fact, since the movie we saw here at Hearst Castle this summer showed Clark Gable and Carol Lombard lounging by the pool back in the day, Kim and I decided to order olde thyme bathing costumes for us. That means Frank and I are going in in 1920’s one-piece black and white striped full suits while Kim and Loretta will go in with period-appropriate black suits reminiscent of the good old days. I am just glad that my suit has plenty of Lycra in it, so that we can appear as slimming as possible under the circumstances. Pictures will be a big part of the evening, so we are hoping to post those by tonight in some forum or other to commemorate the moment.
I first came through this area as an adult back in 1982 on the rare occasion of visiting my father. He brought my first wife and I up to his chateaux in Visalia, where he was building housing for the masses of farm workers that were settling down in the San Joaquin Valley as the food industry was finally installing processing plants that would allow these migrant pickers to finally have year-round employment in the area. On that trip, he brought us up to Hearst Castle for my first visit to the place. On the way, we also stayed at the Madonna Inn (famous for its thematic rooms) in San Luis Obispo and stopped in Buellton for a cup of Andersen’s Pea Soup. In honor of that visit forty years ago, we stopped for the pea soup but chose to skip the Madonna Inn in favor of the Fireside Inn in Cambria, Moonstone Beach, which has become our go-to spot on this rugged coastline.
The Inn has renovated itself over the COVID cycle and is now nicer than ever, but who could possibly improve on the amazing location set across from the crashing Pacific waves on the rocky shore to the west. It’s about as pretty a spot as you can find and we like to come here every few months to remind ourselves of the natural beauty of this area. After tonight’s Neptune Pool extravaganza, we will tool around the area tomorrow, dining in Cambria and probably doing something like going again to Elephant Seal Beach or perhaps to the San Simeon Beach House or some such attraction. There is not a wide variety of things to do here, but they are all spectacular and do a fine job of recharging the batteries.
Stopping for a pea soup to go today was a perfect lunch to leave me good and hungry for the hors d’oeuvres by the pool. There is something about these coastal areas that makes you feel that you need something thick and warm to keep you going and I’m sure that some Norwegian by the name of Andersen didn’t have to think too hard many years ago to find something that everybody liked. You have to hate peas to not like creamy pea soup, especially if you get it with ham hocks or bacon meaningfully infused into it. I find myself wondering if tomorrow morning we will be greeted by a thick pea soup fog here on the coast, which might make a walk along the beach de rigueur.
I feel raring to go in twenty minutes since we certainly don’t want to be late for our ride up the mountain with the other Foundation Members and swimmers. Kim is catching some z’ s, which, by all rights, I should be doing since she and Betty got me up at 5am today after I had stayed up past midnight to read depositions for an expert case I am trying to advance. Rather than waste the morning waiting for out departure, I put it to good use and finished what was 1,200 pages of depositions (the read fast, but that is still about four day’s worth of depositions…actually four individuals for one day each). After that, i took another swing at my report (Version 11) and sent it off to the lawyers with the thought that a solid lob to the backhand on a Saturday morning was totally appropriate to give me time to enjoy my mini-break without having to squeeze in more writing while on the road.
I tend to do all the driving on these roadtrips, so after a 5am wake-up and 3+ hours of deposition work, I put in about six hours behind the wheel for the drive up here through the L.A. Basin and then along that narrow stretch of land between the mountains and the ocean, known as the Santa Barbara Corridor. L.A. was less a problem than the under-reconstruction 101 through Santa Barbara. That’s why a stop in Buellton, the scene of the Sideways comedy, for pea soup seemed just right.
When we return on Monday it will be via Camarillo for a stop to lunch with Kim’s sister Sharon and hubby Woo. That is our usual regional stop, and then we will spend Monday midday hightailing it down the 15 towards our hilltop in San Diego. I will enjoy the ride down since I started the new Geoffrey Berman book, Holding the Line on the way here and am finding it fascinating to learn about the Trump years through the eyes of the U.S. Attorney for the famed SOuthern District of New York. That will literally leave us about sixty hours before we get on a plane for NYC and then Barcelona. I will have to use five of those hours for teaching my two classes and the rest of the time will be packing and preparing. But for tonight, the pea soup has braced me for a jump into the chilly waters in Rosebud Land.