Storming the Storm
As we hope for no rain today, we make our way to the Atlantic coast at San Sebastián. We are reading and watching the devastation in Florida from Hurricane Ian. We have in-laws who live in the Tampa area, where the Hurricane was waffling between a Cat 4 and Cat 5 as it came ashore. They had to evacuate to a hotel in Orlando, the nearest available safe harbor to where they live. I’ve seen on Facebook from another friend who lives in Daytona Beach, where they are right on the Inter-coastal Waterway, that their home has had some flooding, dock damage and general water damage, but has otherwise held up. We go through the process of contacting all of our friends who are in harm’s way when these things happen and they get inundated with messages of concern as they hopefully give a sigh of relief that all is more or less well. It will take these friends and relatives in Florida some time to clean up from what is being called the worst storm to hit Florida in many years. Their lives will go on and they will always remember the year of the big storm.
We are living in a world where one would think that we are better at fulfilling the fundamental Maslowian need for shelter from the storm (citation from Bob Dylan), but nature has found a way to overwhelm those abilities whether we are trying to live near the ocean or in the mountains (where the wildfire risks have gone ballistic). The best evidence that these risks have gone off the charts and the best charts to reference are the actuarial charts of the property and casualty companies that insure these properties we seek to protect against such damages. I have previously reported that I had my home coverage yet again pulled due to wildfire risk, but that has now changed. The California Insurance Department seems to have prevailed on my insurer (Farmers Insurance, which happens to be a California-based company) to withdraw their termination and to renew their policy with me. This reversal occurred after only a few weeks of the initial termination notice. I was heading towards the state’s shared-risk pool when Farmers notified me that they were withdrawing their termination notice and would be glad to underwrite my property for another year (at a 20% premium increase). I considered that a fair deal since the coverage amount had to increase by 12.5% to account for repair and replacement cost inflation. I presume the added 7.5% represented the increased risk of wildfire, which struck me as a fair assessment of risk. The bottom line is that to enjoy the views I want to enjoy will cost me 20% more to insure against “the storm” as I have come to think about the natural world’s risk of making me homeless.
Man used to be very wary of nature and especially so when locating his shelter from the storm. He could go look at the ocean or the mountains whenever he wanted, I suppose, so he avoided being right up against nature whenever he could. He understood its power and, perhaps more importantly, understood his powerlessness to prevent it from tossing him and his belongings about at its whim. Somewhere over the last century, we have become oblivious to that power and way too arrogant about the risks associated with having the momentary pleasure or prestige of having ocean-front or ski-in-ski-out digs. I suspect that the arrogance came in part from thinking we would just manage the risk with an inexpensive homeowner’s policy. Well, the property and casualty industry has reached its limit and decided that if you want to live in harm’s way, you’ll be paying for it. Governance and regulatory pressure slowed the reality from reaching us, but sooner or later it becomes hard to force private enterprise to make bad bets or at least improperly compensated risks. As climate change reality takes hold of the world, expect much more of the same and I imagine that sooner or later it will modify human behavior or at very least express itself more accurately in the values of property more in harm’s way.
These are the things that go on in my helmet as I ride the roads from Elciego to San Sebastián. It’s either supposed to be cold or rainy or both today. We start with a visit to Bodega Ysios, which is a local winery that must be in competition with the Marques de Riscal winery where we stayed last night. It was built in 2001 and designed by famous Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and looks like waves of stainless steel, and not unlike something that Frank Gehry might produce (I’m sure Gehry would take great exception with that characterization). It is our best guess that Gehry stepped in for the competition in Elciego to one-up their fancy-schmantzy winery by putting up their hotel with the Gehry name attached. It doesn’t much matter who was getting the better of whom, since they are both here in this relatively obscure region of Spain for our enjoyment as we wend our way north to the coast. I don’t see any obvious meteorological risks looming, so maybe they have avoided the added insurance premium costs the rest of us are suffering.
From that brief photo opp stop, we headed to the salt flats of Salinas de Anana, one of the oldest salt mines in the world with evidence that it has been used for over 6,500 years. This is our first real attraction in the Basque Country, having flirted near its edge at our hotel last night. The relationship between man and salt is a fascinating journey which I will not wander too far into but rather just say that had it not been so cold and rainy we might have stayed longer to hear more about this ancient reservoir of salt and even to perhaps swim in the salt pools (something Bruce Rauner gave serious thought to until he determined that it was nowhere near as warm as the 63 degrees touted). So, given that the rain didn’t seem to want to let up just yet and our birthday boy, Steve, was inclined to get to the hotel, we opted for the slab to San Sebastián. I must say that I would rather ride Spanish slab than many American secondary roads. It doesn’t even feel like slab so much as nice divided highway ribbons of smooth asphalt. We wound our way through Montes Vascos to get to the coast at Donostia-San Sebastian, the resort town of the Basque Country with its fancy restaurants and hotels. We are staying in the best of the hotels in the Maria Cristina, which has graced this pretty harbor with its regal facade for 110 years.
By the time we got to town in the early afternoon, the rain had mostly passed and we think we may have dry riding from here on across the north coastline as we track the Camino de Santiago (the path of the pilgrimage of St. James) across the country to Santiago de Compostela, where we should arrive in five days. We will start our trek by going to another Michelin 1-Star restaurant tonight (having lost our 3-star reservation over the last two years of cancellations due to COVID). I think it is fair to say that we stormed the storm and came through unscathed and are now ready for the contemplative chill of the Peregrino. The Way of St. James is said to be filled with “fervor, repentance, hospitality, art and culture which speak to us eloquently of the spiritual roots of the Old Continent”. From what we have seen of Spain so far, it will not disappoint.