Two Months in California

Hiking Wilder in Santa Cruz, one of California's many gifts.

After three restful months in Hawaii, we kicked off our California travels in the Bay Area.

San Jose

We spent a couple of weeks with Mark, whose place is a kind of California home base for us, always comfy and inviting. We had fun watching the Olympics together and did our usual Jeopardy binge, enjoying Matt Amodio's brilliance. Also, the guys went to a Giants game and watched them beat Houston. What a great season it's been.

Mark, Dave & Steve at Oracle Park

Beautiful day at McCovey Cove

Fortune smiled on us in the gathering of family nearby, even though most of them don't live in the Bay Area anymore. They were meeting up to celebrate my niece Jenna's start of college at Indiana University, and to wish my other niece Hailey best of luck upon her return to University of Tennessee, Knoxville. My nephew Evan was also there, as were my sister Crystal and her boyfriend Kristian who now live in San Diego. 

the clan

We did some hiking at Alum Rock Park in San Jose, and took a day trip to our old hometown, Santa Cruz, for a delicious walk along West Cliff. Little did we know we'd be back in Santa Cruz shortly.

Monterey 

We were happy to score a two-week housesit in Monterey, taking care of two cute little pups. The house looked out over the ocean, so every day we walked the short path to this beach. 

Dave with Jack and Mario

The owner let us use her e-bikes, which we cruised along the inviting path that goes through town and along the coast. We've ridden e-bike a few times now, and the technology just keeps getting better and better. 

The Monterey Bay is a national marine sanctuary, alive with sea creatures. Our friends Kelly, Terry and Laurie came down for whale watching and lunch at Dust Bowl Brewing, an outdoor place with great beers and a taco truck. (And yes they offered vegan tacos!)

We also met Daisy and Tung for lunch at the iconic all-vegan Mexican place, El Cantaro I was thrilled to finally get to meet Danni and to see Luc again before he's as tall as his daddy! I love this family so much. 

Lunch with Daisy, Tung, Danni & Luc

One day Mark came down, and he and Dave went to a car show, as it was Monterey Car Week. (We caught glimpses of cool cars all over town.)

One afternoon we headed to nearby Pacific Grove to meet with my former colleague, Susan, and her husband Gilly. After an invigorating walk through the Pebble Beach dunes to the beach near Spanish Bay, we hung out in their back yard, talking about stuff we love: the ocean, the outdoors, travel, books. 

Dune walk to the beach

Berkeley

Next we headed to another housesit in the Berkeley Hills in a charming neighborhood with steep, winding streets. We fell in love with Billie, an energetic yet well-trained sweet Rottie who enjoyed chasing her ball at the nearby park.

Billie digs her toys

The meetups continued. Dave, a Cal alumni, spent time with two old fraternity friends. And my former colleague Persis invited us to her sweet home and made us a delectable dinner. 

A joy to spend time with Persis.

One day I drove up to the Sonoma coast to meet the delightful powerhouse April Hirschman and chat on her podcast about memoir, bisexuality, self-love and wanderlust (listen here). 

Can you tell we had fun?!

We had a gap of a few days in our itinerary, when my friend Stacey invited us to come stay at her home in the Santa Cruz mountains. So we loaded up all our stuff (did I mention our car is jam-packed with things to handle warm and cold weather and months on the road?)--and minutes from the house, all the dash lights started flashing on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, our 10-year-old Subaru.

All the dash lights.

It was a Friday afternoon. 

We had a three hour drive ahead of us.

We found an open garage where the doom-and-gloom mechanic claimed Subarus suck and we'd probably need a completely new transmission that would take an armload of cash and a long time to fix.

The idea of hauling all of our stuff to a hotel room and waiting who-knew-how-many-days to get the car back on the road sounded as inviting as an ice pick to the eyeball. Dave pointed out the car was driving fine. It would...probably...make it. And if we waited any longer, traffic would be hell. 

As Dave drove the winding back roads, I called the Subaru dealer in Santa Cruz and made an appointment for Monday. When we pulled into Stacey's driveway, I exhaled, realizing I'd held my breath most of the long drive.

Santa Cruz Mountains

Stacey's gorgeous house nearly burnt down in last year's fire. But fortunately it still stands, and there's evidence everywhere of new growth around the singed redwoods. It reminded me of a poem Stacey one wrote that witnessed my rebirth after a horrible divorce. It includes the lines, "blackened rubble ... / old decay / now new food / for interminable roots."

new growth

It was sweet to spend some time with her and her twin sons who are now in college. We took a walk at Wilder State Park along the bluffs, past a herd of harbor seals. We had an incredible sushi dinner in Scott's Valley.

In the midst of all this, the dealer said our car wouldn't be ready until Friday. We had to drive three hours on Thursday to get to our central coast housesit. Dave was resigned that the next day he'd have to drive six hours round trip to return the loaner and retrieve our car. But miraculously, our car was ready early. Santa Cruz has always been good to us.

Santa Maria

Next up was a housesit in Santa Maria, a city of 100,000+ a bit inland from the Central Coast. We spent a day with Andrea, the homeowner, and enjoyed a meal together hearing about her interesting life. I was especially intrigued by the fact that she'd trekked the Camino twice in her sixties. The first time she did 500 miles, a month of walking. 

Simon, our roommate at Andrea's house

That night we curled up on her couch with wineglasses in hand and watched Martin Sheen walk the Camino in The Way, a movie new to Dave and me but one Andrea has seen many times. What a cool thing housesitting is, that a stranger invites us into the intimacy of her home and becomes an instant friend. 

I could have stayed in that area a month or longer, there was so much to do and see. One day we rented bikes in Avila and rode the Bob Jones Trail. 

scenic

Great Blue Heron at Avila Beach

On the Oso Flaco hike along the boardwalk, we saw fish jumping in the lake, and birds swooping around. From the dunes, we gazed out to the ocean. Also spectacular was driving through Guadalupe Dunes Preserve, impressive dunes that are protected nesting areas for plovers. We ended up at a vast, beautiful beach where humpback whales were frolicking in the distance.

with Laurie at Oso Flaco

It just so happened that Laurie was staying in an Airbnb for a month in nearby San Luis Obispo. Having recently sold her home, she had now joined our nomadic tribe--although she fell in love with the area and may end up planting roots there. We hiked together and went wine tasting. We also spent a day wandering around the sweet downtown of SLO and had lunch at super yummy Bliss Cafe.

with Jill at Leticia Winery

And we got to meet up with Jill, the cousin of Dave's beloved long-time friend Mark who died recently. As we communed in this lovely spot, his energy was with us.

L.A.

Our last California stop was L.A., to spend two nights with my longtime friend Nancy and her husband Andy. We made the plan to get there while her art show, "Family Reunion," was up at bG Gallery in Santa Monica. 

the artist with one of her creations

I'd been talking to her for months and watching her progress on social media as she made sculptures and paintings--and as she sorted through family stories and photographs. The show's stunning centerpiece is "Roots," 256 individuals that illustrate the mind-blowing number of people required over only eight generations to make YOU.

Nancy with Roots

close-up of Roots

The other art pieces and paintings in the exhibition all resonate with ideas of family, ancestry and the biology of becoming. 

While Nancy and I were having lunch and gallery hopping, Andy and Dave were on a quest to buy Dave a new camera. With the stock of everything low due to the pandemic madness, they drove hours all over L.A. It's a long story...and was a long day...but they finally scored one. And that is the kind of thing friends do for each other.

That is what this time in California turned out to be mostly about: spending time with people we love. I'd thought being nomadic would mean seeing our friends and family less. 

But it has turned out that when we're in town, we're not under the illusion that we can meet next week for lunch. We grab the time now...because now is all we have.

Dave and me hiking, photo by Laurie

Holiday Living

Playa de San Pedrito, my favorite walking spot

We have landed back at our casita in Baja California Sur, Mexico after six months away. Friends here ask, "How was your vacation?" They see us as having come back home. It feels more and more that way to me, too.

Yet "vacation" is such an odd word. We don't vacation, we live a traveling life. Life-as-vacation has a nice ring to it. If life is short, why not make it a holiday? The word "holiday" comes from "holy day." So perhaps living with a vacation mindset--alive, fresh, and new--makes every day holy.

I started thinking about life in this way years ago, when I was still teaching. My New Year's resolution seven years ago was to do something new every day. New route, new conversation, new food, new book, new teaching approach...anything big or small, didn't matter. When you travel, everything is new. So living that way in my own town made me feel like I was on vacation. I now see that experiment as a seed planted that blossomed into this very life Dave and I live today.

Not to say it's all-paradise-all-the-time. No matter how you live life, there are bumps in the road. But when you're living how you really want to, the bumps can be easier to navigate. We had both been struggling a bit our last few weeks in Australia--getting over colds and dealing with bizarre weather like hot wind that set my skin on edge--that landing in California felt extra sweet.

Each time we come through California we face an ever-dwindling but persistent pile of things at our friend Mark's house. Dave decided it was finally the moment to divest himself of all of his Silicon Valley work clothes. He donated them to a men's shelter, which will use them when they send men out on job interviews. One man's ending, another's beginning. 

And then there were our beloved bikes that we'd ridden many miles along the ocean cliffs in Santa Cruz, and taken on a ski lift in Big Bear to ride down the fire roads, and ridden up a mountain in Zion National Park to watch the sunrise, and cruised around Portland. These were not the right bikes for Baja...so what to do with them? That thought was on our mind when we went to visit our friends Debbianne and Tony, who happened to mention they wanted to buy bikes for the great trails of their new hometown. Dave and I looked at each other and blurted out, "We have bikes for you!" I love knowing our lives are entwined through those bikes.

Hanging out with Debbie and Tony in Monterey

This was part of a flow of giving and receiving: When a friend discovered we were renting a car, she loaned us her extra one. We gave our snow tires to a stranger. An old friend gave us free passes to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I gave a friend feedback on his poems. And another invited me to a concert because she had an extra ticket. This movement feels like breathing, like waves. It seems related to all the strangers who let us stay in their beautiful homes in exchange for caring for their pets. In fact, we did a housesit in the Bay Area, in Walnut Creek where we enjoyed a darling golden retriever (and I got a lot of editing work done).

Button and Jasper

Turned out, around this time our first great-niece was being christened, so we were able to meet her and hang out with Dave's family. 

Dave, brother Milt, Milt's son James (holding Madeline), sister Sue

And then, at the housesit, we found a book about the history of the area. We opened it up to a page that featured Dave's great-grandfather! 

For years Dave had told me that his ancestors co-founded a Bay Area town, which by toss of a coin was named Clayton rather than Rhinesville. So we drove over there and walked into the museum. The place was filled with people chatting, holding tea cups, and snacking on cookies. Turned out an event was going on called the Camelia Tea. When Dave revealed his last name, people went crazy like he was a celebrity. The beautiful old home is filled with pictures and artifacts of his ancestors. It's mind-blowing to think how his family coming from Germany (among the first Jewish settlers in the area) led to a moment where we held his great-niece in our arms.

We also spent time with my family and were able to celebrate my niece Hailey's 18th birthday at a restaurant in Pleasanton. After our meal, she hopped onto a red-eye to NYC, where she hung out with friends she'd met last summer in Bali (where she'd traveled and done community service). Yes, my niece has a desire to see the world, too, and I couldn't be prouder of what a wonderful human being she is.

Evan (20), sister Crystal, Hailey (18), auntie Kate, Jenna  (16)

And lucky us, we got to care for a furry family member, my sister's dog Coco, for a week. I mean, really, she's as adorable as they get. 

Coco came with me to visit my friend Candice and her dog Darcy.

And then there are friends that feel like family...many of whom we were blessed to see.

Tung, Luc & Daisy. 

Mark, Jackie & Todd

Paul, in town for work, came by.

I also got some power-women time, including a hike, concert, dancing, meals, and attending my friend Laurie's spiritual center to listen to her sing in the choir.

In Santa Cruz with Stacey & Laurie & Junebug

That's another thing about this lifestyle: We don't stay in one place so we can't take for granted our time there. Our connections with people, our explorations, are all imbued with a sense of the reality of passing time. The holiday of life.

Yes, these are holy days.

7 Things I Learned in June.

1. Relax, already, about the outcome. My memoir was named a finalist for a Bi Book Award. The crazy little elf-on-the-shelf-of-my-mind spun its Linda Blair head around, swearing there was no way I would ever win against books put out by big New York publishers.

Bubble Lady at Washington Square Park

So instead of focusing on the award, I whipped out my frequent flier miles, thrilled to have an excuse to spend a few days in NYC. I decided to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, something I'd always wanted to do. I meandered for two days around the West Village and Chelsea, soaking in all those incredible NYC sights and sounds...and bagels.

By the time of the book event, I was so high on my adventure that just being in the company of all those other writers felt like icing on the cake.

And then...I won! Not just one (Best Memoir) but two (Bi Writer of the Year).

That creepy little elf in my mind had almost talked me out of going. You're not going to win, anyway. Why bother?

But when I decided to focus on the journey rather than the outcome--the outcome was even sweeter. And if I hadn't won, I still would have had a memorable time.


2. "Paella season is a thing." We were lucky to enjoy two paella dinners in two weeks.

Chef Todd's creation

Chef Frank's masterpiece

3. ALWAYS double-check texts before hitting send. Auto-correct changed my playful word "wonkiness" to "long penis." Fortunately, my friend thought it was funny.

 

4. When Life Gives You Traffic, Make Lemonade. Is Bay Area traffic worse than ever, or is this just us adjusting-to-California-after-three-months-in-Baja? When we had to be in San Rafael on a Friday at 6 p.m., we knew that meant being off the roads by 3 p.m. at the latest.

Dave discovered there's a wild animal rehab facility in San Rafael that's open to the public. So instead of sitting in a wall of traffic, we hung out with hawks and owls and pelicans, and chatted with the knowledgeable people who care for them.

5. Let the locals teach you. We've been to San Francisco a zillion times...and taken lots of walks at Land's End and on Ocean Beach...which we did this time with our friend Nicole.

Nicole showed us something new.

Because she lives in the area, she knew of a hidden spot...

 

secret stairs

 that took us up to Sutro Heights Park, offering this view:

 

Worth every step--and we never would have known about it if we hadn't listened to a local.


6. Family isn't biology. I've learned that many times in my life--but it really hit home a few weeks ago. We were invited by my godmother to a gathering of her family. I hadn't seen most of these people in thirty years or more--but I felt like I belonged. It was sweet to hear stories about my parents, to talk to people who fondly remembered them.

Two women who loved my parents: Marcia (my godmother, on the left) and Louise.

Marcia and Dean had three sons. And one of them, Greg, said that when they were kids, the three boys had figured out which three Evans girls they were going to marry!

One of my dad's best friends (Dean)...and the guy I was supposed to marry (Travis).

 I was a child last time I saw all these people--but it felt like coming home.

Esperanza and Greg filled the house with music.

7. The story is never over. We are evolving, changing human beings. For the first time in many years, I went to the Pride parade. I wasn't sure how I'd feel there...but it was amazing. (And I wrote about it here.)

 

At Pride with my friend Laurie, looking at life through the eyes of love.

 

So, yes, the story continues. No matter what "it" is, this too shall pass.

Welcome, July. I look forward to what you have to teach.