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I went back to the Bucket of Blood the next afternoon for hydration and more of Mr. Clifford’s story telling, but he hadn’t been around all day. Later, I was hanging around Patricia Munoz’s tienda next door to my room at the Seaview chatting with the church ladies when the call came in. Patricia, ninety if a day, sat down heavily after replacing the
(Editor's Note: I had planned to save this Gone and Back for a later edition, but as I wrote a Gone and Back for the last issue--and since we have a closet-full of Gone and Backs to publish in the next year or two--I thought I would go ahead and publish this in four parts on my blog.)
"I built it in 1962 and called it 'The Domino Bar'," Clifford
Something quite frightening and ominous happened this morning. As per usual on a Sunday morning, I got into shorts, tee shirt and flip flops to go out and do a little gardening before breakfast. When I stepped out the door, a cold wind hit me. Still not wide awake, I got myself a sweatshirt and went back outside. Then it struck me.
It was cold. Fall cold. A pretty reliable indicator that in the weeks ahead (except for a 50/50 chance of an Indian summer week toward the end of the month), it would get colder still. I would have to order in a cord of wood. I'd have to wrap the pipes at some point. Make sure the sauna was working. Put a fresh edge on my skis. Trim back trees. Get winter clothing out...
The first clue you might have that Junin de los Andes in Neuquen province, Argentina is fly fishing country are the town's street signs. All are in the shape of a trout.
Your second clue might be more a matter of luck, or skill. On my first evening there, I checked into the small Hotel de Chimehuin alongside which flowed the renowned Chimehuin River. Though the town is small (10,000), it's still a town and I gave no more thought to getting my line wet on a river just a dozen yards from my hotel room than I would have taking my laundry down to pound on its banks.
You have to love Paul Arenstam's job. As Chef of the Americano Restaurant at the Hotel Vitale., a luxury boutique hotel on San Francisco's Embarcadero (and the only waterfront hotel in the city, surprisingly enough), the Massachusetts native has won high praise for his rustic Italian menu. He selects the best in local ingredients, combined with just the right amount of imported Italian accents, to create dishes that make you believe you've been transported to Umbria or Tuscany....that is, until you glance up and see the Bay Bridge towering overhead.
What makes his job especially great—and he'll be the first to admit it—is that all those fabled California ingredients are just a short walk across the street at the San Francisco Farmer's Market.
The SFFM sounds like something that's been around forever, or at least since Alice Waters first stuffed a leg of lamb with fresh rosemary. In fact, it's only been around since 1992. As the man says, I've got a dog older than that.
The best six months of my life came about a year after graduating from college. No, I wasn't on a grand world tour. I was working my tail off as a carpenter. A combination of luck, chutzpah and good timing helped my friend, Charlie, and I get jobs on the estate of well known film director in the Napa Valley. Our task was to remodel a huge barn on the property into a state of the art mixing room. We figured it would take about three months. It took closer to six.
Since we couldn't commute every day from Berkeley, the film director graciously rented us a three bedroom cottage in St. Helena, about six miles up the road from his estate. The fully furnished little house backed onto vineyards, and had a swimming pool, barbeque and a television that picked up MASH reruns from about six California cities. Our routine was simple and sublime: Get up and work from 8 to 5, then head back to the house, take a swim, throw something on the barbie, uncork one our newest, local discoveries, and then settle in for a couple hours of Hawkeye and Trapper John. On weekends, I'd hike and bike the valley, stop in at tastings around the valley (with the education in wine I received, I should have been paying the film director), and then finish the weekend off with a mud bath and massage in Calistoga. It was heaven.