I ♥ Pea Soup

Couch Surfing! with Gracie and Abigail     At the "Way through the Oaks" ("Paso Robles") we stayed at the home of Serena Garcia, Kathy, Abigail and Gracie. Gracie adopted Deborah, and the pleasure seemed to be mutual. Serena is "Mexican/native-American". Last night she took us to a local country bar where we watched young firefighters and agricultural workers dancing swing and singing karaoke - a real cultural experience which surprised me on a few levels, not the least of which was the self-confidence of dusty grizzled farmers to stand right up on stage and croon cowboy ballads. Serena belted out three tunes herself, including a great Tracy Chapman number. 

    Serena's an interesting person. Three courses short of her B.Sc., she is nevertheless able to carve out a niche for herself as a "traditional healer" who thereby gets around licensing regulations and is able to use modern technology, in particular "cold laser", to accomplish results that satisfy her and her patients. She operates out of a massage therapy office with her son Jorge, who also has a gift for manipulation of bones and tendons, apparently. 

    Her family, from the members I met, appears to be comprised of strong women, cute kids and cool men, and an assortment of happy felines and canines which includes Serena's "seizure dog" called Darling. 

    We drove over a remote mountain track down to the beach, through an area of oaks that made you appreciate what the area was like before white settlers arrived. We learned about the rock bowls where native women used to grind acorn flour and pine nuts. It took a couple of hours to get fifteen miles, but we finally ended up at the beach where we had some awfully delicious burgers, and the girls got to exercise on the swings. We were in a Monarch Grove, where - supposedly - 27,000 Monarchs clustered on a few branches of a single Cypress tree. (I didn't actually count them.) 

    There's a goblin who haunts travelers. It's the "you-can't-do-it-all" goblin. It struck on our trip to Hearst Castle. I realized that in order to keep my promise to arrive at our next host's before dark, we had time to view the exhibits and watch the movie on the life of William Randolph Hearst on a cinema screen, but not to go on any of the tours of the castle itself. That'll have to wait until our next trip out this way - maybe when we're older and cruising N. America in a motorhome. 

    We stopped at a well-known local eatery called Andersen's for an all-you-can-eat meal of split pea soup...it never occurred to us that we might suffer the "revenge of the legumes" later in the day. I spotted a button in the gift shop that said "I pea soup", but Deborah pointed out that it was supposed to be interpreted "I love pea soup" (I ♥ Pea Soup). 

    Yesterday was a double-header of learning experiences, because we attended a movie evening at the home of a friend of Entéra, our current host.  Their chosen movie was about a period in the life of Disney when his studios were on strike and he went to South America. We had a great chat and enjoyed their hospitality, while silently enduring our split pea turmoil. 

    This morning Deborah and Entéra have gone to do Tai Ji together. We're in the hills of Montecito, where people like Oprah live nearby, and some famous person called Kardashian had a wedding recently.  I understand from Deborah, who sometimes knows these things, that it was a very short marriage. 

    We have a comfortable futon in Entéra's studio (she lives in the main house), surrounded by many of her lovely paintings. It is a lush garden area of small curvy streets and expensive homes on different levels up and down the hillsides, occasionally threatened by monster fires that sweep over the hilltops...but not today. 

    Next post: Santa Barbara