High Pressure Seals

It's amazing how all-consuming a "little" car problem can be. This morning Little Red needed attention. For two days the temperature gauge sky-rocketed when we sat in traffic, and San Francisco certainly has plenty of traffic jams.
"Turn on the heat full blast, flip the fan dial to number four, and open the windows," I said. I know my car. It's an uncomfortable temporary measure, but it works.
"It sounds like the head gasket," said the manager at Sears Automotive, a nerve-wracking eight miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic away from our Oakland motel, "but my top mechanic won't be here for an hour."
"Not the thermostat," said the head mechanic. "Let's try a new pressure cap for the radiator."
Two hours and $12.17 later, we headed south again, one eye on the road and the other on Little Red's temperature gauge, by all indications functioning normally. But then, we weren't really stuck in traffic.
At the Carmel Mission of Junipero Serra, school K-8 was in session. "I'd probably get arrested for taking pictures here," I said, as we left the playground side of the mission. We walked through the grounds and around the old cemetery.

"How about buying me a house in Pacific Grove on the waterfront?" I suggested. "I'll ask nicely! Please?"

Andy just laughed. We ate our lunch at the beach and walked along the shallow rock coves, waves crashing on outlying juts of rock, sending plumes of white spray in all directions.

Hundreds of pelicans perched on the offshore rock outcroppings and bobbed on the water, intermingling with the gulls and the sooty shearwaters.

All of a sudden, a little boy shouted, "I see seals. Look! Over there! The heads are popping up and down." The pelicans knew it too. Suddenly, the sky was filled with birds, circling, wings beating. And then they dove. Indiscriminately, suddenly, from anywhere in the circle of flight, dive-bombing the ocean, beak first, like arrows shot at the water.

"The seals drove in a school of fish," said Andy, "and the birds were ready for dinner."

The sight was amazing.
From a distance we photographed Point Pinos Lighthouse, open Thursday through Monday. It was Tuesday. As we left, two men scaled the wall on the tenth tee of the Municipal Golf Course, clubs slung over their shoulders. "I think they plan to play without pay," said Andy.

"It wouldn't surprise me," I agreed. "You said there were courses here for more than $500 a round."
For two hours before sunset, we walked Old Monterey along the quay. At the Coast Guard Station wharf, the harbor seals posed for us and then barked their "eerowk, eerowk" call. No pressures. No problems. No worries.

Everywhere people were outdoors--biking, jogging, walking, roller blading. "It's so nice to see," said Andy. "So healthy. The good life."

"Eerowk!" I answered.