Home from Mammoth yesterday. I'm back in the splendor of my backyard, looking over at the mesa on the other side of Trabuco Canyon. The air is warm and smells of late summer. Light morning breeze. A vase of sunflowers to my right. A couple notebooks on the table. All manner of stone paperweights (from the soon to be late, great Stone Brewery) holding the tablecloth in place. a penitent Sadie curled up at my feet.
Penitent? We'll get to that.
One tradition when I come to Mammoth is to stop at Roberto's for Mexican food. I have the same thing every time: a duck taco with rice and beans, and one of their specialty margaritas. The one I like is called "Herra-the-dog" because it's made with silver tequila. So that's the way I ordered it the other night: "Herra-the-dog, rocks, salt."
The journey from Orange County to Mammoth is an empty speedway at 6 a.m. I made it up here in five hours despite a short freeway shutdown and a stop for Starbuck's in Adelanto. The family condo is a great place for solitude and writing but I'm in a restless mood so I've spent most of the past two days running, hiking, and finding a spot in town to sit alone in the shade and read. Distant Brewing worked just fine.
I'm up in Mammoth with my team this week. The weather is pitch perfect and so far there hasn't been a forest fire to destroy air quality. Being a coach in the modern age means a list of duties and obligations my high school and college coaches would never have dreamed of adding to their to-do lists.
The temperature outside is a rough sixteen degrees, though it is more tolerable now that the wind has died. A thin carpet of new snow covers the earth and my car windows, meaning this is the day I get to use the once-a-year windshield scraper I carry at all times. It does not feel like your ordinary day of reckoning, but there is a clock ticking and a few issues that need to be addressed.
