Decided to take Hwy. 68 around Pebble Beach to Carmel—mistake—they charged $9.25 to drive the road probably to keep the low life out. Saw how the other half lives, beautiful houses hanging on cliffs overlooking the bay and mixed through many golf courses including the famous Pebble Beach Course. I thought of Gina all the way around, she would have loved this. It was 17 miles around the peninsula. Picked up a pebble from Pebble Beach. That was about the only thing we could afford in this neighbourhood.
Stopped in Big Sur Campground for the night. There is not much there, just a few lodges and artist’s shops and a number of restaurants. Very back woods rustic. Apparently they rent rooms in one of the lodges to LA movie types for $4,000 per night. It is on the Big Sur River and there is no view of the ocean from the “town” site.
Marty had a chat with the 81 year old Camp owner who was also in the construction and saw mill business. He looked like a taller version of Jed Clampet complete with old clothes and suspenders. He spends his summers on an island near Gabriola Island in BC where he keeps his 60 foot sail boat docked at his home there. You wouldn’t guess to see him. He was interesting in that his politics was just to the right of Charlton Heston and the NRA and believed that no problem existed that couldn’t be solved with a gun.
He said that he once was shot in the left side of his chest with his own 45. Apparently, his Mother-in-Law was of the same mind as him when it came to fixing problems. She had grabbed his pistol and was going out to fix the zipper on her husband’s pants when she found out it wasn’t staying up the way it should. He stepped in front of her and said she wasn’t doing any such thing with his pistol. She must have been a woman of few words because she quickly explained that being 6’6” and full of work hardened muscles didn’t do you much good in a gun fight, by pulling the trigger.
He had refused treatment for colon cancer some twenty years ago and had used a cleanse expounded by a Doctor Gersen. It required a strict organic diet and saturation with vegetable puree plus multiple coffee enemas each day. It worked! He said that he still starts each day with a back end coffee and claimed his only discomfort is completing this deed in the somewhat cramped head on his yacht while under way. (Sorry for the potty humour.)
He claimed that this procedure was so regenerative to his body cells that his grey hair started growing in dark and that the gun shot scar on his chest started to fade so that you could hardly see it.
Now the man might have been capable of embellishing the truth to some degree, but he couldn’t be totally full of shit when you consider his morning coffee habit. In any case, he sure made for entertaining listening.
