The uniformed man walked past, straight down the middle of the two rows of chairs, perfectly ordinary. He’s young-ish, he’s wearing a hat, a baseball cap, but I didn’t catch the logo. When he got to the back of the shop, I lost interest in his activities, but on recollection I see that he entered the scene empty handed, which is odd for a delivery person or service man. When I glance at him again something slightly odd is happening. He’s got the carboy out of the water dispenser and is looking at the main body of the dispenser itself. Maybe a repair? The carboy is empty. Everything seems normal. But then I see that the dispenser is unplugged and he’s holding the cord. He picks it up and hoists the whole thing onto his shoulder. My eyes track him, head held still, as Maria continues cutting my hair. The empty carboy is in his other hand and he walks back out right down the dead middle of the chairs with all of it. He doesn’t look left or right, and says nothing to anyone.

They’ve started taking the place apart. Maria says it’s been like this all week. There were some workers out measuring at the front of the shop a day or two ago. “Bro, we’re still here,” she says, gesturing toward the emptying room, the barbers beginning to pack combs and trimmers, the decorations barely still hanging on the wall. One of the other clients leaves a bottle of tequila for them, after his last haircut. I send a larger than my usual tip along with the payment. Maybe I’ll see her again at the next barbershop.

The forest is misty at five in the morning, and the air still and quiet. The wind broke sometime late in the night and the air was now only gently drifting. I was returning from the trail camp’s pit toilet, deciding what to do next in the dim pre-dawn gray. The edges of the trees are all softened in the pale atmosphere. Trail camp is at 1580 feet above the sea and I had expected to be in the clouds more than some of this weekend, but it had not happened until this morning, the last morning. There had been only blue skies and the tireless wind, and some thin shreds of white racing overhead, just out of reach.

But the wind had tired of its constant 30 mph or more racing and gusting in the green tops of the blackened red giants. Now it was something much less, something rarely heard and only faintly felt.

The low roar, the distant rumbling that had been noticeably palpable since the wind had picked up the night before last, it’s not gone. Perhaps it is not wind in the trees’ trunks. It could be waves on the coast, or maybe it’s still windy in the trees where the sound is coming from, where the wind has gone for a rest.

The sun is rising. I can see the crinkles in the tent’s rain fly in the grazing dawn light, and the tiny faint dots on the pages of my notebook without the flashlight.

Soon I will go back out, go for a walk in the misty dawn light and look, again, for the landing strip in the still air with the distant low roar. An airstrip is an improbable thing to find on the top of a ridge, in the middle of a redwood forest in the clouds, far away from everything. The map says it is there, so I will look for it.

This place is a hotel restaurant at the end of Menlo Park on Sand Hill road, past SLAC but before 280. Could it be the local spot for the ultra wealthy that live in the hills past the freeway, up in La Honda or wherever? Hotel restaurant is sometimes a bad word, but this one used to be the spot back in the day. I’m unclear which day that was. It wasn’t yet built when the dot com boom was on. The other tech boom has been a sort of continuous series mini-booms and busts all happening in parallel. The AI boom is on right now, but so is the AI employment bust. It’s all very confusing and stressful.

But at Madera there is no stress. It is a place that has the right amount of space between the tables, is not too bright or too dim, is quiet for conversation and your own voices are absorbed into the special air they use so your party doesn’t disturb any other party, or vice versa. I don’t know how they do it, but I wish more restaurants would stage this way. Not all, of course, but being able to hear each other is a nice experience.

I haven’t yet mentioned the view. How do I capture this, because it is not a postcard view. I would assume that the spectacular feature is the marine layer clouds falling over the crest of the hills, something that happens quite often and is always a delight. Well, it wasn’t on today. Perhaps Madera was saving a little for bigger guests. We just got a normal cloud layer, even diffuse light on the green oaks and ridge lines and a bit of freeway poking around one corner behind the pool. It is a view that I enjoy and I am pleased to have been seated near the large windows and facing them so I could look out and savor those hills and ridges and trees, even if they didn’t include any spectacular falling clouds in evening light. Maybe next time, maybe I can be on the lookout. We were there for brunch.

I am glad to say that the food was every bit as carefully selected and prepared as the atmosphere. Lemons were bright, greens were perfectly crisp and fresh, vegetables each a piece of art, and all the entrees were just so. This is dependable quality, reliable luxury. The people back there preparing this stuff are perfectionists and notice the details and address them. They probably use tweezers. They are craftsmen- people, crafts-people, and highly skilled technicians of food. An overseer is directing this orchestra, the menu was very coherent, none of the dishes were present only to fill a hole. I can see why it’s not the spot right now, but also, please, for the hope of letting us keep some nice things, do not throw out this gem. Everything was delicious and perfect and to me worth every penny. I would go again anytime I wanted that experience. It ranks with Dio Deka, another house of perfected food that I have experienced lately. I cannot imagine ever being disappointed by either. Nor would I go there to be surprised or wowed or shown something new. You go to a place like this because you know exactly what you are going to get and it is going to be as perfect as possible because all imperfections have been either edited out or that thing is just not possible to serve right now so it will not be offered. The gluten-free Lemon and Ricotta pancakes were absolutely worth every bite and they are also among the least “California” dishes on the menu. The avocado toast was a work of art, a living still life, right down to the jammy egg on top. The artichoke hummus was so amazing that I couldn’t resist the drop of oil that had fallen on the table because the lemon infused-ness was that good. The mixed vegetables looked like something out of a painting and the green goddess dressing was bright and tangy and frankly a small revelation that such things are still made with such attention and care in today’s world.

I haven’t mentioned the staff. They were excellent. And invisible. There to do their job, all elegantly poised and perfectly dressed and immaculate. Frankly a bit of the Edwardian house staff about them, a little upstairs/downstairs in the air. I’m not sure how that would have arrived here on the western end of the world, but I swear I felt it. Must have come with the clientele. It did take a few minutes longer than we thought it should to get some extra slices of bread for the remaining hummus. I assume they needed to bake and slice it and butter it at just the right temperature and the baker was refusing to rush the cooling period, that bread would be perfecto when it reached the table or there would be blood on the kitchen floor. That we even asked for it probably betrayed that we’re not that clientele. Who knows.

I haven’t been on University Ave in possibly eight, maybe nine, years. Not since before the pandemic. It’s changed. It’s the same.

There are rich people. I mean really rich people. There are normal folks. There are homeless and beggars and buskers and panhandlers. There are people that are probably high, but who can really say. Maybe they’re just high on life. Or they don’t feel like wearing a shirt. What I am saying is that the people watching is good.

The CVS in Palo Alto has timed safes and doesn’t stock promethazine with Codeine anymore. At The RealReal, the security guard has to press a button to unlock and open the door for every customer. To let them in. And to let them out. Maybe the streets of Palo Alto are just like that now.

We walked down University Ave and got a juice at Joe’s. Mostly just to use the bathroom, but also to get a juice. The accent pink is an off-Pepto. That’s a weird choice for a cafe.

We walked back up and contemplated moving our cars. The signs seemed to say we didn’t need to, but they were a lot of words. Jeff told the story of the signs around the Smithsonian. How they were easily misunderstood by tourists, and lots of cars are towed every day at 3pm. He’d been lucky and seen the line of tow trucks on their daily mission. Palo Alto doesn’t seem like that kind of place, but I don’t know. We left the cars where they were. They were there when we came back later.

We kept walking up, looking for our dinner, and passed another Joe’s. A different Joe’s. I’m sure of it. Seems odd to put two Joe & The Juice bars within a couple of blocks of each other. Maybe a questionable pink isn’t their only problem. Maybe I’m hungry. Then again, I’ve seen the Starbucks diagonally across the intersection from each other. So, again, I don’t know.

Beeple has been by recently. That’s cool, I’m curious. It’s an ad. Coulda been some secret and cool art piece. You can go to his retrospective show, if that’s your thing.

You know what the standout at dinner was? The elevator. Darkest elevator I’ve been in. The best mood lighting I’ve ever seen. Who could resist it? Goes between two floors, a short trip, and has a disconcerting jolt when it goes down. Unaccountable how it got there, got in this restaurant. The chicken was quite good too. But that elevator. Probably worth a detour if you are into it.