In the Dark

IN THE DARK… Squid oozed over to the Salinas Valley Fairgrounds on Saturday, April 20 to score a sweet taco wagon party for 50 of Squid’s friends under the sea, as well as for the insatiable bulldog Rosco P. Coltrane, during the Salinas Valley Fair’s kick-off fundraising event. The outright price to buy the “fiesta on wheels” was $4,000, which Squid considers a steal in this day and age (have you seen the prices of tacos lately?). All joking aside, the food experiences and baked goods at this event routinely sell for thousands at auction, thanks to generous bidders.

But before Squid could raise one of Squid’s tentacles with a bid, the room went black from a power outage that affected a portion of the city. That was fine for Squid – cephalopods are used to traversing the deep, dark sea – but for everyone else, they couldn’t see very far in front of them, making it nearly impossible for the auction spotters to call out the bids.

Fair organizers decided to end the event early, although there were still 17 items left to be auctioned off. To Squid’s relief, the auction is back on, at least virtually: Bidders can battle each other through May 10 online.

Squid, though, is disappointed that the tacos to be served up on the wagon don’t come with shrimp. Squid may instead bid on The Club Carmel custom knife to prepare for next year’s fair kick-off, and share it with attendees so they have something to cut through the darkness.

FIRE AND RAIN… Since Highway 1 slipped out at Rocky Creek in Big Sur, Squid has been taking some time to fix up the old jalopy to get ready for the next outing down the coast. To Squid’s delight, Caltrans announced on Sunday, April 28, that twice-daily convoys between Big Sur and the Monterey Peninsula would continue – but were opening to the general public, not just local traffic, effective Monday, April 29. That meant Squid could go for a drive and do Squid’s part to support the Big Sur economy. As State Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, acknowledged in Caltrans’ press release: “The community has taken hit after hit with fires, floods and road outages.”

By Tuesday, April 30, Squid was ready to get a beer in Big Sur. But Squid didn’t get very far, because at 3pm, a quarter-acre brush fire was reported near the Bottchers Gap campground. (Good news is that as of the Weekly’s deadline, Cal Fire officials didn’t expect the incident to spread more than 10 acres.)

A fire at a campground – even though Bottchers Gap is located at the upper end of Palo Colorado Road, which has been closed to the public for seven years and counting. Disaster just keeps striking – Big Sur can’t seem to catch a break.

Squid, meanwhile, will park the jalopy back in the garage for now.