Gloom Lifting

6/24/17

I spent all week planning to have breakfast with my PCA Los Angeles Region buddies in Calabasas today.  Calabasas is just past Woodland Hills, arguably the hottest part of the San Fernando Valley.  I wanted to take the 911 to breakfast because Calabasas is the gateway to some of the best canyon drives in the Santa Monica Mountains.  The 911 has been cooped up on freeways and city streets for some time now, and I wanted to get it out, get the Targa top off and cruise a canyon and Pacific Coast Highway, just to enjoy a summer drive through Malibu on the way home.

The valley was one of LAs first bedroom communities.  Its growth was fueled by cheap land, cheaper homes and Bing Crosby crooning about making the San Fernando Valley his home.  I have spent the vast majority of my life, including the past 29 years, living in West LA.  Pam and I did live in the valley for the nine years before that, though.  I have essentially forgotten that portion of our lives.   That is not to say that I do not like the valley.  I do.  I just like it in the fall, winter and spring.  If possible, I avoid the valley in the summer, as it is just freakin’ hot.  So hot that just touching the hard plastic steering wheel in my old Porsches if they were parked in the valley in the summer could cause third degree burns.

Still, I really wanted to take the 911 to the valley on this morning.  The thought of the canyon cruise and the trip down PCH with the ocean to my right was compelling.  All I could think about  were waves crashing,  breezes blowing and the sun shining.  The big question that had haunted me earlier in the week was the weather.  In the summer the valleys are about 20 degrees warmer than the coast and about 15 degrees warmer than where I live in West LA.  The 911 does not have an air conditioner, which means that every time I stop moving it gets really hot inside the car if the temperature crests 78 degrees, which it does in the valley by about 8 AM almost every summer day.

The week started hot, really hot.  So hot that Palm Springs topped out at 122 degrees one day.  Calabasas topped out at 94 degrees Wednesday afternoon.  Even though I would be out of the valley by mid morning, I started sweating just thinking about driving the 911 in that heat.  Consequently, I began to fixate on weather forecasts.  I watched them on TV.  I looked them up on the internet.  I listened to them on the radio.  They all predicted a cooling trend by the end of the week.  No doubt that the weather forecasters have gotten better, but many times they forecast the storm of the century which only manages to dump a whopping quarter inch of rain.  So I do not always believe the temperature forecasts.

I do not know why I got so worked up over it.  It would either be too hot or not.  And it’s not like I did not have a great fallback.  My air conditioned Porsche Cayman GTS stared me in the face every time I walked out my front door.  It is my favorite car in which to navigate the twisties.  But I wanted to take the 911, and I did not want to be schvitzing too much as I waited for the street lights to turn green.

It turns out that I did not have to worry about it.  The forecasters were right.  The temperature plummeted, especially at the coast, which ended up blanketed in a dense layer of fog.  Most of the America, and maybe even the world, think that LA has perfect beach weather in the summer, all summer.  They conjure up picture perfect postcards depicting the sun shining with beach goers relaxing, tanning, or surfing.  Those of us living in LA know better, as we understand that despite sunshine inland, the coast can be bathed in a marine layer.  We call it June Gloom, which has nothing to do with the kids finishing the school year, but has everything to do with the fog that sits on the coast.

Today’s marine layer was so thick that it extended all the way to Calabasas.  The drive to out was cool, fast and easy.  Breakfast, at Lovey’s Deli,  was fun and relaxing, and I saw lots great cars and lots of friends.  I parked my 911 next to Keith’s McLaren, thinking they looked like they belonged next to each other.  Kind of a yin and yang thing.  The food was good and the conversation better, but I did have a tough time deciding between the scrambled eggs with corned beef and the cinnamon roll French toast.

Soon it was time to leave Lovey’s and get on with my drive.  As I had opted for the corned beef and scrambled eggs at breakfast, I felt somewhat deprived, so before I left I bought a chocolate chip Danish made by Bea’s bakery, something that I had not had in years, but something that sparked a long forgotten memory.  By then the sun was shining, and it was getting warm.  I took my Targa top off and left, driving north to get to Malibu Canyon, the road I was going to take back to PCH.  As I headed up Malibu Canyon, I looked up and there it was, the marine layer, just nestled on the low peaks of the Santa Monica Mountains, which top out at just about 2,000 feet in that area.  Gone were my fears of schvitzing as I drove.  In their place were fears of shivering and actually using my heater on a summer day.  Frankly, I half expected the low clouds to schvitz on me.

Thankfully, I stayed dry, and the drive back was great.  I made a quick stop on PCH to get a few pictures, including one of my favorite structures on PCH, which looked good shrouded in fog.

In all, I drove just over 60 miles.  They were great miles.  The 911 was made for these roads.  It cut its teeth on these roads.  Too bad  there were a lot of cars not made for these roads ahead of me, slowing me down.  But that did not matter.  I kept it in second and third whenever possible, with the engine revving around 4,000 RPM, generating nice sounds.  I had a huge grin on my face as I made my way home, with the June Gloom lifting with each mile I drove.