July 29, 2012 Sunday

VG Donut & Bakery

Today Kate and I returned to the World’s Best Bakery – VG Donut & Bakery in Cardiff by the Sea. For years I have been telling everyone I know that VGs is the Best Bakery in the World and today I reconfirmed that assertion. Last night I joined Kate at the Romance Writers of America awards ceremony in Anaheim (Kate was nominated for an award, but didn’t win it) and today we were driving to San Diego to visit my mother and brother. Of course I was driving down the old Pacific Coast Highway through all of the beach towns and had to make a stop at VGs. It’s located across from the entrance to the San Elijo State Park and across the railroad tracks in a small non-descript script mall. But believe me all the locals know VGs and can direct you to it. I bought two buttermilk bars (my favorite) and a coffee, Kate had a cake donut and we purchased a dozen cookies for my mother.

We first came here in the summer of 1970, before we were married, during a surf trip to Ensenada. I had to stop to show Kate the break at Cardiff by the Sea, a favorite spot during my high school days. It was still morning, I pulled into a Flying A gas station (remember them?) to fill up and asked the gas attendant (yes that was in the days when an attendant pumped the gas) –

“Where do you buy donuts around here?”

“Right over there,” he said without hesitation and pointed to VGs. “Best donuts in the world, bar none.”

Well we purchase several glazed donuts, freshly made that morning, and he was right. They were the best donuts we have ever had. So from that point on (over 42 years) every time I’m in San Diego County, I go out of my way to get to VGs.

In 1968 Jim and Betty Mettee bought the shop, named it “VG” for Very Good, and the whole family then learned to how to make donuts. Joe Mettee, their son, now owns the shop and his children are bakers, thus VGs is a third generation family business. In 1970 the shop occupied one small retail location; now it has expanded to two. When you walk in, the sweet aroma of freshly baked donuts, cakes, and breads knock you over. The place is jammed with ovens, fryers, and baking equipment. In front of that stands a store length case filled with fresh goodies. There is barely any room to customers to stand and only two small tables inside to sit at. But, they have tables outside for customers to relax and enjoy their purchases.

VGs is now a full service bakery specializing in the old fashion style of baking and is an institution for locals seeking a morning coffee and bakery goody. Donuts are baked twice a day starting at 4:00 am and 4:00 pm. They also specialize in wedding cakes and catering to local business events.

Next time you are in San Diego County – at choice surf spots like Cardiff, Swami’s or Encinitas Beach – I insist, you have to go to VGs. Check out this great video of VGs on YouTube.

An Ode to VGs

106 Aberdeen Drive 
Cardiff, CA 92007
Phone: 760-753-2400. 
Email: info@vgbakery.com
(No Orders Please).

July 27, 2012 Friday

San Onofre State Beach	Old Man’s
9:15 am to 11:30 am	2’ to 3’, sets to 5’
Low upcoming tide	No wind to light onshore breeze
Bright sunny day	Good session

“I always check here first. Lowers is always twice as big as all the other breaks.”

My life-long friend Greg was taking me through his normal morning surf check routine. Success in business has allowed him to purchase a home in south San Clemente that is a short drive or walking distance to some of California’s best surf locations. This was his routine every day this summer. We were up at 6 am, drove to the nearest 7-11 to buy coffee and a couple of bananas and jumped back in the car to check the surf. Greg first drove to his principle look out spot, that was on the off ramp to the San Onofre nuclear power plant and the state beach. At the top of a hill at a stop sign, we could clearly see Lower Trestles, the premier surf location of California, that’s it in the above photo. Keep in mind, we were standing at the center of several prime surf spots – Cotton’s Point, Upper Trestles, Lower Trestles, Churches and San Onofre. Set waves at Lowers were head-high, glassy and clean, and at 7 am thirty surfers were on it. Greg knew that there would be waves at San Onofre.

Greg drove further south and entered the employees’ parking lot for the nuclear power plant, just before the entrance to the state beach. Note – despite that nuclear reactors had been shut down since last January due to leaks in water pipes, there were plenty of employee cars in the lot. We jumped out and walked to the bluff to check the waves at Old Mans. Greg was right. It was half the size of Lowers – waist high with sets to shoulder height with about thirty surfers spread out across several peaks. We next drove back north to check out Cotton’s Point, which was flat with nobody out, thus San Onofre was our decision.

We returned to Greg’s house to drink our coffee and read the paper. After thirty minutes, we loaded boards, wetsuits, towels and his two dogs, Marley and Rocky, into the car and headed back to San Onofre. So that was his daily routine, and like me he usually entered the water around 9 am, gentleman’s hours.

Greg loaned me one of his San Onofre boards – a Stewart, Collin McPhillips model, 10 feet long, 23 7/8 inches wide, and 3 ¼ inches thick – a real paddling machine and I needed all the paddling speed I could get.

Old Man’s is the home of the classic “powerglide” waves, especially well suited for longboards, older surfers and mellow crowds. It breaks somewhat like the Patch at Bolinas, only the waves are bigger, a little steeper, more powerful and longer. Today they were a combination of a NW wind swell on top of a south ground swell. The wind swell portion would jump up into steep peak and the south swell portion provided the force and the long ride. Greg and I took off together on our first wave. The steep peak propelled us into the ground swell that continuously broke to the left and slowly built up to a nice inside curl. One wave and I was stoked.

The takeoffs were flat but the waves had force. Because the waves always reformed, we could go for the walls that would break in front of us, cruise along under the white water and climb back into the swell that would continuously break left until near the shore where the sea grass would stop the momentum of the board. My third wave was a good one. I was paddling out when a set wave broke in the channel and a good shoulder was reforming right in front of me and no one was on it. I turned, stroked into it and streaked across a waist-high curl until I hit the sea grass near shore.

After a long lull, a sizeable set came through. At the last moment Greg turned around and went for the first wave as it was cresting. After paddling over it, I looked around and saw Greg in a crouch hanging at the top of the wave with spray arching off the breaking part of the curl. He dropped down the face, disappeared for a second and then popped up again and shot ahead of the fast breaking wave. It was his best wave of the day. As he modestly put it, “I finally caught a decent wave.”

After an hour and a half, Greg went in to walk his dogs on the beach. I moved inside for another forty minutes and scored on several good inside waves. What a good session -- by then I had the feel of the board, the confidence that I had figured out these waves, my arms felt strong and the water was warm.

July 26, 2012 Thursday

Crystal Cove State Park

Today I did what I have I been wanting to do for several years – I stopped at the Crystal Cove State Park to see if the old beach house where my family spent seven summer vacations in the 1950’s was still there. I was travelling from Manhattan Beach to San Clement to visit Greg, my life-long friend. At Long Beach I left the freeway to get on the Pacific Coast Highway (Highway 1) to slowly travel through all the classic surf towns of Southern California. Between Newport Beach and Laguna Beach, the densely developed sprawl of houses, strip malls, shops, and stop lights ends and the landscape changes to three miles of open space of dry brush and sandy trails that run up the cliffs above an empty sandy beach. As long as I can remember (1950 onward) this stretch has always been empty. The entire three miles are now part of the Crystal Cove State Park and thus will remain open from now on.

The old beach house was still there; it’s the white one in the above photo. At the south end of the open stretch where the Los Trancos creek empties into the ocean resided a colony of twenty or so beach houses at the base of the bluff on the edge of a pristine sandy beach. Today the houses are in disrepair and closed off to the public. These houses were built in the thirties and each one was different, this was not a development. The family of my dad’s boss, John and Betty McGraw, owned the house. Betty’s father built it in the 1930’s. For seven summers our two families (four McGraws and five Moores) would cram into that small house for one or two weeks of sunshine and fun on the beach. Nine people stuffed into a two-bedroom cabin with a postage stamp of a kitchen. I slept on the bed that they had outside under the covered deck. The top cover was a heavy army surplus canvas tarp, I crawled under it and listened to the crash of the waves all night and would wake up to the dense fog and dampness dripping off of the tarp. For me it was the dream vacation, my love of the ocean began right here. My mother has a picture of me standing at the water’s edge with a fishing pole, which towered over my head, in my hand at age three. A boardwalk ran in front of the houses and ended at a small store. I would run down to the store first thing in the morning to buy the paper for my parents, and in the afternoons we would run back to the store for candy and ice cream.

The beach sloped into the water causing the waves to build up and crash on the water’s edge. To me the waves were huge and really tossed us around. I learned to body surf here. We also got pounded trying the ride the waves on surf mats. Knowing what I know now, some sizeable south swells came through during those summers. I remember clearly that my last summer there I was nine years old – 1954. But kids being kids, going on trips with your parents loses its glow at about age ten, especially when your brothers are four and six years older. The children of both families lost interest and thus the trips to Crystal Cove ended. But I have always had a love for the place and was glad that I had managed to return.

Several years later, I recall my mother mentioning that Betty’s family was forced to give up the house. They tried to fight it but they lost. I looked up the history of the Crystal Cove State Park and here’s what happed:

In 1894 James Irvine Jr. formed the Irvine Company that consisted of 110,000 acres of land stretching from the Santa Anna River to the ocean. The Irvine family first purchased the land from Jose Andres Sepulveda, the original Spanish land grant owner. Early in the 20^th century, the Irvine family generously let ranch employees and friends pitch tents and build temporary shelters on the beach. In the 1920’s, the Hollywood file industry used the cove as a filming location. A  cargo ship carrying lumber capsized nearby and provided residents with building material to erect cottages. In 1927, the little colony of cottages was given the name Crystal Cove. In the 1930’s, the number of cottages grew causing a management problem for the Irvine Company who still owned the land. Towards the end of the 30’s, they notified the residents with cottages that they either had to move them to another location or give up ownership to the Irvine Company. Most owners gave them up and leased them back from the company. This step effectively protected the cottages from sale to private developers, prevented expansion of the cottages beyond their original dimensions and maintained the colony’s 1920s & 30s character. The colony remained this way until the mid-70s when the State of California first expressed interest in acquiring Crystal Cove. Two residents, with the help of family and friend connections, worked very hard to place Crystal Cove on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1979 the State of California purchased the land from the Irvine Company to form the Crystal Cove State Park.

Thus Betty’s family had to give up their great little beach house in 1979. But the state is doing a good job of preserving the area, keeping it away from developers, and opening up a beautiful beach and miles of hiking trails for the general public to enjoy.

Click on the link below to view more pictures, and if you ever get the opportunity, I encourage you to check out Crystal Cove.

Crystal Cove

July 25, 2012 Wednesday - Part 2

Leo Carrillo State Park	“Secos” – the Big Rock
1:00 pm to 2:00 pm	Consistent 3’ to 4’, sets head-high plus
Mid upcoming tide	No wind
Sunny and warm	Spectacular surf

I wrote this at Leo Carrillo State Park, a few miles north of Malibu. In the old days, before the state park, this was known as Secos (as in Arroyo Seco, Spanish for dry creek) – the primo surf spot where they filmed the 1959 classic surf movie, Gidget, the movie that started the whole surf craze in the early 60’s. The morning overcast had burned off, the bright sun was out, the wind had died, the water had turned a deep blue color and the waves were ideal – consistent 3 to 4 feet with occasional head-high plus perfectly peeling fast right curls.

Why am I not out there? I had already spent all my energy this morning at Surfers Point in Ventura, and I’m on schedule to connect with my good friend Jay in Manhattan Beach in two hours. Boy, was I tempted. Visions of my younger days flashed through my mind – days when going out twice in one day was the norm. I decided not to push my luck. Besides this was my opportunity to write-up this morning’s session.

For a half hour I took photos of some specular rides. From a photographers point of view conditions were ideal, perfect lighting – bright sunny day, blue skies and deep blue water. The waves formed next to a large outcropping of rocks, they jumped up broke and then peeled right along the contour of the beach, forming beautiful long lines within a few feet of the shore. I stood at the water’s edge and clicked away as surfers cruised down the curls within ten to twenty feet from me.  

Click on the link below to view my photos of these beautiful waves -

Leo Carrillo State Park