There's this one spot that I've found on this otherwise marvelous 40-acre facility. This spot is roughly tetrahedral in its space, about 30 to 50 inches to a side, usually about a yard or more off the ground (thank goodness!) and it moves about some undefinable center, which depends on the wind, I've deduced, given that when it's really windy there's no reception at all, when it's calm the zone is quite stable, but will indeed move as much as a foot or more with a sudden gust. This tiny zone of reception is nearly always on the right half of the road, when facing east, but never, so far, off the road. Lucky me that this is a road lightly travelled! It's near the steel gate, just north (on the pavement, now) of three very young eucalyptus saplings that may or may not have a relationship to the location and size of the zone, but are handy as a reference point. So, if you have this particular phone and Verizon service, and happen to visit this truly marvelous "Coastal Lodge and Camp" north of Santa Cruz on an otherwise very lightly developed San Mateo County coast (quite wild, really, compared to the suburbs east of that far redwooded skyline), when it's not too windy, then you just might be able to call someone you love. If it is indeed windy, or you just can't find it (It really took me a few days of sporadic and increasingly feckless searching to eventually find it about halfway along my daily walk to and from the quite nifty and friendly restaurant. In my defense, they were a series of gusty days.), Costanoa has Wi-Fi, so you can walk around with your laptop finding out where IT gets a signal (not way down at my favorite campsite, of course). I've found that one of the Wi-Fi transmitters is attached to the "Comfort Station" nearest the Seascape camping loop. So, if it's gusty outside and you want to send off a few emails or whatever you just must do on the Web when you could really BE on vacation, you can set your laptop down carefully on the rough concrete counter between the sinks and tap away. Assuming there's not a troop of Brownies splashing about, naturally. Yes, it's that kind of Comfort Station, but yupscale in a Brawny kind of way; the concrete floors have glorious radiant heating, the rough pole construction has vaulted ceilings, skylights, baby-changing fold-out-of-the-wall gizmos, galvanized walls, trendy halogen lighting, and indoor as well as outdoor private showers. Heh? All of the comfort stations have an open-sky breezeway between the paired gender-specific wings, which, given the frequent breezes off the nearby Pacific, are frankly a bit too breezy for the petro-log fires that are lit each evening in the strangely comforting-until-they're-lit fireplace and attendant faulty chimney set in the middle of these breezeways. It's really quite unfortunate for the lungs of anyone near them, particularly the younglings resolutely trying to melt the chocolate of their "s'mores" in the paraffin soot that pours out of the maw of these fireplaces with viciously inefficient backwards-working chimneys. Ah, well, all earthly paradises must have their little hellish quirks, mustn't they? Except for the two Comfort Stations serving the hoi poloi of the "pitch-your-own-tent" and RV camp loops, the four other comfort stations each feature a real deal sauna. Oh, lawdy. Lastly, how's this for irony? If you can, borrow a Cingular / ATT phone; they seem to have clean service just about here there and everywhere on this isolated outpost of yummy yuppie-dom. Imagine, Cingular patrons walking around with these goofy "how'd I get so lucky" grins. And me, with a phone that gets service everywhere, even in the freakin' Rain Forest of Big Foot Olympic National Park. Ah, well, I'm on vacation. Listen. That's the sound of my phone not jingling, ever. I guess this is what a vacation used to be, eh?
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