A Year in the Bay

In July the sun sets late here. By a little past five the light already comes in at a slant, looking like sunset, but dark is still three or four hours off. That much daylight felt wasted at home. We remembered Montalvo, sitting in our Google Maps saves for a long time; leaving now would put us there right at sunset.

A Google Home Mini on the floor in low evening light

Evening light and the shadow of a desk leg on the wood floor

Montalvo#

Montalvo sits in the foothills above Saratoga, a 1912 villa that Senator James Phelan built as his country estate, an arts center now. We got there a little after six and had the place to ourselves. In the hall the chandeliers were off and the folding tables stood collapsed against the wall; the brightest thing in the room was the arched glass door, the courtyard’s evening coming through it.

The dark hall of Villa Montalvo, an arched glass door opening onto the courtyard

No event today, by the look of it, though the house really did feel like one resting between two.

Folding tables on the sunlit veranda, seen through the glass

A white arch above wood paneling, a window looking into another window

The garden was still in the sun. A row of statues stood on the low wall, old actors from 1912, and the newly paved path, very much their junior, ambled downhill under their gaze.

Statues on a low garden wall in the evening sun, a path curving behind them

The car#

On the way back we pulled into the car wash we always use. We picked the car up in San Diego, on Valentine’s Day of last year, a year and a half ago now; since I changed jobs it has been hauling all kinds of people around, and it suddenly occurred to me that we had never taken proper photos of it.

The freshly washed X3 head on, hazy hills behind

The car looks much as it did when we bought it. I am not one for putting things on a car, but over a year and a half my questionable taste has been quietly rubbing off on it.

The welcome screen glowing on the dashboard, shot through the windshield

A red panda sticker peeking over the rear window trim, sky in the glass

I thought back to speccing it: everything was easy to choose except that BMW offered three different blacks, which had me stuck for a little while, and in the end I closed my eyes and picked Sapphire Black. Washed, then waxed with the CarGuys bottle, the paint went back to the black it left the factory with. With the sunset on it, the name was right, and it looks like the pick was too.

The front of the car in an empty lot at dusk

The side of the car, the red panda just showing at the window corner

The rear quarter of the car against the evening light

At eight sharp a Delta jet pressed down with the sunset, low over the fire station across the road, dropping toward the airport. I thought of last summer, when we moved to the Bay Area on a Delta flight too. A year and a half on the car, a year on us, and somehow everything still feels new.

A Delta jet coming down over the fire station across the road