Floods in New York, damn hot in Sacramento, cool in classrooms

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - In Sacramento, except for the damnably hot afternoons, the weather is barely a factor in life.

Quite a change from New York. There, you could walk outside in bright sunshine and get splattered with rain before you got your car door open. It happens.

Schenectady is under water

And right now, upstate New York is experiencing wild flooding, apparently from the tail end of yet another hurricane passing by.

Two hurricanes in, oh, a couple of weeks? And others forming out in the Atlantic. No climate change going on at all. Zip.

In the meantime, Adm. Fox and I plug along at our classes with one hand, the other working on getting staged to pull out of California (as legal residents) in December. It's weird making all these arrangements to change health care around, move cars, pack up offices we've had for 20+ years. Weird doesn't really cover it though, I think.

My students are getting an interesting ride this fall, as my patience is, well, maybe a little thinner than normal when it comes to putting up with the B.S. One student skipped the first night session of magazine writing and had the gall yesterday to be upset that I dropped him from the course. There were four people waiting for his seat that first night.

Ironically, I added all four  of those students and said, "What the hell, it's my last semester. Hang on tight, amigos."

Tonight it's off to Elk Grove for dinner at a Mexican restaurant with Chief Engineer Scott Noble and Counselor Jen Noble - part of a program to get in culinary shape for our return to Arroyo Seco.

Training can be soooooo hard.

Restaurant Las Brisas in Arroyo Seco

Arroyo Seco beach coming of age: hotel, restaurant, RV park...

ARROYO SECO, Jalisco, Mexico - Having dinner last night at Luis' (Restaurante Las Brisas) on Playa Grande in Arroyo Seco - in the company of 14 people staying at the Hotel across the street - it occured to me that suddenly Arroyo Seco might be coming of age for tourists.

The single biggest drawback for out-of-town visitors in our few years living here has been that there is no commercial establishment for people to spend the night. So anyone interested in coming in and spending time wandering (or surfing or swimming) could only come in for day trips.

And the restaurant scene mostly consisted of small family run taco stands on the main street, which opened well after dark, long after most day-trippers were headed back to La Manzanilla or Careyes or Melaque.

View from the lower patio area of the hotel

Then the hotel - really an 11-bedroom home with a large central kitchen - came available for people to rent. It's not the Four Seasons, yet. And the owner would prefer to sell it and make it someone else's responsiblilty. But for now, Jim Monaco, owner/operator of the Monaco PV real estate company, has taken the place over for the owner and is renting out rooms.

He is also working like crazy, fixing the place up.

And there is an RV park now, too, that had guests about a week ago from the state of Washington.

Last night, the gringo population swelled as most of the rooms were taken by visitors from Barra and Melaque - a group of friends and people from as far away as the Mexican state of Michocan. And in addition to spending the afternoon and evening (and this morning) enjoying the beach scene and the small heart-shaped pool at the hotel, the entire assemblage walked across the street to Luis' restaurant, where a special meal had been prepared.

Luis and his wife Nena put on quite a spread, and most of the items we ate are available on the normal menu for the restaurant, open nearly every day.

Their son Luis and two young amigos acted as the waiters and kept all the diners happy.

Group from the hotel at Restaurante Las Brisas

Three years ago, when Adm. Fox and I bought the lot on which we now live in the winter and spring (aka, the Pink Flamingo), it was partly because we thought someday someone might want to open a restaurant or school or ? in the center of town.

Maybe that time is getting closer.

Perhaps a subsidiary of of Palapa Joe's?

Here's a brief video of from last night...

Restaurant Las Brisas in Arroyo Seco - the new beach hangout

ARROYO SECO, Jalisco, Mexico - The new location for Las Brisas Restaurant in Arroyo Seco, on Playa Grande, suits it well. Very well.

Under a large shady palapa roof, the restaurant has space for maybe fifty people in a crunch (or who might not be crunched,  there's plenty of chairs and tables...). The entire interior of the former house seems to have been given over to a huge kitchen with plenty of room for the fresh fish and shrimp that are the house specialties.

Las Brisas Restaurant in Arroyo Seco

In fact, don't go looking for a hamburger there, just yet. It's a seafood place - and everything is fresh, sometimes caught from the freshwater laguna out back, sometimes the ocean in front.

The place is operated by Luis and Nena, longtime Arroyo Seco residents who ran the restaurant in a much smaller facility across the street for several years. But that restaurant was really open only on weekends (and Semana Santa, of course). Luis and Nena's son, Luis Jr., along with some of his pre-teen amigos, act as the waiters and are close to professionally attentive.

Sometimes they might be wet after just getting out of the pool when they walk up, but they won't make you wait for your food.

The new place is serving meals every day and has become my new Arroyo Seco hangout.

Luis (standing) taking an order

So, um, where is it?

The Arroyo Seco turnoff is a left from Highway 200, a few kilometers north of Agua Caliente and the turnoff for El Tecuan.

The Arroyo Seco signs put up last year seem to have weathered the summer nicely.

Once in Arroyo Seco proper, the turn to Playa Grande is at the end of the main street. If you turn right, you go to Playa Chica, where there are no services, but frequently plenty of surfers.

Playa Grande is about two kilometers from town and Las Brisas is near the south of the beach. It's very close to the new RV park, too.

My favorite dish - so far - has been camarones filadelfia. Yup, they mix some Philadelphia cream cheese in while cooking the shrimp and peppers. It can be a little picante, too. (I have been getting the half order - plenty of of food - for 50 pesos...)

On a recent outing with amigos from La Manzanilla, the shrimp diablo got rave reviews as did the fresh fish filet, cooked in garlic.

All this writing about the restaurant is pushing me out the door to my quad for a quick spin to Las Brisas for some camarones filadelfia and a cold Tecate.

Oh, and a swim in the pool, too, if it's hot. I haven't seen any adults in the small pool, but, hey, it's Mexico. Jump in...

I will try to remember to take some photos of the food this next trip, too. The last few visits it disappeared before I could get my camera out of my bag.