Palo Alto can sizzle like the chips of a Wintel computer calculating Bill Gates' net worth while just over the ridge in Half Moon Bay the air is as chilling as Kenneth Starr's smile. There is no bright and cheerful spot here that doesn't have a drizzly and gloomy counterpart somewhere a few miles away. Fred Stevens, a denizen of often dank Daly City offered his service as guide. Fred met Mike Wood, his wife Jane Wardzinska, and me on a ridgetop overlooking a fog bank roiling below. The fact that it was sunny and 92 degrees here was a bit unsettling, but we were in a cemetery, which cheered me up a little.
Cemeteries can be fungally fabulous.
They are typically a vast expanse of grass surrounded by stately pines, cedars, and oaks. They have running sprinklers whenever necessary to keep the grass green, and if they're located close enough to the coast they can get a constant drizzle of fog condensation. If there happen to be no mushrooms there, you've always got some reading material nearby on the tombstones. This particular cemetery was promising for many reasons, not the least of which was a gentile shabbiness. There's nothing worse for fungal grass inhabitants than a regular lawn mower and a fastidious gardener wielding trimmers.