We spent the last ten days at Asilomar, for the annual Diamond Heart All School Rereat. Hameed spun his magical spell transporting us into the netherworld of the kosmos.

I’ve found it best, at Hameed’s retreats, to just relax and enjoy the ride.

Emerging into the ‘real’ world afterwards can sometimes be a challenge . And again proved to be the case, as we attempted towards Big Sur from Pacific Grove California. The exercise proved to be like the movie Groudhog Day, as we couldn’t get there from here. By the time we finally go ton our way on highway nr 1 we were already exhausted. The roads are breathtakingly beautiful, but it’s a littler hard to enjoy teg scenery with hairpin corners, road construction and 1000-foot drop off’s Another thing that we failed to take into consideration was that a it was Labour Day-weekend and many of the campsites were booked up.

At one point, when we were at wit’s end, we pulled over to collect ourselves, breath and recognise that all was well. Just at that time, two Italian women pulled over and asked   the nearest gas station was. Having payed attention, I could tell them there was one 40 miles ahead or 20 miles behind. This information did not ease their comfort, as they were almost out of gas. I was able to save the day fort hem, as we had a jerrycan of gas ready for our generator, and this let them go on their way with all their immediate troubles behind them. Annet was able to spy a campsite that appeared without warning, and I was able to turn around with a forlorn hope that there may be a campsite available. We were in luck, the only problem was that is was again a very challenging site to get into.  We enlisted help from our next door neighbour Glenn, who was glad to assist, and then our other neighbour, Jeremy, came with even more instructions. Jeremy’s wife babysat Jonas, leaving Annet free to offer her observations with the rest of the crew. The hero in the end was Kayleigh, a small 11year old, who realized that it was these boulders that were getting in the way of our passage and suggested to rolling them back. With this inspired idea we finally get tucked away, all with a little help from our friends.

I’m not sure what to think about karma, but the small kindness we offered those Italian women, seemed to pay instant dividend.