The Heavenly Scent

I drove down to supervision today on the scooter, about a 30-40 minute drive from Eucalyptus House, almost an hour from my home, which is where I was leaving from. I went down highway 280 because 101 is scary crazy even in a car. 280 is a pleasant drive down by Half Moon Bay, less traffic but the road surface leaves much to be desired. But I never take my eyes off the road for a second when I'm going that fast so I'm starting to learn the nicks and potholes of the road, like any motorcyclist does for a frequently traveled route.

Then the two hours of supervision, its usual affair. And then bundled up to return. I didn't feel like hitting the highway again; it really makes me nervous these days. A lot more can happen on a weenie scooter with no protective gear (other than helmet and long pants and sleeves, etc) at 70 mph than at 30 mph. So I decided to take El Camino Real, which is the old route 82, before the main 280 highway was put in place (I'm guessing). It's a main road with lots of stoplights. But it had very few potholes and surface traps so I was happy. Plus I got to work right on time and I thought I was going to be a whole half hour late. So that was good too.

As I was driving up, toodling along, with my ear pods in under my helmet listening to my iPod (yes, I know this isn't exactly legal... but I play the music softly and always keep my eyes and ears peeled while driving), and suddenly, around Burlingame (one of those shsi-shsi rich south Bay suburbs that starts at San Francisco and just keeps going south, a long sprawl), I smelled a smell.

This smell would have put five pounds on you, if you had smelled it. I know I did. Driving along, smelling the usual smells of asphalt, the exhaust of other cars, the worse exhaust of trucks and cars who have not been smogged properly. Sometimes sewer smells, sometimes a breath of fresh air in the midst of all the pollutants.

And then, the first strains of it, creeping into my helmet, past those other smells of wrongness. Oh my, a heavenly scent. It smelled exactly like a croissant filled with dark chocolate and heated to perfection, melting the chocolate and bringing out that buttery croissant scent to mingle. I don't take my eyes of the road surface when I drive, you never know when a pothole will come up (although most roads I have traveled, I know exactly where the holes are) but this was the first time I'd driven this section of El Camino Real. And I wasn't looking away. But oh, I so wanted to. Waah!! I wanted desperately to know where this scent was coming from because I was so tempted to go find it and eat it. But I was worried about being late to work and thusly, kept driving. But I kept sniffing, drawing in huge lungfuls of that delicious, almost edible scent as I went by, which went on for almost two "blocks" and I was very sad when I could no longer pick that otherworldly smell from the rest of the boring and icky ones.

When I got to work, I told my co-workers there and my boss (the now-director Anne) said there was a chocolate factory in Burlingame. Apparently there are three major factories in the Bay Area, so she says, and I probably went by "Guitard", at least that's what it sounded like. I know of Ghirardelli (which I think one in San Anselmo, CA and I think it even used to be in San Francisco) and Scharffen Berger (in Berkeley). But I did some poking around and found a small chocolate factory in San Francisco, called so amazingly enough, The San Francisco Chocolate Factory. And there is indeed a chocolate factory in Burlingame of all places, called Guittard. Tasty.

I might just have to stop next time.