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adventures

First ride of the year

After 1,323 miles on the trainer during a mild winter, this afternoon was my first outdoor ride since December.

Right from the start, and throughout this 30-miler, it was wonderful. The weather was perfect. The wind was in my face. My legs burned, but kept going, and I got a text that my lovely bride’s swim had been canceled, and that she, too, was going out for a ride. I managed to find her, and we did the last six miles or so together.

Now, at last, spring is here.

Erudite wheelmen would speak of the hum of their wheels, the grip of bar tape, bidons.

Poets would write of the power and purpose of getting back into the drops. Really, it’s heart and joyful freedom.

Freedom to ride hard, to soft pedal, to weave over the road like a kid. Freedom to try on that hill, or to not. And the thrill of coming down the other side, no matter the effort on the way up.

It’s the carefree feeling we rode with as kids.

Already, it feels like a great year of riding.

But maybe you’re here for a different sort of enjoyment and relaxation. Got you covered. Here’s another shot from an entirely unremarkable vista view on the Pacific Coast Highway.

They have so many of them that they don’t even name them or, really, even mark them all that well. But they’re each lovely. We assume they’re all lovely. We weren’t able to see each one.

Guess we’ll have to go back one day.

adventures / California / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
8
Apr 24

The clouds eclipsed the eclipse

We did not check in on the cats last week, and don’t think I haven’t heard about it. They know they’re the most popular weekly feature. And they know, somehow, when I’ve written about them here.

They pester me incessantly when they aren’t here in their regular place.

Perhaps you’ve seen a demanding cat, but unless you’ve seen a demanding cat quite certain of their celebrity, you can’t appreciate what I’m dealing with here. Not really.

Phoebe will doze off on your knee, and it’s adorable, except for that moment you need to shift, move or get up.

But sleeping between layers of a fuzzy quilt is even better.

Not pictured, above, that guilt is folded over multiple times for maximum fluffiness, and is sitting on the back of the sofa.

These cats aren’t spoiled at all. Take it from Poseidon.

You’ll notice he’s not sitting on the sofa cushion, but on two different pillows on top of the sofa cushion.

He will, from time-to-time, sit up and watch a good police chase, however.

The person in that white truck evaded police, left the car and snuck into the woods, trying to mingle with a little encampment there. The police figured it out pretty quickly, though. Poe was there for the whole thing, though. I don’t know why he likes car chases so much, but they do captivate him.

At any rate, we remind them of their many comforts whenever they try to be sneaky, themselves, and bolt for the door.

I snuck outside to look at today’s eclipse. We were not in the totality, which every celestial mechanic expert on the web can tell you about today. But we were due something like an 81 percent endarkening. Except there was the little matter of the forecast. Clouds.

Except that, this afternoon, the clouds did not gather in their masses. There were some low, fluffy white clouds and so we were confident that we would see the thing we aren’t supposed to look at. And then, at precisely the appointed time (have you noticed everyone in the media kept saying “scheduled,” as if our people had talked to the sun’s people and we found a time that worked for everyone?) the clouds moved in. All of the clouds.

So I saw nothing of the eclipse, even though I broke out the eclipse-protecting eye wear.

After which I went to class, because you might as well see if anyone else saw the thing. One student, I know, drove to Ohio to see the big event. I guess I’ll find out, from him, how it was next week.

The purple-leaf sand cherry (prunus x cistena) is coming into its own. It’s a shrub you can’t miss; it’s right by the garage and easy to admire.

Saturday we went to the local Tractor Supply to buy a bunch of seeds.

In the parking lot there we met this guy. Chipper fellow. Quick with a joke, said he was from another town up the highway, but was very complimentary of the people he’d met today. Said they were real neighborly. Small town vibes around here. We made a nice little donation to ChildHelp and felt good about all of the seeds and soil we got, besides.

The Yankee put the seeds in the soil while I returned to grading things. Now we’re just waiting on the vegetables to appear. Maybe tomorrow.

After that, we made a fire in the fire pit. I mention it only to point out the way the smoke was escaping through this one piece of wood.

But don’t take my word for it. There’s video.

If we’re not careful we’ll develop a slow motion video habit, but I’m pretty sure my audience has moved beyond such basic tricks.

Besides, you’re here for the peaceful videos, right? Here’s another minute of the Pacific Coast Highway you can enjoy from our recent trip to central California.

Relax. Enjoy. Repeat.

And have a great start to your week. Much more interesting stuff to come here every day, including more California videos, so do be sure to stop back by.

adventures / California / Friday / photo / video — Comments Off
5
Apr 24

We interrupt our regular update for this special report

EARTHQUAKE PALOOZA WATCH 2024

I was in one room, my lovely bride in the adjoining room, and there was a rumble and a rattle. I thought, at first, that a particularly noisy garbage truck had gone down the road to fast. Or maybe a helicopter was on low pass maneuvers. Maybe the helicopter ambulance service.

To the USGS!

The steady hands in the Office of the Department of Shake Studies say it was a 4.8 temblor. This, of course, was too close to the media center of the world, and so with in a matter of minutes and hours texts and calls filtered in from the family and friends, earthquake experts and structural engineers, all.

I had dutifully walked the grounds and nothing was amiss. Except for this woeful damage.

This was my first earthquake. It is possible I’ve slept through some small ones — if they could be felt where I was at that time, that is. And I’ve been in some stadiums that erupted to the point of registering on seismographs. But this was a true parts of the earth rubbing against one another first for me.

Turns out, on this side of the country, you can feel them over greater distance. Has something to do with the soil and stone composition, I’d imagine. And we don’t even know where all of the faults are in this area. Indeed, we don’t know the precise location of the one we felt this morning, which is said to be the biggest one in this region in the history of the country.

Late in the day, we felt, barely, a 3.7 aftershock. I’d thought I’d imagined it … until The Yankee asked me if I felt it too.

So that’s two for me. Earthquakes are old hat now, and we can return back to normal sunny days with the occasional storm cloud rolling by, please and thank you.

The camellia did not seemed bothered by the rumbling of the earth beneath it.

That’s a credit, I am sure, to the big, strong root system. Not too deep, not too shallow, just right.

And also the soil they are planted in. This guy is rooted firmly in the sandy mix, here, on the inner coastal plain — where the heavy land and the green sands meet.

Things are really starting to grow around here. Now … if we can only start the process earlier in the spring.

Since we’re talking about beautiful weather and beautiful places and earthquakes, let’s have a look at a few more videos from our trip to California last month.

This is just a randoms spot where you could pull off on the Pacific Coast Highway. Just a view, unique in its ubiquity, glorious in their splendor, outstanding in their anonymity. Nothing in the world has ever happened here, except for people that stop, look down and marvel at the size of it all, the beauty of it all, and just how simultaneously timeless and ephemeral it all is.

That’s a lot to put on waves, maybe, but the waves are used to it. I stood on this beach for a long time wondering how long it takes to grind the big rocks into little pebbles, and how long before those little pebbles become sand and dust. In that light, the waves are not impressed by our meager notions of time or our literature.

Mehmet Murat ildan wrote, “The greatest pleasure of the wave is to bring the stones to the beach and then try to get them back into the sea! Everyone and everything has a toy to play with!”

And that’s true.

But waves take as much as they give. It’s a good thing they give us a lot. One is mindless, and the other we think of as a kind benefactor. How interesting that we assign conflicting personas to the opposite sides of the same wave.

No, the waves, the oceans, they are not impressed by our meager notions of time or our literature. Or our silly notions of time. Slow motion, regular speed, the few hours I spent on that beach, the thousands and millions of years some of those great big rocks have been worn down, it all means nothing to the waves. It’s mindless, yet patient. It’s off-putting, but liberating.

adventures / California / Thursday / video — Comments Off
28
Mar 24

Papers and sticks and videos

The grading continues. I am currently reading about four dozen feature profiles. Some have some nice potential, a few are already there. Many of the students writing these pieces have found interesting people to write about. That’s the first step.

After that, well, you have to spend time with them, spend time on them. Learn all about them. And then write it. Feature profiles aren’t hard. They take a lot of time. And then they get difficult. There’s a great craft to writing a profile about a stranger, and having your audience wants to read more. And because of all of that, it’s interesting to see how people take their first attempt at trying to write such a thing.

At my current pace I should get everything done at just about midnight, tomorrow night.

I try to give everyone some useful and specific feedback, you see. So it’s time intensive for me, too. For some, I am encouraging them to continue to work on this story. A few aren’t far away from being published. Hopefully one or two will take that advice.

For one of my breaks away from the computer today I went outside to … pick up sticks. The yard is littered with them from a storm here and wind there. Initially, I despaired at what I would do with all of these sticks and small limbs. And then I remembered: we have a fire pit.

So now we have a growing stack of kindling.

It sits near this pear tree, which still looks lovely.

Also nearby is a nice little growing stand. A good place for herbs and other things that have a shallow root system. In a week or two, perhaps, we’ll get to this in earnest. But, for now, I am enjoying seeing the things that pop up all on their own.

I’m cheering for you guys, and I’ll put a version of that picture will eventually make its way into becoming another banner here on the site.

Let’s head back to California for another peaceful little beach video.

Relax. Enjoy. Repeat.

And if you, like me, are a fan of the slow motion crashing of waves, here’s another one of those.

Not to worry. There are plenty more videos where those came from.

adventures / California / music / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
26
Mar 24

Videos of several sorts

Just kidding about the weekend being laid back. My lovely bride and I and my two god sisters in-law (just go with it) all drove down to Baltimore Saturday night.

(Baltimore. I know. Our streak continues. We weren’t even very far from that bridge and the horrible scene unfolding there.)

(And if you are about to say “Nothing bad has happened to central California, and you were just there. Give it a bit of time.)

Anyway, we crossed over another bridge, went downtown, had a sandwich at a conveniently located Shake Shack (because it is milkshake season) and then ran into this guy.

That’s Ryan Miller of Texas, Massachusetts (Tufts) and Vermont. And also of Guster. It just so happened that we were there to see Guster play. And he was out wandering around, looking for all the world panicked about where he should be before his stage call.

“Cutting it a little close,” he said to us.

They’re not starting without you, so it’ll be fine, I said.

We asked to take a photo with him. He said sure, but only if we did it in the crosswalk. Because it was him, you see, that was cutting it close.

I was just glad I got my phone back before he dashed off. So this is our crosswalk shot.

It’s like Abbey Road, but it is President Street.

It’s a good reference since I’ve been saying, since it was released in 2019, that Guster’s most recent record, Look Alive, is a Beatles album. If the Beatles were making music in the 21st century, it wouldn’t be far off that.

And Guster has a new album due out this May. So they’re on tour, and we saw them Saturday. Here are some clips.

I’ve seen Guster now in four or five states over three decades. It is still a lot of fun. I am lobbying to catch one more show later this year.

Here’s some more video from California. We have weeks of this. This is a slow motion wave crashing video from Spooner’s Cove in Los Osos. We’d climbed up the big rock that sits in the middle of the cove, we must have been 15-20 feet off the ground. My lovely bride had very patiently waited to capture a big wave in the slow motion style. Took a while. I got this one on my first try. She was not jealous or anything.

What aggravated her was that, as I stood there, I got good wave after good wave for slow motion video purposes. I’ll share those as we go along these next few days, too.

For now, here’s the day’s peaceful shot of sand and sea.

Relax. Enjoy. Repeat.

And come back tomorrow. There’ll be more videos to share then, too.