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Cambria, San Simeon, Hearst Castle

This is Spring Break. Started Saturday bundled up and out the door to watch an 8-year-old’s basketball game. The blue team, which we were cheering for, lost. But the red team, who we also applauded, played well. Also, they had a deep bench of junior students, and the blue team had just the five players. The red team got out to a big lead, and things were looking grim — seven-minute quarters, 10-foot basketball goals and all. The referee was as strict on the fundamental rules as the NBA. And, on the blue team, everyone wanted to bring the ball up the court. That enthusiasm worked out, though. Despite going down 10, they got back to a single bucket when the final buzzer sounded. Some of the blue teamers were despondent. Others were just ready to be shuttled off to whatever else was scheduled for their busy 8-year-old Saturday.

We went to Waffle House. There just happened to be one near the gym, and I haven’t been to a Waffle House since before the pandemic began. That one was not a good one, somewhere in Indianapolis. This one was good. Except the staff were getting along harmoniously, and no fights or any other drama dominated the experience. It was just a quick sandwich and a classic waffle.

When you have the opportunity to have a waffle for lunch, you have a waffle for lunch.

Then, it was time to strategically jam things into a small suitcase. And then it was time to get in the car and drive 90 minutes. On Sunday morning we used the services of one of the many national airports. But instead of driving up early in the morning, we chose a hotel. The hotel we chose was conveniently located near one of the state’s finest institutions. I looked up the reviews. Some people like working there! Not everyone enjoys being a guest there.

Our place was nice. It was quiet, except for the highway, which was 96 inches from the window next to our bed. I listened to this for hours, waiting for 2 a.m., because if you can schedule a trans-continental dawn flight, on the day that the clocks spring forward and you’re paranoid about alarms, you should definitely consider that undertaking.

The alarms went off right on time. Up and at’em, to the parking lot, to the airport and to the plane. All a pleasant and unremarkable experience. We took off and headed west. We flew Jet Blue, our first time on that airline, because of price considerations and direct-flight convenience. Someone asked for a blanket two rows ahead of me. The flight attendant said, “Of course. That’ll be $10.” I brought a jacket, and left my wallet in my pocket. The flight was fine, the legroom was great. I watched The Burial and rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>The Holdovers. Both were good airplane movie fare.

We landed in LAX, which was great, because that was what we had anticipated. We were early, which was pleasant. The Jet Blue experience was just fine. We got a rental car, opting for a sensible Toyota that required you to step up into, and duck down, simultaneously. These are fun!

We drove north, which was the direction we wanted to go, cheerily reading off road signs that we recognize from watching police chases. We stopped at In-N-Out and had a perfectly average burger, which was in keeping with our first In-N-Out experience several years ago: decent enough, not at all worth the hype. But we enjoyed the patio in sunny Southern California where it was in the 60s and everyone was wearing jackets and hoodies.

We continued on to our airbnb, in Cambria, the small central coastal town we’re visiting for the first half of the week. A delightful lady met us there, and we’ll be staying in the garage apartment of these nice people’s home right on top of the hill. This was our view. (We were also promised visits from deer and turkeys in the mornings, and I’m 85 percent convinced this was the selling point.) If you look in the distance, you can see it.

Enhance that photo. And, by enhance, I mean allow us to drive down to the coastline so that we may see the Pacific properly.

We’re strictly tourists until Thursday. You know what that means. A lot of photos!

This is standing on the William Randolph Hearst Memorial Beach. That pier is closed for dangers to life and limb. They really do think of everything in California.

If we were standing on the Hearst Beach, you might think, that must mean we were close to the Hearst Castle. And if you think that, you’re right, and you know where the next bit of this post is going. Here we are on the first stop of our little walking tour of the main rooms. This is the tour they encourage all of the first timers to take. (In fact, they warned us off another tour, because this one is for first timers and, hence, apparently better, but also for people just like you and me.) The guide said no food and drink, and stay on the carpeted areas. And one of the people who was on the tour, a cantankerous old woman who was just, presumably, just like you and me, said “What about marijuana?” The tour guide had half of an answer for that.

Anyway, that’s the guest house, I found out just after I took the photo, and not the Castle, or the Casa Grande, as Hearst called it. I do know a bit about Hearst the media mogul, but really nothing about his home, as you can tell.

This is more like it. This is Casa Grande, and therein are the main rooms, which is the popular first timer tour we were on, along with the older woman looking to spark up her afternoon doob. (She did not.) It’s not my style, but you can see where Hearst got his Mediterranean and Spanish influences. Much of this region could remind you of Tuscany, if you glanced at it a bit. And while the house isn’t too my tastes, the achievement is certainly worth noting. Everything built here is built atop a great big hill, and the logistics of even getting a road up here to start with was impressive. That it took 20 years, that Hearst was constantly tinkering with the plans, that he had a rock star of an architect for the entirety of the construction all figure into it, but you can’t sit up there and not be impressed by the achievement of just getting materials to this place.

As a group, we did not stay together very well, which allowed me to work several different smaller groups there in. I would stand with one cluster and mutter under my breath, “I can see what he’s trying to go for here … ”

And then I would move to another cluster and say, “Sometimes I wish we had a smaller pool like this one … ”

The taste might not be mine, and the pool may come up short, but the man knew how to pick a view.

Depending on which story you heard — and our guide told us one, but the reenactment video narrated by Donald Sutherland told us another — Casa Grande is built either on the land where he and his family camped when he was young, or on a hill near there. It’s a delightfully romantic story, and so I hope the guide had it right. But that video at the end of the tour was well-produced. I’m sure they were working from good material. This is probably the best view near the place where he remembered spending so many wonderful days as a child. And that’s plenty good.

The main rooms tour takes you into the big welcoming reception room. All of Hearst’s many guests would gather there before dinner for a drink (but not two, Hearst delighted in being a great host, but did not suffer a sloppy one). We saw the dining room, that was straight out of European central casting for a dining hall. Except, maybe, for the table, which is set for dinner, as if the Chief were going to come through those doors at any moment.

We also saw the morning room, which I am sure has a better name than that. That would have been where the guests gather to read the paper, take the sun, and someone would fetch their to-order breakfast. We also saw the billiards room. I bet you can guess what happened there.

What happened there was that our guide talked about how Hearst was always working, surrounded by his phones and the newspapers he owned. (Hearst got his money the old fashioned way, his daddy dug it out of the ground.) William was an editor and publisher by 23, courtesy of Pa, and then became a proper media mogul. Newspapers, radio, movies. Our guide then said Hearst was the social media of his day.

My lovely bride was at one end of the billiards room, with the front of the group, and I was at the other end, working another cluster of visitors, “We run into this problem all of the time. If you have two tables, some of your guests just can’t play, so last summer we expanded and now we have four in our entertainment wing … ”

So the guide said Hearst was the social media of his day. I looked at The Yankee and she looked at me and so there we were, two media pros and scholars trying not to giggle and daring each other, with facial expressions, to derail the tour and explain where she was obviously wrong.

We let it slide.

Then we watched a short film in Hearst’s in home screening room.

“Oh this is nice,” I said. “I can see what they were trying to do here. Of course ours could just be better because of the modern technology. And how we budgeted for it … ”

Hearst was one of the richest men in the world by then, of course. But in the story, I was only wearing the cheap sunglasses to not stand out, of course.

The footage we saw there was a bunch of home movie clips, filled with stars of a bygone day. Some you recognized, still. Some, when the old images came up and the tour guide said the name, you would have a moment of recognition. Others were just lost to most of us — most of us except the old woman who was looking to scurry up a little. She might have known who all of the people were. It was charming, seeing the old footage taken from the grounds, right there in the place. Just delightful.

Then we saw the other pool. It’s built beneath the tennis courts. The room leaks. In fact, the entire ceiling has been removed because it’s a mess. They blamed this on Hearst, and his changing plans, not the architect. And also common sense. If the roof is your tennis courts, then your roof is flat. So there’s nowhere for rain to run off and you’re going to have leaks.

“We learned from that mistake, too,” I said to no one in particular.

That pool, though, really is something.

(Click to embiggen.)

It’s a nice little tour. It’s worth seeing. We never thought about adding the zoo, which is no longer functioning, but you can see some of the remnants on the way up to the house itself. Only now are three or four little jokes coming to mind about how we should incorporate that in our third quarter expansion. I guess we’ll have to go back so I can try out that material on another set of visitors.

Our own tourist activities continued, with the rest of the afternoon spent enjoying the beautiful central coastline around us.

“… there is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many times it’s sent away.”

— Sarah Kay

“We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know – unless it be to share our laughter. We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide.”

— James Kavanaugh

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

— Isaac Newton (or Joseph Spence)

“I marvel at the nine shades of green and three shades of blue, only separated by the irrepressible skein of white foam, the color itself which keeps some of the blues from looking gree — oh, hello.”

— Me, probably

(Click to embiggen.)

“To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam.
To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.
Ay, you are like an ocean,
And though heavy-grounded ships await the tide upon your shores, yet, even like an ocean, you cannot hasten your tides.
And like the seasons you are also,
And though in your winter you deny your spring,
Yet spring, reposing within you, smiles in her drowsiness and is not offended. Think not I say these things in order that you may say the one to the other, “He praised us well. He saw but the good in us.”
I only speak to you in words of that which you yourselves know in thought.”

— Kahlil Gibran

(Click to embiggen.)

“People travel to wonder
at the height of the mountains,
at the huge waves of the seas,
at the long course of the rivers,
at the vast compass of the ocean,
at the circular motion of the stars,
and yet they pass by themselves
without wondering.”

— Augustine of Hippo

“He was a telephone man who fell in love with long distances; he gave up his job with the telephone company and skipped the light fantastic out of town …”

“The last we heard of him was a picture postcard from Mazatlan, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, containing a message of two words: “Hello – Goodbye!” and no address.”

— Tennessee Williams

Yes, Tennessee, the rest of the play explained itself.

“Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I’m talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean.”

— Haruki Murakami

“I am the shore and the ocean, awaiting myself on both sides.”

— Dejan Stojanovic

More tomorrow.

adventures / Cozumel / memories / Monday / photo / SCUBA / video — Comments Off
4
Mar 24

An important story of diving strength and grace and power

We held our first backyard activity of the new year this weekend. We put a fire in the fire pit.

As ever, the order is tender, kindling, firewood.

It took a while, because someone put wet wood — and not the kindling and firewood I’ve been storing out of the elements for just this purpose — in the fire pit, but pine straw is eager to burn and when I got enough of that in there you could hear the water sizzling away until, finally, we got those relaxing looking coals to stare at.

It was a good way to mark the weekend, a great way to start the outdoor season, which should run right up until December if last year was any indication. March to December? I’d take that, happily. It was sunny again today, but rainy or damp, and cool, for the rest of the week. We’re just waiting for the mercury to climb a few degrees higher.

OK, here’s the last photo from our recent trip to Cozumel. I’ve rationed these out for two months, and that’s better than I expected. (Don’t worry, we’re going to be able to stretch out the remaining videos for a good long while, too.)

This is the photo where I once again thank our trip planner and my dive buddy. Dive buddies serve a lot of roles. They point out stuff you might have overlooked. They help verify the stories you come back with. They also help ensure your safety. (Or whatever.)

In Cozumel, you do a lot of drift diving. You drop off the boat, go to the depth of the dive profile and just let the current take you … that way. The boat above follows your bubbles and picks up in another place. When you do it right, this is peaceful, easy, diving. You learn quickly that, even with a light current, the water is in control and you make your peace with it. You’re going this direction. You’ll see some great things. You’ll miss some things. C’est la plongée. Or, I guess, eso es bucear.

You don’t swim against the current.

So we’re going along on one of our last dives, the six divers and the dive master, Max, who has worked and dove all over the world. We’re all stretched out in a line, lingering here, drifting there. I’m about the fourth one back. My lovely bride is one or two people ahead of me.

Coming the other direction is a beautiful eagle ray, which migrates through that region in January and February. You see it, you admire it, you drift on. My dive buddy turns around and swims after it to capture video footage. Max and the other four divers are impressed. She’s swimming against the current, probably 100 yards, closing the distance on a creature designed for this environment.

Max this worldly, long-professional, very cool ciao Italian man, looks at me, his eyes as wide as his mask allows. The expression for “What?” works in any language, under any body of water. I shrugged and nodded.

A little while later, we happen upon a turtle, and that tortuga is also swimming opposite us. The Yankee again turns, closes the distance, passes the turtle, and gets in front of it to take another photo. We’re at the front of the group this time, and so she swims upstream past the other five people, who are in disbelief. When she finally turned to join us once more, they were still watching. I gestured to her to show the muscles. Everybody else needed to see the gun show.

And, look, she wasn’t even breathing hard.

After the dive, Max and I are the last ones in the water, waiting to climb on the boat. He said to me that he’d never seen anyone do that, and certainly not twice. I guess he’d never been diving with a varsity athlete, a three-time Ironman, a five-time USA National Championship triathlete, who is also a FINA world championship swimmer.

It was, without a doubt, impressive, but not surprising. Not to me. I’ve been surprised by all of it before. And I need all of the air in my tank just to keep up with her.

We’re still working on her fire-building skills.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo / SCUBA / video — Comments Off
26
Feb 24

Everything here is terrific

Friday’s snapshots I did not share … because I was busy sharing other things. (I began a look at a 78-year-old yearbook. Did you see that? You should check it out.)

My office window faces the western sky and I happened to glance up just in time to see this explosion of color above the treeline. Grab the phone, down the stairs, out the door and stand on the porch to take this photo.

And then right back inside, because I believe I was barefoot. The neighbors must think things.

The lilies are still going strong. The purple flowers, the ones with names I do not know, are well into their romantic wither and wait stage. But these guys are still offering a powerful fragrance.

It is a promise of spring to come, and it is coming soon. Surely it is now. I walked outside today and thought, This feels great! And it could be that I was standing in the sun, that I’d just gotten off my bike and my heart rate was still elevated or that 54 degrees in late February feels like a treat. It is more of a sign of things to come than a symbol of things lost. Later this week the sunset will set after 6 p.m. You can’t help but feel optimistic. I’m wearing blue and yellow to class tonight, because it is officially time for spring colors.

The cats can tell, too. I don’t know that they can. I assume they can. If they are attuned to the seasons we have enough windows for them to figure it out. They’ve seen a few birds return and there’s a squirrel or two outside tormenting them know, so maybe they know something is up, seasonally speaking. But I can’t say that for sure, of course. They haven’t told me.

I shouldn’t make them out to be readers of the Farmer’s Almanac or anything. Poseidon, after all, is still content to hibernate.

This is his cabinet. It was easier to move things around and put his little blanket in there and, when he’s being a pill at dinner time, just remind him that he has his own space.

And, then, at other times, this genius … well … you can tell for yourself.

Phoebe is not impressed by him. Not the first little bit.

I like the idea of Phoebe having a noir mood, though. That has potential.

She’s lately taken to hanging out in the cat tunnel. This is a recent development. It was always Poe’s territory, but, now, he has to share.

She’s so meek and timid, we like when she asserts herself in this way. Poe has a cabinet. He can share the tunnel.

Saturday, my lovely bride and I went for a bike ride together. Usually our schedules are just a bit off, so this is a real treat, sweating and huffing and puffing and going nowhere fast in the basement.

She started the ride on Zwift a little before I did, so she had three miles in and I had to chase her for a long time to catch up. But there are our avatars, riding alongside one another, having a grand old time in the cool down phase of her workout.

I didn’t ride yesterday — making three days I’ve skipped in February — and I got in 22 miles this afternoon. Time for that end-of-the-month push to make sure I hit the outlandish and arbitrary goals I have set for myself!

OK, we’re nearing the very end of the photos from last month’s dive trip. But I still have a lot of videos. I figure we might do these a couple of times a week, just to see how much longer I can stretch out such a wonderful trip.

And I’m being sneak with it here, too. Because I am recycling the eagle ray shot I had from my last video. But, hey, my video, my site, my rules. And the eagle rays, which are presently wrapping up their migratory season through that part of the world, are a special treat.

But wait until you see what appears right after that beautiful eagle ray, in this very video …

And now I must go to campus, where we will talk about the power of social media and large group social dynamics.

Yeah, the video is better. Watch the video!

adventures / Cozumel / Instagram / memories / photo / SCUBA / Tuesday — Comments Off
13
Feb 24

An officially unofficial day

We generally observe today as the anniversary of us being a couple.

It was a friend group, you see. There were about six of us who were all in the same grad school cohort and within the group there were the two of us palling around all the time. Nineteen years ago we were at a small dinner party and playing board games. The next day we were hanging out again and somewhere in there realized that people thought of us as an us. People, in our group and in the larger cohort and some of our professors too, thought of us as a couple within the group. Where there was the one there was the other. So we celebrate today.

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Tonight we marked the occasion with a late dinner at an empty local little restaurant. I also commemorated the evening by teaching myself to hand-fold envelopes, in which I put two little love notes.

Last month, of course, we were celebrating under water. It’s amazing how much material I can get out of a few days worth of dives, no? You should see how many of my dive buddy I’ve not included

And I’ve only added a few of my lovely dive buddy’s photos to the collection. Here’s one now, and that’s me in the middle distance!

I love that wide composition. Like it’s just you in the water, all by yourself. It’s a nice feeling, especially since you’re not. There’s a handful of people not too far away, but you spread out, juuuuust enough.

Here’s some young yellow tube sponge growing on this coral covered outcropping.

And I got lucky floating directly over this nice bowl sponge.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you something else I was lucky to see: a giant turtle.

Last night I had class where we talked about the Super Bowl, and the Huxleyan dystopia. The readings and the schedule lines up perfectly. Also I had the chance to make fun of myself and one of the students absolutely nailed the punchline. I should have dismissed class right there. It was perfect.

One element of some of the readings in this particular class is to help create a healthy skepticism of the media around them. So we also talked about Edward Bernays. And then, as a palette cleanser, I offered them astornaut and author, Ron Garan.

On the way out I saw this on a bulletin board.

Imagine that! They’re publicizing their scholars’ work to the student body. Novel concept! I’ll be sure to attend some of those.

Tomorrow, a giant turtle, and more from under the sea. I’ll put some flowers here and we’ll see one of the oldest courthouses in the land. Be sure you’re here for it all!

adventures / Connecticut / Cozumel / Friday / photo / SCUBA — Comments Off
19
Jan 24

Have another slice

We are spending the day in the Nutmeg state. The cats have been here for several weeks, enjoying extra attention during the holidays while we did extra traveling. We are now also enjoying our time with the in-laws. They took us out for pizza for lunch.

This is the story of apizza.

New Haven is renowned for its pie. We’ve been to a few of the places. Sally’s Apizza, after a long wait and intolerable staff, came out as a disc of charcoal. Pepe’s has become the pie standard. Tomato pies so good you can taste the calories in the air.

Or, as The Yankee’s diving coach said last night, “As you get older, fewer things seem worth standing in line for, including pizza.” It was hard to argue against the point. But, I thought, Pepe’s might be.

Recently, my father-in-law visited Pepe’s and wrote about it on social media. On of our colleagues said, “Yeah, that’s good. But it’s no Zuppardi’s.”

Sometime after that, he went to Zuppardi’s, and found himself agreeing. Found himself raving. Insisting that he take us. Now, the man knows pizza. And so it was that on our next trip, we were to visit Zuppardi’s.

And so here we are.

My father-in-law said it was a pizzeria like the old days. Small booths. Wood paneling on the walls. Unassuming. Just good pie. And he was correct. Because the man knows his pizza.

I don’t know if it is better than Pepe’s, but that made-in-store sausage was exceptional.

Back to being underwater, since I don’t have to worry about post-pizza buoyancy. Here’s my favorite fish, and her rare bubbles.

A coral formation bursting with orange elephant ear sponges.

And this is a beautiful encounter with another of the shy, scrawled filefish.

This one is definitely going on the front page when I update that in the next week or so.

And on this formation, some nice examples of staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) This is a fast growing coral, perhaps the fastest in the western Atlantic region, making it an important Caribbean coral.

You don’t see as much of it as you once did.

But you will see much more underwater life in this same space next week. Have a great weekend!