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adventures

We’re back! Somehow …

We made it back from California. We were only a little late, but that worked in our favor. But that’s getting ahead of things.

I had two days worth of taco lunch, on Thursday and Friday. Also, on Friday, I did a little two-mile run. That’s two runs this week, and my first two runs of the year. I’ve been spending my time, of course, putting in base miles on the bike. All of which allows me to find ways to get to this old saw: When I see a person riding their bike, I always think, ‘Man, I wish I could ride my bike right now!’ I have never, ever seen anyone run and think, ‘Man, I wish I could go for a run right now!

My run was to the drug store. I should have bought some painkillers for my little run, but the purpose was to get some contact solution. I could have gone to a CVS four-tenths of a mile away, but that’s not a run. Not really.

Anyway, the first run this week was 1.5 miles on a beach boardwalk. This run was downtown, which is a run that, despite the red light, green light, wait for a clear intersection nature of it all, felt like it could go on for forever. Maybe those occasional breaks were why it felt that way.

I saw a bunch of friends, which was delightful. I bumped into a former coworker, who is about to leave the place where we met. She told me how difficult things have become there, which is unfortunate. But she’s excited for what’s next for her, starting next fall, which is exciting. She’s been stretched thin, it appears. Added duties, administrative issues and so on. It all sounds not good. I said, When you get there, and you’re doing just the work you’ve been hired for, the work you want to do, it’ll be a big improvement. And you will have earned that. You’ll just have to be let yourself come to realize that fact. When you do, you’re going to remember how to enjoy all of this again.

Sometimes, I sound like a sage.

The Yankee’s two presentations at the conference were great. Interesting research abounded throughout the conference, none more so than hers. We had a great dinner on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, we were up and out early. To the airport, Jeeves!

This is what happened next. The Los Angeles city government conspired to ruin everything. We’d received an email on Saturday from the car rental people warning us that construction between their lots and the airport was slowing everything down. Arrive early, they suggested. We did. Returning the car was easy. The shuttles to the airport were non-existent, stuck in traffic somewhere around wherever. This, despite an early morning flight, backed up customers at the rental car lot. On the third bus, we were able to board the bus. The driver was awesome, but she was flabbergasted. The construction project had reduced the lanes to the international airport to a minimal level. After a long, long, long time on the bus, we just got off and ran the last mile and change, backpack and suitcase in tow. (So look! Three runs in one week!)

After which, the federal government conspired to make it worse. At Terminal 5 at LAX, there are two TSA agents tasked with the important job of checking driver’s licenses. Yesterday morning, there was a man and a woman on the job. Around two corners — not counting the serpentine crown lanes — I managed to get in the woman’s line. This was good! The man’s scanner was barely working, which meant that every third passenger or so he had to walk over and borrow the woman’s gear. The woman, for her part, left her duty station three times. The time was ticking. And I missed the boarding window.

Fortunately, my flight crew was stuck in the nightmare outside, as well. And that was the only way I made that plane. When the first part of security theater had been satisfied and my ID was finally checked, an older woman came to the front of the line, asking if she could go ahead. Her flight was leaving in eight minutes and so on and so forth. Everyone was in this boat, I was sure of it. The TSA agent said she’d have to ask permission of everyone in front of her to cut the line. I knew my flight crew was still trying to fight their way in, so I invited her to break in line in front of me. With one authoritatively dismissive tone, I convinced the dismissive ID experts that she was with me.

At the take walk-around-in-your-socks portion of the security, the old woman said she’d lived here for 40 years and she’d never seen it like this. She said she, too, ran from the road. She said she was 75 years old.

She had time to tell me all of these things because the scanner image specialist left his duty station twice.

“Safety,” one of them tiredly said over and over, “is my priority.”

Somehow that explains why people kept leaving their posts.

Anyway, we made the plane, but I only made it because the flight crew had trouble getting in.

The flight was fine. Long, but short. Seemed to take an entire day, especially with jumping three time zones. On the other hand, we flew across the entire nation. Lunch was airport food on the plane, chewing quickly, hoping to avoid cooties. Dinner was from a rest stop Shake Shack at 11:30 p.m. But, hey, it’s milkshake season.

It was a great trip. Our only problem over the whole trip, as it turned out, had to do with getting home.

I have a lot of video from the trip, and that’ll be something I dole out over the next however long that takes. But I’ll give you a hint.

Come back, or better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed for many, many more videos from the Pacific Coast.

I shot, I dunno, maybe 15 or 20 videos that will just be Peacefully Enjoy The Moment videos. I suppose that speaks most of all to how pleasant the trip was. But I haven’t counted how many videos I have, so I’ve no idea how many and how long we’ll enjoy from that trip.

For example, I’m still adding video from our New Year’s diving trip. This one just has a lot of fish, and then a barracuda with great camera sense.

I’ve probably got a few more videos from that trip, and then maybe I’ll just pull out some single shots for posterity’s sake. Video runs never really end here, but this post must. I must finish my prep for this evening’s class.

adventures / California / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
14
Mar 24

Down to Burbank, and our conference

We loaded up the rental and headed south from Cambria this morning. The mini-vacation has come to an end. The three-day convention is beginning this evening.

Cambria is about three hours down the road. The first two hours or so was views like this.

It looked like this for a long while, until we reached the high high winds in the San Emigdio Mountains and, then, back to the towns and cities that orbit Los Angeles.

The winds were something. I found a weather report that says 25 miles per hour, but that must mean there are no weather stations in the mountain passes. You could get buffeted, hard, from any direction. At one point, the wind was even coming through the mountains.

Including Burbank!

That’s where the conference we’re attending is being held. The conference is the International Association for Communication and Sport summit. This year it is hosted by the University of Texas.

They have a facility, right there in Burbank. This is no fly-by-night thing. No strip-mall-with-folding-fairs-in-the-shadow-of-Hollywood program. It is a proper school facility with a small satellite office set up. Two classrooms and all the amenities. Some real thought went into that space. Many will be hooked, most will be Texans. I am referring to it as the Texas embassy for the weekend.

Anyway, the conference began at Dodger Stadium this evening. Light dinner in a luxury box area. Great views down the right field line. And our friend, Ann. (She’s from Canada, you don’t know her.)

They aren’t plotting to take over the world in Dodger Stadium. I’m told that conversation will take place tomorrow.

The Yankee is presenting two papers at this conference. I’m watching those and visiting with friends and, tomorrow, trying to get ahead of next week. The weekend itself, though, will be a great deal of fun. Lots of nice people, and people you know from other places. Nods, waves, and some actually delightful conversations.

adventures / California / history / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
13
Mar 24

Monterey, the aquarium, more of the coastline

The wake up crew. The morning zoo. The neighborhood watch. The welcoming committee. The hungry ungulates.

Whatever you call them, they’ve been out there waiting for us, three days in a row now.

The apartment we’re in, the people who rented us the place through tomorrow, they go out and feed the deer (there are five in this bunch) every morning. And the turkeys. They’re wild animals, free to come and go and go and go, but they know to take advantage of a sure and dependable thing like breakfast.

Today we went to Monterey, which is to the north, which means a bit more time in the car, which means we stopped at a vista point every now and again.

Click to embiggen.

It sure is beautiful. And the towns are just far enough apart that you can feel a delightful isolation in between them. A rugged independence takes hold. We got out of a rental Toyota at that vista, but when we turned around the SUV had turned into a Conestoga.

You wonder about this feeling. Can you have similar concepts closer to home? The separation and the solitude that comes with that? Is it a function of being somewhere else? Not knowing the roads? Being on a little vacation? Is it the hills? Is it just the west?

It works, whatever it is.

Though, to me, I think, and I probably always will think, that it has something to do with how the hills tumble into the ocean. How every curve of coastline can feel a little bit different because of the specific geology. It’s the new rugged country because it is new, and rugged, geographically speaking. It’s still being worn down by waves and wind. And we are here for a very small part of that.

Whereas, when I see the ocean today, or the Gu’f back home, it’s never a surprise. Once upon a time those oceans came well in, and we have a great flatness, the gradual coast to the coast. Here, as we drove two hours north today, it was mountains to my right, and ocean to my left.

Or it should have been, but for rock slides. This required a detour. A substantial, scenic detour. The scenic detour was worth seeing, too.

We had lunch on Cannery Row, a place made important because of their mid-20th century sardine trade, a place made famous by John Steinbeck’s novel (and some other artisans, too, but let’s stick with Steinbeck). In a generation or two, the fishermen had exhausted the location fish populations. Now it exists as … a tourist destination.

You wish Steinbeck were still around to give that a run. But that’s only because you haven’t read “Sweet Thursday.” This is how he opened it.

When the war came to Monterey and to Cannery Row everybody fought it more or less, in one way or another. When hostilities ceased everyone had his wounds.

The canneries themselves fought the war by getting the limit taken off fish and catching them all. It was done for patriotic reasons, but that didn’t bring the fish back. As with the oysters in Alice, “They’d eaten every one.” It was the same noble impulse that stripped the forests of the West and right now is pumping water out of California’s earth faster than it can rain back in. When the desert comes, people will be sad; just as Cannery Row was sad when all the pilchards were caught and canned and eaten. The pearl-gray canneries of corrugated iron were silent and a pacing watchman was their only life. The street that once roared with trucks was quiet and empty.

For Monterey, it was self defense, turning what was into a place that looked back on what was. And down here, on Cannery Row, they’ve made it welcoming, and quite, and familiar, just like every other tourist zone you’ve experienced.

At one end is the well-regarded Monterey Aquarium.

Have you ever seen a person that looks like someone you know? Only, you have the feeling they look familiar, but you can’t put the suggestion in your mind with the person in your eyes? We all have that feeling from time-to-time.

Have you ever had that experience with an animal?

It’s a lovely aquarium. I have the feeling that the newer ones probably took in places like this and said, “These are the ones we need to improve on,” and were successful in doing so. And, for the older ones then, it’s hard to upgrade, because where do you move the sharks for three years while you’re rebuilding to keep up with Atlanta?

Monterey’s aquarium boasts 600 different species of animals and plants, and they bring in the water fresh from Monterey Bay, which is just outside. They take their ecological message seriously and they do a nice job keeping children engaged.

And, oh look, here’s a ray swimming by.

Children, the ones wowed by this, the ones who have this day stick with them forever, they have to be the intended audience of this entire production. A handful of children who have been in this aquarium in the last 40 years have been inspired and become conservationists, botanists, ecologists or marine biologists. Some kid will have the best shot of fixing the things their ancestors messed up, and it could all have started in a place like this. Whether the kid, the scientist she becomes, remembers that, that has to be the primary goal.

Now, if only they’d figure out some failproof, tamperproof, idiotproof, leakproof, fishproof way to let guests feed the fish.

Have you ever seen a white sturgeon? These are ancient fish. Time forgot them, but here they are, hoping we overlook what’s left of them, too.

They are characterized by these bony plates, can typically grow 5- or 6-feet long and it isn’t uncommon for them to live into their 30s. The oldest was estimated to be 104. The heaviest have weighed in at 1,390 pounds, with some estimated much larger. A late 20th century study brought the average sample weight down, fishermen have noticed, too.

Overfished to near extinction by the early 1900s, today their biggest challenges seem to be poaching (for caviar), pollution, low rivers and dams, which can impact their migratory patterns. (Fish ladders are usually designed for smaller fish like salmon.) They seem to be doing OK in other parts of the world, but endangered at least in this region.

And now for something much more colorful.

Even in an aquarium, anemone are fascinating.

The Monterey Aquarium went big on jellyfish. It was a decision that does not disappoint.

Somewhere around there, or the spotted comb jellyfish, I devised the next several weeks of plans for videos. It should be wonderful.

This is the spotted comb jellyfish. There are others. You’ll see videos.

This is from the Monterey Aquarium’s deck. There are seals out there, lounging on buoys, and otters at play in the bay. And, according to Smith’s newly formed rule of Ecology, any place that makes their tools of discovery freely available is in it for the right reasons.

After the aquarium we sought out more of these dramatic Pacific coast views. We were not disappointed.

Click to embiggen.

The sea cares not for your notions of time. It is doing it’s job here, and it will do so no matter the temperature it reaches, or the crap we put into it. Right here, that job is wearing these stones down rocks, and pulverizing the rocks into pebbles, and rubbing the pebbles into a coarse sand.

Thing is, the sea has many jobs. Not just the ones that make the pretty views or the dramatic waves. And do you see that rock that just juts into the left margin of the shot here?

A dude took his three young children over the minimal security line and out onto the rock, right over the ocean. I must be getting older. That seemed an unwise choice not worth the risk, or the sea spray.

Same cove, but from the opposite side.

Click to embiggen.

In between those two points there’s a small place built for observation. It’s a nice spot. Not the nicest one the local authorities could have chosen. A dude with a tripod and a serious look on his face found that spot right away and stayed there for an hour. No, it was not me.

So, instead, I took photos of the photo taker. I was going for a silhouette here, but, staring into the sun as I was, it was just a guess. Didn’t work the way I planned, but it worked perfectly.

Another view of the same cove, and perhaps this is the second-most intriguing part of the Pacific coast always is to me. You don’t have to go far, even in the same place, to get a radically different view. Again, the Gu’f and the First Coast of my youth and the shore I can visit today are lovely, sandy, and not so young and spry as all of this.

Which is probably something I thought about writing while we considering locations for future publicity shots.

I will never not find this fascinating. Here is the land and the hills which make it and the stuffwhichgrowsonitandTHEREISTHEOCEAN.

This is the Bixby Bridge, built in 1932, and the furthest part north of our trip. Just a few miles up the road the Pacific Coast Highway is closed because of snow or mud or locusts or the ghost of Nixon or persistent hippies or whatever is afflicting California this time of year.

Before then, Wikipedia tells me, Big Sur residents were particularly isolated in the winter. The Old Coast Road a dozen miles away was often closed. This bridge, the longest concrete arch span in the state and, at- the time, the highest single-span in the world, came in under budget, at $199,861. The inflation calculator says that’s $4,527,158 in modern money. Seismic upgrades in the 1990s cost much more, and it’s apparently still not up to modern spec there.

Click to embiggen.

A person once in charge of the land trust around this area called it “the most spectacular meeting of ocean and land in the entire United States.” That person might have been biased, but that person might have also been right?

It’s a fine view, and some of you might receive a Christmas card with this image on it later this year.

As ever, the tortured photography student in me — I took two classes in college, one under a prominent Civil Rights Era photojournalist and another under a Harvard architectural photographer — is always thinking about lines and motion. Particularly in new and exciting places.

This is seldom a problem, of course, until it finds me standing in the road on blind curves in the middle of nowhere.

This is the Bixby Bridge from the reverse side. It’s gorgeous. It’s glorious. How did they do it in the 1930s? Aliens. But how did those 1930s aliens do it?

Construction began on August 24, 1931, and was completed October 15, 1932, beating the two-lane highway, itself an 18-year project, by a half decade. In between, over 300,000 board feet of Douglas fir timber was used to support the arch during construction. It took two months to construct the falsework alone.

The ~~aliens~~ work crews excavated 4,700 cubic yards of earth and rock and more than 300 tons of reinforcing steel were shipped in by train and narrow one-lane roads. They chose cement for a few reasons. It looked better. It was more durable in the elements to steel and the cost savings could be paid out to the workers. (And this is how you know it was done in the Great Depression.) That decision required 45,000 sacks of cement, which started going in place in late November. They zipped it across the river canyon on cable and slings.

Today, the arch ribs are five feet thick at the deck and nine feet thick where they join the towers at their base. The arches are four and one-half feet wide. All of this, Wikipedia confidently tells me, means that the bridge was designed to support more than six times its intended load. (Good thing, too, it’s a heavy traffic area these days.)

It turns out that these two large, vertical buttresses on either side of the arch aren’t necessary. It is not clear to me if that includes the 6X wiggle-room design tolerance or not.

We didn’t drive over it. None of this was my concern.

Sure is something though, isn’t it?

Tomorrow, we turn south, for Burbank, and a work conference. It will be fun, but not as fun as all of this.

adventures / California / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
12
Mar 24

Cayucos, Spooner’s Cove, Morro Bay

I have a lot of videos piling up. Seems I’ll be stretching this trip out for blog purposes as well. That’s a deliberate content decision. Besides, who has time to edit videos when you’re out doing all of the fun stuff? And why am I still dealing with jet lag three days into your trip? I’ve never been good at this. I can move one time zone and feel the effects. I think I can fly, stay in the same time zone and drag for a day or so. But to move three time zones, have a clock change, in a leap year, and now be breathing in the briny Pacific air? I’m, right now, awake every morning at 5:30 and ready for bed when the sun gets low.

Definitely it is the leap year thing.

Today, The Yankee officially became a gas station taco convert. We pulled up, ordered our lunch and enjoyed lunch as it should be, outside, in the shade, at a picnic table. She’d also found Brown Butter Cookies The site says they are sibling-owned. Take that mom and dad! No family-owned stuff about this business. Traci and Christa had a deli, but the cookies were the hit, and so the pair followed their customers, and here we are.

No, really, here we are.

The review sites say they’re a bit pricey, and, for cookies, yeah. But the folks working there are charming. The cookies are good. They did not have peanut butter cookies, because that’s a seasonal thing, apparently. I wondered aloud if they had a difficult time getting peanuts or Jif or some other ingredient, but the woman who was patiently waiting on me to make my decision said they only do the peanut butter cookies in the summer because, during the school year, they make thousands of biscuits for 15 local schools. They are whole grain, applesauce, no dairy and no nuts. The elementary kids, she said, really love them. So they don’t make peanut butter cookies at the same time of year for allergen purposes. She sold me there, even if she wouldn’t sell me a biscuit. Schools only.

She also laughingly told us about watching people come in with their friends or loved ones and devolve into fights will trying to figure out their complete order. Cookies are a serious business out here.

Yes, a version of this photo will become a banner on the blog some day soon. (Related, I’m ready to put the outdoor tires back on my bicycle. The warm weather we’re enjoying this week has me sold that spring is here. It’ll be cold and windy next week, no doubt.)

Predictably, we hit the beach. This is at a place called Spooners Cove, and it was our second beach of the day. It is a sand and stone beach. You can walk from one end of the cove to another in five or six minutes. Lots of wave action, no swimming. I did find some sea glass, and there are plenty of tide pools. She was, then, a kid again.

There’s a great big rock jutting up out of the water. Of course, we climbed it. Here’s a view from the top.

Click to embiggen.

We’re slipping into this delightful habit on our trips of going to a place and doing not much more than the impossible task of taking it all in. Sure, we could have snapped a photo and kept moving. We could have stayed on the beach. But we lingered on the top of that treacherous rock and watched the waves surge and the water explode. We felt the mist and the raindrops and peered out to the horizon, to the bluffs on either side, and into the little puddles gathered on top of the thing. And, also, looked down, to ponder the power of the tides and the color of hydrodynamic creation.

(The rocks on this coastline are always changing. We are in a sea of change by the sea.)

We listened to the elephant seals and had dinner at a nice family-owned seafood restaurant in Morro Bay. These, it should be noted, were two separate activities. The back of the restaurant’s menu had the classic black and white family photo. The parents had immigrated to the U.S. from Europe. The kid on the end, the youngest, the shortest one in the long row, ran the restaurant.

It was a swift moving place. I started timing the removal of dishes. When you’d finished with a plate, it was taken from the table within 12 seconds. I am left to conclude there is a tableware shortage on the west coast.

We also took in the grandeur of Morro Rock.

Made primarily of dacite, the 581-foot height of the thing dominates the shoreline. It is one of 13 volcanic plugs, what’s left of an extinct volcano, in the region.

Two indigenous groups, the Salinan and the Chumash, each consider it to be a sacred site. Nearby, a settlement dating back at least 4,000 years has been discovered. The Spanish, Wikipedia tells me, probably were the first Europeans to see it, in 1542. Their first land expedition came much later.

Stone was removed for about 80 years in the 19th and 20th centuries. They were making a breakwater for the bay and building out the harbor. Morro Rock bacame a historical landmark in 1968. That gull is just one of the many birds that may call it home. Cormorant and peregrine falcons also nest there, but you can’t climb it. Too fragile for repeated use. We can blame decades of quarry work for that, perhaps.

We caught a lovely sunset on our way back to our room.

Sometimes you need to pull off for the sunset. I think it’s required when there is a coastline available for your composition.

These last three photos, according to the timestamps, were all taken within four minutes of one another. This panorama looks to the west, of course.

Click to embiggen.

I went across the two lane Pacific Coast Highway and faced the east for this one.

And then, walking back across the road to the car, and facing the west again.

There’s some magic in a sky like that. It’s a hopeful thing. Today is closing, but tomorrow has a great deal in store for you. The temperature you don’t notice, the sound may disappear, but on the breeze you might feel opportunity. You might feel the promise of tomorrow on those winds. There’s some magic in a sky like that. Plenty of it.

adventures / California / Monday / overwriting / photo — Comments Off
11
Mar 24

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.