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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.

adventures / California / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
19
Mar 24

I made a beach video, just for you

What day is it? What time is it? We didn’t take a red eye, but it seemed like it. I’m an amazing lightweight when it comes to being thrown off by travel, so it is not a great surprise that, a mere 36 hours removed from being on the other side of the country, and five-and-a-half degrees of a lower latitude, I’m still trying to determine my identity, and which shoe is for which foot.

Lewis and Clark would be very, very disappointed in me.

Of course, they knew nothing of time zones. They might have known about coordinate cartography. Sailors of their day certainly did. But did that really figure into the slower pace in which those hardy souls crossed the nation?

And how was their cell service when they did that, anyway? Because some places on this trip, it was surprisingly spotty, even now.

There’s a joke to be made here. Something about how one of the members of the expedition had a great data plan. I’m not convinced people really know Toussaint Charbonneau well enough for the joke to really land.

Spring is finally showing up here on the inner coastal plain — where the heavy land and the green sands meet. You can see it on the ground and in the mulch and on the ends of the little sticks that have been protruding from the bushes and trees all winter long. We took two nice little walks, in a sunny chill, around the yard yesterday to see what had popped up while we were out of town.

The peach tree, for one, is making a lovely show.

We had so many peaches last year. Gave bags and bags of them away. Ate a lot. Froze a bunch more. I look at this beautiful little flower and think, We better start eating those we froze.

Peach smoothies for days. Maybe some peach shakes and peach ice cream, too.

But first we’re going to need about 15 more degrees, day and night, please.

I had class last night, of course. There’s nothing like the first evening class after spring break to give you a sense of who is invested in the class. Everyone, I hope. They have an exam next week. And so that is what we spent the evening discussing, how the exam would work, a few tips on what to look for, a review of key terms. A few exercises.

You know what’s embarrassing? When you forget a thing right when you’re trying to make the point, and someone asks about it. It doesn’t make for the most graceful deflect ever to say, “What do you think it means?” But there I was last night, doing exactly that.

It was one of those tip-of-my-tongue moments, sure, but it was going to take a while to pull it all together. And I’d done the exact same thing in this class in our last meeting. I can’t let on that this is happening all of the time, of course.

Anyway, the students have good material with which to prepare. I hope they all do well on their test.

I’m guessing, if I spread them out evenly, there are two, maybe three weeks of videos from our west coast trip to share. If there are that many, I decided I should hastily make a California banner. So I made a banner. May as well use it.

Most of these, I think, will exist without context. I shot a lot of them thinking, this will be a nice moment that readers can use as a quick, calm, break. I was fortunate and made it to the beach. Just in case you didn’t …

That’s late afternoon on Moonstone Beach, in Cambria. The seaside village has a population of 5,678, but that’s a number for the larger, sprawling area, surely. It came up as a lumber, ranching and mercury mining town. The ranching is, one supposes, not a coincidence. The Obispeño name transalted as “Place of the horses.” Today, it feels like it has been an artist village for a good long while. It’s a lovely place. And, as you can see, the beach is quite nice as well.

Not bad for a 60 second vacation, no?

And now, to catch up on things. Or was it, to get ahead of things?

Difficult to tell after such a trip, and the accompanying jet lag. Toussaint Charbonneau would be unimpressed.

adventures / California / Monday / running / SCUBA / video — Comments Off
18
Mar 24

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.