Contemplations of a Closet Curmudgeon

...or Why Are All These People Smiling?
( Cut for heavy photo content )

Nothing like taking the road along the beach home from the supermarket at sunset. More of the set can be found here.

Does anyone back east have any doubts why I continue to live here? No? Didn't think so. It even makes up for what they attempt to pass off as bagels out here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/70104978@N00/sets/72157624942326350/with/4984418946/

This is something I'd been meaning to do for ages since I've moved here. Alameda weathered the 1906 earthquake better than San Francisco did. As a result, we have a lot of interesting architecture from a number of periods. Doing it by bike is perfect too: don't have to worry about trying to park, just roll over to the curb, pull out the camera and shoot. I will probably continue to add to this album over time.

Anyway, I was up and thought it would be nice to get out on my bike as that muscle in my left leg didn't appear to be bothering me. Went out around 9:30 and pulled out my camera when I got to the old Spanish revival firehouse on Grand Street. It's a great old building to begin with, but they also still had a bunch of flags dotting the lawn and a lovely flower arrangement sitting in front of the door for. Shot some of the Victorians on Grand Street. (There are lots of huge houses down there, but some may be better photographed in late afternoon light, being on that side of the street.)

Was really glad I'd put on a fleece jacket as I got close to the beach. Stopped at the Panera at Alameda Towne Centre for breakfast and got stuck behind two female workout buddies who had to dither over what to order and make life difficult for the girl behind the counter. Had I known the cinnamon bun was going to be so disappointing, I'd've ridden over to Webster Street and gotten a plate of eggs at Albert's Cafe instead. At least the chai was pretty good. I sat outside in the sun and read the first chapter of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and drank my chai.

Picked up some fruit at the Safeway (also at Towne Centre), which fit nicely in the new backpack. Clearly designed as a school bag, it's got lots of pockets that zip shut and it was more than roomy enough for what I bought. The s-curved shoulder straps are a nice touch too. So I took my two pounds of grapes and my bag of Granny Smith apples and my cheese and cruised back across town by way of Broadway as it has a nice wide bike lane and Park Street does not. Shot a few houses on the way back, which really works best if there is a bike lane to pull way over in, stop and compose a shot.

Had a bit of a lull this AM, so I went out back and shot the piping crew working on two more units for the job I shot a week and a half ago. My zoom capabilities with this camera are not huge and I have to stay out of folks' way while they're working. However, cranking the camera to 12 megapixels allows me to crop things as needed.  I'm quite pleased with these.

( Cut to save your f-page )

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I'm going to answer this here as it would not be socially or politically expedient to do so on SCA-West right now where someone noted that people kept taking "goofy" pictures of him and someone else just wrote: "....perhaps I might suggest it is not the photographers? Just as I must assume this from the very few pictures of me with my mouth closed- we are as we are..."  If that's so, I may as well kill myself right now because I don't really want to go down in West Kingdom history as fat, old, ugly, blurry, mean looking, dorky.....

This is one of my favorite photos of me: 

I've disliked having my photo taken all my life. There are a handful of people who I actually trust with a camera - you know who you are didjiman , bovil , moriven , helblonde.  There are multitudes who don't know what they're doing and I don't care how much they spent on equipment. I myself am not as ruthless in culling my pictures as I should be, but I do at least discard some. If it's blurry, it goes. If it's badly lit, good bye. If I've just made a good friend look like a hag, erase. Cutest baby ever looks like demon spawn from the flash, ok, we'll see if red-eye correction works, otherwise, it's out.

Photos of the Free Artillerie Company doing our thing at the Woodland Scottish Games are up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/70104978@N00/sets/72157623933461460/

I'm trying to learn to be more ruthless as a photographer, however, the point was for our members to see themselves see themselves (yay!) doing what they do and we could conceivably cherry pick some of the better ones to go up on our woefully outdated website at some point. I discarded about eight to ten outright and then stayed up much later than I meant to last night scrolling through and trying to crop out visual clutter. It's such a little thing, but it can really make a difference. And we were in a visually cluttered environment. The Saturday demo I was facing our camp, which provided a nice background if I could work around the big blue trash can and roaming members of the general public, but it meant shooting into the sun. I shot from the opposite side on Sunday, which meant the sun was behind me, but the Roman encampment with its metal-intensive display of armors and other Shiny Roman Stuff (TM) was behind our musketeers.

EDITED to include some of the ones I'm very happy with. ( Read more... )

But it's raining!

So, it's raining. Gotta get out of the cabin. Got. To. Now. Before I try to commit jigai with a butter knife or something.

First stop, an indulgent chai latte and slice of banana bread from the Peet's in my local Nob Hill Foods. Dammit, I've lost ten whole pounds since Ash Wednesday and there's not so much as a jelly bean in the house, I'm having a chai, 'kay?

Now what? I think as I sit in my truck sipping warmth.

Go somewhere. ANYWHERE.

We-e-e-ll, I do need a new pair of clogs. The old ones are beyond trashed. The insoles are gone.  

Petaluma. There's a Clark's at the outlets up there and their shoes actually fit my duck feet decently. It's early enough it should be an easy drive and the weather sucks enough it's not likely to be the kind of zoo that makes me twitch and hate humanity.

It's raining. It's grey. The Richmond-San Rafael bridge isn't empty, but it's not crowded either. 101 in San Rafael is sparsely traveled. Thanks to a wet winter, Marin and Sonoma sort of look like Scotland.

I lose decent signal from KFog, whose morning acoustic program is starting to turn my brain to a mango smoothie. Over to KDFC classical, which is fuzzy but still recognizably music.

I pass the first Petaluma exit and see a sign that says "Bodega Bay, next right." Hmmm, I've never BEEN to Bodega Bay. (Hitchcock fans may recognize the name as the location of "The Birds.") OK. What the hell? I've got my camera along, might be worth seeing what there is to see and just 'cause it's raining doesn't mean I couldn't get some interesting pictures.

I exit the freeway, wend through Petaluma and find myself passing miles of green hills, cows, sheep, photogenic white barns usually positioned where there is no safe place to pull over and photograph them. I finally find one where I can at least roll down the window, and pop a few snaps as rain pours in my window.
 

Miles, I tell you. In the rain. I pull over at turnouts to let folks pass me because I honestly don't know what's around the next turn. The rain shows no sign of relenting.

Hmm, good location for "The Birds," I think as I roll past a 25 mph speed limit sign around a curve into town and am greeted by a horde of seagulls swirling around the roadside. No one human with sense is out in this, though there are a number of cars coming down the road in the opposite direction.

I hang a left off the main road and pull over by the marina. Damn, it's cold. The hood of my storm coat refuses to stay where it belongs and my hands are freezing as I take some photos.  A couple of fearless gulls attempt to check me out as they hang suspended in a brisk headwind. I can see a boat out in the bay at anchor, heeled over more than 45 degrees - and staying there. Who knows how long it's been like that?


Shivering, I dive back into the Tacoma and turn up the defroster. I carefully ease back out onto the curvy main road and backtrack through town.  A couple miles back I hang a left, following a sign for "Bodega." I'm not sure that's the church Suzanne Pleshette was living in, but it kind of looks like it. St. Teresa of Avila. I cut up the side road and find myself next to the Potter Schoolhouse, which I do recognize. I pull up my hood again and go out into the rain. I try the church door. It's only 12:30 on Easter Sunday and it's locked up tight. Go figure.


I reach Petaluma again. I find a pair of shoes at the Clark's outlet, discover to my disgust that the Liz Clayborne store is gone and head out of town, realizing I'm pretty hungry. I find a Jack In The Box on my way back to 101, grab one of their new grilled sandwiches and an iced tea and sit in my truck with the heat up, listening to a mind warping cover of Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" as if arranged by J.S. Bach.

Raindrop spattered photos are up at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/70104978@N00/sets/72157623645972501/

I got a phone call this morning from my nephew. Not much of a conversationalist on the phone, I suspect the concept feels like the person he's talking to is not really there. Anyway, it turns out he read a book in school on the Civil War and that's how all this got started. He did sound excited and rather disappointed that he can't have his "soldier coat" Right Now!  And of course, after I've bought the fabric and the buttons he wants a "general" coat.  I can rationalize some junior officer insignia for a shell jacket, I suppose.


The apartment looks like a blast zone, but I just did not feel like staying inside today. I had a bowl of oatmeal and went up to Moe's in Berkeley, where I acquired copies of The Book of Incense and The Kimono Inspirations. I also found a copy of The Art of Japanese Paper for only $9 across the street at Shakespeare & Co.

I grabbed a chai latte at Peet's and virtuously did NOT have a spicy ginger cookie with it. Hit the Michael's in Emeryville and found more of the metal monkey-with-the-peach charms to add to my token stash. I also picked up some wooden plaques to replace the "guests welcome" sign that was in the stolen sugoroku box.

The sky was doing interesting, stormy wintry things without actual precipitation, so I went the back way down Mandela Parkway to Jack London Square, parked on the Embarcadero next to the lot across from BevMo and pulled out my camera. You can see what I got here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/70104978@N00/sets/72157623475504552/



I do think I need to create an icon with this saying on it though: 

I think I'm going to give trystbat 's party a miss though. I just started some laundry when I got back, not realizing the time so I'm kind of in it for the duration right now.  And I just realized I haven't eaten since that oatmeal....

I was completely alone once I turned down Route 111. I never made it to wherever the brown and white signs pointing to the Salton Sea State Recreation Area take you. Instead, seeing the deep glow of water off to my right in the pre-dawn light, I cut down a frontage road onto Desert Beach Drive, pulling past a couple of empty buildings and parking on the sand near a derelict swing set.

I opened the car door. It smelled kind of like the Bay does, some days, only even fishier. The concentrated salinity of this inland sea, added to environmental nasties in the forms of agricultural runoff combine to kill off many of the fish species. It wasn't as awful as you might imagine: certainly not as bad as when my old landlord used to salt and dry his catch in the garage back in New City, NY. It was just there.

It was by no means silent. The persistent sound of the waves slapping against the beach and the cries of hundreds of birds prompted me to set my camera on video for a moment.  For a place that is supposed to be dead, it was very much alive.


Photos are up at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/70104978@N00/sets/72157623444869794/ for Salton Sea and http://www.flickr.com/photos/70104978@N00/sets/72157623320283961/ for Joshua Tree National Park

Thanks to all for the birthday wishes.

Met didjiman at his house a little after 7 for a drive involving windy roads up to Big Basin State Park. Do take note of the seasonal climate note: Cold, overcast and rainy. Big Basin receives the majority of its average 48 inches of rain. December through March average temperatures range from highs in the 50's to lows in the 20's. (I think it was probably in the 40's when we arrived, though I got warm enough hiking to peel off the sweatshirt I had on under my windbreaker.)

We did the Sequoia Trail loop which clocks in at under 5 miles, with some climbing, but nothing too awful, starting at park HQ for Sempervirens Falls, then up to Slippery Rock and back down along Opal Creek. We got the occasional rain drops, particularly on the hike up Slippery Rock.


I have just ruthlessly culled a buttload of dim, blurry photos because it was so dark under the redwoods on such an overcast day my camera was having trouble registering some shots. The "flower" mode did work very nicely for some interesting mushroom species and a close encounter with a banana slug. http://www.flickr.com/photos/70104978@N00/sets/72157622951183938/



We practically had the place to ourselves. Except for the ranger we checked in with, we ran into one couple at the falls (they'd come up the road by car), and another on the trail coming the opposite way from us fairly late.

Stopped for sandwiches at a place in Saratoga on the way back, then back to didjiman and karisu_sama 's place for a cup of tea before heading home.