Weekend Recap

A sunny morning stopover always makes for a good start to the day.

One of the benefits of having weekends on and weekends off with my children is that both give me an opportunity to have fun, different kinds of fun but lots of fun nonetheless.

This last weekend was a very good one. After an expensively annoying last week. I need to stop thinking I'm getting ahead, everytime I do that, I get smacked in the face with an expected expense on top of expected expenses I forgot about...

West Cliff at sunset is pretty awesome!

The highlight of the weekend was spending a few hours at the beach and in the water and my older son decided to join us and play in the water too. He usually sticks to digging or reading in the shade but he came out and we all had a really good fun time playing together!

Seeing as how it is now Wednesday, let's add in a bonus recap of the last couple of days, specifically the afterwork portions of the last couple of days.

I've been super fortunate enough to be able to get out and enjoy some of the recent swell while also becoming much more familiar with my new SUP.

We got out for a short bike ride

Suffice it to say that I spent a good chunk of the last few evenings with a giant shit-eating grin on my face as I caught waves to ride the length of Cowells two evenings in a row! The  guy I bought my board from said it was un-pearlable (that's when your front digs into the water and you slide off the front of the board usually) but I've proved him wrong and I pearled a few times before getting a better stance and launch sorted out.

Unlike the bigger board, the shorter one can zoom right down a wave face and go right down the line happily. It also carves back nicely and I'm starting to get into harder and deeper turns.

Pro tip to other SUPers catching waves: Keep using your paddle on the waves, you can gain speed, retain balance and save waves and more by keeping an active paddle. I keep seeing folks standing on their boards with their paddles held mutely in their hand as they cruise along.

More fun on tap this weekend!

Hot Damn, Back Again!

Like most technical repairs, if you dick around with it enough, you'll either really break it and have to call in an expert or you'll fix it and look like a fucking genius.

Guess who has two thumbs and looks like a fucking genius? This guy. Don't ask me what I did, I did a whole bunch of stuff and the blog is back. Looks like it badly needs to get updated though, huh.

Let's start with some newer images.

Taken during an impromptu beach trip a few weeks ago.

Looks like I still need to fix a few broken pipes, can't access newer images, at least not on this computer (shared house computer).

Will add more tomorrow. It has been a good while since a good update has gone up here. I had a good weekend. Gonna write about it tomorrow.

And then there was this

Took this last night towards the end of a bike ride around town and out along West Cliff.

Some of the Reasons Why I Love Santa Cruz

All of these are mine except the last one. Its easy to take a gorgeous picture when you have a gorgeous model with some many beautiful angles and poses.

Cowell's and the wharf.

Today in Santa Cruz looking at the wharf from the other side of town.

Found an iOS app that takes photos and planetizes them for you.

This pano makes the river look way bigger than it is.

Not mine but wow-freakin'-wee!

Looking at the World

I live in one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to. This is not by accident, this is by choice. I could live in Podunk, Iowa for a third of the expenses I have here but well less than a third the quality of life. And what is the point of that?

I took this series of shots last week at the midpoint of a ride after work. This is the view looking back towards the Boardwalk from the cliff between Seabright and Main beaches in Santa Cruz.

It is one of my favorite places anywhere and I love that it is a mere 3 miles by bike path away from my house.

Another shot from about the same time, maybe even the same evening stopover. For some reason I really like the bird dominating the frame, the gulls love this spot too because of the hard winds. They get to fly all matrix-style with hovering, flying backwards and doing wicked wingovers, even the big ol' pelicans get into it!







Another recent shot from down near the river mouth. Took this yesterday afternoon while out riding bikes with my boys (tail wind out and head wind back does NOT make for a happy boy!).

We are in the final stretch of the school year which is good and bad. Looking at summer activities and things to do is fun.

And there are always the projects, the side projects, design projects, websites, parodies and all the other things we do to keep ourselves too busy! But more on those as they gel up more.

What Life Should Be Like

Like this

And like this (taken 2/21/14)

Not like this (taken 2/21/14)

Any questions?

A California Kind of Sunday

There are moments, minutes and hours that, for me, pull together all of the various threads of my life and gather them into one neat bundle. After a busy Saturday with my boys including working on the deck, setting up the tent in the backyard and having a campfire complete with S'mores for the family, Sunday was a bit more low key to start with.

Just Because

It is the end of a fun Saturday night. We went to a party on the beach this evening. We watched the sun go down, the dogs played, the kids played, the adults played, the baby cried some, the other kids cried some, there were s'mores and everyone was happy, happy, happy.

Now they are all asleep. And tomorrow there is football. Good football! Woohoo! And there might also be mountain bike riding! Double-de-woohoo!

Happy Beach Party Saturday Night to you.

And We're Back

It seems like there's almost no time to stop and catch my breath over the weekends. That isn't really true but it feels like it. From the end of work on Friday when Nande and I headed out to Hidden Beach to try out my new triathlon wetsuit to the beach party on Saturday night with the whole family and a whole bunch of friends to yesterday's much lower key outing with just me and the boys.

Add in lots of sports fun, the Giants winning in torturous style last night, the KJ Noons/Nick Diaz fight on Saturday, all of the football action yesterday and last night and it feels like getting back to work is also a good time to catch my breath and start thinking about next weekend.

Some other highlights: We got to see four double up skydivers land on the beach right in front of us and with an awesomely dramatic flared sunset behind them to boot. On Friday night when I went out for a swim, a seal popped up literally no more than six feet away from me in the shallow surf, scared the crap out of me (and him or her). I also saw my first ever green flash though I'm not so sure now that I've read the Wiki page.

And, if the Jets win tonight then I win our local football pool which would be a nice wrap. Actually, I'd happily trade winning the football pool for a Giants win to finish out the NLDS and move on to the National League Championship Series against the Phillies!

But now its back to the grindstone, too much to do, not enough hours to get it done in and too many people waiting impatiently for stuff to work again. Which inevitably means that someone is gonna get their head chewed off for getting all up in my bizness. And then I'll feel like a jerk for a little while again, it is the cycle of life or something.

And Sullivan got a replacement bicycle this weekend too. His last bike was accidentally left behind during a trip to the dog park but it was almost too small for him so he was going to need a new bike before too long. But it would have been nice to defer some of the cost of the new bike by selling the old bike. Either way, we're mobile again and Sully has taken to his new bike with a vengeance! He's faster than before but with no increase in control and I know its just a matter of time before he takes a good digger (he has a tendency to not keep his handlebars straight).

It was a good weekend, a little too short as always but we had a good time anyway. I think I need to get a look at the calendar and figure out when the next long weekend is and start planning a caper for then.

Big Weekend Fun for All!

Long weekends are the very epitome of Dad Life and Labor Day weekend is the finale for the summer bbq season for most of the country. Of course, not in Northern California where I live, its bbq season all year long here (with the occasional cooking in a downpour for fun).

And the best part about long weekends, aside from staying up too late and sleeping in the next morning, is packing in lots of activities and filling each day with things to do. The speedy summary:
Friday - Watsonville Fly-In Airshow Monster Trucks
Saturday - More Airshow fun, photography and
Sunday - Beach day with friends from out of town
Monday - Bike riding with the boys at the Polo Grounds and a great sushi dinner with friends.

On Friday I was looking forward to a low key evening after a pretty tiring week. I had not been planning on monster trucks in any way, shape or form. But my wife came home with a set of free passes to the Watsonville Fly-In Airshow for that night which featured some monster truck on the runway action. We got to check out a whole bunch of planes before the monster trucks starting blasting around.

Birthday Shoutouts to my 9/11 Peeps

There are lots of pretty cool folks born today. Let's give a quick shout out to some of them.

Ludacris, Maria Bartiromo, Harry Connick Jr., Kristy McNichol, Tom Landry, Bear Bryant, D. H. Lawrence, O. Henry, Lola Falana, Brian de Palma, Ellis Burks and, let's see, who else, oh yeah, ME!

Of course, today has been permanently clouded over by the terrorist attacks in 2001 but it will always be our birthday first.

To celebrate, we are heading to the beach with the whole family including Nande, our over-sized wild dog. And next week I am planning on going sky diving over the Monterey Bay. We're also going up to San Francisco on Tuesday for the Giants game against the Colorado Rockies, I scored a great deal on some club level seats a couple of weeks ago!

Today in Pictures

We went to the beach today, it was a little hazy but pretty warm and mostly sunny. We splashed around in the water alot. Nande got run out, Grady got run out, Sully got run out. They are all sleeping well now.

A Blue Break

No comments, just a pretty picture I wanted to share.

Unexpected Beach Day

We took advantage of the phenomenal weather today and split up for some fun. I took Grady for a walk in the slough with my new zoom lens to see if I could capture some of the falcons and hawks I've seen around on my bike rides. My wife took Sully and Nande out to the beach for some play in the sun and surf.

Grady and I had a good time talking and taking pictures. He has such a funny sense of humor and is such a sweet kid, sometimes I don't ever want him to grow up. About an hour or so into our walk, my wife called and said the weather really was exceptional and that we should maybe come to the beach.

She wasn't lying by any stretch. It was really perfect out at the beach. Warm sun, almost nobody around save walkers cruising by. We had plenty of space to play and Nande had already gotten one good round of play. She had plenty left in the tank though and I did my best to wear her out by throwing a stick into the surf again and again.

The only downer to the day is just how brutally icy the water is. It literally hurts to walk in because it is so cold. But Sully was having none of that running away stuff. He dragged me out in the breaking surf more times than I might have wanted to. But its hard to say no to the little guy when he's got such a huge grin and is obviously having a truly fantastic time.

The waves were massive and pounding the sand and there was a really severe rip tide a little ways out but we weren't going too far.

By the time it was time to head up, pretty much all of us were beat, ready for a late lunch and then, hopefully, some naps. Sully and I fell asleep for a little bit while my wife and Grady hung out downstairs.

It was a wonderful way to spend this, the last day of the Bush administration and the last day before Barack Obama gets sworn in as the President of the United States of America. A pretty heady concept and one that seems almost like a dream that has finally, finally come to fruition.

Nande Charges into the Sun Again

We had a wonderful trip out to the beach this afternoon. Nande got a chance to run and run and run some more. And I got a chance to take about 150 photos of her and the boys playing in the water, which was cold as hell!

A great time and now Nande is wiped out cold on her bed.

Beach Day in March

Grady Runs on the Beach

We took advantage of a sunny Sunday and packed up the crew to head out to the beach. Yes, including Nande who can't seem to grasp that her high-pitched yelping doesn't make everything more fun for everyone. But anyway.

If ever there were a day to have a skim board, this was it. The beach seemed to go on for miles and miles. But the water was outrageously cold and not fun to be in at all. Even Grady wasn't into spending much time in it.

A good time was had by all, I think. I got to play with Nande and Graydon in the surf, Paula walked with Sully and they're all asleep now so I think I did my job reasonably well.

Fabulous Day at the Beach

We had a blast out on the beach the other day. We have been working through a wicked heat spell right now which makes the beach a real possibility even though that water splashing over Graydon is really, really cold!

He had his best time ever at the beach. He would chase the waves back and forth, would scream in delight when a wave would bash over him and he loved it when I'd rocket him up above a breaking wave.

And, oh yeah, he slept like a rock!

And I got a whole bunch of fun photos too. Man, I really need a full sized DSLR to start to really leverage the photo opportunities. Hard to justify dropping a big chunk of change right now though.

Today Was a Good Day

We Have Liftoff!

Anyday where you can go to the beach, play with your dog, snap some pics and catch a great shot like this can't be a bad day.

It was chilly out but warm enough for a tank top and shorts. We walked up and down the almost deserted beach for a while, I threw scoops of sand for Nande and she had a ball running after it.

That and I found a neat little spinning top with a frog in it on the beach, which I'm sure Grady will love.

I'm trying to take advantage of my time out of work as best I can. Today was either a beach day or we were going trail riding. Maybe that'll happen tomorrow!