Some time ago I sat in a harbor-side café, watching the seals cavorting on the docks, the boats bobbing with the gentle waves. Identifying the various styles and types, enjoying their beauty and the functionality. It came to mind that I know boats. But perhaps true knowledge requires something deeper…
Read MorePlan for Plan B
Over the last five years or so, Brad proved himself as “the Wizard of Waze” on our Gray Hogs trips—he’d enter our ultimate destination, calculate in any traffic issues, add in some stops along the way, and we’d blissfully follow his lead, never worrying nor looking at our maps, just riding. We got spoiled, until…
Read MoreStrange Goals, Strange Steps
Hyder, Alaska is a strange town: a United States town that uses Canadian money and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for law enforcement. Even though you can only enter Hyder from Stewart, British Columbia, Canada, you need no passport to get in this sovereign US territory. Just to get out. And yes, it looked like a ghost town as Rich and I rode our bikes there on a foggy and drizzly morning. We saw none of the fourteen people who supposedly live there. But if you look carefully and…
Read MoreAngel Wings
A few years back while living in the Conejo Valley, one Friday at about 6 AM I walked out to get the morning paper and found clear, calm blue skies, and a nicely temperate temperature. Why so many move to SoCal. By 10 AM, everything changed. The typical slight southwest wind reversed itself into a Santa Ana condition, a high gale coming from the northeast, with gusts up to 70 mph. And I was headed into the wind that afternoon, leaving for a…
Read MoreAngel Wings
A few years back while living in the Conejo Valley, one Friday at about 6 AM I walked out to get the morning paper and found clear, calm blue skies, and a nicely temperate temperature. Why so many move to SoCal. By 10 AM, everything changed. The typical slight southwest wind reversed itself into a Santa Ana condition, a high gale coming from the northeast, with gusts up to 70 mph. And I was headed into the wind that afternoon, leaving for a…
Read MoreTemecula
Some mornings, the sun instantly brightens the sky. And some gloomy mornings merely become more dreary. Yet on others, the midday sun blasts through the clouds and haze and fog. Why do our emotions seem to follow the amount of sunlight? I discovered that our current hometown of Temecula provides a metaphor that might help here…
Read MoreBeauty As Its Own Reward
I’m a decent stream fisherman for trout. On a Sierra trip a couple of years back, in 13 hours of fishing I pulled in 43, some up to 15”. That’s pretty good for smaller Sierra streams. No brag, just fact. (Kudos to the first that gets that allusion about “no brag”). Then came McGee Creek.
Driving south on old 395, I saw the line of trees marking McGee, and was ready to drive on by. Why? In ten or twelve stops there over the years, I have caught the grand and humbling total of two trout there, both last spring. Yep, entirely shut out before. But the stream’s beauty continues to entrance me—gorgeous holes that…
Read MoreA Time to Sail
OK, I may get the nautical terms wrong, or just not use them, but I AM a landlubber with limited sailing experiences. My first came when good friends and former neighbors, Ray and Carol Ann, invited Sheila and me to join them for a day on the waters of San Diego with their sailboat. The air rushed past my face as we flew into the wind. One side lifted as we turned, reminding me of taking a tight turn on my motorcycle, but somehow even more thrilling. Then Ray invited to experience the joy of “driving” it, and encouraged me to take a wild turn as one side cleared the water. My wife screamed “Slow down!” in fear, even as Ray encouraged me on. I confess, I listened to…
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