Gatsby

My brother Dave & and his wife Mary live in Annapolis. Been die hard sailors for many years and have a 37' sailboat. As early senility (and creaking joints) set in, they decided having a boat that depended entirely on its motor for propulsion might make a good addition to the fleet. So they acquired Gatsby, a 43' trawler and brought it home to Annapolis a few weeks ago.

Good looking boat, even though it has no masts.
















But living conditions look quite primitive.


What? No fireplace? This won't do.








And shouldn't there be at least at baby grand piano here? I'm disappointed.














But she does have a nice nose. A bit broad in the beam, but just fits into the home slip.


Dave and Mary plan on taking Gatsby on The Loop over the next couple years. So, if I don't make it to Annapolis, might catch a ride somewhere in the Great Lakes or the Mississippi.

More Later

"Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials."

Lin Yutang

Twister

One or more tornados roared through Iowa City where my Dad and two sisters (Patty and Kate) live in the early evening Thursday (4.13). None of them had any significant damage but the house that Patty and family lived in for 20+ years - and sold just 6 months ago - was right in the path. Here are some pix. (you can double click to see enlarged images.)

This is the front view of Patty's old house - built circa 1900 and on the Historical Register. You couldn't have taken a photo with this view before the twister - there would have been big mature trees in the way. All gone.



The boarded up section, lower left, used to be three big bay windows in the dining room










Here's the jumble that was a lovely back yard.
















And here's a broader look at the neighborhood. Patty & Patrick's old place had much less damage than some of the neighbors.















It's a mess. But luckily there were very few injuries and, last I heard, only one fatality. Still, it will be a very long time before this lovely old neighborhood recovers. It wasn't Katrina, but ...

Meanwhile, Patty and Patrick have a touch of survivors' guilt in their new home about 2 miles away. Essentially untouched.

Babe the cat

My friend Erfert had an extra cat - a stray that had adopted her. Nice cat, said Erfert. But Wrong - Erf already had two cats and they didn't like the newcomer. So, after checking all 'round the 'hood for possible owners of Wrong, Erf asked if anyone needed a nice cat. Turns out, I was thinking I did. So - today was cat delivery day. Erf and significant other (Mendy) drove over to Moss Beach.

Wrong immediately disappeared into my closet so we thought we'd give her some space and went down to the tidepools.

Hey, look. There's a bunch (herd, pod, raft?) of seals.


Mendy is intrepid - doesn't seem to care that the world's largest ocean is just a few feet to his right.













This is a classic pose in the tidepools.

What the heck is that!?
















Erfert (on left) and Mendy do some sort of trident salute just before they disappeared beneath the waves. Just kidding.

We all survived and went back to the house for soup.











I had decided to rename 'Wrong' to 'Babe'. I've had two other cats in my life. The first was named Blue - 'cause she was kinda a Russian blue and I liked the old folk song with the refrain "Had a dog and his name was Blue, betcha 5 dollars he's a good dog too." OK - my Blue was a cat but ... And my second cat was named Bob (all black - Black-On-Black = bob). A very cool cat that would take a daily walk in the woods with me. So - the theme has been - one syllable names starting with 'B'. So, welcome Babe.

We had soup, chatted and then Erf & Mendy said their farewells to Wrong/Babe who was still hiding in the closet.



We thought it might be a few days until she crept out of the closet. But it only took a couple hours until she was exploring the whole house.
















And soon, just lounging on the couch in front of the fireplace.

I think this might work.

Welcome to Moss Beach, Babe.

UFO sighting

Unfamiliar Fiery Object - oh, it's the sun. Not seen around here for over a month. I rushed out to the front porch, took off my shirt and basked in the 60 degree heat!

The yard has been growing unabated for all these weeks - never a dry day to go out and wack it back. So I fired up the lawn mower this morning and cut back the highest parts.

It's supposed to rain all next week so this may be it for sun for a while.

Al Gore at Google

Al Gore, who introduced himself as “I’m Al Gore — I used to be the next president of the United States,” gave a talk at Google today. (Speaking, as all guest speakers do, in the Google 'multi-purpose room' - 30 minutes earlier, this was one of the Google cafeterias)

If only he had been able to show how smart, funny, and down-to-earth he was when he was in office and running for Pres. The world would be a different place. He was all that - very smart (jeeze I miss that in our elected officials: your assignment - compare/contrast Clinton/Gore with Bush/Cheyney) , pretty danged funny, and definitely down to earth. Also very passionate. (On the down-to-earth part, he told an anecdote about giving his Climate Crisis talk to a bunch of red-neck friends on a house boat in Tennessee late at night. And qouted one of his newly-enlightened friends responding with 'holy f***!". Mr Gore added that he hoped this talk wasn't going to be video-streamed to the web.)

His talk was on the Climate Crisis - how we got here, how bad is it (VERY), and what we can do about it (quite a bit - but need to act soon). The talk was a Power Point presentation (but, of course, with Al Gore live) of a movie that will be coming out shortly. For more info see his website. Google is going to take the whole company to the movie as soon as it's released.

After his planned talk, there was about 30 minutes of Q&A. Again - I sure wish we had seen this guy in 2000. If only his handlers had just let him be himself. The man can actually think on his feet and not worry about staying on message.

The guy to the left of Al is Dr Larry Brilliant, who heads up Google.org - the non-profit side of Google. Just a regular guy -spent years in India ashrams, hung out with Grateful Dead and Wavy Gravy, oh - and was largely responsible for ridding India of smallpox.


It was a really interesting afternoon. But then, I had to drive home (after wasting an hour losing/finding my Google badge and thus) hitting prime time traffic over to the coast. Have I mentioned that there is a problem with the roads? Sorry - was trying to stop that whining.

Don't mean to obsess, but ...

That road! Latest guesstimate is that it might be closed for 'several months.' While I don't have to worry about my job (I don't depend on tourists driving down from San Francisco to keep my business going) it definitely complicates daily life. No more Saturday morning trips to the farmers' market - it was 20 minutes north via Devil's Slide; now, an hour or more even without traffic.

And the daily commute is fine - as long as I leave the house by about 5:30am and start back over the hill before 4pm. Luckily, hours are flexible at Google and I'll work at home one or two days a week but still...

A good reminder that no matter who much concrete and asphalt we pour on the ground, Nature can quickly regain its dominance.

Here are more pictures if you're interested. I promise to talk about something else next time.

That Danged Road

Well, the rain has stopped - for the moment. It's still gonna take a while before Caltrans can even assess what it will take to fix Hwy 1 at Devil's Slide. Here's a pretty good summary for those interested: State of Emergency

Devil's Slide

Well, the winter wasn't too bad, but the Spring - Yikes! March was the wettest since they started keeping records. So of course - what time is it? Time for Devil's Slide to slide. They closed the road on Sunday and there's no estimate of when it might reopen. Days? Weeks? No telling.

Here's what that notorious section of road (the same section that slipped in '95 and closed the road for 150 days) looked like yesterday. Big boulders keep falling down from the mountainside above.














And then there's the little crack - that keeps getting bigger.














Oh, and this little stretch of road where the crack is opening is about 450 feet above the ocean on a sheer cliff.

So what? Well, with this stretch of road closed, the already busy commute from the coast to the other side of the mountain has gone from slow to 'ohmygod' since there used to be two roads out of the coast and now all must go over the single remaining road: 30 minute commutes turn into 2 hour commutes.

Everyone is developing their strategy: hit the road by 6am at the latest or wait until 10am? Same deal with coming home.