Winter of my discontent

A blue moon on Thursday, perigee on Friday, perihelion on Saturday with an 8.7 ft exchange, and what have we got in California? Rain. You'd think to an Oregon boy it wouldn't matter, but a full moon with cloud cover just isn't the same.

And so this is Christmas ...

Heard a Beach Boys riff on the radio today. It's hard to get used to the idea of Christmas in California. It's hard to get used to the idea of a Christmas without snow. Particularly when you've got friends where it's 32°. Hard to imagine kids who think this is normal.

Size matters

I was camping with the kids at Big Sur, trudging down the road past site after site, when my daughter
(age 5) asked, "We have a big tent, right Daddy?" "No, actually ours is kind of small." "But it's bigger than THAT one, isn't it?" "No, I think it's smaller."
She so wanted our tent to be big. Where we fit into the grand scheme of things--how we compared--was important. The fact that it's under 3 lbs. (a fact Daddy is quite pleased with) of course meant nothing.

Old man and the sea

The first surprise was the weather. The sun broke through and we found ourselves sheading a layer of clothes. We saw the tiniest crystal-clear jelly fish, like pulsating glass grapes. Paddled in close all the way up to Hopkins, where we darted outside to avoid seals, then back in again into that stormy 'room'. Couldn't have been more than a foot deep. Long green surf grass, pink encrusting algae and snails. An otter lay in the shallows and watched not twenty feet off to our right, chewing and looking on, utterly disconcerned. Then, paddling out the Northwest side we hopped over rolling incoming waves. To stretch out the day, on our way back we paddled out to bouy number 4, covered with lazing tawny sea lions. Where do people from Monterey retire to? How do you upstage this? Every cloud has a dark patch too.

Frogger

Nothing can get my heart racing like crossing a shipping channel. You get out the chart and read off the course: 3 miles across, 2 of them in shipping lanes, north bound and south. That's 40 minutes in shipping lanes. 40 long minutes. I must be in the wrong sport!

The calm before the storm

... SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 8 PM PDT THIS EVENING THROUGH LATE TONIGHT ...

... GALE WARNING IN EFFECT FROM LATE TONIGHT THROUGH TUESDAY EVENING ...

Columbus Day out on the bay. Absolutely calm in the lee. The shimmer of cat's paws touching down. Followed the shore up to Hopkins where I slowly, steadily, cautiously wove my way through
the rocks without flushing a single cormorant or brown pelican that looked on--or that I presume looked on, since I wasn't making eye contact. Four young sea otters were diving and basking and feeding in the shallows beyond. Making my way up the alcoves between Hopkins and Lovers Point I came across willets and black turnstones, a silent pair of black oystercatchers, and a drab grey robin-like bird I had never seen before--a "surfbird"--working the rocks.

Mystery solved

From the undeveloped site on Blake Island, you follow the path about a hundred yards to get to fresh water. When I rounded the corner the sun was just going down, a string of moored boats bathed in golden light. As I walked I could hear the whine of rubber on rumble strips in the distance, eighteen wheelers on I-5, no doubt. But how could that be? Here I was looking west, with an island between me and I-5, five miles away. There had to be another source, so I started looking around. It didn't take long to discover that the din was coming from the bushes themselves--it was bees!

Pусское ущелье

Mendocino II

Just as my interest in kayaking was beginning to flag, along came Mendocino. Again. What a special place. Each capsize a christening. It felt good to be on and in the water again. Peter, the friend who invited me along, got video--azure blue water with a powerful blow hole set against "crapotis" (messy clapotis). Until I can download it, here's a picture of Roger Schumann going over Disney backwards (!). (Check out the sea palms!)

Downtown Seattle by night

I really came to appreciate the network of WWTA sites on my trip. What a great idea.

The grass withers, the flower fades ...

One of the most pleasant surprises of my trip was the undeveloped campsite on Blake Island, which I had all to myself. Paddling around the island I was initially disappointed to find a flat open grassland, the first unwooded site I had seen. Disappointment however soon gave way to a kind of giddy joy, as I quickly began to appreciate the charms of this site. First was the unusual greeting committee--a semipalmated plover. Next was the site itself with its grasses and indigenous wild flowers. Third was the pair of killdeer (charadrious vociferous) that had taken up residence in the driftwood out on the point. At some point I must have gotten too close as I was treated to the entire display, complete with charade and vociferousness: Flying just beyond me, the male alighted about 10 feet away and began beating his wings in the dust, puffing up his feathers, squawking, and generally looking as tasty as could be. I watched in amusement knowing the routine. After a minute he peered over his shoulder, beat his wings a time or two more, looked to see if he would get a reaction, then flew off in disgust.

Mendocino I

If it's September, it must be Mendocino time again. Time for pour- overs, caves, and things that go bump in the dark. Time for Sea Palms and Black Oystercatchers, and kelp-foamy reefs. Trade in Pt Cabrillo for the real deal. (I was in Lincoln City in June and saw a guy get rolled on the rocks. Pretty nasty. (Note to self: try to avoid that.) The first mussel lifts the whisker, the second one shaves it off. Speaking of which (WSKers), I've been invited by a friend from BASK. Apparently the campground is full so it should be a blast.

Ode to the Outback Oven

To what shall I compare thee? Let me count the ways!

I whipped up these biscuits last trip and the kids loved them. Got the recipe wrong--too much milk--nothing a little extra time on a low flame couldn't fix.

Bananas Foster

with these folks, Lincoln City, June 2009

Keep clam

I discovered a spot on my trip to Seattle worth the trip back for the clams alone (location undisclosed). Hint: it's under the clam!

Happiness is ...

• laying out your gear and drybags
• checking the tide tables twice
• planning your menu
• deciding what to go with--2mm, 3mm or a drysuit
• making sure everything fits in the boat

Rite of no passage

We must have looked at this thing for 10 minutes before giving up.
It looks straightforward enough in the picture, but there was a hole in the middle that dried out and water moving more left to right than middle-aged hippies.

In search of the perfect put-in

Belaying boats somewhere south of Pt Lobos

Kelp crabs pinch hard

as I learned from this little guy.

Which reminds me of a joke:

Q: Why does the ocean roar?
A: You would too if you had crabs on your bottom!

Back-ups to back-ups

My wife never bargained for this. Kayaking only came later, after we'd wed. Because of that I've always felt a special need to play it safe. With a wife and kids, I'm not allowed to die. So I put a lot of stock in redundancy--I want at least three reliable rescues--in case something goes wrong. First is a drysuit, second is a roll. Because that isn't 100%, my go-to back-up rescue is a paddle float roll, virtually impossible to miss. If all else fails, there's VHF and flares, my last line of defense, to help ensure that Daddy walks back through that door.