Island Anticipation

Yaaaaaaaayyyy, it is finally time for the camping trip to Santa Rosa Island! Busy, busy, busy little bee, is me. I am sooooo ready to hang out on an island for a few days! We have planned, shopped and packed and I am practically on pins and needles looking forward to getting started. Channel Islands, here I come! =o)

Originally we had talked about going down and hanging out for the whole weekend, but the memorial service for my friend is Saturday morning. So, instead, we are heading down to Ventura on Sunday, playing tourists a bit during the day, having dinner and attempting to get to bed early and get a good nights sleep. It is too long a drive to try to head out from here the morning of the boat trip, since we need to be down at the harbor by about 6:30 Monday morning to load the camping gear on the boat.

We are going backpacking style, except for food and beverage cooler, because it's about 1.5 miles from the pier to the campgrounds, so the lighter the better. It was rather fun to get some new gear for the trip. Although I have plenty of camping gear, I didn't really have the right stuff for camping "lite". So a whirlwind shopping spree at the local mountaineer store produced a new backpacking pack, a new condensed sleeping bag, a good sleeping pad and a few other random items. Not a cheap excursion, but worth every penny, in my opinion. It is both thrilling and a tiny bit scary to think about living out of a back pack, being that I will also be on a small island without access to pretty much anything, but it is only for 3 days, and soooo totally cool!

It takes about 3 hours to get from Ventura Harbor to Santa Rosa Island and I believe there is brief stop on Santa Cruz Island first, if it happens to be any sunnier this trip, it would be lovely to get some better shots of the seascape surrounding the islands. Pretty excited at just the joy of being on a boat heading for a great trip and the planned breakfast with mimosa's we'll be partaking in with the 18 other people in our group that we are meeting up with at the harbor! :) Delightful!

I'll come back with lots of photo's to share and perhaps a good story or two to tell. =o)

quoting

"Don't be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so."
- Belva Davis

Shakers

Several news stations are reporting a 5.4 earthquake hit in SoCal earlier today - hope everyone down there is doing alright, sounds like the aftershocks are pretty strong. Take it slow and please be cautious.

Peace and love and light and joy

Generally, this is a way to share the bit of my life I am comfortable sharing publicly with my friends and family around the world to help us keep in touch. I tend to keep it light, just the more entertaining of the things I come across and the things I am up to. Occasionally though, I go a bit deeper. Today is one of those days.

Things have been a bit rough and its finally really getting to me. A friend of mine passed away last week, completely unexpectedly. 2 weeks before that, another friend was in a serious car accident with her family, and her Mother died at the scene. We are a small and very close community, these tragedies have hit us hard.

Everywhere I look these days, it seems there is just so much to be sad about, so much that breaks my heart, that I have no control over. It is easy to feel overwhelmed, even for me, someone who is well known for my typically cheerful - glass is half full type disposition. The many fires, smoke and ash, the people losing everything, the people in harms way trying to help, global warming, drought, the wars, the floods, the homeless, people starving, people losing their homes, people blowing themselves and others up, people harming children, the elderly and each other, the failing economy, the mundane day to day challenges...we sure have made life complicated and it has been far easier to see the uglier and more depressing of life, it's complicated mysteries and the less stellar side of human nature, lately.

Though there isn't much that I can directly do about most of it, I take and offer some comfort in the ways that I can. In my direct community, I am very active, involved and contributing. I strive to help anyone, in any way and whenever I can. Often, simply being there for someone in their time of need is enough, sometimes, it is just a small unexpected gesture, whatever it is, it most often feels a very small price for the reward of making a difference. Some of it, is literally the way I choose to live my life. Because I personally have lost so many people, I make it a point to tell the people I care about most, that I love and am grateful for them whenever we speak and try never to leave important things unsaid or allow small stupid things to fester. I try to smile at everyone I see, to be kind to everyone I come across, to really notice and pay attention to people as we interact. When I feel helpless over larger things, I retreat to the basics: invocation and counting blessings. I'd like to believe that when put out into the world, they have a little more power to affect a positive outcome.

Peace to all my relations
Love to all my relations
Comfort to all my relations
Grace to all my relations
Community to all my relations
Compassion to all my relations
Safety to all my relations
Health to all my relations
Joy to all my relations
Shelter to all my relations
Nourishment to all my relations
Gratitude to all my relations
Safe Harbor to all my relations
Rest to all my relations
Workable Solutions to all my relations
A Helping Hand to all my relations
A Compassionate Ear/Shoulder to all my relations
Friendship to all my relations
Help to all my relations
Faith to all my relations
Connection to all my relations
Beauty to all my relations
Light to all my relations
Blessings to all my relations
Respite to all my relations
Inspiration to all my relations

For everyone and anyone who is suffering today, may you find grace, peace and comfort.

For everyone and anyone who is experiencing joy today, may you share your blessings with another.

xoxoxo

dark knights - comedy

quoting

	To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself. Soren Kierkegaard, 1813-1855 Danish Author and Philosopher

Fill'er up and take a drive

Some good things happened this weekend....

The only gas station in town finally re-opened after almost a year (so we no longer have to drive to another town to get gas) and they managed to contain enough of the basin complex fire to re-open highway one! So it seemed a good reason to get some gas and take a nice Sunday drive.

Since there are still a lot of firefighters, equipment, major clean up along the road that needs to happen and residents are still headed back home, we didn't want to get in the way, so we decided not to go all the way to Big Sur and stopped Lucia instead to have lunch. It was comforting to see that it is still our beautiful coast. Though we didn't go into the heart of the worst of it and I imagine that will be sad to see when we do, I will take and share the good when I can, so I am thrilled to report that from what I could tell LimeKiln appears to be in good shape and though they were all closed to the public, all of the parks and forests from like Sand Dollar up to Lucia, looked okay from what we could see. The visible smoke in the air is far reduced from a few weeks ago and the scent has diminished as well, though both still around.

Also managed to stop in for a quick bite for sunday sunset at schoonies on the way home, usually a mostly locals only event but tourist demand for locals entertainment was on high last evening. So the locals were on display and in rare performing form for their viewing pleasure. I seriously wonder sometimes how many peoples home videos and photo albums I (& others that live here) am on/in around the world. Sometimes I think of it like a Jeff Corwin experience, I imagine him walking through town describing us like they do when exploring some exotic location and its natural species..."Hopefully we'll spot a native today, the "ucan" native can be seen along shorelines, in the surf, on the pier and at various watering holes in the region...though mostly sun creatures this species does suprisingly well at night too...prone to frequents smiles, loud laughter, melodic bursts of song and colorful artwork...often seen riding boards and bicycles or wandering aimlessly about town..."

Saturday was spent puttering luxuriously around the house in the morning and then a planned attendance at a summer art show held by some damn talented folks from Forever Stoked. There was so much eye candy I had to walk through the exhibits several times just to take it all in. If I had roughly 12 grand to spend, I would have come home 3 very large paintings, two of which would have taken up an entire walls by themselves and one of which is comprised of 3 large panels. I was inspired by almost all of them though really. Since my budget is not that phat at the moment, I instead purchased gratefully a print of Charlie's Old Cayucos, a small print of Chris's take on Morro Bay - the 3 stacks and a rock view from Los Osos, and a print of a lovely tree done by an new artist for the Forever Stoked crew, OH! and a diggin' sketch print in black and white of a surfer surfing by flashlight! Yeah, I love art! It was also just a really nice sunny day, at a beautiful little ranch out in Morro Bay, live music, time to be creatively inspired, super nice people - including meeting someone who works for my company too - sooo random but fun! I never meet anyone who works at my company unless I am up at the office, half the time I have to explain how it isn't the food company!

not snow, little sun

The sun is trying to peek out today for the first time since last Sunday. For weeks now ash from the fires has been caked and baked on my car (and everything else) and a mixture of smoke, ash and fog has kept it pretty dark and eerie around here. The smell of smoke and burning has permeated the air for weeks too. A beach bonfire has never ever sounded so unappealing!

The sunsets, when they can be seen, are beautiful intense reds, oranges, purples and yellows, from the smoke filtering out all of the blue light, so pretty, but still disturbing. Whereas a few weeks back the talk was the crazy heat wave, now all anyone talks about is the many fires. Last evening, I looked out of my window and saw fat flakes falling through the air, at first I thought it was snowing, but it was really just tons of very large ashes floating down. I think last night was the worst so far, the quality of light was really creepy and the air was so full of moisture, smoke and ash. I am not sure which fire is bringing it our way, as basically it is burning both north and south of me within about an hours drive. If it is this bad here, it is actually tough to imagine what it must be like at the actual scenes.

I can't help but wonder if there is anything left of my little camping spot, it seems surreal that I was just there only weeks ago, hiking and taking pictures all throughout the Big Sur coast and that much of it may not be there, as it was, any more. My heart goes out to the many that have lost so much all across California and those that are temporarily displaced, they are in my thoughts and prayers as much as the thousands of people spending grueling hours, some while standing in harms way, to help. Blessings to you all!

basin fire effects

Le Grande Finale

This is Buck!

ladies and gentlemen, we actually have proof...I give you, the man, the myth, the legend...this is the real, original, one and only true...Buck

Don't know who Buck is? Well, the story goes like this....I was invited to a birthday party for a friend of a friend and it was going to be out on a ranch, on a creek, out in a rural neighboring town. Because of the distance and locale, we were also invited to camp overnight. Being just a weekend before the planned trip to limekiln, we debated, but ended up going out late in the afternoon.

It was a pretty little spot and there was a good turnout, folks were wandering along the creek and up to the main house to chat it up and grab a beer or something to eat. At some point this kid wanders up and he says, "Hi, I'm Buck" then he proceeded to talk to us for about a half an hour, but about every 3 minutes, he would bust out with some variation of "Hi, I'm Buck" Yup, he was beyond hammered. We found it endlessly amusing but were also a bit glad when he finally wandered off.

But later in the evening he wandered back. He managed to do pretty much the exact same pattern, yada yada yada, Hey, I'm Buck! Then he passed out, as the pictures above attest to, and then our friends dog crawlwed up in to his lap (and may have had his way with him.) We had way too much fun at this kids expense, we made up a whole new "bucking" vocabularly. We tried to use the word @u%k as often as possible in a sentence but substitute "buck"...so things like "that bucking kid, he's so bucking wasted, we can't even get him away from the bucking fire." (I know, its proabaly really lame, but we found it endlessly entertaining at the time, as has everyone we have been able to share the story in person with since) and soooooo, we found these pictures and for those who have heard the story, we wanted to provide a face for the name.

graceful wonders

I went into SLO yesterday to see the orthodontist, for a check in on the braces, delightful.

It was a later afternoon appointment so I decided to log into work early in the morning so that I could log off for the day when the appointment time arrived. After some quality mouth torture I decided to shop, something I rarely do. It was actually nice to just wander a bit in town, got a coffee, ran some errands, bought a few nice things, got my favorite sandwich from my favorite little Italian deli.

On my way back, as I was coming around the corner into the northern bay and along the strand, something flickered in the corner of my eye out on the ocean. I pulled across the lanes and over to the beach, I parked and walked out to the vista point above the first beach access stairway to see if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. What I saw instead was the largest pod of dolphins I have ever seen, frolicking in the surf, in super shallow waves, in a giant ring and in every direction I looked they were rolling in and out of the water in pairs. It was stunning, simply breath taking. Their peaceful, easy, graceful roll, so entrancing and soothing. It was a perfect suspended moment in time, like so many beautiful moments I have been so gratefully and unexpectedly blessed with lately.

It is officially 4th of July as I write this, it is a bit late and I have been out with the other locals. The night before the holiday is as much a part of the ritual as the holiday itself. It has reached an almost holy stature for most of us. Yes, around here the 4th of July is practically sacred, it is lovingly referred to as Cayucos Christmas. I am so excited!

I have to be up in an hour and a half to go move my car from downtown. That is going to hurt a bit...then its sand castle review at 7am, coffee, breakfast burritos and chair and tent set up, accompanied by bleary eyed good mornings and the mounting parade anticipation. Town wandering, a short nap, BBQ visits, more wandering, perhaps more napping and then the pier fireworks show. Nothing says 4th of July like the characters, spectacles, beauty and town drunks of our little version of a cross between Mayberry and Tortuga the home of the cowboy pirate surfers...