Soule Park, Ojai Golf

Today Julie and I played golf togehter for the first time. The public course in Ojai was a blast, and cheap, while the weather was just slightly different than the Oregon Coast. A beautiful day.
Tomorrow we leave for Tucson and family visits. (Pssst. We're bringing some wine Nancy)

Santa Barbara

Ok, so we have moved south a little bit and I am in short sleeves, thanks in part to being near the marina which is sheltered from the northerly winds by the mesa. This feels different. And warmer.

Julie is downtown shopping and my sincere hope is that she does not purchase anything larger than a bobby pin or we will need to crate it up and forward it to our destination. The truck is just that full. After our tour of the central coast wineries, we have a bottle or two more than we will be allowed to take over the Mexican border and we may be forced to consume them while visiting in Tucson. If we do that then the bobby pins will fit and I consider that a great solution and wonderful, forward thinking.

Wine Country Has Gone To The Dogs

This is an actual book with real recipes for making yummy biscuits and such for your favorite canine. There is nothing really wrong with that whole concept, except I found this in the Tobin James wine tasting room, which is this huge 10 million dollar building near Paso Robles. I guess that after tasting the list at the winery people may be just enough impaired to plunk down the $25 or so for their favorite cousin in Tucson with the new puppy and wrap it in a box made for fine wines, then ship it off as a surprise. But, having not sampled enough wine to become impaired, and not being too foolish, I just could not go that far.

I did, however, get Julie in the act of pretending to be a wine drinker. The Grey Goose was back in the hotel and this was the nearest alternative. We actually had a great day today, despite the cool and showery weather, driving around the wine country here. By no means was it what some would call "hubbubish" here, as the wintery weahter has kept the crowds thinned out. There are 85 wineries with tasting rooms in the area and we sampled just a few.

Pismo Beach

San Luis Bay

Well,this is not a bad place considering that the Winter weather is about 20 degrees warmer than the Oregon coast. We got in early, cruised around San Luis Obispo and actually found a little deli for lunch that I had scouted on Google Earth. I want a full time Internet connection for my truck so that I can have Google Earth on full time! That would be better than the navigation system in Julie's Audi.

Ready to Launch

I am killing time while waiting for Julie to finish packing her clothes and personal items. I like to have everything laid out so that I can organise the load into some logical sequence. This rarely ever really happens, like now. I would rather not have to unpack the entire truck just to get to items that we will need on the road, before we get to San Carlos. It makes both of us crazy if I hover around the process,. so here I am dinking away at a keyboard.

Coming from the kayaks has been an elusive whistling sound at about 60 MPH. I have duct taped everything I can see to try to eliminate the sound and we'll find out tomorrow if it is successful.

Compression Testing a GM 350 cid V-8

This has absolutely nothing to do with actually doing any mechanical work on my Chevy engine and everything to do with nudity. If we left all of the clothes at home, then packing the Suburban would be no problem. But that will not be the case. Nope. Laws require that we be clothed, so we will just have to figure out how to compress them into the space remaining after having packed all of the toys. I will probably need to check out the axle specs to determine their load bearing capacity as well. And I might need to spring for new brakes as well because of the weight now bearing upon the wheels. Inertia may carry us to the southern border if we get this puppy underway. I will let you know if this works out if we get under way.

Big Rocks Rock!

For some reason known only to some cubicle tech-head at Google the video I downloaded to my hard drive would not upload to this blog system. But, I am determined because it is worth watching, so I have included a long link to the Youtube video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRRDzFROMx0&feature=PlayList&p=DA9BCAEB4A4AC06D&index=0&playnext=1

Please take a few minutes to watch this. This fellow understands the simple process of leverage!

Overkill, or just too tall?

Off to Mexico soon!

I have been running around town with the kayaks strapped to the top of the Suburban just to make sure that we do not have any extremely irritating wind / strap noises. I do not want to be trying to find a cure at 6:00 AM on the side of the road somewhere in the Oregon Coast Range. One of the things that I found out is that we are literally 10 feet tall. I made a good size sign calling out our new height that is readable without my glasses and taped it to the dashboard as a reminder.

In addition to the toys strapped to the outside we will manage to fill the interior with more toys and clothes for at least four climate zones. Julie and I are like 5 year olds anticipating Christmas, or more particularly, what Santa might bring us. It is hard to wait.

One of the difficult things about escaping at this time of year is the intrusion of the governments time table into what should be a joyous time for us. I have filed and paid my FUTA tax, my Social Security tax, my medicare tax, Form 941, Form OQ, my W-3's, and I am trying to get everything together for the corporate tax return. The last is difficult because not everything I need for the business will arrive in the mail before we leave. I am trusting the Number 1 Daughter to get the remaining things into the CPA while we are gone. If she is still speaking to me when we return I will be amazed.

More later...

Blind Pilot

These fellows in the band Blind Pilot are friends of Alisha's up in Portland. The first time I met them we were having a big family gathering a couple of years ago at the big beach house and they bicycled from Portland to Florence. If you were approaching them from their rear, the first bicyclist you would see wore a sign that read "BLIND" and the second a sign had "PILOT" on it. I commented to them that they must have had some odd reactions from people assuming that the one in the rear was actually blind. They had an "Ah Ha" moment, because it had not occurred to them why so many drivers honked and shouted.

Last summer they did a bicycle tour, with instruments in tow, from Canada to Mexico. I do not remember ever having so much energy. Perhaps I never did.

This is more what I was thinking when I was told that Blind Pilot was going to come for a visit...

Playing For Change

Coffee

Coffee drying, Peru

During the time that Eric and I had the coffee roaster business, we had regular inspections from the county health department and we used to get a good laugh at some of their demands. One of the best ones was one particular inspectors interest in creating a completely sterile environment for the storage of the green, unroasted beans.

We developed a system in our cramped back room (which contained the roaster, our office and all of the daily supplies) for bean storage that gave us counter space. I made a number of big plywood boxes on rollers, each capable of holding 600 pounds of beans, and they had hinged lids to keep unwanted stuff from falling in and gave us some flat work space to boot.

Our inspector demanded that we coat the interior of these bins with a "food grade" epoxy to prevent the beans from contacting the raw wood. We explained to him the processes in the countries of origin used to dry beans in open air, walking over them to turn the beans occasionally, exposed to everything outside. And we reminded him that we roast the beans up to 455 degree F before using or selling them. I did not like the idea of using a petroleum based "food grade" epoxy so I bought some and just kept it around without using it for 5 years. This worked.

This is just another in the random series of thoughts for which this blog was created. I borrowed this photograph from the web site of our former coffee broker in Oakland, Royal Coffee.

http://www.royalcoffee.com/

Land Yacht

I am beginning to get a little concerned that even the Suburban may not contain all of the stuff we want to take with us to San Carlos. We have two substantial and growing piles, and we have not even begun to consider clothing. The kayaks and bikes will mount outside of the vehicle, but golf bags, fishing gear, a modest tool collection, lots of books and the ubiquitous category of "miscellaneous" may leave little room for our persons. We do not want to leave anything behind. Then what happens if we get the red light at the border and they want to unload all of this stuff to poke around? Oops. Let us hope for green lights.

Oh Joy!

This is just a little follow up as to how we usher in the new year here on the coast. Julie is working today, and with a prediction of few customers she will probably have time to get the year-end inventory done so that the government may be paid for its interest in the clothes on the racks at the boutique. I am checking the flashlights and making sure that our one hurricane lamp has an adequate supply of kerosene as the National Weather Service has issued some updated warnings for us. I have also successfully negotiated the pharmacy counter for needed Julie's drug which has already passed the oesophagus. We will hunker down this evening for the first day of the new year.

314 AM PST THU JAN 1 2009...

HIGH WIND WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE SOUTH WASHINGTON...AND NORTH AND CENTRAL OREGON COAST UNTIL 2 AM PST FRIDAY...A HIGH WIND WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 2 AM PST FRIDAY. SOUTH WIND WILL INCREASE THIS MORNING ALONG THE COASTLINE. A WARM FRONT WILL LIFT NORTH ACROSS THE COAST AROUND SUNRISE...WHICH WILL RESULT IN SOUTH WIND INCREASING TO 35 TO 45 MPH WITH GUSTS OF 60 TO70 MPH ALONG THE BEACHES AND HEADLANDS WHILE COASTAL COMMUNITIES WILL SEE GUSTS UP TO 60 MPH . THE WIND WILL GRADUALLY BUILD THROUGH THE DAY BEFORE THE STRONGER OF THE TWO FRONTS MOVES OVER THE AREA. (I have never seen this before) AFTER THE WARM FRONT MOVES ONSHORE...THE LOW PRESSURE AREA WILL EXPERIENCE A PERIOD OF RAPID DEVELOPMENT...WHICH WILL INTENSIFY THE COLD FRONT. THE COLD FRONT WILL BRING THE STRONGEST WINDS OF THE SYSTEM TO THE COAST THIS EVENING. EXPECT SUSTAINED SOUTH WIND OF40 TO 50 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 80 MPH ON BEACHES AND EXPOSED HEADLANDS WHILE COASTAL COMMUNITIES WILL SEE GUSTS FROM 60 TO 70MPH. THE STRONGEST WIND WILL BE SOUTH OF ASTORIA. EARLY FRIDAY MORNING THE WIND WILL SHIFT TO THE WEST AND DECREASE TO 25 TO 40MPH WITH GUSTS TO 55 MPH. This is great news that Friday will see such an improvement!!!

Happy New Year

First of all we are both sort of fine.

Ok, so we started out early New Years Eve in the emergency room of the Florence Hospital because the medical system here is poorly organized to handle a relatively simple matter on the day before a holiday, and because tort laws make doctors spineless. I will not go on a rant about this broken system we have.

After Julie's last and final procedure with the surgeon in Bend a few weeks ago, she began her normal course of antibiotics which failed to prevent an infection, so she went to a doctor in the Florence clinic to try a different antibiotic. So far so good. This round of drugs failed to kill the bugs attacking her skin, so she asked the Florence doc for a renewal after communicating by with her surgeon on vacation in the Bahamas. It took the clinic two days to get back to her to let her know that the doctor could not schedule her into an office visit, and the triage doc at the clinic was too busy -"just go to the emergency room at the hospital". So there we were on New Years Eve spending a couple of hours in the hospital to get a pill. One pill. I am certain that it will be a fairly expensive pill and that if our insurer is on the ball that we will get a letter or phone call asking "wuz up?" Some part of today I will spend away from all of the Bowl Games getting the other pills, which will, hopefully, kill the little buggers that are living off of Julie's skin at the moment. She has had enough trials and does not need any more tests of character. Her character is fine.

We resolved anew today to get out of here when we can get our house sold, or if that does not happen soon then to plan more extended get-a-ways when our weather is not so good. Like today.

Our weather today is warmish, but relatively nasty - to wit:
Today: S wind 35 to 40 kt. gusts to 55 kt developing in the afternoon. combined seas 14 ft dominant period 9 seconds ... building to 19 ft dominant period 9 seconds. rain.Tonight: SW wind 35 to 45 kt with gusts to 55 kt ... becoming w30 kt with gusts to 45 kt after midnight. combined seas 22 to 26ft with a dominant period of 10 seconds. rain.

So I wish you all a very healthy, happy and prosperous New Year and hope that we will get to see you, especially if you are in a warmer climate.