Melancholy moments

Our Casa

I am enjoying being on the central coast of California for this mild beginning of winter, even though we have set a few new record low temperatures for early December, dropping to 30 degrees or less for a number of nights. The days begin crisp, but sunny, and ramble up to the low 60’s which makes golfing a bit more enjoyable than what is typical for this time of year on the Oregon coast. Still, I am a bit bored and will need to find more to do than just golf if I am to keep sanity within hailing distance.

There are of course many holiday parties and related outings to attend, but these are tests of memory as we try to remember the names of the hundred or more people we have met in the last month. And they challenge the willpower involved in keeping the fork away from the mouth too frequently, or with such rapid movement and frequency that I would need to move to an all elastic wardrobe. I am finding new friends but still miss the Florence gang and the close connection we all have. There is a certain additional camaraderie there in Florence as we all survive storms of significant enough magnitude that if they occurred on the East coast they would paralyze the nation and be the subject endless news reporting.

I miss Oregon and all of my stuff that will not fit in the Casa Sur, especially the garage space and my coffee roaster. The houses both in Florence and Nipomo are pretty much Julie’s space, with small carved out corners for myself, so the garage has always been sort of like my registered mineral claim with the BLM. (Julie just might take exception to this as my 50 inch television looms large above the fireplace) And I miss the outright ruggedness of Oregon. California seems so controlled, sort of antiseptic compared to the Pacific Northwest. Without changing latitudes I do not know how to get both sunny skies and the outdoorsyness of Oregon.

The Tow

So my favorite daughter Alisha (and only daughter) bet me $5 that I would have at least ten people honk at me as I towed the DeLorean eight hundred or so miles South for our over-Winter in California, and I readily took the bet thinking that my poor hearing would immunize me from financial loss. Well, I was wrong and Alisha was up five bucks before she contributed it back into the petrol fund.

What transpired during the tow was the filming of at least ten feature length films of a DeLorean under tow, with the various “crews” even taking to the road shoulder to capture the proper angle. Of course this often led to the camera vehicle camping out in my blind spot for prolonged periods and extra diligence on my part to make sure I did not squash these trespassers and end up being the star of films titled roughly “The last moments in the life of John Smith as he captures irrelevant images of car on a trailer.” Several times I was almost scraped off onto the road shoulder as my lane ended and the film crew failed to recognize my need to merge, with the blinker and hand signals indicating my urgent intention. There are laws on the books making it illegal to talk or text on a cell phone while driving, but none that I am aware of specifically targeting picture taking. Legislators listen up – this is your chance to make an indelible mark on society.

As I crossed into California and stopped at the agricultural inspection station I was asked “Sir, do you have any vegetables or plants with you and, by the way, the fellow in front of you really likes your car.” This was from a vehicle that was trying to force me into the truck inspection lane until I pounced on the brakes and swung in abruptly behind him.

Mostly what I noticed as I checked my rear views every few seconds to keep from pan-caking mostly little foreign cars of dubious parentage (i.e., non-British) were a thousand phone photos being snapped, and many thumbs up as they accelerated past my tow limited speed of roughly, cough, cough, 55 MPH. There were so many smiles directed at my road numbed, drivers side silhouette that I began to think that the scenery alternatives must be extremely bleak. But I suppose that if a stainless steel vehicle can make people happier, without killing them, and that the internet postings of thousands of blurry pictures of my D-car are not a burden on the servers of the internet, then that is OK. Alternatively, next time, I can either throw a sheet over it like some military transporter of classified equipment, or set up my own movie camera on board the DeLorean to capture my own entries into the YouTube world of interesting stuff people do.

Blame Congress

I do some of my Banking with Bank of America, in part becuase I have been with them since the beginning of geologic time, and because they were conveniently located to where I lived and worked. That changed over ten years ago and it is now a twenty minute drive for me to get to the only B of A on my part of the Oregon coast, but I have continued to stay with them becasue my banking evolved along with the internet to include all of the bank services I could possibly need right at my laptop computer. The only reason I ever go to a real bricks and mortor location is to deposit a check.

At the end of last week B of A, along with many other big banks, announced that they intended to begin charging $5 per month for the use of our ever popular Debit Card. This move is the result of Congress being pressured to limit the fees banks can charge merchants on debit card transactions to something like 24 cents, whereas before legislative scrutiny they had been charging up to 40 cents. All is good - sock it to business to figure out how to cope. Thus the new fee on consumers. Thank you Congress, you messed this one up nicely.

Well, now that I am almost thoroughly enmeshed in the online banking system, this last friday, shortly after the fee announcement, the B of A online banking system virtually tanks, slows to a crawl, or is inaccesable. I am deeply suspicious that the two events are linked and that someone or some group is thinking that they are making B of A pay for their shoddy treatment of thier customers by fussing with the banks internet banking system. If this is true, then "they" have mostly negatively affected people like me who need to do things like pay bills and transfer money. Oops.

So I am now resorting to sending e-n-v-e-l-o-p-e-s in the mail to my utility companies. I am thinking that I will join the revolution that Congress has started and just sending in the payment stub to the utility, no check, and a copy of the message that appears when I attempt to access my money in the way that the bank prefers:

Bank of America
Home Page Temporarily Unavailable

We're sorry, but some of our pages are temporarily unavailable. Thanks for your patience.
If you like, you can:
Home Page Temporarily Unavailable
We're sorry, but some of our pages are temporarily unavailable. Thanks for your patience.
If you like, you can:

JJ

For those of you who know JJ in San Carlos, Sonora this photo is classic JJ. I found it on the "Viva! San Carlos" site and just had to share it. You have to read his apron.

How to Scare Tourists Near Mexico

So I flew into my native city of Tucson to visit family and shuttled over to the XYZ Car Rental facility to pick up a vehicle for the week and went through the normal formalities of renting, but was surprised at the sales pitch that was thrown at me for insurance coverage.


Basically the young man behind the counter reminded me that I was in “a border town” (not entirely accurate) and that many vehicles are stolen along the border (true enough), and he asked me where I would be traveling and staying, implying that things are more than a little dangerous in many parts of Arizona. I inquired of the salesman as to the cost of several insurance options, with the most likely pitched target being something like $14.99 per day, and I then informed him that I believed that my own insurance covered my interests under the circumstances I was likely to encounter. His reply deepened the suspect nature of the human terrain likely to be encountered during my visit as he casually mentioned that their contract called for me to compensate the company for their “loss of use” for up to 28 days when their vehicle was stolen under my care.

I suppose insurance sales techniques have always tapped into that balance between greed and fear, but I resented the implication that my city, my beloved southern Arizona had become a war zone of thieves and scoundrels, untamed by the authorities, and that my only solution was to send money to the headquarters of XYZ Car Rental to limit my exposure.

If I had purchased insurance from XYZ Car Rental, my cost of rental would have almost doubled from the contracted price, excluding taxes and fees. But that is not what really bothered me about these minutes at the rental counter. It was the attempt to play a “tourist” using the much reported border security issues and the inferred perpetuation of the belief in the overall lawlessness in Mexico that really galled me. I wonder if sales associate prospects are trained in these techniques by the company if they are to be posted near the Mexican border? I love Mexico and have traveled their often enough over my lifetime, both by car and other means, and I know not to leave my vehicle parked unattended in a dark alley in Nogales, Sonora or Mazatlan, Sinaloa, and for that matter in Los Angeles, California, and Miami, Florida or just about anywhere else likely to not have a population mostly concerned about their golf handicap. In other words don’t become easy prey for thieves – anywhere. And yes, dark alleys in Tucson should be on the dumb list too.

And I also was reminded by this encounter of a basic tenet of business: If you are a corporation trying to glean a few more dollars, or pesos, from me you should know your target better and not insult them.

As it turns out, between my own insurance and that provided through the credit card I used for my rental, we’re covered well enough, but it will take some time, or medication, to get my blood pressure back down to a reasonable operating level.

(This was published in the Arizona Daily Star as a guest submittal on on May 13, 2011)

Sarah Palin meets Thomas Jefferson

I just had to share this.

Teddy Bears

Two nights ago there was a rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, just south of us on Point Conception, carrying some do-hickey for the Air Force. I believe it carried a pod of stuffed bears in a capsule, or something.

The launch was to take place at 9:24 PM, and I was hoping to make it to that hour despite having played in a golf tournament for the past two days, and having played the day earlier as well. I was pooped, but lay in bed reading anyway, just trying to make it to the appointed time. Well, the book was boring, the hour too late and when the time for the launch came and went and nothing happened I just gave up. I did not wait long past 9:24.

( I did not get to see this)

During the first fits of sleep I was kicking myself for being such a wimp and nodding off because I had seen a daytime launch when we were here in January and I thought a night observation would be pretty cool – much better than daylight hours. The bedroom windows were wide open and I strained to hear the rumble of the launch, but I am getting older by the minute and am told that my hearing is not what it used to be, so I got out of bed and peered out the window for maybe 15 minutes. No launch. The sky was crystal clear and there was zero air traffic, as you would expect. Back to bed.

A short while later I heard a low, deep sound, enough to wake me from my semi-sleep, and I was certain that it had to be the teddy bear missile, so up again. So all that I see is an oldish arching contrail headed out over the Pacific and a jet at high altitude moving due west from us making its own new contrail. I had missed the launch and had been awakened by the jet plane that was flying into cleared air space.
No report on the teddy bears.

Sailing South - for Chris & Sandy

There is a reason that sailors leave Portland and points north before the Fall and Winter swells set in along the Oregon coast...

Flowers

On the central coast of California there are micro-climates piled upon micro-climates and each area seems to specialize in some different type of agriculture. In our immediate neighborhood we see a lot of lettuce, strawberries, broccoli and greenhouse flower operations.

As a way to both educate the public about their businesses and to promote the retail aspect of some of these operations, each year a group of them hold an open house and invite the public in for tours. This year there were seven greenhouse businesses here that we open for about six hours for tours.

Julie and I toured the operations of Eufloria because we pass it almost every day driving the seven minutes into the center of our little hamlet of Nipomo and they have a very small, simple sign stuck in the ground by their entrance road that just says "Roses".

Men, if you ares still wondering how to obtain the attentions of a female just know something about roses and send a few. Better yet, take her on a rose greenhouse tour.

This operation ships millions of roses each year and literally have the growing down to a science. Our tour guide was also the sales manager for the company and President of  a statewide growers association, so not only did we learn a bunch about the growing of roses, we also learned about the politics of competition from abroad.

This greenhouse operation is controlled in ways that I had not thought about, I suppose because I had never considered how one would go about getting the maximum production out of a flower. These are all hydroponic plantings in a greenhouse environment and use a gas powered boiler system to produce extra heat when needed, but they capture CO2 generated in the combustion process and route it in a controlled manner into the greenhouse when extra input is needed for growth. Every aspect of growth is controlled and parasitic bugs are mostly managed by other bugs that eat them for lunch.  The rose stock is grown and distributed by Dutch companies who have learned how to manipulate all of the desirable characteristics. These plants will not do well at all outside or in a home because they are specifically designed to produce maximum results within a greenhouse.

There was so much more information on this tour, all of it interesting and great fun to learn.

(This is the pre-packaging stage where the staff removes any imperfections before placing the product in big walk in coolers)

Perhaps the best thing is that Julie now knows that she can pull into the parking area of Eufloria at any time and buy local, fresh roses for cheap and they can last from two to three weeks if the temperature is kept cool. How cool is that?

Trilogy Nipomo

This is a collage of shots of the club house facilities at Trilogy, Nipomo at the Monarch Dunes Golf Course. A truly magnificent, very comfortable structure.

Making a Deposit in Nipomo

The southerly getaway.

Notice that there are s-h-a-d-o-w-s, and not uniform gray.

Road Buzz

Sometimes, after you have been driving all day and have a really good road buzz followed by a glass of wine or two, there is not an awful lot you can say...

This explains so much...

Going a little bit South

Once again we are loading up the Suburban, the vehicle that ecologists love to hate until they need one, and we are heading back to the Central California coast where things are nicer this time of year. Migration is nothing new on this planet of variable climate and we feel fortunate that we can count ourselves among the birds and fishes and retired humans that are in positions to make the trip. This round trip is something that we hope to do with primal regularity.

The behemoth truck allows us to take almost an entire household with us, similar to the Grapes of Wrath truck above. Of course we need GPS navigation, Internet and cell phones stuck on the various truck surfaces, to find California. These are things that were not even imagined in the 1930's, the period depicted in the photo, but these earlier pioneers did not have a fully equiped Suburban with leather seats and a V-8 engine that would run on E85 fuel and enough computing power to go to the moon and back. I suppose if we just go the hundred or so yards West to the end of our street and turn South on Highway 101 we would arrive in our desired spot of California in short order, but what fun is that?

My current occupation...

Once again I find myself working for the government, but without the bennies.

La Vida Buena

Sculpterra Winery

Metal Cat - eight feet tall.

The group "Con Brio" from San Francisco. Very good!
Behind the camera we are drinking wine and listening to musica!

Seasons

 Snow at the lake before we headed south.

Snow at the Highway 101 bridge over the Siuslaw River. 

A butterfly cluster in Pismo Beach.

It is warmer to the South!

Catching Up

Turkey Day 2010

No Pictures

Insert Picture Here



I have been having a little bit too much fun to spend time taking photographs of sunny, happy times at the beach, golfing, wine tasting, etc. and then uploading them to my laptop to post here. I do have the occasional snap shot taken with my phone, but it takes a few gyrations to get those onto my computer to share here as well, so I am not doing it.

Our days have been as busy or lazy as we want them to be, with a minimal amount of planning involved. If we plan something for the day, we just as easily "un-plan" it if it does not feel right or if we find something we would rather do instead. The prerogatives of retirement prevail.