The Golden Gate Experience

Last weekend, I figured on going down to San Francisco and spend the day taking a few artsy pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge from places I had not been before.  Looking on the map, I found Baker Beach so after 30 minutes of trying to find a place to park, I bundled up my tripod and backpack full of camera and lenses and ambled off down the beach toward the bridge.

As soon as I got down to the water's edge, I put my pack down and changed the lens on my Nikon to a 18-55 kit zoom lens, the widest angle piece of glass I owned.  There were people walking up and down the beach, some with dogs, a couple of people pushing baby carriages with sand tires and the usual day at the beach folks. Complacent in my surroundings, I busied myself with camera settings and attaching the tripod.
 
These days, I purposely choose manual settings on my camera (control freak that I am), adjusting light, ISO, shutter speeds, etc. I fired off a few frames then dropped the camera down to see how they were looking and then I noticed....yep, right there in all his glory......a nekid man (we Southerners say it like that) sauntering down the beach.  I'm a big boy or old man, however you want to look at it, so I can take all that in stride very well.  Pondering the idea of a naked guy on the beach made me to look around and in doing so, I realized there probably were maybe a dozen or so folks in the same state of dress.  Off up against the hill there was a congregation of people of whom some seemed to be in the nude and as I approached the rocks nearer to the bridge, realized there were a couple more laid out on the rocks.

I thought I would like to climb out on the rocks where a couple of dozen people were for a different shot of the bridge. On my approach, I came face to face with an older man just sitting there wearing nothing but a hat, shades and a smile.  Young teen girls were passing in front of him undeterred.  Me? I'm thinking that I've discovered at least one source of lesbianism.  If I were a young female and came up on such a sight, I would either have to gouge my eyes out with a stick or I would be turned off of the idea of men forever.

On returning back to the hotel later that evening, I Googled "nude beach San Francisco" and found that there are several beaches like this in California and at least four in the Bay area.

Yep, I think I may have discovered a source of lesbianism.

Feeling Guilty...........um....almost

With all the horrid weather in sweeping across much of the country, I feel just a little guilty as I find myself wintering in northern California's Sonoma County,  Well....some...yeah, some.


I'm hearing stories about -27 °F in Oklahoma, waist deep snow in New York and hard freezes in Louisiana.  That's just terrible!

So, with all the weather friends and family are experiencing let me apologize for enjoying myself and let me feel dirty for having to drive through miles of vineyards and rolling hills on the way to work each day.

However, I feel like I've paid my dues.  It hasn't been that long that I've flown into blizzards in Detroit and let sleet bounce off my head in Grand Rapids but for the sake of those still fighting it, I'm sorry.

Yeah, that's it.  I'm sorry.  Can we all feel better now?