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?

Me, the motorcyle "wrench"

In the motorcycle world, there are those who are fair weather riders.  Some won't ride when it's too hot, too cold, raining or the wind is blowing from the wrong direction.  Of these, I am not counted.  I ride, simply because I have the bike and do not want to be one of those people who have a Harley sitting in the garage gathering dust.  There are people out there who can tear down a motorcycle, put it back together then get on and ride it.  They're called Wrenches. 

I've rebuilt and replaced starters, fluid changes and way back in the day, replaced tires.  So when Boudreaux's rear tire had become pretty slick, I decided to do it myself.  I've done it before and shouldn't be that big of a deal, right? Heh!

Previously, I had bought a Metzeler rear tire and tube online and it had been sitting next in a corner since before Christmas.  Saturday morning I decided it was high time I mounted it, so I enlisted the aid of my brother-in-law, Gary, to oversee my project.  While he was on the way over, I jacked the bike up, removed the side bags and had almost removed the wheel before he got there.  With a little effort, we completely release the wheel from the frame and went about the task of taking the tire off the rim.  We were so proud of ourselves for having the old tire off the rim within 20 minutes and no skinned knuckles.

Now for mounting the new one.  I unpacked the tube to discover it was the wrong type and just would not work.  Rats!  It is a mail order tube I needed one right then so a trip into town to the Harley shop for a much more expensive one.

Once home, we went about the chore of mounting the new tire and tube.  Between the two of us, we fought that spoked rim all over the garage floor, the driveway and back again. We got the tire half way on and tried to stuff the tube in but it sounds much easier than done.  We even went inside to watch a YouTube video on the art and process of tire changing.  Somewhere in the process, I got the bright idea of lubricating the tire so it would slip in easier.  Well, it slipped in alright. Somehow we slipped the whole rim into the tire completely with both sides inside the tire lips.  Darlene encouraged us by asking how much I had saved by buying the tire online and doing it myself.

By now, we're both tired and disgusted.  It's now 4:30 PM and we've wasted four hours and not any closer to having it completed than we did just after taking it off the bike.  Completely dejected, we decided the best thing to do would be to take it to a shop, admit defeat and pay someone with the right equipment to do it for us.  Gary will undoubtedly take it to a shop for me, explain it's not his and belongs to his idiot brother-in-law and some time in the future Darlene will remind me about the incident when I decide to make my own repairs again.

Sometimes, you just need a professional to do things and not be a Renaissance man.  Admitted, I'm not much of a wrench.

Great Weekend in Central California

While I've spent quite a bit of time in the Los Angeles area and extreme northern California, my visits to the central part of the state has been sparse.  I've had a couple of brief weekends in San Francisco but never have had a chance to explore from the bay area.

With that in mind, I made plans to leave early Saturday morning in the direction of Yosemite National Park.  I've always wanted to go there since I was a barefoot kid reading about it from the pages lent from the bookmobile that would come by weekly in the summers in a very rural Louisiana.  Most people I knew had little if any knowledge of places like this and for years pronounced the name phonetically "Yose-Might" until I eventually heard it pronounced on TV.  Arggghh.......what a goober.

When I finally arrived, it was all that I thought it would be and more, although many of the areas were closed for the winter but I had a chance to see many of the sights I had seen pictures of.  Hopefully, I will be able to revisit in a warmer season when the leaves are bright and more wildlife shows itself.  Even though the bears were hibernating, I did manage to see several deer and a Red Wolf or a large Coyote.

When I arrived into the Yosemite valley, I could see the Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, Bridalveil Fall and El Capitan to name a few.

By noon, the sun had changed the lighting, eliminating much of the dramatic shadows and lured more visitors into the park.  That was my cue to head back to the Sonoma Valley.

Sunday morning, my rear was sore from a lot of riding from the day before so I stayed in to watch church online and eventually get out to turn in my car and get another....hey...it was dirty.  Well, that's not the real reason.  The rental agency gives free rentals for a certain amount of rentals and not days rented.  Anyway, after exchanging my car, I putted around Half Moon Bay and checked out the coast before heading back to the hotel.

Monday morning, I started out early in the direction of Carmel By The Sea.  I admit it was a gracious little spot on the shore and is a popular destination but it compared nothing to Hawaii and Maui in particular.

It was a great weekend but that many hours riding eats up a lot of gas.  Even though it was a company rental, the excursion fuel costs always goes on my ticket and in California, it isn't exactly cheap.  Maybe walking would be better, anyway.