Still Hanging Out in California

This past August, we attended, briefly, a church festival in Sacramento. It was a very hot day. The temperature under this tent was around 32 C. What with the heat and the long lines at the food vendors, we decided retreat was the best option. I took this with a 40-something year old Minolta on Kodak Portra 400 film.

Before the beginning of summer, we were in Sacramento on some errand. They were (and still are) doing major work on the I-80 freeway and we found ourselves stopped at a place where things usually move at 100 kph. So I got a shot that is usually impossible. We’re crossing the Sacramento River. The camera is facing east. On a clear day in winter, that horizon is a line of snow-capped mountains.

We have a lot of books in our house. Books have many fine qualities but self-organization and self-dusting aren't among them. I came up with and executed a scheme of organization/less dusting for my books. When I was done, I had unsettled things a bit in house. There were newly created gaps in the living room bookcase, so my housemate decided to do a little reorganization too. Which resulted in multiple books stacks on the living room floor.
I was sitting on the sofa a few nights ago, looking at the stacks and thinking about how my reading has become a bit stilted and academic. I have beaten a lot of the fun out of it. I decided to pick up a random novel from whatever was nearest my feet and start reading it. This is the book I picked-
( random )
I'm not quite finished yet but it has been delightful. And there's a sequel. At our local public library.

I thought this shot was a little muddled, needed shallower depth of focus. But the moment happened and there was not time to adjust the aperture.
My first encounter with Whole Earth was in May 1985. It was a Sunday. We had just moved to Davis and were spending the day on campus. My husband was watching a cricket match and our daughter and I were exploring on our bikes. At one point I made it to the Quad and saw something that made my jaw drop. I left to find my husband because, wow, he needed to see this. When he asked what was going on, I told him, "Either I just had a massive acid flashback or there are a couple thousand people on the Quad who think it's 1967. " Tie dye, vegetarian food vendors, rock bands, yoga/meditation tents, etc. It was breathtaking. I've attended many more since then.

From the early 2000's to about 2016, we used to take a long weekend in Los Angeles every January. It was a wonderful change to leave the cold, often foggy north for the sunny south. The drive down I-5 was a bit long but it was also an effective way to decompress. Driving down a gloomy, almost desolate freeway will do that to you. You forget about work and concentrate on avoiding the large trucks that dominate the route. On the rare occasions when it's sunny, you are bedazzled by the green of one of the most productive ag valleys on the planet.
This was taken with a film camera, the Contax G2, loaded with Fuji Provia. Scanned with a Nikon Coolscan. I flipped it to B&W in post.

Things are not going so well in the United States of America right now. We are experiencing something very similar to what happens in small, poor countries with underdeveloped political systems. A small group of people whose brains are addled by greed and hubris are testing the limits of what the system can stand. They don't care who gets hurt because they are sure it won't be them. But as this photo illustrates, things in life have a tendency to go around and come around.

I'm the sort of person who thinks you should get good use out of something before discarding or replacing it. I've had my (now) former laptop for almost ten years. It's still works fine, but it needs a new battery and some might argue that it has become a security risk. A trusted family member has convinced me to get a new one.
That's the first part of the story. The second part is this- I've been using digital cameras for over twenty years and in all that time, I haven't done a major overhaul of my archive. I have attempted it on a couple of occasions in the past few years but each time the effort loses momentum and I let it go again.
For now, this new machine seems to be working wonders on my ambition and attitude. I'll take advantage as long as it last. :-)
I found this yesterday. It was taken on the Embarcadero in San Francisco in 2009.

I went out for a short walk yesterday when I saw something I first mistook for a piece of litter. This creature is about four inches across, no idea about its identity. Maybe this is something I should look into this rainy winter?

We were sitting in traffic, waiting for the light to change. Even in our small town, traffic can get a bit jammy on the main thoroughfares. I wasn't driving and I had a camera with me. Also, I liked the shadows on this little house.
It was about a week before the election. We were worried. Our fears were not unfounded. Now we're hearing stories about people who voted before they looked up the definition of tariff.

This past July we decided to head down the coast. We hadn’t been to Santa Cruz in years since we’d been getting our need for beach satisfied in San Francisco at Ocean beach. It was also a magical mystery tour through the Bay Area suburbs and exurbs. We took the 680 freeway south and then around the bottom of San Francisco Bay, past San Jose and Silicon Valley, over the Santa Cruz mountains and down to the sea.
When we got there, it was much quieter than we expected. It was the middle of the week, but it was also July. We expected to see more vacationers. Pacific Avenue, the main shopping street was also a lot more peaceful than usual.
Regardless of the mid week lull, the surfers were still enjoying their bit of the ocean. (That little black line above the surfer on the left is an otter.)

For the trip back, we decided to take Hwy 1, back up to the coast. At most of the state beaches we passed, there were lots of people enjoying the late afternoon. Finally we went through the southern suburbs and right up through San Francisco, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.
One section of Hwy 1, next to the town of Pacifica, used to scare the hell out of me. The road was cut into a cliff, no guard rail, then a drop off of hundreds of feet into the ocean below. That road looked raw, like it had just been constructed yesterday. Which was often the case because bits of it would regularly fall into the sea. Finally then decided it was too expensive to maintain like that so they decided to do this-

Yes, this is the loveliest tunnel I have ever seen! :-) Instead of trying to maintain the road on the side of the mountain, they decided to bore through it. Well done CalTrans!