Another Day, Another Wildlife Extravaganza

Today dawned sunny. Plan 'A' was to get out on the Ducati again and go hit some of the roads at the north end of the bay, that used to be the southern end of my motorcycle playground when I lived in Santa Clara.

However, the fact that it was sunny and clear on the bay allowed me to spot that there was fog in the Santa Clara valley that was spilling over the Santa Cruz mountains where I planned to ride. That would mean that half the roads would be wet - I decided to postpone that plan.

Plan 'B' then kicked in - let's go mountain biking (having a week and a half off work is awesome!)

I headed to Fort Ord and went for a 16 mile ride in the sunshine. I'm guessing there hadn't been too many other folks out in the hills earlier in the day as I came across two bobcats at different parts of the ride - my first multiple bobcat sighting at Fort Ord.

I only just spotted the first one as I was about to ride past it as it crouched down in the grass next to the trail. I decided to stop and it decided to wander nonchalantly off (as they frequently do). By the time I got the camera out of my pocket, it was out of range of a decent point and shoot camera shot.

However, its attention was then directed to a clump of grass near where it had wandered off to. The bobcat was soon paying 100% attention to this clump of grass, very gradually, stealthily getting closer to it. It had totally forgotten I was there, so I got of my bike and wandered into the grass as stealthily as I could manage which proved to be stealthily enough.

I watched it for about 2 minutes - closing in on the grass pile - eventually it pounced, but whatever it was after either wasn't there or eluded the cat as it came up empty pawed.

Then it remembered that I was there and went back into nonchalant wandering mode - at which time I was close enough to take this shot before it got out of my range.


Later in the ride, bombing down some downhill single track, I came around a corner to find another cat sitting the grass by the side of the trail. One emergency stop later and I'm fumbling for the camera again while the cat looks like it's waking up from a nap.

The cat's blinking and squinting while I'm getting the camera out, and then it's awake and off into nonchalant wandering off mode - I managed to get a blurred shot of its ass as it wandered off - I didn't include it here.

Better Than The Zoo?!?

As I'm currently on vacation from work, when the weather is suitable, I'm off out on the Ducati. The weather was nice today, so I decided to head down to Lucia again.

As it is between Christmas and New Year, the roads do have a fair few tourists on them, but it's still fun, particularly once you get south of Big Sur and the tourist traffic thins out.

When I was approaching the normal condor hangout, I started coming across slow traffic and lots of people by the side of the road - I soon realized that there were condors right at the side of the road, so pulled over and joined the masses.

As you can see in the photo below, the birds were close to the road - three or four on the ground and another five or so in a nearby tree.

I'm pretty sure the biologists don't like the birds being this close to humans, but the birds didn't seem to care (and thankfully none of the humans were trying to feed them or anything - I'd have tried to stop that sort of thing if it was occurring).

I've never been this close to them before - the most impressive thing was when one took off, the whooshing sound from the wings was fairly loud!

Thankfully when I came back up the road later on, the crowds had gone. There were no condors by the side of the road, but one flew over me low enough to make me feel like ducking.

First Snowboarding Trip of the Season

The time between Christmas and New Year is typically a very busy time up in the ski resorts around Lake Tahoe, and typically a time I avoid.

However, a combination of Wella being free to go snowboarding and some decent recent snow just begged for a trip. I drove up to Wella's on the Friday night (she's only 2 hours or so from Kirkwood) and then we headed up for the day on Saturday morning.

The snow turned out to be in great condition - lots of powder off the main runs to go play in. The weather turned out to be good too, after some initial overcast, the sun started shining through. The final piece of the puzzle would be how would our relative skill levels on snowboards be. If one of us was way better than the other, we'd either not hang out together or one of us would not have that much fun.

Thankfully, it worked out great. We're right around the same skill level as each other, so we both got to hang out all day and do the kind of runs we like - the only fly in the ointment was that Wella was developing a cold, so she slowed down a bit earlier than she normally would, but with all that powder around, I was wearing out pretty quickly too, so even her cold was a minor inconvenience to the enjoyment of the day.


The photo above shows Wella in the middle of all the powder we were playing in (we were not doing the groomed runs much 'cos the powder was so much fun).

Later, Wella, even in her under the weather state, kicked my ass at Scrabble.

Christmas Day, Tim Style

Yes, not one for your traditional fare, I did however cook a Christmas dinner - minced beef marinated is Sukiyaki sauce, with cabbage and fried tofu over rice.

Amazingly enough, it was very tasty, and even more amazingly enough, I didn't make myself ill! Doesn't it just look super tasty?

The day was cold and wet for the most part (we even had some brief hail in the morning), but in the afternoon, the gaps between the blustery showers lengthened, and after a quick look at the radar images on the web, I went for a wander.

The coffee shop at the bottom of the hill was open, so I had a small decaf mocha to keep me going and then wandered around to see what was going on. Cannery Row was actually fairly busy and a few restaurants and shops were open.

I was wandering around the back of (the closed) Bubba Gumps and noticed that there was a cool reflection in the window, so took a self portrait. You can see the stacked chairs from their deck on the far side of the restaurant in the back ground.

Ship Out Of Water

Saw a couple of interesting things on my morning run - firstly, the surf was up a bit, presumably ahead of the incoming storms (one tonight, and one tomorrow - it's supposed to be wet for a couple of days).

The photo below shows the surf crashing off rocks on its way into shore - that's the Hopkins Marine Lab in the background.

The surf was causing all the harbor seals to be pushed up high and at one end of the beach they gather on next to the lab.


The second interesting thing was seen in the boat yard as I was running towards Fisherman's Wharf. One of the larger whale watching boats was on a crane hoisted out of the water. They've been working on it (fresh coat of paint was what I noticed, but I presume they did seaworthy and mechanical things too) for a week or so now, but this was the first time I saw them moving it on the crane, so I snapped away.

Putting More Miles on the Ducati

The weather forecast for the weekend has a sunny Saturday and a wet Sunday. Easiest decision of the week, I'm going for a ride on Saturday!

Of course, now the question is where to ride? Well, I decide I'm going to ride down 1 through Big Sur again - for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there's no fog, it should be a spectacular ride. Secondly, given the high probability that some of these storms will soon close Highway 1 (thanks to the likely mud slides that will occur on the fire scarred hillsides), do it now while I can.

This time I rode all the way down to Lucia before stopping. Below is the Ducati sitting in the parking lot of the restaurant and store there - I stopped for a candy bar before heading back up.

One the way back up, I stopped at the vista point south of the Big Creek Bridge for another photo opportunity. The bridge in the background is where I'm riding to next.

There was hardly anyone on the road, so I really got to enjoy the bike and the ride. On the way back up, at the condor spot I see the biologist waving her aerial around tracking the condors, so I pull over and end up chatting with her and some other bird spotter for around 20 minutes - saw a couple of condors and learned more about these big birds.

After that, as I rode back up towards Monterey again, I noticed smoke in the air - a few miles later I came across a wildfire that was not that far from the highway. There were gusty winds and the fire was one hill behind the hill nearest the road and it was moving towards the road with some pace.

I took a couple of photos and then headed out.
On the way up, fire vehicles were heading down - hopefully tomorrow's rain will put it out if it's not already out.

Looking For Breakfast

I was on my morning run and saw these two pelicans hanging around one of the local fishing boats. The pelican in the foreground is all colorful, indicating they must be coming into breeding season.

Photo was taken near the end of the municipal wharf.

Reasons To Stay In Bed

Tuesday morning is normally my go for a run morning. This morning, there was some rain in the air and there was ice on the ground (as can be evidenced by the ice pellets sitting on the back step just outside my bedroom window).


I went back to bed.

Stormy Weather

It's been a bit of a stormy weekend - though the storms only really got here Sunday afternoon, complete with a small thunderstorm. Rest of the weekend was cloudy with some showers.

Even so, it was worth checking out Sunday morning, just in case we got a cool sunrise. I got up at 6am and decided it was worth the risk of getting out of bed. I headed to Asilomar, but picked a location that allowed me to also point to Point Pinos Lighthouse.

I got lucky with the lighthouse direction, the sun lit up the underneath of the low cloud and I got a nice shot.

Back in the Saddle Again

Yes, after a couple of years without a bike of my own, I now have one again - and I have a big perma-grin to go with it.

Thanks to Dean, I managed to get a deal on a 2008 Ducati Monster S4Rs, the monster with the 999 Testastretta superbike engine in it.

Of course, as I was picking it up on Friday, the weather forecast called for 5 days of rain, which would curtail my enjoyment of the new bike. Indeed, it was trying to rain as I walked home from the pub on Friday night.

Saturday dawned foggy and wet, but it soon looked like it was going to be a nice day. A quick check of the forecast indicated it would be clear in the morning then cloud up and rain in the afternoon an evening. By 10:30am, the roads were more or less dry and the sky was blue - I needed no more excuses.

The plan was to ride down Highway 1 to the Condor hang out and then come back - if the weather or roads looked too iffy, I'd turn around earlier.

The roads were fairly damp for the first 20 miles or so, which mean I took it even easier than I had originally planned (hadn't ridden for about a year and I had new tires) - but once I got to the dry roads, I started to learn to ride again!

The weather was kind - there was a strong gusty wind that was blowing me around a bit, but otherwise it was lovely - an the threat of rain seemed to have kept most tourists off the road too.

As the above photo shows, I made it down to the condor hang out - saw five of them flying quite high up - and one made a low pass right past the bike (checking it out I assume).

Besides being very fast and handling very sweetly, the bike has another effect that I'm not sure I can explain just yet - as I was catching up cars, they were pulling over to let me past before I even caught them up - not sure if it's the big headlight or the mainly white profile from the front maybe fooling folks into thinking I'm a cop - or maybe it was just the speed I was catching them up at (and I wasn't going that fast). Whatever it is, it's most welcome - hopefully it'll continue!

Now, I wonder what the weather forecast holds for tomorrow??

Interesting Skies

The skies were interesting on Saturday as some high clouds started to come in mid-morning.

By mid-afternoon, it was looking like a promising sunset, so I grabbed the camera and tripod and headed out to Asilomar.

It looked like there were two possibilities, cool clouds over the lighthouse or cool clouds over the ocean - I gambled on the latter - unfortunately, the sun never really got under the cloud I was pointing the camera at, so it never really turned into a great sunset, but it wasn't a total failure.

Wildlife Update - It's the Monarchs' Turn

Yes, it's the Monarchs' turn, mainly due to the local Pacific Grove freebie newspaper reporting that Monarchs are twice as common as last year (which, truth be told, isn't that many still).

My Thursday bike ride takes me fairly near the sanctuary, so a quick diversion was on the cards.

When I got there, I couldn't spot any butterflies, but after a couple of minutes I spotted a few clusters.

In the photo below, you see one of the clusters circled in red. I was there early in the morning, so it was too cold for them to be flying, so they're all bunched up looking like dead leaves.

I saw about 5 clusters similar in size to the one in the photo - and the local PG paper is claiming 18,000 Monarchs, but it does all seem rather quiet.

December Rolls In

So, December rolls in - and I get home from work around 8:15pm on Dec 1st and I go to check the mail and I find a salamander guarding the mail box - guarding might be too strong a word, but it'll do for now.

For the record, the mailbox is next to the front step - I suspect there's a nest (or whatever the word might be for the home of a collection of salamanders) somewhere around that area. Regardless, it's cool to keep coming across them, but as I leave the house on foot these days, I'm busy checking for anything on any of the steps.

And then during today's run, I came across this scene on the municipal wharf - it looks like the pelicans don't realize that the fish hopper on the left is only in action during the offloading of a load.