Movie Magic?!?

Out on my run this morning along the coast I came across a movie being made. No idea what movie it was, but there were about 10 trucks and other vehicles lining the road and a bunch of temporary tents and lights and lots of folk milling around.

I of course had a quick look around to see if I could spot anyone famous, but I didn't recognize anyone. In fact, it looked like they were packing everything up from a dawn shoot, but as I was running back past on my return leg, someone shouted "Cut!", so I guess they were filming!


I did recently sign up to be a potential extra in a movie they were shooting in Carmel, but I thought that had finished shooting last week. And for the curious, I never did go to be an extra - they wanted guys to wear suits for this cocktail party scene and I don't own a suit, so I was out of the reckoning immediately!

Back In Condor Country

With all the recent rain, riding down into condor country would have been a rather wet experience. Indeed, Highway 1 was closed for part of the day the other day as a landslide was cleared from the roadway.

However, today was both a weekend day and a dry day (at the end of a few dry days), though the forecast was calling for wet weather to arrive towards the end of day and last for a few days which will lead to both bad riding conditions and the chance for more landslides.

Given all of the above, I had to go ride down the coast today. I've figured out a good compromise on camera equipment, whereby I can take my medium lens and the camera in a backpack where they're reasonably protected and I'm not too inconvenienced with the weight and bulk of them when I'm riding.

So, first thing Saturday morning I'm off to go hopefully have a good ride and see what I can see before the rain arrives.

As I'm approaching the condor hangout, I can see a large blob in the top of one of the trees. I pull over at the hangout and immediately see the one in the top of the tree and soon spot another one on the chimney of the house being built at this location.

As I'm standing there checking them out, a new (to me, it's her third week on the job) biologist intern turns up with her aerial and scanners - a lot of the insight in the rest of this post is thanks to her as we chatted for a good 20 minutes as I watched and she watched and scanned. Every time I've talked to one of these folks, I've learned a whole lot.

Both birds took off from their perches and ended up on the cliff just below where we were standing. Here you can see one of the birds, #375, as she glides past.


Both birds ended up just below us on the cliffs, as can be seen in the photo below. They're both juvenile birds (the black heads give that away - they don't turn pink until they're older than three years), and they're both female (thanks to the intern for that piece of info). Bird #444 (on the left with the tag that has a 44 on it - the third four is kind of a mystery) is a condor that was born in the wild on the central coast, the ultimate definition of the success so far of the preservation process.

These two birds started making their way up the cliffs and heading for bits of trash which prompted the intern to go get a water pistol to shoo them away. Condors can apparently put 3lbs of food in their gullet at a time, but if there's trash in their gullets, it takes away from the gullet's capacity and therefore they have to eat more frequently and are therefore more likely to starve, so if the biologists see birds eating trash, they shoo them away.

One strike with the water pistol and the birds were on their way.

While all this was going on, a small pod of dolphins was swimming past the sea lion colony 300 odd feet below.


Once the two juvenile condors headed around the corner, I carried on with my ride.

Later on my way back up the coast, I spotted the intern waving her aerial and a couple of turns later, spotted a few condors flying just over my head. Back up at their normal location, there were a couple more, so I pulled over again.

After a false start, I realized that thanks to the approaching storm, the wind was blowing in a different direction, so I had to head around the corner and there were three (including one of the juveniles I'd seen earlier) soaring around, as can be seen below.


One final thing I learned more from the intern today - there are different types of tag. Some birds have two, some birds have three and some birds (the breeding females) have the most expensive solar powered GPS tags that send in the details of the bird's travels every couple of days.

Having got back this afternoon in the dry, it has started raining this evening, hopefully the current storm doesn't bring any hillsides down.

"Crashing" the AT&T Pro Am

This week sees the annual AT&T Pro Am golf tournament occurring out at Pebble Beach. I don't fully understand quite how it works, but they have a bunch of celebrities and other amateurs playing with the pros, but yet it's still a PGA championship event and part of the PGA tour - quite how they separate it all out, I don't know.

What I do know is that the weather this morning was wet first thing, so I stayed in bed and read a book (yes, you read that right - a book!). By about 10am, the roads were fairly dry, so I decided I'd go for a bicycle ride as the weather forecast was hinting that it was now or never for this weekend and dry weather.

As the hills are too wet for mountain biking, I rode along the coast. 17 Mile Drive was closed to tourist traffic, but they let bikes in with no problem. I thought I'd cycle to Pebble Beach and see if you could see anything without a ticket.

You couldn't, lots of rent-a-cops guarding all the entrances, but this tournament takes place over three courses at the same time, and one of the three, Spyglass Hill, is near 17 mile drive closer to Monterey, so on my ride back, I ventured up the road towards Spyglass Hill and was able to get close to the action whilst still being on a public (ish - it's the 17 mile drive area after all).

I was able to take the photo below of two guys waiting to tee off - I didn't recognize their names or anything. Further back down the hill I had to wait at a crossing as some other golfers (again, didn't recognize names) and the fans following them crossed the road to get to the next tee.

Interestingly enough, the crowds were quite light - not sure if it was the weather, the economy or the fact that the golfers are spread across three courses, but it looked like it was a good tournament to go spectate at. There were also a fair few signs indicating that in 2010, the US Open will be at Pebble Beach, I imagine that'll be a lot busier.

On the way back, it tried to rain on me a couple of times, and the sky was looking vaguely ominous, so I stopped at Asilomar and snapped this shot.

In the end, the showers died out again and I was able to get a quick motorcycle ride in during the afternoon too, though the roads were damp here and there, so it was a gentle ride.

Cool Surf in the Morning

I was out running this morning soon after sunrise. On the way back from Pacific Grove to Monterey, the waves were up again and looked pretty cool back lit by the sun rising over Monterey.

So I stopped running and snapped this photo when the next set of waves rolled through. Then I carried on the run and completed the 10k I had planned to run.

High Surf Advisory

We've had rain for the last few days and the original forecast for today was mainly rainy. I had planned accordingly and had a raft of English football games lined up to watch as the heavens opened outside.

Of course, weather forecasting out in CA is about as accurate as it is back in the homeland, which means not very accurate at all.

The day dawned sunny and remained so all day long. However, there was a high surf advisory in effect. Those two conditions combined convinced me to go for a bicycle ride along the coast to see how high the surf actually was.

The sun was warm, the surf was somewhat high and there was a breeze. What this meant in reality is that I had a good ride, stayed plenty warm and ended up encrusted in salt.


The above photo, taken at Fanshell Beach on 17 mile drive doesn't really do the surf justice, but then photos of these types of event rarely do. I did see otters, seals, whales and deer and really did enjoy the warm sun, so the fact that I had to clean the salt of my sunglasses lenses three times was a minor inconvenience.