Slacker

Yes, I haven't been doing nothing.

We had car week (which was awesome, though potentially car overload).

We had Condor clean up week.

We've had wildfires.

I'm still enjoying the Ducati every chance I get.

Work had a pleasant reversal of fortune.

And I'm sure many other things occurred too.

I do plan on blogging about them all at some stage - though maybe this is that blog entry.

I did paddle (English style - wading in to the ocean) today thanks to the warmest day of the summer so far.

From car week - the Tour d'Elegance

Plan C - Let's Go Whale Watching!

Plan A - my friend John was going to come down, we were going to go to Laguna and watch the historic race cars practice for next weekend's races - then go on a pub crawl.

Plan A failed when John realized he had tickets for a concert back up in the bay area - the pub crawl will be rescheduled.

Plan B - go mountain biking then check in on the historic race cars.

I was all set for Plan B until Plan C came along.

Plan C dates back to Thursday - I amazingly enough saw both Humpback and Blue whales from the house! Apparently blues were somewhat common within the bay on Thursday - I did wonder whether a whale watching trip should be in order for the weekend.

Then I got an email from my friend Pete - he and my other friend Ali had decided to go whale watching on Saturday and wanted to know if I wanted to join them - hmmm - this could be Plan C.

After a couple of minutes of mulling, I went for Plan C and booked myself on the same trip as Ali and Pete - turned out to be the right choice, though it didn't start out like that as Saturday morning started off foggy, and for the first hour or so of the trip, remained that way.

We saw a couple of Dall's porpoises briefly and encountered a small pod of Risso's dolphins in the mist, and then it all got great as we punched through to the other side of the fog bank.

We were surrounded by whales - mainly humpback (probably around 50 or so) and some blues (10 or so), all feeding on an apparent abundance of krill. We got to spend a fair while in the midst of all these whales before we had to head home.

The icing on this already bountiful cake was getting to see lunge feeding for the first time (the whale hits the surface with its mouth open swallowing gallons of water teeming with krill).


The cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake was encountering a leatherback turtle on the way back to Monterey - so we got to see the largest creature on the planet (the blue whale) and the largest sea turtle (the leatherback) all on the same trip.

Overall a great trip!

For the full set of photos, click here.

Tuesday Night Photos

Well, let's start with the weather - it was fantastic today. After a few weeks of lots of fog, today (and yesterday apparently, but I was in San Jose, so didn't notice) was great. The fog burnt off while I was out running this morning (ie, around 8:30am) and it was sunny and warm the rest of the day.

The official Monterey high temp of the day was 69 degrees (F) - apparently Monterey hasn't officially hit 70 since mid June - but I could live with today's temps every day for sure.

When I was out on my run I noticed that the harbor had hundreds of jellyfish in it.

So, this evening, the weather was gorgeous, the harbor was full of jellyfish and it's one day before a full moon - time for a wander with the point and shoot (P&S) camera .

First, time to take some photos of the jellyfish - some of the bigger ones were about 2 feet in diameter, and I saw one (didn't manage to get the camera out in time) that was 3 feet in diameter - looked to be a different species.

In the photo below, we have a small (normal) one with one of the bigger ones swimming below.

After that, it was "hey, what time's the moon rising". A quick surf on the iPhone later and apparently, the moon was due to rise just after 7:30pm. As it was around 7pm at the time, I had time to go grab some spring rolls from the Farmer's Market downtown - three chicken and crab (and I had no allergic reaction to the crab - maybe the chicken to crab ratio is so high that I'm impervious) spring rolls later and I'm on Fisherman's Wharf just after 7:30pm

A few minutes later and the moon is rising above the hills and directly above the old Del Monte hotel - time to snap away (that's the municipal wharf in the foreground).


After that happened, I started making my way home, looking for more photo opportunities, next I managed to get low enough to the water to get the moon close to the roofs of the restaurants on Fisherman's Wharf.


A few hundred yards further on and I get a nice view of the boats in the harbor and a different view of the municipal wharf with the moon in it (the moon was still rising - I couldn't stop it!)

Finally, I made it home and noticed on the way up the steps to the front door that there was a nice clean raccoon print in the dirt/mold/moss growing on the front steps - no idea when it was made (though it must be recent).

T'was a fun evening - and the forecast is that the weather stays that way for a few days now (apart from Thurdsday, when apparently the fog will be back in full force).

A Condor Free Weekend Update

Let's start with Saturday - met up with a couple of friends and we went mountain biking at Wilder Ranch, just north of Santa Cruz.

We had a fun time despite Jason's gears getting out of whack and Danny's shock blowing a seal near the end of the ride.

In this first photo, there are actually real people, and one of them is even me - how amazing is that in one of my blog posts!

Here Jason and I commiserate on the state of his bike's gears - we're at the bottom of the Enchanted Loop - a great piece of single track that drops down over lots of Redwood tree roots to the bottom (where the photo was taken) before emerging up a short-ish rather steep ride back to the start of the loop.

Overall, we did a 12 mile ride over various trails and loops in Wilder Ranch.


As has been a trend on recent mountain bike rides, we came across a snake at one stage - though this one was tiny.

In the photo below, you can see Danny and Jason and the snake (clue, look at the two holes in the trail in the bottom left of the photo - the snake is poking out of the right hand side hole).


On to Sunday! The last couple of weeks have seen the traditional summer weather pattern in the extreme - lots of fog and morning drizzle. I've ended up using my wiper blades in the car every time I've driven to San Jose the last two weeks.

This kind of weather, combined with it being the height of tourist season and folks such a Gateau visiting recently means that the Ducati has been sitting the garage.

However, today, the fog burned back off the shore enough that weather wise, the time was right for a blast. Tourist traffic of course is just bound to be bad, but I knew that before I headed out.

It was a good blast, and although Highway 1 was pretty full with tourists, most of the few times I found some clear road happened to be where the road was fun.

Soon after I left town I noticed smoke in the sky, which means that there's a wildfire somewhere.

In the photo below, taken at my turn around point, you can see the smoke.

One interesting note about the turnaround point. I normally grab a bottle of water and some sort of candy bar (typically a Mounds - which is basically a Bounty Bar in English English - or today's choice, a Twix). The little store there is fairly pricey, but you can't blame them as they're in the middle of nowhere.

However today, the woman behind the till only changed me $2 for both the water and the candy - I pointed out to her that I had both and she repeated the price and noted that I'm frequently there buying stuff on a Sunday and that I should have a nice day. I think she remembered my squeaky boots (the motorcycle boots have all this ankle protection and it all squeaks when I walk).

On the way back up, even though the main fog bank was still a couple of miles off shore, little bits of mist was forming next to the road side, particularly once I got up into the area the Condors tend to habitat. I didn't see any Condors today, but the photo below shows you the general scene, with Highway 1 on the right going north up the Big Sur coastline.

I think it's impossible to not enjoy a motorcycle ride on roads like this.