I got up early, made my French roast coffee (black), observed from the video in the outdoor camera that my coyote came to visit last night around 3:30 a.m., got dressed and walked to the beach while it was still overcast and relatively cool.
It’s a hilly walk and I was already sore from a hard workout yesterday, but I kept going. I wanted to avoid the crowds that were sure to descend as soon as the sun came out.
Here’s a couple pics of a very flat Pacific Ocean, although it’s so crowded, I don’t think epic surf was anyone’s goal.
And then I saw this gem of sage advice on the sidewalk in front of the house where a couple of feral children reside. I know they’re little assholes because at one time I saw them throw rocks at their cat and I told their dad, who turned out to be a bigger asshole. Apple def didn’t fall far from the tree in their genetic pool. He didn’t respond in a kind manner when I told him he was successfully breeding future sociopaths.
It’s Easter Sunday and that always meant a traditional day hike or walk to the beach or a camping trip to the desert.
This year was a bit different because of the pandemic, isolating to protect ourselves and others from Covid-19.
But the beach always beckons. Well, not exactly the beach because it’s now closed, but non one can deprive me of a view of the magnificent Pacific Ocean.
My round-trip walk is about 6.5 miles, maybe a bit longer because I took a detour to include pics of Agua Hedionda Lagoon.
For those of you that didn’t get out for a walk today, here ya go!
It looks like an advert for a hallucinogenic (LSD) but that’s an ALTERED PERCEPTION haha. That’s just the way the light hit it. The sign really said “Beach closed.”
And just in case you didn’t take the hint, this signage made it extremely clear…
And if anyone is STILL clueless, this sign and caution tape is even more specific…
But here she is. Mother Nature. The Pacific Ocean. No waves. I bet a million dollars if there was a solid 4-6 swell, those waves would be packed. No one can keep a surfer from the water. That’s essential to life.
I took the long way home around our Agua Hedionda Lagoon. Pretty daisies, the lagoon, and the power plant off in the distance.
One of my favorite views; the lagoon and the ocean.
All the rain created a mudslide on Adams, the street around the lagoon.I’ve never before seen Adams closed at Park due to a landslide! Crazy times we’re in.
And finally back home. There’s really no place like home. Dorothy was right.
I walked to the beach and back, about a six-mile round trip, and captured this quirky pic with my phone of the almost Supermoon over Agua Hedionda Lagoon.
Photo by Enchanted Seashells
Sunday’s full moon will bring the biggest and brightest of the year so far. December 3rd’s Full Cold Moon is the only supermoon of 2017.
A supermoon occurs when a full moon coincides with the perigee of the moon’s orbital cycle. A perigee is the point at which the moon moves closest to Earth during orbit. Because the orbit is not a perfect circle, this means the moon typically sits anywhere between 252,000 and 226,000 miles from Earth. That’s a difference of 26,000 miles—longer than the entire circumference of the Earth. (newsweek.com/supermoon-2017-full-cold-moon-728118)
Look, a BEACH BUNNY! I saw this adorable creature today at Tamarack Beach in Carlsbad.
There are normally a billion ground squirrels that live on the bluffs, but I rarely see a rabbit, so this was a special event for sure.
Last week the temperature here was 105 degrees; today it was drizzly and in the low 60s, so I decided to take a little walk to the beach. I went the long way ’round and ended up walking about nine miles.
It’s pretty much downhill to the ocean-super easy- but that means it’s all uphill on the way home, so I’m pleasantly tired.
When I got home, I checked for mail and looky here what I found!!! A sample of Chanel’s new fragrance, Garbrielle, accompanied by the most amazing affirmation…just what I needed right about now.
“I decided who I wanted to be, and that is who I am.”
DAMN RIGHT, COCO. You got that right, GURRL.
After enduring the shittiest of all shitshows of shitty years, swimming my way up and out and slowly being pieced back together, reforming and rising from the ashes of despair and pain, THIS IS A SIGN.
As I tapped out the letters that spell “despair”, I wanted to make sure it conveyed exactly how I felt so looked up the definition and nodded my head in silent agreement, “the complete loss or absence of hope”. YUP. Nuff said.
The little perfumed card is propped up on my bedside table, and wonder of all wonders, there are two owls hooting to each other in my backyard.
The Full Sturgeon Moon rises tonight. A perfect time to set intentions and believe in magic!
I wonder if these intense lunar energies had anything to do with a baby gray whale who lost his way in our little beach town entering Agua Hedionda Lagoon from the ocean.
I happened to be in the right place at the right time with my lovely Canon and a decent lens and was lucky enough to snap these photos.
SeaWorld came to assess the situation and told me that he didn’t seem to be in distress; he was spouting every couple of minutes or so, which is completely normal, and he was rubbing his body against the rocks to try and dislodge all of the barnacles.
Gray whales are more heavily infested with a greater variety of parasites and hitchhikers than any other cetacean. Imagine carrying a load of hitchhikers on your back that can weigh several hundred pounds! Gray whales do this all their lives. Who’s riding, and why?
Big Batches of Barnacles
Those patchy white spots you see on gray whales are barnacles. Grays carry heavy loads of these freeloaders. The barnacles are just along for the ride. They don’t harm the whales or feed on the whales, like true parasites do. Barnacles don’t serve any obvious advantage to the whales, but they give helpful lice a place to hang onto the whale without getting washed away by water. Barnacles find the slow-swimming gray whale a good ride through nutrient-rich ocean waters.
As larvae, the whale barnacles swim freely in the ocean. But they time their reproduction so the larvae are swimming in the water of the nursery lagoons when the baby whales are born. Then the larvae jump aboard the whales arriving in the lagoons–as well as the newborn calves—to start their lives as hitchhikers. The most common barnacles on gray whales are host-specific, which means they occur on no other whales. One type of barnacle, Cryptolepas rhachianecti, attaches only to gray whales. Once this type of small crustacean has settled on “its own” gray, the barnacle spends its whole life hanging onto that whale.
Life is good if you’re a barnacle. Snug inside their hard limestone shells, the barnacles stick out feather feet to comb the sea and capture plankton and other food for themselves as the whales swim slowly along. As the young whales grow, the barnacle clusters grow too. Gradually the barnacles form large, solid white colonies. The colonies appear as whitish patches, especially on the whale’s head, flippers, back and tail flukes.
Whale biologists look at the pattern of barnacle clusters in order to tell individual grays apart. This is possible because no two barnacle clusters, like no two human’s fingerprints, are alike!
When the tide changed, he finally made it out beyond the jetty waves; hopefully he finds his mom and doesn’t wander into shallow water again!
Just another amazing day in paradise. So much magic and beauty to be grateful for!
Whale or SHARK?
My own little embellished-with-sparkles-gray whale rock is much happier barnacle-free, don’t you think?
Son, daughter-in-law, and Theo are in San Fran for the summer, so I flew up to spend a week basking in the joy of a three-month-old baby boy.
Today we took Theo on his first beach outing at Ocean Beach to attend the Nor Cal Corgi Con 2016 Summer Event. DIL is from the UK and her love for corgis is to be expected since Queen Elizabeth is a Corgi mum.
Personally, I’m more of a Border Collie girl, but all dogs are wonderful, so I knew it would be fun.
It was untypically hot and sunny; the sand was a BIT too hot for the poor dogs’ paws I thought, but all in all, it was a fun outing!
Disabled Corgi with a dedicated mom!
GoPro Corgi!
I can’t really believe they bred a Border Collie with a Corgi but here’s the proof…a Borgi??
It’s been a year since my son’s boyhood friend tragically died in Hawaii from a surfing accident. His body was never recovered. I wanted to take a moment to remember this bright shiny boy and the joy he brought to everyone he met.
From Kirk’s Facebook page
The loss of a child cannot be fathomed.
Who could ever be prepared for their child to die before them? There must be endless tears and sorrow and sadness and a forever and unrelenting pain.
For me, it’s a pure and simple matter.
If I never heard my son’s voice again or was never able to wrap my arms around him, I don’t know if I could take another breath.
…On Wednesday, November 13, 2013, Kirk Passmore, 32, a passionate big-wave surfing veteran and Hawaii resident, is presumed to have drowned and as of today his body has not been found.
Although extensive searches have been conducted in the area, he’s been missing since the day of the accident and is presumed drowned.
It was all caught on video. This is the video of his last wave. Somehow he never made it out alive.
His dad wanted the his final ride shared with as many people as possible.
Maybe you heard about this. Maybe you were watching the news on television and you paid scant attention to the story while you were on the computer or eating dinner.
Maybe you read it on the internet and saw the pictures or the video.
You probably thought to yourself or even said out loud, ” Wow, that’s really sad.”
Kirk Passmore.
Why am I writing about him?
Yes, it’s true that he was someone’s child, brother, friend.
But he was also one of my son’s friends.
They went to school together.
He’s the first (and so far, only) of my son’s friends to die.
Kirk had the biggest smile and the reddest hair. Everyone called him “Fanta” or “Red”.
He was one of the many boys I’d chauffeur around, packed like sardines in the back seat, all gangly legs and arms, endlessly stuffing their mouths — bottomless pits of growing boy bodies– with the cookies and smoothies and other snacks cheerfully provided to everyone who came over.
A carful of boys talking about school, skateboarding; laughing, always smiling, always a thank you for the ride as he slammed the car door.
“See ya, Jason.”
A flash of bright red hair lit the way as he ran up the walkway to his house.
But no more.
I bet for most of these boys – and I still call these thirty-somethings BOYS because to me they will always and forever be “the boys” or “the guys” — my son’s friends from Kelly Elementary, Valley Junior High, and Carlsbad High School — this is their first experience with death and subsequent thoughts of their own mortality.
I feel so badly for his family and his friends who are mourning him with candlelight vigils, surf paddle-outs, tributes, and memorials.
To honor Kirk, they’re handling their pain with grace and beauty.
One of them, artist Bryan Snyder, created a memorial wall in our town. If you’re ever in Carlsbad, check it out.
Bryan Snyder
Our deepest sympathies go out to Kirk’s family. Our hearts are heavy and we are so very, very sorry for their loss.
The Passmore family released the following statement:
Kirk was born February 11, 1981 in Orem, Utah. He grew up in Carlsbad, California and graduated from Carlsbad High School in 1999 where he was a member of the school’s surf team for four years. As a youth, he was active in pop warner football, little league baseball, and basketball but his love was in surfing.
He started coming to Hawaii when he was 14 and was an experienced and expert surfer. He was not new to big wave surfing, having surfed most of the well-known big wave locations, including Waimea Bay, Sunset Beach, Pipeline and outer reefs on the north shores of Hawaii. He was a familiar face at Todos Santos off Baja California. He also surfed Maverick’s in northern California and Puerto Escondido in Mainland Mexico. He spent 3 years in the southern coast of France. He moved to the north shore of Hawaii full-time in the spring of 2012.
Kirk was a part owner of Third Stone Surfboards in Waialua, Hawaii and a Manager at Bonzai Sushi in Haleiwa, Hawaii.
He is survived by his mother, Diane Passmore (Orem, Utah), father and step-mother, David and Karey Passmore (Sunset Beach, Hawaii), siblings, Alyson Adams (Highland, Utah); Merrily Roberts (Encinitas, California) and Matthew Passmore (serving an LDS mission in New York, New York).
The family wishes to thank the Coast Guard, the City and County of Honolulu lifeguards and Fire Department who continue the search.
Even though it’s the beginning of December and was the fifth night of Hannukah, here in Southern California we enjoyed a brief summery Sunday before a massive winter storm barrels down the coast from Alaska.
A late afternoon beach walk in Carlsbad…magnificent sunset, boats, seagulls flying home. Not such big waves, though I bet the winter storm will bring plenty of surf energy.
Maybe that’s why I get so excited for the WordPress snow to appear.
It’s the only snow I see unless we go skiing!
These photos have not been retouched. This is exactly what it looked like. AMAZING, right?
I’ve never before seen Adams closed at Park due to a landslide! Crazy times we’re in.
#wordlesswednesday #curlyhair #santaanawinds #beach #SoCal #windy
Enchanted Seashells | Princess Rosebud 