Friday morning we shut down the house and headed to LAX. Despite a disorganized boarding queueing procedure from Air Canada, the actual flight was not full and we ended up with an empty seat next to us. However, the flight was delayed for about a half hour due to a “maintenance procedure” that prolonged our […]
Visiting the King of Shores
I posted a bit ago about how we’d gone back to Shaw’s Cove for the first time in five years. Part of that was because we’d visited La Jolla Shores on one day down and back trips in 2020 and 2021. Then no swimming at all anywhere in 2022 or 2023. So while it had […]
Getting it right
A month ago we returned to Shaw’s Cove after a 5 year drought to find out that we’d been snorkeling to the wrong side all along. A few coves south lay the Laguna Beach Marine Life Refuge, where most of the juvenile leopard sharks learn to drive. Last time all our friends cancelled on us, […]
On the 1,640th day of hiding, Covid found me
Yeah, the C word. Somehow modern humans found a way to come up with a worse C word than what we already tiptoed around (except in the UK, where it’s cute and sassy for Ricky Gervais to say it!) prior to 2020. So why are we not going back to the cove this weekend? I […]
The Return to Greatness
I didn’t realize until I was post-processing the photos from a short trip to Orange County this past weekend that we’d not visited Shaw’s Cove for a full five years. You see, after 2019 things got weird. Things got weird for almost every aspect of everyone’s lives, but going to the beach suffered too. Technically […]
Spending Independence Day with their Former Dependent
For a few years mom’s heard about the light show that we observe from our roof in the hills of Northeast Los Angeles every July 4th. This year she decided to visit, bringing my father along for the first time in over two years. Mandatory disclaimer time: yes, we’re still the lone two people on […]
Maui Wowie
On Saturday we woke up dark and early before the sun in order to catch our Uber to LAX before 7am. We were flying southwest and had checked in the day before right at the buzzer, the instant we were allowed to, but still ended up in C group. When we finally lined up we […]
The City of (not sun) Light
Our train arrived in Paris after sunset and we tried to use the “easy” subway system we experienced in London and Brussels but were quickly stymied by a glitchy machine that wouldn’t keep English selected past the initial screen. Kind of a problem for figuring out what to buy. Belgium even had a guy walking […]
They Should all be Belgian Fries Instead
We reached Brussels before sunset, perfect for checking out the Bourse Christmas Market. We’d picked the right lodging in some ways and the worst in others. The hotel was right next to the market and the hub of the city, but it was also somehow very loud at night with clanging and banging and strange […]
The Other Half
For many years Sam has wanted to visit the famous Christmas Markets in Europe. For many years I’ve wanted to at least set foot in the country where just under half my DNA originated (at least after the walk out of Africa where almost everyone’s originated). Dad’s half I connected with in Bavaria in 2016, […]