Dean, Paul, and I took a walk this afternoon down to the beach and around the point to view Randy’s house from the bottom of the cliff.  Unfortunately, we were only able to see the back fence and a small part of the roof.  The back yard is approximately 85 feet above the shore and the house sits quite a way back from the edge of the cliff.  My little digital camera doesn’t take very good pictures at that distance, but Randy got some very good shots of us with his 6 megapixel camera.  Some samples (warning, large pictures):

Climbing to the shore, about 200 feet away.
Standing on the rocks, about 400 yards.

The camera is a Canon EOS Digital Rebel.  Very slick.  The unit goes for under $1,000 ($200 less if you get just the body with no lenses) and allows you to use Canon’s SLR lenses.  I just might have to get one of those.

The primary purpose of this weekend is a reunion for five of us who hung out together back in the early 1980s in Grand Junction, Colorado.  My friends Randy, Dean, Mike, and Paul had known each other for several years before I met them in 1982 when I wandered into Randy’s computer store and TV repair shop.  (The TV repair business paid for his computer habit.)  The five of us did a lot of things together for the two years I lived there, and we’ve kept in touch to varying degrees since then.  By this evening, everybody had arrived and we started talking over old times and discussing the things we’ve done in the past 20 years.  The beer flowed and the puns flew, and we had a grand old time playing poker and Mexican Train (a dominos game that I’d never played before).  I’m not sure what our wives and the children thought of our antics, but we sure enjoyed it.

Debra and I got up this morning to go tide pooling.  We walked down to the beach and then out onto the rocks to view the sea life that gets left in the holes, nooks, and crannies when the tide goes out.  There’s always a wide assortment of sea urchins and sea anemones, plus rock crabs, striped crabs, hermit crabs, mussels and barnacles.  Limpets, sea slugs, and starfish are less common, but we saw a few of each.  The thing in the picture at left is a limpet, or so Randy’s Audubon book leads me to believe.

The tide pools are protected by law, but that doesn’t stop people from picking things out of them to take home.  Taking shells and other dead debris is one thing, but many take crabs or small fish for their aquariums and some even pull off the mussels and other shellfish to make fish stew.  While Debra and I were hopping from rock to rock trying to avoid stepping on anything alive, others were running straight through the mussel fields, stepping in the pools, and generally destroying the sea life wherever they tread.  I even saw one guy trying to peel a starfish off a rock.  Sometimes I wish I could just smack some sense into these people. 

I always like to fly west.  We left Austin at noon today and arrived at John Wayne airport (Orange County) about 3:30.  By 5:00, we were kicking back on the porch overlooking the Pacific Ocean and sipping a cold Corona.  This should be a relaxing few days.

I’ve always liked the weather in southern California but I seriously dislike the traffic, smog, overpopulation, and weird politics.  It’d be different if I could afford to live in Laguna Beach where the population density isn’t nearly as high as other parts of southern California and the sea breeze blows the smog inland.  I’d seriously consider moving out here if I didn’t have to get up and fight the traffic every morning on the way to work.  There’s still the weird politics to contend with, and I’d have to spend a little more time before deciding whether I like the people.  I’ve been spoiled by the casual friendliness that’s part of central Texas culture and I don’t know if I could give that up.  Most of the people I met “on the street” in Laguna weren’t very friendly at all.  I realize that the 4th of July weekend is the height of tourist season and the locals are tired of all the transients clogging up the streets and the beaches.  Still, that’s no reason to be surly and downright rude.