The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

One of the things that I enjoy most about being back in California is that it is coldish. These means I get to wear wool. I love wearing wool.

For recreation, James and I go for a tramp on Christmas morning. We head for Point Reyes again to play with elephant seals and collect mushrooms. Weather not so good but the rest is amazing.

We hit the beach, which is strewn with huge seals celebrating Xmas.

I mean, isn’t it wonderful that 40 mins away from the house, I can cuddle elephant seals as much as I want.

James is a super skilled mushroom collector. He spies loads of oyster mushrooms growing on trees.

Anyway a great day’s ramble. Thanks James for mushroom mastery.

https://www.truckcampermagazine.com/news/top-10-truck-camper-articles-of-2019/

Everyone loves a good comedy.

So, once Xmas has waved goodbye, I will head South on a long trip to San Blas, Mexico. Read all about it: https://www.10000birds.com/san-blas-a-mexican-treasure.htm I hope to spend a month there; watching, photographing birds and eating lots of fish.

I start to pimp the truck to make sure she can master the many thousands of  lang Scots miles, the mosses, waters, slaps, and styles, that lie between San Francisco and San Blas.

The radio volume control has stopped working and I splash out on a new sound system.

One of the biggest difficulties of driving the truck plus camper is that you have very poor rear vision. The camper is too wide for the standard mirrors to see around. Who are you going call? Yup, Amazon. I order up 2 extension mirrors that I arrive the next day. Amazon is incredible. No matter what obscure knick knack you want, it arrives on your doorstep usually the next day. I showed Jeff Bezos around SLAC once. He did not seem very interested but was polite.

I check all the fluids and James cleans out the air filter.

The truck is in really good shape and raring to go.

I zoom down to Stanford.

James and I bike down to Salesforce Park. This is a long park, smack in the middle of the city, built 4 floors up on top of a bus station roof. Amazing place. https://www.1843magazine.com/upfront/postcard-from-silicon-valley/at-san-franciscos-salesforce-park-a-city-drifts-into-the-clouds

Happy Holidays everyone!

I head North looking for adventure. The first stop is Four Wheel Campers in Woodland. They greet me like family. I have some notoriety since my camper fell off the back of the truck in the high mountain desert. https://thequietripple.com/2018/12/05/thank-you-jesus/ They immediately fix some small niggles on the camper and charge me not a penny. Good people.

I then drive up to Colusa. There is a great wildlife reserve just outside town that I will wallow in. https://www.fws.gov/refuge/colusa/ I spend the night in a riverside park in Colusa.

Colusa has known better days. The main transport route from San Francisco to the goldfields was the Sacramento River. Colusa marked the end of the usual navigable stretch. Sometimes you could get as far up as Red Bluff but Colusa was the deal. Big fortunes were made in transport. A Mr Lee from China did so. He was a great supporter of Sun Yet-sen, the Father of the Nation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat-sen. Sun Yet-sen visited Lee in Colusa and his daughter lived there for many years. So there you go.

The weather is dreich at best and maybe even gruamach. Difficult for photography.

I then move to the nearby Sacramento National Wildlife Reserve https://www.fws.gov/refuge/sacramento/ . Tens of thousands of Snow Geese, Ross’s Geese and White Fronted Geese spend the winter here. By the time I get there it is getting dark and after a quick tour around, I head off to Black Butte lake to spend the night.

Back to Sacramento Reserve but still very gloomy.

I then head over to the coast, stopping at the Sacramento Valley Museum in Williams https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g33272-d2108437-Reviews-Sacramento_Valley_Museum-Williams_California.html. It is closed for the Winter but the ebullient Dixie is just leaving as I arrive. She volunteers to give me a tour anyway. It is such fun. She is super enthusiastic and very knowledgeable. She is the one who told me about Sun Yet-sen. One of the best things about being in a truck in obscure parts of the State is that, more often than not, there is no phone signal and accordingly no internet. I had completely forgotten about the UK election until Dixie demands an in depth analysis of the Tory landslide. I do not know what to say. Things ain’t what they used to be.

I drive on for hours through huge Sequoia forests in the pouring rain until I finally hit the coast and spend a cosy night in the parking lot of the general store in Elk. Off very early and what do I see just outside the tiny town? Elk.

It is a beautiful day and I slowly make my way down the magnificent Pacific coastline.

Point Reyes always delivers and this time it was coming onto a beach littered with Elephant Seals.

California is amazing! So much country, so much wildlife.

I drive back to San Francisco and enter over the Golden Gate Bridge.

I never tire of the road.

Well, a major ingredient in the happiness recipe of my life in San Francisco, is a resident parking permit. With one, life is happiness and joy. Without one, life is misery and pain.

I live on Fell and across the road there is the Panhandle park. This gives a kilometer long stretch of parking space along the side of the park. Prize real estate! With a permit you can always find a place, more often than not, just across the road from the house.

The permit is yearly, running out on the 31st of December. The SFMTA sends a letter in November suggesting you renew, which is easily done online. I realize I have not received this letter. Panic! I have been blacklisted, I have been outsidered, I have been excluded, I have been refused.

I rip out my Senior bus pass and take the first bus down to Van Ness.

I fully expect a couple of hours wait before I can plead my case but I am the only customer. I fill in a simple form. The guy gives me my permit. It takes 5 minutes.

The 21 bus rushes me back home, where I stick on the permit with trembling fingers.

So important.

James and I head north to the forests on the Pacific coast. We plunge in just south of Point Reyes. There is no path but James is an inveterate forest man after decades of mushroom hunting. It is raining.

The forest is beautiful; dripping wet, with a vast variety of trees, sequoia, spruce, buckeye, holm oak, laurel and many others that I do not recognize but James does.

The forest is unmanaged and we clamber over dead growth and follow deer tracks.

We follow a little stream deeper and deeper into the forest. So wonderful, absolutely no sign of humanity, complete wilderness so close to the city.

The only noise comes from the stream backed up by the hammering and squawking of woodpeckers.

We march in a couple of miles and then we march out again, like the Duke of York.

Fabulous walk, more exercise than I have done in the last 4 months in Okinawa. It is too hot and humid over there.

We then go to Tony’s Seafood Restaurant on the shore of Tomales Bay. We have a memorable meal.

Full of fresh air and fresh seafood, we rumble the truck through the mist and rain back to San Francisco. Great day!

Topher White is an old friend, we worked together at Stanford, ITER and OIST. He is an amazingly smart and creative guy. He started up Rainforest Connection (RWC). Check the web site: https://rfcx.org Donate lots of money. I was lightly involved at the early stages.

Minutes after I landed in San Francisco, he calls me. Can I come and be interviewed for a Netflix documentary early tomorrow morning? I show up at his garage workshop. It is crammed with film crew folks.

Topher talks and I nod my head.

Topher then asks if I can come down to a studio in the Mission that evening to do an interview for Huawei, who are a big sponsor for RWC.

Anyway, both crews, one from Boston, one from LA, were amazingly professional and I imagine, amazingly expensive. We had a lot of fun.

Back in the USA!

Since my Mother died, my friend Kiyuna san has been asking for photos of her.

Sister Rosy recently sent me some good ones. JPGs you can upload to a web site, go to any Combini at any time of the day or night and print them on photographic paper. Amazing.

Anyway I give him the photos on Saturday and today he comes by as I am settling the boat in for the winter and presents me with a beautifully wrapped package.

He has made a shrine graphic in honor of my dear departed Mummy.

He believes fervently in reincarnation and tells me that I must not be sad as my mother has already been reborn and is starting on another remarkable life.

So, I leave Okinawa for several months on Wednesday morning. I put on all covers, sling fenders, check mooring lines and generally tidy up. She is in good shape and I have no worries about leaving her. Also Kiyuna san will keep his eyes on her. ” I have more eyes than teeth.” he asserts.

Mitsuda sensei has finished my sail cover! Although not as essential as the cockpit cover, it is an important piece of kit as uncovered sails, exposed to the ferocity of the Okinawan sun, soon wither and die.

The hallmark of Mitsuda san’s work is very high quality materials and meticulous attention to detail.

He is determined that the minimum number of photons strike my sail and so has designed elaborate flaps that protect the area around the topping lift. These are held in place with Velcro, which in Japanese is Magic Tapeu.

I have an immense sense of security now that my boat is so well covered, like having lots of firewood stacked as winter approaches.

Anyway, I go down to the Toya fishing harbor very early on Sunday to buy a fat fish. This I intend to fry up on the boat as part of a picnic. Oh no! there are lots of Octupi that have just been caught. Who can resist fresh Octupus. Not me.

The idea is meet up with Mitsuda sensei, give him crazy amounts of money for the covers, go for a short sail and have a picnic, which now includes fresh octopus rather than fat fish.

We go sailing. It is a beautiful afternoon, with enough wind and calm seas. It is the last week of November but I am still in shorts and Tshirt. It must be 25 degrees.

We spend far too much time out on the water and it is 4:00 before we start the picnic. I suddenly lose my resolve to cook up a 5 kilo octopus on my boat stove, magnificent though she be.

No worries. We have plenty of food.

So, suddenly it is getting dark. Okubo san and I rouse ourselves from, post too much food, languor, we re-furl the sail and rig the cockpit cover and the sail cover. She does more work than me.

Ah, Okinawa in the twilight of the year

At 9:00 this morning, my doorbell rings. I open the door to find a grinning gentleman of about 60 standing there. We exchange ohayo gozaimasu and he then hands me a beautifully wrapped gift.

Luckily I did not refuse, thinking it was a scam, but accepted as gracefully as I could with lots of dozo yoroshiku onegaishimasu and aregato gozaimasu, as I realized he must be a new neighbor and was giving the gift as part of introducing himself.

He lives in 301. How sweet.

Inside the beautiful box are two cakes fashioned to look like slices through a tree trunk.

November in Okinawa is warm, sunny and cooler. I think after nearly a decade of living here that October and November are the best months.

The sunsets are more muted but, on the other hand, photographable from my balcony.

More sunset stuff late in the year.