The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

Not a care, few helmets, talking on phone, kids loving it, what a cool way to get around.

I tell you, when it comes to ingesting fish and other stuff that started life in the sea, then the west coast of Mexico is hard to beat. In San Blas, if you stop, close your eyes, spin around and open them again, then you are facing a fish restaurant.

These restaurants are rarely more than shacks with palm roofs and earth floors. The cooking is done over a very slow burning grill, more smoking than grilling really. The menu is look at the grill and choose what you want.

The market is overwhelmed with fish stalls.

I go to an upmarket restaurant, one that has a menu.

You look out onto the ocean. Frigate birds and pelicans drift by. The meal, with 2 mugs of homemade limonade, comes to $8:00.

I fix up a meeting at the bridge for 7:00 am. They were to boat me around the estuary swamp land that surrounds San Blas. I am there at 6:45, still terrified of being late and thus unworthy. I sit in a cafe and order breakfast, refried beans, eggs, warm tortillas and Nescafe. By 7:15 no one has shown up. I start to sob into my refried beans. An older guy, riding by on a very beat up bike, comes to comfort me.

“I have boat, come. I not speak English!”

5 minutes later we are skimming over the estuary towards the swamp. Anyway, this reinforces my ever strengthening opinion that organization is grossly overrated, especially in Mexico. Not a criticism.

Incredible trip. Ricardo, for it is he, has a fantastic eye for birds and we see so, so many species. The photos are small selection. My biggest problem was that we got so close to the birds and reptiles that my big bird lens had too much magnification, allowing only close ups of heads or other body parts.

Thanks Ricardo!

Slow internet equals no posts. Happy New Year dear readers, a small but distinguished bunch!

I head off to San Blas in Nayarit, Mexico for a 6 week trip of hardcore birdwatching fun.

It takes me a week to get there. There is too much to say. The US and Mexico are huge and very scenic.

I burst into Mexico at a tiny place called Lukeville. For the first time I get all the documents for legal driving in Mexico. Normally everything is so chaotic that I give up and just drive – never been busted. About 15 miles South of the border there is a big shiny new building where I get my Temporary Importation Permit, my Tourist Card and insurance. I feel very old.

I drive down the west coast of Mexico. There is nothing here. I stay in a hotel in a Puerto Libertad.

Wifi? Non

ATM? Non

Gasolina? Non

There are a lot of fisher folk chopping up fish.

California, Arizona, Sonora, Sinaloa, Nayarit 2,300 miles. Well done truck! What is more the dreaded turnbuckles did not budge an iota. I settle into an idyllic camping spot in San Blas where I am only disturbed by coconuts thunking into the ground and by the grunting of White Faced Ibis that cluster around.

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!