Writing Wrongs

Last morning in Morro Bay, the plan was to take Hwy 1 up the coast to Hwy 46, and there to 101 with a stop for lunch somewhere.

Checked out of the motel a little before 10, made one false start along the embarcadero, forgetting that Hwy 1 is not on the coast at that point. GPS found it for me. Hwy 46 was quite a ways up there, but I knew that, and it was the well-designed road I expected it to be. A much safer route than the shorter Hwy 41. Since it's a true 55 mph all the way, not riddled with curves like 41, Hwy 46 only took a little bit longer to get to 101.

Somewhere along 101 my left eye started feeling irritated. Maybe I got some sunscreen on there when I applied it at a viewpoint on 46. Maybe it was an eyelash. Either way, I pulled off at some little town, long enough to use the water bottle as an eyewash. It seemed to work, but after another few minutes of driving the eye was stinging again. I had broken my best driving sunglasses on the final whale trip, and had bought replacements at a boutique and at Rite Aid, one of them grey UV ones the other amber polarized ones, both aviator style. I switched them, and that seemed to help.

King City was a stop for gas, the trip meter hit 300 miles, but it took 9 gallons.33 mpg, not very good for highway. The guage did not show the tank that low, it was not even down to 1/4. The gas station shared a parking lot with Denny's, so I had lunch there, after pulling my bottle of artificial tears out of the luggage and giving both eyes a couple of doses. By the time lunch was done, my eyes were fine.

Back on the road, between Gilroy and Morgan hill I was fading, but just taking an exit and slowing down, and stopping at some stop lights was enough to cure the highway hypnosis. And boosting the air conditioning because it was around 90° out there. Odd, the weather in the central valley was cooler than Silicon valley today.

Home, both cats tried to escape outside. Kaan came back in when I yelled at him, Domino never made it out the door, she is not very fast.

Unpacked, and spent the afternoon and evening processing the photos, which are now in several sets on Flickr:
Mission San Juan Bautista: http://www.flickr.com/photos/how3ird/sets/72157635165666708/

VisionQuest: http://www.flickr.com/photos/how3ird/sets/72157635159368937/ which includes one I think lemmozine will like:


Mission San Miguel: http://www.flickr.com/photos/how3ird/sets/72157635159784691/ and the photo I went for:


Morro Bay: http://www.flickr.com/photos/how3ird/sets/72157635159929323/ (a short set, which includes a Coast Guard boat with a sailboat lashed alongside)

Whales (and sea lions and lots of birds): http://www.flickr.com/photos/how3ird/sets/72157635160088481/ 

Hwy 46 viewpoint: http://www.flickr.com/photos/how3ird/sets/72157635168545822/

I also spent 25 minutes on chat with amazon.com because their system would not let me return the Fire HD. Last night I got to the point where I could print out a UPS label, but I didn't have a printer. Tonight I had a printer but it wouldn't get me to that point, it kept referring me to support. The bozoid on the other end of the chat did not understand anything, and spent way too much time between responses. Finally got it done, and will send that puppy back tomorrow.


And it's only 10:15.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
UPS, return the Kindle Fire
???

After doing some more research on Compact Flash cards, I was surprised to find out that Lexar and a couple of other high-end manufacturers have 1000x models. All I have in my collection are 266x and 133x. Looking at some of the numbers posted on various camera geek sites, 1000x is in the area of diminishing returns (my camera probably cannot write that fast) but 600x looked like a plan. After some digging, I found 633x CF cards on sale and ordered 4 of the 16GB ones. I'll use those before I use the SD cards. The trade-off here is monetary. 10 of the 16GB SD cards which have an equivalent speed of about 80x cost $130. 4 of the 633x 16GB cards are $170.

Class 10 speed is 6 MB/s, 633x is 95 MB/s. 
Costwise -  $1.30 a MB/s for the SD card, $1.79 a MB/s for the CF. Pretty close.

In raw mode, I get about 750 images per 16GB card. If I shoot as much as I usually do on trips, that'll be one card every 2-3 days. For 18 days. Yeah, I'll have more than I need.

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Today I did some laundry - shirts, and forgot about them while I went to the movies (MIB3-3D review is in the previous post). Loved it. Especially loved that there was actual acting.

After, I parked myself at Starbucks, and even though it was 85° outside there was shade, and a much better view of passing eye candy, of which there was a lot, it being a hot day and lots of people going to the flicks. Walked to Microcenter to see what they had in the way of CF cards, and "not hardly anything" was one way to describe it and "what they did have was way over-priced" would be another.

Home, too warm for the patio, but the aircon kicked in every now and then, which kept things cool enough. I am remembering that in Thailand a 76° day is called Winter.

Watched an episode of Eureka, and am finally starting to find Felicia Day annoying. Or her character, at least.

Finally remembered to put the shirts in the dryer, and eventually take them out and hang them up. Now the colored stuff is in the dryer. One nice thing about the apartment, the people upstairs get the heat from the dryer, not me.

Forgot to do so many things today, like take care of the boxes in the bedroom and take pictures of my eyes. But I did remember to box up the broken VCR to send back to the eBay seller who obviously did not check it like he said; and T-shirts to nephew and sister and their respective spice.

A lot of folks liked the photo of my dad I'd posted on FB, so here it is:

4/11/2008 at the Seattle homestead. If it wasn't crosswords it was sodoku, or an annotated book from the Old Testament - he had the complete set from Soncino. If that date is right, in this photo he was 84. Hmm. That does not sound right. But yeah, that was the last week they lived in the house. They moved to a senior apartment complex on 4/15/2008. Dad did not like Father's Day, he thought Mother's Day was enough.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Maybe BASFA.

  

It was billed as continental breakfast. but I am unfamiliar with this particular continent. Coffee was the only thing to drink. There were a variety of tiny pre-wrapped muffins and things which looked like they may at one time have been scones.

Last night when I went to Samy's Camera's web site, it said the SBA branch is closed Sundays. But a full page ad in the local weekly said they would be open at 11. GPS showed me a novel way to get there, so I shuffled off. A wrong turn put me in front of a huge Salvation Army hospice. Found Samy's at 10:50, the door was open so I went in. They were open but the staff was doing morning busy work, which they were eager to get out of. They did not have the rare Nikon lens which was my first choice, but they did have a nice Tamron, all Tanrons were tax-free for the wekend, and this came with  $100 rebate. Bought it and wore it home.

It was still cold and foggy, I figured I would need something sweat-shirt-like for the afternoon sailing. Took the overcrowded 25-cent trolley to 1 block shy of the waterfront. Both clothing stores had something, but the cheap one was pug ugly so I bought the regular price one.

Took some pix at the skateboard park, which is  now overrun with scooters and those obnoxious little bikes. I watched many adults with no skillz. And just as many scooter children likewize. There was one young girl on a skateboard who was practicing the same jump over and over again, usually doing fine until after the landing, when her board would go one way, and her, another.  I think she was the most talented one there.

Had lunch where I should have had dinner last night. Very fast and attentive service. Fish & chips had horrible cole slaw, scanty but delicious fish & okay fries. Great tartar sauce.

Back to the motel, arranged my stuff for the sail, had a lie-down (not a nap, just to recover from all the walking). Took 2 Bonine, and walked to the harbor. Got my boarding pass, and was buttonholed by the owner until the next couple arrived. He can talk a lot.

I had half an hour to kill, so I had a coke from one of the local holes in the wall, hit the restrooms in the maritime museum, and  went down to the boat.

Lovely 42-foot sailboat with mizzen, main and spinnaker. We left on time, and instead of sailing after we left the harbor, we went full throttle on the engine. That thing really moves.

About 2 hours to the turn-back point and we had not seen a single marine mammal. Okay, one seal.  Captain cut the engines, had the sails put up, but there was no wind. Somewhere in there the crewman saw something, capt. put the engine on very low, and we got to where there was a pair of whales, momma & child.  We maneuvered around them for maybe half an hour, and we did get some good views of Momma's head, but no breaching or flukes.

Heading back, again nothing except a seal. Very disappointing, that because they advertised hundreds of porpoises in the area. All in all, nice boat, nice crew, nice 4 other passengers, didn’t get wet, so mostly good.

From there to the Breakwater, which advertises ice cream as well as full meals. Service was slooooooow. Got the sourdough bowl with clam chowder slopped all over it, best chowder I've had here. I told the waitress I'd be having mint chip ice cream for dessert. I was there an hour when she brought the bill, but not the ice cream. Manager came at 7:30, said they were closing, and I told him I still haven't seen the ice cream which is on the bill. He had it brought out, but made me feel totally unwelcome. I double-checked their sign on the way out - they had 30 minutes before closing time. Asshole.

Shuffled back to the motel, after a 7-11 stop to get pop. would have liked to go out tonight, but nothing is open and there's no public transportation after 6 pm. Taxi might have been possible but I'm okay just chillin.

Plans for tomorrow:
Check out the carriage museum across the street
Check out of the motel
Hang out at the coffee shop near Amtrak
1 pm train home.

My planz for today were lacking in the fruition department. File it under "he who hesitates" and some missed connections. The plan was to figure out where Cal Poly is, and take the bus there. The first step in that plan was to board the downtown trolley which is supposed to run every 15 minutes starting at 10 am. After a breakfast of a fairly decent clam chowder and sourdough bread from Splash Cafe, I packed, checked out of the motel and waited for the trolley at the stop across the street from the cafe. After 20 minutes of no trolley, I needed to use the facilities so I went to the cafe and used theirs. Then back to the stop, and another 15 minutes. At which time it dawned on me that I had not seen any trolleys coming from the other direction either. So I started walking and got all the way to the mission (about a mile) without seeing any.

Toured around the mission creek park, got some cute pictures of kids playing on the rocks mid-stream, and just walked around and people-watched. Back to downtown, I walked toward the train station, since that's where I'd seen the bus stop for Cal Poly, but needed something to settle my tummy, so I ducked into a grocery store across from the park, bought a diet cola & a 6-pack of oreos, walked across the street to the a big park there (Mitchell Park), found a picnic table and had a leisurely snack while watching a 3-person yoga class doing odd things with their bodies. There will be photos soon. 

Got to the train station and punched Cal Poly into my iPhone's map thing and it said a bus was going to depart in 3 minutes. It arrived and departed without me, I just somehow was nervous that I would not get back to the depot in time to catch the train. Stupid, because the bus ride was about half an hour, and it was 1 pm, the train left at 3:30. Instead I walked around the neighborhood, ended back at Mitchell Park,  camped out on the grass and watched a tow truck pull up with a late-model Honda (Fit?) on its bed. A woman came out of the truck and the driver helped her unload the car. Cooler, assorted clothes, blankets,  and three bicycles, first the bodies with rear tires, then the front tires. The truck drove away with the car, the woman assembled the bikes, then laid down on the grass to read a book.

Took a walk around a few blocks, back to the park to use their restrooms, back to Amtrak with half an hour to spare and watched some passengers try to find the train to Irvine, which is actually a bus. The Greyhound bus to Santa Barbara arrived with a destination sign which said Dallas. The Coast Starlight pulled in from the north a little early, and was about to leave 20 minutes late, but stayed where it was because the Coast Starlight from the south was there early.

After passengers were let off, I lined up to get a seat, asked the woman in charge of the first coach car if this was the car for San Jose, she said yes. Then when it was my turn to board, I asked if she had a window seat, and she told me to get onto the next car down the line, where the not very nice man said, when I asked for a window seat on the right, I was lucky to get a seat at this point in the run. He assigned me an aisle seat on the left. Decided to see if there were seats in the lounge car, and there were plenty on the right. As I walked through the car I'd originally asked to get on, there were at least six pairs of empty seats. Amtrak really needs to find a way to be more flexible about seat assignments. BTW, at least four of those seats (on the right) stayed empty clear through to SJC. There are only two stops between SLO and SJC, it's not rocket science.

Boring trip, for the most part. In the lounge car there was some cretin from Yuma whose cell phone conversations were at the top of his voice, and after three tries at trying to tell different callers three variations of he had just left "San Lopso Opso something" he changed it to San Bernardino for the remaining callers. Only 250 miles off, and not on the Coast Starlight run. Then the guy sleeping in the seat across from him woke up, and we got the rest of his life story, including claims that he has called all his ex-fiancés for mother's day, except the one who who had his kid.

There were also a couple of older characters on the other side of me who looked and sounded more like they ought to be riding box cars. Not the most erudite conversation there. Just before we got to Salinas I went back to my assigned seat, ate a bear claw from Splash Café, and read from an eBook I'd downloaded last week. My camera battery had given out, and it was getting too dark to take photos from a moving train anyway.

Got into SJC half an hour early, just before 8. Drove home, unpacked, charged a camera battery so I could transfer the photos to the main PC. Uploaded pix of the jazz band to Flickr, and put a pointer to them on the band's Facebook page. More uploads later in the week. I got some good pix in SLO, not so many on the train, due to excessive reflections in their observation car. I wish they would fix that. Polarized material would help.

Oh yes, where Cal Poly is turns out to be at the end of Grand Ave, on the same end of town as the motel, not near downtown at all. I probably could have caught the bus there yesterday when I was at Grand & Monterey.