Home Sick

Inspiration

I was quite inspired tonight to pen a new entry.  After work, I sat down for dinner with take-out from Phil's (The Rib-less Dinner), salad and a couple Grapefruit Sculpins that I scored at Ballast's Little Italy tasting room.  Our Apple TV screen saver came up on our TV and pictures from our past life in The Bay appeared.  In those pictures, our top half was layered with a shirt topped by a hoodie topped by a medium insulated jacket with warm hats.  We were wearing jeans, shoes and what not.  We had pictures in The City, at A's games, BBQing Oysters at Tomales Bay, pictures of the Bay Bridge, hanging out arm in arm at windy Crissy Field watching the sun drop below the Golden Gate Bridge.  And pictures of us blowing cold smoke as we exhaled hot air into that slightly cold, brisk morning in early January.  I guess no matter where you go, if you live in one place for over twenty years, you'll always have a longing for it.  It's life.  It's sounds.  It's smells.  It's culture.

One from my archive.

But life has a current, and rather then trying to swim against it, we decided to see where the river went.  SoCal isn't a bad place to end up on the other end.  It's not NorCal.  That's for sure.  We traded our shoes for sandals, our jackets for T-shirts and our jeans for shorts.  Everyday is pretty much sunny.  Having a pair of really good sunglasses is not a necessity, but it helps.  San Diego.  One of the old guys I surf with described it as "Never Land".  It's a place where you can stay young and never grow up.  And people do look young here, whether cosmetically altered, genetically lucky or just by healthy living.  It's a place where people work to live.  Sometimes work to play.  The Bay, in some ways, became a place where that notion was the other way around, for me at least.  Plus, I was living far away from ol' Pacific.  I needed to be closer.  I needed to drown in it to breath.  But I have plenty of family still in The Bay, and I'm lucky enough to visit once every few months.  But it's not the same.  I miss crossing the Bay Bridge once or twice a week.  I miss Bart.  I miss Muni.  I miss AC Transit.  I miss the cynicism.  Hipsters.  Na, not the Hipsters.  When I go back, places and neighborhoods change, even within the short time since I've been gone.  Neighborhoods have lost it's color, and I'm not talking about the buildings.  Even the names of neighborhoods keep changing.  My brother lives in "Twitterloin" for God sakes.  What the fuck is that???  There are more people from Ohio and Boston then from The Mission or Oakland.  But at least a few of my really good friends planted roots and fight to keep the true spirit of The Bay alive and well.  They know who they are.  Yeah, you Jack.  Yeah, you Rassan.  Yeah, you Amber.  Yeah, you Todd.  Yeah, you.  And you.

One thing I don't miss is the drive to Santa Cruz.  Thinking back when I would wake up at 3:30a and be on the road by 4a and getting yelled at a local by 5a, all the while being cold and half asleep.  Out here in San Diego, I live half way between my favorite break in Baja and that one place they call "Trestles".  Both approximately 45 miles either way.  Within five minutes, I have two of the best beach breaks in the County (Scripp's and Black's) and two reefs that I will leave unnamed, that break on any decent south that comes through.  Yeah, those early morning, half sleep, listening to Led Zepplin while driving with the heater full blast days are done. Well, at least for now.  Because "you never know".   



One thing that I really love about San Diego is the sunset.  There hasn't been one bad sunset yet.  And the secret to a great sunset that I learned is clouds.  Clouds make epic sunsets.  There are probably better sunsets elsewhere.  But elsewhere isn't "California".  And California is by far the best place to live on the planet.  And I've been to a lot of places.  I grew up in a beautiful place.  And California still is the best, by miles.  Above is a recent swell the Bearded Bandito and I caught a week ago.  We went to our favorite spot 45 miles south of our home, with only five guys out, we scored endless head high rights.  Yeah, it lulled for a bit later in the afternoon, and the wind kind of got on it towards the end, but from a guy who learned how to surf at San Francisco's Ocean Beach, I'd take those endless fun rights any day, no matter what condition.  Funny story:  The inside and outside peaks were going off.  I looked over to The Bearded Bandito and asked "Inside and Outside are firing, where you gonna sit".  With a slight grin, he replied,  "Pick your poison."

What I miss the most about NorCal in general is Pine Trees.  Their smell.  Their brown bark.  Their endless green, prickly needles.  I grew up between living in Hawaii and coming back to NorCal here and there.  And when ever we ended up living in NorCal for a year or two, my family would go up to Yosemite for a week in the summer and we'd camp at either lower or upper pines.  And looking at pictures of Yosemite brings up those feelings of youth, family, laughter, joy and the utter awe every time we'd make it down to it's Valley.  But my wife and I have been doing some exploring, and one thing SoCal has is a lot of deserts.  And so does Baja.  And we've been finding ways to enjoy the deserts, either camping or just cruising...


A Dusty Drive from Kookingitup on Vimeo.

Joshua Tree for one is a pretty awesome spectacle.  To it's creepy yet beautiful Yucca brevifolia, Jack Rabbits, foxes and the occasional rattle snake make this National Park an enchanting section of California. We caught it during the recent super moon.  The way the moon light hit the boulders at midnight was a sight to be seen.  During one of the nights, I sat outside on a beach chair and watched all the constellations shift.  It's like you can see the entire universe and beyond down that way.  It seems like a good place to trip out at, if you know what I mean. 

I took my niece to Lego Land's water park the other day.  Out of all the slides they had there, she chose to get on a raft and float down the "Lazy River".  She got a lot of shit from her friends for it, making fun of her for not riding the "grown kid" slides with them and opting just to cruise with her favorite uncle down that man made, chlorine filled river.  I asked her after a while why she liked the Lazy River so much.  She replied "because you never know where it's going to take you."  "Yeah, you never know," I replied to her as we floated down that lazy river.