The Gurly Life

Sunset from Haleakala

Here's the slideshow. We were here.

 

 

Hana Highway, Part Deux

Last time I drove the Hana Highway, I took one million pics and posted them all. That means I have already taken most of the photographs that I took when I did it again. However, I did try to get slighly different kind of shots than last time, too, and these are the ones I'm showing you. Trust me, there are 6,000 (I exaggerate a little) other pictures of jungle-like vegetation, which I will spare you. There are also lots of goofy pics with my friends Willow and Adam, and those will be forthcoming, too. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy these. You can see them as a slideshow by going to this link. There are only 17 photos, so I recommend it.

 

Exploring the city on a bike without getting run over

Have you ever heard of this cool thing called CicLAvia? It just happened, on Sunday, April 15. Not the first one, apparently. They closed off 10 miles of city streets from 10am to 3pm, and only bikers and pedestrains and skaters could use them. It was the most fun I've had in a very long time. I rode mostly on my own, surrounded by several thousands of my closest friends. I of course had my camera, and stopped a bunch of times to take pictures. Exploring LA city streets without all those damn cars is really something else. I was on my bike for almost 4 hours. It's gonna hurt in the morning -- no, it's hurting now, and it's gonna hurt bad in the morning. Totally worth it.

Bikers milling about close to 10am, ready to take the roads. At 10 on the dot, shouts and cheering started us off. I started at the Bicycle District Hub, at Heliotrope and Melrose. It is less than 2 miles south of where I live, and down the hill. So, I got on my bike and rolled on down there.

Riding through a residential neighborhood. Look, no cars! I didn't even know this street was there.

Around a corner, and there's downtown within sight. Did not take long at all, especially since it's downhill almost the entire way from my place to downtown.

The Park Plaza Hotel. Did you know this was here? I didn't! They were shooting something. In retrospect, I should have asked them to let me wonder around for a few minutes.

The pond in the background is MacArthur Park.

View of the 110 freeway from the 7th Street bridge.

Coming to downtown off the 7th Street bridge.

An ironic statue at one of the fancy corporate buildings downtown. The security guards were staring slackjawed at all the bikers, they just ignored me. Usually I get shooed off a property if I'm taking pictures.

Downtown buildings.

Bikers in downtown LA.

A building downtown. I love the fire escapes on these older buildings.

I rode all the way east past Alameda, and through a neighborhood that was all food stalls and pinata shops. Loud music blared, and every food imaginable cooked on outdoor barbeques and cooking surfaces of all kinds.

And then, on Central Avenue, the Coca Cola bottling plant. For real.

Which looks like a ship.

This is a hand-made bicycle. It says "I'm a bad-ass, but I care about the environment." Lots of shiny skulls.

This is bike polo. Polo, on bikes. Yup. What will they think of next?

Railroad tracks and the LA river from one of the bridges.

Since the way back was shaping up to be one long uphill ride, and since I needed to get back to go swimsuit shopping (yeah, I know!), I decided to take the subway back. I had run into a couple of people from my meetup group, and one of them very gallantly escorted me safely back to Union Station.

"I'm a dude! Get off me, you perv!"

On Saturday I had lunch plans with Dee.

This is Dee with the jindo she is fostering, Dori. Dori is a boy, and while the name may sound like a girl's name, it's actually a Korean name so it all makes sense.

As I was running about an hour early (when does that ever happen on a weekend?), I grabbed my camera and played around. I went to the beach, but it was about 11 am so the light could not have been flatter.

This is either interesting or utter shit, I can't really tell. I'm leaning towards utter shit, but maybe I'm wrong. It's taken through the orange slats at the Santa Monica Mall parking lot. I could spare you my utter shit, and only post the good ones, but what fun would that be?

Incidentally, the SM Mall parking lot is total genius-slash-big brother. This is what they have on every floor if you can't remember where you parked your car. I took a picture, because if I had told you, you wouldn't have believed me. Of course, I don't remember my car's license plate, so I'm not sure that this would be helpful. Eh hem. I should have tried looking for "Pixie the Prius." Of course, I might be blogging from a mental asylum as a result, but what a blog post, right?

The other cool thing is that they have red/green lights along the ceilings indicating whether each space is available or not. In case you're wondering, red is for not available, green is for available - once you get the hang of it, it's easy. If you're color-blind, I guess you're SOL. Or you do it the old fashioned way and actually look at the spaces as you drive by them to find the available ones.

Someone was flying a spectacular kite on the beach. Unfortunately I wasn't able to capture its dragon face, but the wings were really amazing:

I was trying to do something that I had too much light for: I wanted to use a slow shutter speed to capture motion. At first, I tried standing still, and letting the moving subject go by. Blech. It's harder than it looks to get just the right amount of blur. Also, I didn't have my tripod, or the filter to reduce light coming through the lens, so...

Next, I tried a slow shutter speed while following the subject. The aim is to get a (more or less) sharp subject and a blurred background. The idea was good, if unoriginal, but again too much light and no tripod. Here's the best I was able to do, which is hardly worth writing about (and yet, here we are!):

The lesson here is, practice practice practice. Also, I think it would have worked better if I'd been photographing moving subjects directly in front of me.

While crossing the bridge over Pacific Coast Highway, I took this one:

After lunch, Dee, Dori and I went to a cute little park off Wilshire Boulevard, and sat by the pond to watch the ducks.

Well.

You have never seen such duck drama. First of all, there were maybe three girl ducks and about a dozen boy ducks. Good odds for the girls, but you know that spells trouble. There was a lot of chasing around, flapping of wings, splashing of water, generally a great commotion. All was revealed when we noticed that one of the boy ducks was trying to get it on with other boy ducks. Not that there's anything wrong with that, some of my best friends are boy ducks who like to get it on with other boy ducks; the problem here was that the other boy ducks were having none of it and would squawk with dismay when Mr. Horny Pants would hop on their backs. Finally, another boy duck, probably the pond principal, had to intervene to stop the nonsense. I did not capture the action as I was too disturbed by the duck-on-duck violence. No means no, dude.

And so ends episode 235 of On Golden Pond. Please join us next time when Mr. Horny Pants is revealed to actually be his own evil twin.

Glendale

On Sunday, my friend Dee and I wondered around downtown Glendale to take some pictures of a building. The building we needed to photograph was stunningly boring, but we found some other interesting buildings there. Here are a couple of photos. The entire set is here, on Flickr, but it's not terribly interesting.

A mural on California, corner with Brand.

This was also on California, across Brand from the building with the mural. This was the building Dee and I had come out to photograph. It's a historic building, but they renovated it in the worst possible way and it was so boring it almost gave me a stroke. They had these along the side of the building that broke up the coma-inducing monotony.

The Alex Theater

Look at that cool floor.

The theater itself.

The Maryland Hotel. Rents by the month, by the week or by the day.

The lobby of the Maryland Hotel, photographed through the plate glass window. Frozen in time.

A random building off Brand. I think it was a bank building. I didn't mean to use soft focus here, but somehow it works. Next time I will try to use it on purpose.

 

Morro Bay

Almost two weeks later, the final central coast post. If you want to see really good pictures, then you should go to Michelle's blog and check out her posts: Day One: Breathe; Day Two, Hearst Castle; Day Two, San Simeon and the Elephant Seals (NOT about Maliboo Kitty, thankyouverymuch); Day Three, the Mission and the Rock.

If you missed my other posts, you can read them (or just look at the pretty pictures) by clicking: Some Natural Beauty; Our Photo Safari; Elephant Seals (again, I don't mean Maliboo Kitty); Hanging Out With Michelle; and Hearst Castle.

On Sunday morning, our third day, Michelle and I made our way to San Luis Obispo for breakfast. For once, I could easily have gone most of the day without eating (because we had eaten our weight in yummy food Friday and part of Saturday, so much so that we weren't able to have dinner Saturday evening), but Michelle was ravenous, so off we went. You have to understand, usually in the mornings I'm one of those people who has to eat within 30 minutes of getting up, otherwise people start looking like ham and eggs to me, and they risk life and limb.

We had breakfast at a delicious and popular breakfast place in San Luis Obispo, Louisa's Place. Completely delicious and fun and friendly service, though they did misspell "premier" on their web page. Eh hem. No matter, the food was still good. But I emailed them about it. I mean, I emailed them to tell them how much we enjoyed our brunch there, but I added a PS about the typo. I know it's a little OCD, but if there was a typo on my website, I would want to know about it, wouldn't you? Anywayyy...

I didn't take many pictures, except for one of a beautiful parrot in a tree, but if you click through to Michelle's Day Three post (see link above), you can see some very nice pictures of San Luis Obispo. Incidentally, SLO appears to be overly populated by rather gorgeous people. At first I thought maybe I had been buried with my nose in my camera for two days and that I was appreciating people like a starving person might unexpectedly enjoy liver. However, Michelle noticed it too. I don't know how I feel about that. It occurred to me that my odds of finding a boyfriend would probably drop. Meh. Whatevs.

So blahdy blahdy blah, we walk around, we peruse a couple of shops but not too many because you know how I get and Michelle had mercy on me, and then we head back towards Cambria, with an eye towards checking out Morro Bay Rock. Because we had lots of cold and windy weather, I layered with my silk longjohns (what?!?). On the drive to Morro Bay I depantsed so I could take off the longjohns. Thankfully, I wasn't driving at the time. Don't get me wrong, I have depanstsed and repantsed while driving, but it's much easier when I'm the passenger, I find. Way less veering and erratic driving, no honking, screaming of obscenities or giving of the finger (at me, of course, I can't give someone the finger if I'm trying to drive *and* change my pants, now can I? Silly!).

Anywayyy...

At this point, it's far too late to introduce a few photos with a platitude such as "without further ado" or "let's get right to it, folks!" so I will just say that after all that prattle, you should just be grateful that now I will shut up and you get to see some pretty pictures.

Psyche! Instead of pretty pictures, a picture of smoke stacks. I think this is a power plant, sitting right across the way from Morro Bay Rock. It's so obnoxious that it's almost artistic, isn't it?

A sailboat. Hanging out. I love the blueness of the water and the sun's reflection on it.

Sorting the fish.

Flowers and the row boat.

Morro Bay Rock.

Backlit sailboat. Really a tiny sailboat.

A fishing boat. Again, I really like the sun's reflection on the water.

The water here was completely calm, quite the contrast from the crazy waves we photographed down the street from our little rental. That brings me to the end of Michelle's and my photo safari. I got to relive it a few times by writing about it, but now it is time to turn to the next trip. And there is a next trip on the horizon.

Next: my new year's resolution. Which is not the next trip, but is related to the next trip. Sort of.

Elephant seals

After the obligatory visit to Hearst Castle, we headed over to Piedras Blancas to check out the elephant seals. It's mating/calving season, apparently, so my friend Alison (or was it her dog Brennan?) suggested we check them out. They were just up the street. In case you're wondering why they're called elephant seals, it's because they're about the size of the average year old elephant and they have this proboscis-y flappy upper lip.

They are blobby, floppy, wobbly, jiggly, googly and blubbery. When we first walked up to the beach with all the seals (the elephant seal main drag, if you will)

we were taken aback by their enormous size, their numbers, and one of the mommies had literally just given birth and we got to watch seagulls descend upon and gobble up the afterbirth. Gag! I will never look at seagulls the same way again. Yes, yes, circle of life and all that shit, but really, we had just eaten lunch for heaven's sake.

Mostly they lie around. The males (about a 1 male to 15 female ratio, it seems) spend their time fighting each other, presumably for the females. They can get more aggressive than this, but this is what I got:

So they fight, one wins and the other goes off somewhere else looking like he had something to do anyway. Then the winner first takes a breather, then he figures he'll get his just desserts, and he'll wobble over to one of the females and try to mount her. She will turn around and bark at him, with the most obvious "Are you kidding me with this?!? I JUST GAVE BIRTH, for Pete's sake!" look on her face you can imagine. He will gallantly give up, and go on the next one of his conquests, who will turn on him yelling, "Seriously? Do you NOT SEE THE BABY? I have a headache anyway." He will try another time or two, after which he will just lie down and rest. It's not at all clear to me what the heck he fought for in the first place.

Our photo safari

As I mentioned in my previous post, Michelle and I went photographin' last weekend. I had not taken pictures, really, since May, so I was quite rusty. Nevertheless, we had fun, and I did get a few decent shots. She got more than I did, because she's an amazing photographer, and maybe there will be a link to some of her photos soon. HINT, HINT.

So, without further ado, here are a few pictures of the ocean. The complete set is here. Here are a few I liked.

This is the beach just down the hill from where we were staying. It was gorgeous, cold, and not crowded. There were just enough people to make pictures of the beach and the water just a little bit more interesting.

The ocean was quite dramatic, which is not good for swimming but good for pictures. I also have a black and white version of this photo. I keep flipping between preferring one over the other, but today I like the color one better, so that's the one I'm posting.

This one I'm posting for Michelle, who likes the light shining through the top of the wave.

This one I like because (a) it's black and white and it somehow works that way and (b) I like the couple with the fishing rods. There's also a color version.

This I really like, in part because you can see the bottom of the wave through the top, and because I feel quite brilliant for taking a photo of a wave from the back (top?), rather than the front. I was walking above it on the pier and realized I had never actually seen a wave from this angle before.

On Sunday afternoon we went back to our beach to play with longer shutter speeds and water. It was an experiment, made more difficult by the setting sun directly in front of us (too much light for long shutter speeds) and by the biting, relentless cold wind that made our hands completely numb and not very nimble. Most of the shots I took that afternoon are pure shit. But that's experimentation, I guess. So, having made a long story even longer, here are the two I like the best from those experiments.

That kid was out there for a long time and didn't stop moving at all except for about a minute while he kneeled. That's when I was able to get this. This was a 1 second exposure at f/38. Unfortunately my lens was fogging up from the humidity and the cold, so there's a weird streak on the right. Michelle would be able to fix it, but I didn't know how, so it is what it is. I think it might have been better if the frame was a bit to the left, so that the edge of the surf was almost at the edge of the frame, but seriously, by this point I could barely move my hands so let's just be grateful that I even got a shot of the water at all.

This is an odd image because it's almost like like sand, surf and sky all together. But there is no sky in this shot. This was a 5 second exposure at f/40 of the surf mostly retreating from the beach. Weird, right?

And finally, what's a trip to the coast without a sunset shot?

A train ride

In a fit of unbridled spontaneity (it was a dark and stormy night, too, by the way), I decided to take the train to the central coast to meet my friend Michelle for a weekend of photo taking and girl talk. What I love about the train is that I'm not driving. Plus, the tracks make losing your way somewhat harder to do, unless of course you get on the wrong train.

So here are a few pics of said train ride. The other nice thing about being on a train is that I don't have to pull over to take photos, or in the alternative, shoot blindly through the car's windshield.

Here we have stopped, apparently in someone's back yard. I think it was rather thoughtless of them not have light refreshments available for us, after all, we did visit. Some people!

This is Simi Valley, which is quite beautiful and covered in large boulders. Very striking. If you haven't been, I recommend a trip out there.

Incidentally, someone just walked through the car offering apple juice boxes. How cute!

 Here they appear to be cultivating something. I know, I know, too much detail, but wouldn't you rather be informed than not?

 We stopped in Oxnard, elevation 61 feet. That's all I know about Oxnard.

The train swings quite close to the water in many places, must closer than the 101 or PCH so the scenery is quite lovely.

 Beauty and the beast. The beast being the truck. Duh.

 Some serious RV action along the coast.

At one point, all I could see out the train window was water and sky. And oil drilling platforms. Sigh. I note that shots of just plain open water are not nearly as awe-inspiring as the actual open water.

 And there were also some wetlands. I missed the more visually interesting ones, they went by too fast, but here's a nice boggy-looking waterway.

 

Above, Lompoc train station. I kid you not.

This was the only structure for miles around. Maybe it's the Lompoc federal penitentiary, maybe it's not. I don't know.

 

Much of the landscape around Lompoc was covered in this reddish succulent. I'm not sure how it shows up on your screen, but I notice that when I uploaded the photo here the red washed out. It's actually quite red.

 

 

And then I just got bored (we rolled into SLO shortly after this) so no more train pics.

There. Isn't that almost like you took the train ride with me? You're welcome!

Weirdness actually, is all around us

Last night I went on a date in Old Town Pasadena. The date consisted of dinner and window shopping. We had fun. As you are aware by now, wherever I go weirdness emerges. Well, it's not that it emerges, it's there for the picking - and I pick it. So here are some highlights.

This was in the window of the creepiest store ever, called Gold Bug. Weird and creepy does not begin to describe it. You really need to click on the link and check out the website. I will admit that there is something fascinating about the whole thing, and the contributing artists obviously put in a lot of work and care in the pieces, so it's good that there's a store that caters to this kind of work. Having said that, it's weird and creepy. Take the above. It appears to be a diorama of some sort, a Christmas scene that began bucolic and then a tarantula wandered in and stole the Christmas gifts. Puts the Grinch to shame if you ask me. I think the caterpillar is about to eat the Christmas tree, too.

There there was this:

The heads of hair in the front of the frame are about the size of a fist, to give you perspective. So from the street, you see the backs of these seemingly shrunken heads with pretty hair under glass jars, and this miniature goat wearing a crown. A passer-by said those are not shrunken heads, that's doll hair. For dolls. Oh, ok, so that makes it, like, 10 times creepier, kthxbye.

We wondered around some more, and spotted this little gem taped to a tree.

Yeah dude, just wait for the good women to line up.

We wondered through a store called Naughty Or Nice, which really didn't seem to relate to what it sold, but whatever. They had these fur hats for sale, so here we are, wearing fur hats.

Everyone looks sexy with a big fur hat. You can't deny it.