Life of Wry

Managed a little red white and blue yesterday.. not much, but a little. Not my alltime favorite holiday or anything, but I still feel bummed if we’re not doing anything, because it’s a holiday and all, and I’m weird that way.  But our plans were few.

So I ended up doing a little work at home (getting something done that’s been hanging over my head for months, which took about 45 minutes and made me feel absurdly accomplished) and spent some pretty nice time in the hammock (twice yesterday, actually), which was the best.  We went to a pool party which was nice because I sat in the shade under misters — which have to be one of the best inventions ever — drinking mojitos, and catching up with a friend who’s always full of stories… she didn’t even notice I was glazy. I knew that part of the day was going to be worth not knowing anybody (except the one) at this party because: 100 degrees, swimming pool, mojitos, a long table of party food.  And, unanticipated bonus: misters.

Not complaining about any of that.

Jim and I had also wandered downtown for lunch and watched a little of the annual bike races. I almost hate watching criterium races because of all the crashes. Makes me nauseous. We saw two. Woozy just thinking about them.

And, later, met a friend at the fireworks.

So… that was the day, and these are the pictures:

Women in the pro-am fasty-fast-fast division.  Frightening.

And of course the essential 4th of July fireworks pictures, of which I had a few [..more than I needed].

The worst of the lot:

And the best of the lot.  My best, that is, by far not the best, even amongst the many iPhone pictures I saw people post on Facebook, which were mediocre.

So I played with this one and made the fire shoots purple. (Fire shoots?  What do you call those things?)  Because purple fireworks would be neat.

I’m saving my favorite 4th of July story for tomorrow’s post. Stay tuned.

The fireworks went off early in our backyard this year.

Say what you will about Crape Myrtles, Agapanthus and Canas …. ubiquitous here in the hot California central valley, yes, but, WOW… they are swollenly, voluptuously, colorfully gorgeous right now.

And see that hammock over there in the back part of the yard, shaded by the Birch? I know, hard to see for all the blossoms. That’s where I’m headed right now… con libro!

Happy Fourth of July, y’all.

Peter’s driven. So to speak.

Had his 15th and a half birthday not fallen on Christmas Eve, he might have gotten his permit sooner, but, given the holiday schedule, the best he could do was to get it on January 3rd… which meant the soonest he could get his permanent driver’s license was… uh… let’s see… TODAY.

He satisfied all the criteria — the online course, the written test, the three road lessons, and made the appointment for his road test perfectly within all windows. Motivation makes a planner/implementer out of even our organization-challenged teenager.

Here are today’s milestone moments:

Early to the DMV, in order to be there when doors opened at 8:00am (driving test scheduled for 8:00am… of course.). Folder of paperwork in hand, he texted friends and took some of his own pictures.  This was definitely a big deal for him.

After the usual bureaucratic stuff, he drove off at about 8:45. John was his tester, the one the kids really like, apparently.  He’s been there about ten years and passes you, even if you hit the curb (so we hear). John was funny, relaxed and had clearly done this a time or two.

A person can make fifteen mistakes and still pass. Peter made five.  But got lots of positive feedback, too. Bottom line: look both ways when you’re driving through intersections and work on your stopping points when at a stop sign.

Right after the test, Peter dropped me off at home, then took off for baseball practice. All by himself. So here’s the shot of the first time out the driveway alone (see left blinker light on?).

A few hours later, he returned to have lunch (he’d gone to Subway to pick up a sandwich,  and a donut next door, all by himself!). He debriefed the whole thing for Jim and me (thrilled!) and gloated over his test results:

And then… a moment to pose for a picture behind the wheel (that was a requirement to getting the car for the afternoon):

He’s planning to make the rounds at various friends’ houses, go out to the creek to swim and has to get gas.

A full afternoon of driving hither and yon.

And I’m pretty sure life has just changed for all of us.

On the list of favorite things.. brunch in Berkeley with my bud Elliot.  We’ve been friends since 1989 (twenty-five years, goodness).  Before we officially met, I’d known about him for a couple years–he was that well-known, very respected guy from Cupertino who won all the awards. We met officially at an Alliance for Community Media conference in Tampa, and had a ton to share and relate to as executive directors of similar-sized media centers in similar towns (he moved over to Palo Alto). Fast friends, valued colleagues, and buddies ever since. Now we’re grey. Heck.

We manage a meet-up about twice a year, three if we’re lucky. Involves great food at Rick and Ann’s, lots of shop talk (still), and a walk through some random Berkeley neighborhood, where we talk about everything else and do a lot of this:

More shots from today… all camera photos…Berkeley is such a feast for the eyes.

This house (which he said I’d seen and commented on before, but I’m not sure about that) in the Claremont area:

And its detail…

Some bollard art… succulents in a steel pipe:

And lots of flowers… there are so many beautiful gardens in Berkeley surrounding homes with such crafty architecture:

And a coupla old trees (not a metaphor):

Jim’s birthday baseball game–a month and a half after the fact, but that’s how these things go. Jim, Peter, me. Giants v. Cardinals. First game in a 4-game series.

wOOt!

I didn’t really have a dog in this fight, but being in San Francisco, I was more or less rooting for the Giants. Jim was ambivalent, and Peter has always been a Cardinals fan. I just love being there, no matter.

Here are some pics:

Arrived early so we could watch batting practice and get a head start on the eating portion of the program.

Ate popcorn while standing in the bleachers behind left field, hoping, maybe, to catch a homerun ball.  Watched this Cardinal do tricks with a baseball:

Goofed around:

Then got hot dogs and garlic fries… oh those fries…..

While we ate those, we watched Tim Lincecum warm up in the bullpen.  Peter (far left) went down and got his own pictures. Lincecum was coming off his second no-hitter (five days ago) and was pretty hot:

Settled in to watch the game… more eats: peanuts, a Ghirardelli hot fudge sundae (Peter), red vines and cotton candy… I think that’s it.  Glad for the seventh inning stretch… standing aided in digestion!

Got an accidental selfie that came out pretty good!

We got to see Randy Choate pitch the final inning for the Cards.  Not sure how long he’s been with them, but he just celebrated his tenth year anniversary in the majors. He is well known in Davis because he married a local woman: the mom of one of Peter’s former teammates (Jake), a Davis raised girl (and daughter of the high school football coach), and a long-time coach herself at the high school (Leigh Whitmire).  Choate’s worked out with the DHS baseball team (not Peter’s vintage, however) and is very well liked ’round these parts.

The Giants ended up winning 5-0 in a pretty fun game. Then, it was When The Lights Go Down in the City time…   I have to say, I love the part when the whole stadium sings. Maybe New York New York at Yankee Stadium was more chills-inducing, however.

Here’s the view leaving AT&T Park:

And a final look back at the stadium, with lights illuminating McCovey Cove:

Great birthday, Jim!

This is what I love. Getting up early enough to see the sun, low in the sky, shining through the kitchen window.

The sun shines through the bottles…

… and onto the island.

Nice, huh?

I didn’t know this about Fresno… that it was this relentless expanse of urban sprawl, reminiscent of Phoenix or Scottsdale or Tucson or Mesa, Arizona, all laid out on a giant grid, one mall after another, after another….

Maybe all this development has happened relatively recently. Maybe Fresno was once a central valley ag town with a core area and older neighborhoods surrounded by fields, orchards, rotating crops, pastures… but isn’t any longer. Maybe it still is and we only saw the new stuff. But wow.

There are huge (like eight-lanes-across huge) boulevards that extend for miles and miles across town in all directions. They seem built to accommodate traffic that is not yet there. There are elaborate traffic signals at the intersections, again designed to manage traffic not yet there.

Off the main drags are subdivisions and housing developments with names like Harrington Estates (made that up), each neatly contained behind some wall or landscaped barrier, the entrances of which are overly stately and/or decorated with some combination of fountain, gate, line of flags, flower-filled terrace, or all of the above.

There are strip malls and shopping centers everywhere and they all seem similarly adorned with palm trees, corner water features, stamped concrete traffic circles and very organized, manicured landscaping. The malls all have the usual suspects: Starbucks, Pet Smart, Five Guys, Subway, Office Max or whatever.

If we wanted, say, a Jamba Juice, we’d enter it into the Garmin and up would pop a dozen options, none very far from where we were, and off we’d go, zig-zagging through the grid to the nearest one.

There are ready cuisine choices of any type. All have their own distinct and recognizable design and layout, menus, seating options.  It’s just weird. And yet all kind of normalized.

So, Jim and I are sitting at a Starbucks, in the middle of one of these new, clean, modern shopping centers, eating from pre-packaged meal boxes that we’ve come to know will be available at any Starbucks we walk into, reviewing our options for lunch later that afternoon. The boys might want an In ‘N Out, or a Chipotle, or a Rubios, and whatever the choice, they know exactly what to expect, they know their personal orders.

And it suddenly struck me, that it felt like something out of the Jetsons. It all felt uber mechanized and modern. GPS’ing around at 90 degree angles felt robotic. All we needed were little flying cars.

I couldn’t help but wonder what our grandparents would think if they were suddenly brought back for a little glimpse of the future. … future defined as only a couple-three decades after their passing. Could they have imagined this is what would become of life in modern cities?

The photo is of a drive-in sushi place.

… and one to go.

Fresno Tournament. One game Friday night, two games today.  Peter’s on the mound bright and early tomorrow, for the fourth and final. Think good thoughts.

Beautiful Fresno. What makes it beautiful is its view of the Sierra and its proximity to Yosemite… certainly not its miles and miles of urban sprawl in an endless grid configuration and strip malls on every block.  None of that matters, as this trip is more about the experience of playing here with the Davis varsity team in this elite annual high school tourney–the Buchanan Tournament. I won’t say much more about it since Peter won’t be playing until Sunday, but he’s getting some good dugout and social time.  So far, so fun. 

A few photos to post ..

Nice shot of the sky as we took off this morning:

A mediocre shot of the Old Spaghetti Factory dinner crowd:

A baseball cake for the Walker twins, who turned 17 today!

Nice to know the boys haven’t outgrown the excitement of a birthday cake. 

Okay, I actually have another favorite sport besides baseball. My sport. My real sport, the one that defined me through high school and part of college. While I never got quite this far–to the US Track and Field Championships–I have accomplishments and medals I’m pretty damn proud of.  Yay 14 to 23 year-old me!

Anyway.

Here are some shots from today’s opening day of the four-day meet, held at the newly upgraded, state-of-the-art track in Hornet Stadium, Sac State (so, so nice).

We got there just as the 800 heats were starting. This is a very pregnant (34 weeks) Alysia Montano. She’s the five-time national 800m champion and was not expected to win, but it’s cool she ran:

This is what she looks like when she’s winning championship races (found on interwebs):

Here is the rest of the pack, far ahead of Alysia.

Then we (Madeline B and myself) left our spot at the finish line (great seats) and wandered across the field to watch the women triple jumpers. We found some empty seats in the jumping coach’s section, and realized we were sitting among coaches, teammates and friends of the jumpers, which made for a pretty intimate community around us… fun. Here one shot (of many) that I took. The best of the women were getting about 44-45 feet.  Such an awkward event, but fascinating. Hat’s off to these guys!

Meanwhile, lots of races were going on.. all first-round heats for races that will be decided later in the meet. Besides the 800m, we saw some 1500m heats, some 400m and 100m heats (nice!) and the women’s 3000m steeple chase.

The men’s and women’s 100m was probably the highlight for me. Women were running in the 11.3 to 11.9 range. I will have to look up my 100m times at UCD, but I thought it was in the mid to high 12s… like 12.7 maybe?  I’m so bad at meter times, since my track events for most of my years were measured in yards.

Here are some shots of the 100m:

Pre-race concentration. This is Allyson Felix who won gold in the 2012 Olympics in the 200m (my favorite race).  She’s won three gold medals so far and seems to be going strong. I’m pretty sure she qualified to move on.

Another woman stretching… or chilling (I think it’s Alexandra Anderson):

Here they are in blocks:

I missed the best part of this race, but like the picture anyway because MUSCLES.

Here are some guys… not sure who, but watching sprinters back into their blocks is always a huge thrill.. much adrenaline for me:

Some 100m sprinter, pre-race (yes, that’s Spider Man-wear):

And, as we were walking out (and talking to Desmond J, whom we saw in the bleachers!), caught a little of the women’s 3000m steeple chase:

Will miss the rest of the meet, but was so glad to have seen a few hours of it.  Great, great energy.