Photographs from Monterey, II

Posted on Monday, March 31, 2014 by BZ

I have been en vacanza with my wife since last Sunday and, as I customarily do with coastal vacations, I enjoy sharing photographs. So, without further ado, a few more (again, click on each one to embiggen appropriately) photographs for your consideration:

Spotted harbor seal pondering the true Meaning of Life in Pacific Grove.

Navy training aircraft cruising over the Bay of Monterey.

Originally I could have said I had no egrets about this trip but, now, that would not be the case. Light-footed little kelp-walkers, those.

A baby pelagic cormorant in its nest. This nest was just a few feet down and away from our hotel room. Babies have white whiskers and blue in their bills. One morning we noticed the bird was gone; we feared the lad had fallen overboard during the night. We were pleased to see he had taken brief leave because he had learned to fly.

The closest to walking on water any earthly mammal will get. It was always an amazing sight to behold.

Pacific Grove, one of the most beautiful little coastal towns I know.

Above, you can see the relationships between Monterey, Pacific Grove, Highway 1 and the rest of the Monterey Peninsula.

Northern fur seal, snoozing above the waterline in Pacific Grove.

NOAA boat out of Monterey. It represents, as you can see, the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. This is the first time in seven visits that I have ever seen this boat in action; it is normally moored adjacent the muni pier next to the USCG boats.

The NOAA vessel is the last one at the far right, above.

One of our otter friends enjoys cracking open a new case of Shellfish Lunch.

And then, overnight, the Celebrity Century anchored in Monterey Bay adjacent Old Fisherman’s Wharf. At 814 feet long and weighing in at 72,000 tons, it had stopped to shuttle passengers to and from the wharf, all day.

Little orange-and-white boats shuttled about for hours.

The Celebrity Century arrived on an absolutely gorgeous day, amidst various rain showers. The clouds cleared, miraculously, for my shots of the ship.

Here, the Century hauls fantail out of the bay. It is registered out of Malta.

The Celebrity Century disappears around the peninsula, another in a series of massive diesel-electric cruise liners built by Fincantieri of Italy.

The Tierra Lynn tacks amidst glorious colours.

The Reelization comes in after having reeled in. A great name for a boat.

Monterey can be a very dangerous place for SCUBA divers, or any diver for that matter. The California coast is cold, dangerous, uninviting, and challenging. However, the San Carlos Beach Park is a major attraction for those who wish to acquire their certification because of its relative ease of entry for novices. Still and all, the kelp and their beds are huge and difficult provocational tests for divers.

San Carlos State Beach.

The Windrose, tacking.

Because I am in many ways a cheap bastard, these photographs were not taken with a standard DSLR camera but, instead, a much, much less expensive Nikon Coolpix P510 camera with a 42X zoom. I do, however, enjoy the red variant that I purchased as illustrated. It is a deceptively small camera. But I have always said: the eye exists with the finger, and not the chassis.

With only one more day left to visit as I write this, I find myself challenged to come up with a Flip UltraHD video of the area. Will I be able to do it and then upload it to YouTube so that I may post it here in time?

And finally: a question for those electronics & video wizards who may chance by this blog:

Some day, because it is no longer produced or supported by Cisco Systems, my Flip UltraHD camera will tank; that is a given.

Can anyone recommend a good quality HD cam to replace the Flip? It doesn’t have to be as small or as cheap, but it should contain an average amount of features and maintain good HD resolution and quality. My budgetary range is up to $1,000 before I get into a bit of the Prosumer category. Any suggestions for me? Anyone? Bueller?

Thanks for reading, thanks for commenting, and thanks for sticking by ol’ Zep.

Photographs from Monterey

Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2014 by BZ

I have been en vacanza with my wife since last Sunday and, as I customarily do with coastal vacations, I enjoy sharing photographs. So, without further ado (please click on each photo to embiggen):

Mark I, Model I, seagull, one each.

Young sea lion drifting in a kelp bed.

Mom otter with baby, coasting with a friend.

Kayaker watching the otters in Monterey Bay.

Pacific white-sided dolphins in a pack. They were traveling so fast, it was difficult to capture them in the frame.

Uh oh: to the uninitiated, are they sharks or are they dolphins?

Having played tag with the kayaker, the pod heads towards the marina.

The sea lions were likewise occasionally compelled to ring up flank speed.

View from the hotel room of Monterey Bay, looking roughly northeast.

Content harbor seal, sunning adjacent Pacific Grove.

One more day in Monterey — Monday — and then Tuesday is a drive day. Back to work on Wednesday. But one more photographic post coming.

En vacanza: driving day

Posted on Sunday, March 23, 2014 by BZ

Today is a driving day enroute a 10-day vacation to the Monterey Bay region in Fornicalia. Both the wife and I very much enjoy staying by the ocean in northern Fornicalia. Of course, there will be photographs of the area posted here, along with continuing salient observations of the foolishness of current-day Life, which is already in progress.

In the meantime, pending a Monday political post, please enjoy a tad bit of Key and Peele:

Excelsior!

En vacanza, de los Pacificos

Posted on Monday, October 28, 2013 by BZ

As I write this, it is Monday afternoon. I can hear the waves crashing from the Pacific Ocean. This is a far different sound than what I heard on Sunday morning when I was loading the car for the trip.

My wife lives in what I term Ghetto Centrale in Elk Grove (Elk Grove: otherwise known as Baja Mack Road) in a house that isn’t worth the cost of a box of Junior Mints — okay, granted, a large box of Junior Mints.

It is surrounded by rental homes and thump trucks and thump cars and gangstas and those on probation and parole. The emaciated black dude four houses down slings dope at night. His toothless ancient white pot-bellied girlfriend scuffs her shoes past the house once a day, picking things off the street. The people sit on the front steps or in their garages, watching those who drive or walk down the street. It’s like being under a microscope; because no one works, everyone knows when you come and go.

Then, this Sunday, I awakened to a noise I heard from inside the house. It sounded like something over a distant megaphone. Was it — what we normally hear at night over a loudspeaker — the sheriff’s helo telling people to stay in their houses?

I went outside to listen and confirm: no, it wasn’t.

It was instead a Muslim call to prayer.

I could hear the speaker, at great volume, but a distance away, announce the words in a single male trilling voice, dissonant but discernible as same.

I thought: that’s it. We’re leaving. RTFN.

And we did.

P.S.
More to come, from the Pacific coast.

Leaving the coast

Posted on Thursday, March 21, 2013 by BZ

I’ve been on the Fornicalia coast in Mendocino County for the past ten days on vacation with my wife, posting from a rental house overlooking the Mendocino Headlands. Originally to have occurred in early February — but my wife had a school to attend and I had other projects at work — we had to delay our vacation by a full month. I plan our vacations roughly a year in advance.

We’ll be leaving tomorrow (I’m writing this on Wednesday for a Thursday post, because I’ll be driving all day Thursday.) and, whilst here, have identified other places we’d like to visit when we return.

One problem with WordPress, however, is that there is a limit with the size of videos allowed as well as the size of photographs.

I was poised to post a very nice video of the ocean from my Samsung Galaxy Note II phone in HD, but WordPress nixed that. Thanks, WordPress. I could upload that video into Blogger (with my train blog) but not here. This is the look and sound of me being not particularly pleased at the moment.

In the meantime, I have had to purposely re-adjust some photographs so their sizes would fit here. This still rankles me — I could post unlimited sizes in Blogger and you could click the photo to enbiggify. Bastardos.

So this one post has taken me the better part of four hours to create and size in PhotoShop and SnagIt for a seemingly-measly ten or so photographs. Which, by the way, I had to load one-by-one into WordPress.