bearding a woman for travel and fun

i just returned from a walk down to the beach to miss the sunset; my gps said the sunset was 8:11 pm, which was the time i arrived at the beach. i’ll have to look into that a little better.

the walk was pleasant, however.

on the way down i encountered a raccoon peeking its head out of the culvert. cute little sucker! no doubt one of the culprits that vandalizes our trash on a nightly basis. i talked to it as i passed by so as not to anger it into attacking me. ron tells me they attack dogs all the time and have attacked humans on occasion. why did they always look so cute and adorable on walt disney’s wonderful world of color?

also watched a harrier hunting for small rodents in the rough around the golf course. if you’ve ever wondered how the harrier jump-jet got its name you won’t after seeing one of these raptors hover over its prey. they are amazing flyers!

also encountered a few long-eared bats as they patrolled the twilight sky looking for a meal.

i do not feel threatened by bats and enjoy watching them snatch up insects on the wing.

i’d put up a bat house, but ron doesn’t like them, despite them eating their weight in insects every night.

hung out at the monterey peninsula country club’s 11^th tee for a while on the walk back to the pad. if i could swing a golf club (my shoulders won’t permit it), this would be my favorite tee. the above picture is taken from the farthest tee (i’m sure there is a correct name for being the farthest tee from the green), looking across the street to the easier tees and toward the green. if you look closely at the image you will see the 17-mile drive snaking between the cypress trees to the right. as it goes out of sight there is a turnout. this is where we hold our morning meetings. i drive between the two upper tees and the two lower tees every day and live a brief 3-minute walk from here.

had a real day off today. well, we did have a few errands to run, but they were non-laborious and included a “pretty woman” trip for a couple of dress shirts and slacks and a pair of giorgio brutini shoes.

also had the bmw washed. what a beautiful car!

speaking of beautiful cars: the sun came out today and so did the cool cars. we must have seen 8 ferraris this afternoon.

we also ran up to moss landing to get invitations for the western automotive journalists cocktail party during councours d’eligance from “the pose’s” boat; a 45 foot sailing vessel-of-some-sort. the pose is a certified marine captain, uniform and all. our schedules keep conflicting, but now that we are wrapped up with painting, i assume it won’t be long before we’re out on monterey bay with the great white sharks.

while we were at moss landing, to keep up our quasi-gay couple image, we stopped by a very cool antiques shop. i could have spent a few thousand bucks there in about 3-minutes!

on the way back to the peninsula, we stopped to pay tribute marilyn monroe at a produce mart in castroville, where in 1947 the young norma jean mortenson was crowned the very first “artichoke queen” in the self-proclaimed “artichoke capitol of the world!”

i bought no artichokes as they are more expensive here than they were back in carson city. and all of them were beyond fresh.

it was in castroville that ron came up with the idea that we need to travel with a woman (preferably a marilyn look-a-like) to act as a “beard” when we are on our escapades so we are not perceived as a gay couple. which, in my opinion, would just make us look even more gay.

while ron was out this early this evening with susie, i finally found my first two caches since becoming a peninsula resident. i’ve been feeling guilty for not offing the travel bugs i’ve had in my bag for the past month, or so.

one was hidden (not so well) under an oak tree surrounded by poison oak (in nevada the only thing i had to worry about was the occasional rattlesnake) and the other was right off of cannery row in the midst of all the tourists. the latter requiring me to tie my shoe a couple of times to retrieve and re-hide the cache.

now, i feel like a california cacher!