We spent Tuesday going down the coast from Pacifica to Santa Cruz. We stopped briefly at Half Moon Bay for a short ramble, took a detour to Cupertino to see the Apple Headquarters, went scootering in San Jose, got to see Tom’s place, then ended up in Santa Cruz for the end of the day.
We headed out of Pacifica, and started south. We took a side stop at Half Moon Bay, where there are walking paths through some woods and fields to the ocean.
Mike and Matt in Half Moon Bay
Next stop was Apple Park in Cupertino. You can’t actually go into the Ring Building, but they have a Visitor Center where you can sort of see the Ring Building — enough to get a sense of the scale of it. It’s huge. The Visitor Center also has a diorama of the campus, and they have a virtual display with iPads showing a VR view of the various buildings. The top story is a really nice outdoor viewing area.
Apple Park’s Ring Building seen from the visitor center.
Typical Apple, the bathrooms in the visitor center are impeccably clean, sleek, and premium feeling, and you have to look carefully to figure out how to flush the damned toilet.
From Cupertino, it was a short trip to San Jose, where Brian wanted to give scootering a try. It didn’t last long; we scootering on the margins of the streets and the park, the park was full of homeless people.
From there, we stopped at Tom’s place. It was nice to get a sense of where he lives. We then checked in, and then headed for the coast.
Santa Cruz is sort of a coastal resort. There’s a big wharf, an amusement park, and it has the vibe of a blue-ish collar vacation town. Our first stop was Lighthouse Point, where there were a ton of surfers in the crashing waves. They were flying past the rocky point; it was amazing how good they were.
After watching the surfers for awhile, we then moved up the coast to the Natural Bridge beach. It’s small cove with a natural arch formation, and on the other side, some rock formations that the guys went climbing over
Our last stop was the Santa Cruz Wharf. This is a very long wharf jutting out about half a mile south into the Pacific. It has a bunch of touristy retail and restaurants on it. As I approached the end, I could hear sea lions barking — they were on the piles supporting the wharf. It was near sunset, so I got some sunset pictures, both of the sky, and of some boats anchored nearby. As dusk deepened, the lights came on at the amusement park across the water.
This morning was another foggy morning. Actually, that’s an understatement; it was more of a heavy mist when we went down to the coffee spot by the beach.
The fog and moisture ruled out the hike Mike and Brian wanted to do, so we decided to see Fisherman’s Pier in San Francisco.
The pier reminded me very much of Chatham or Provincetown, in that there is a lot of retail aimed at the tourist. There’s a wax museum, which we didn’t have time to see, and a ton of restaurants.
The pier faces to the North into San Francisco Bay; you can look to the North to Alcatraz, or to the East to the Oakland Bay Bridge. The road bordering the Pier has a historic streetcar line running PCC cars in historic livery. On one of the wharves, sea lions haul out of the water and sun themselves. Pelican are overhead and perched on the docks, and there’s a World War II submarine, the USS Pampanito, there.
The fog burned off briefly while we were there; by the time we’d had lunch, the sky had cleared, leaving a line of low clouds on the horizon.
We didn’t have much time to explore any of the shops or museums because we had reservations to go on a Segway tour of Golden Gate Park at two. Riding the Segway was cool, although I did have a spill once when I had trouble steering it, and by the time we were done, my feet were killing me. You’re basically just standing on it, not moving your feet, and I brought the wrong pair of sneakers out with me, so they have very little resilience left.
Golden Gate park itself is very cool — lots of different kinds of botanical displays, a Ferris wheel, a band stand, and an art museum. It’s also very very large. You could easily spend days here, exploring. As it was we got an overview of the whole thing. We weren’t able to take pictures during the tour, so I had to content myself with some pictures when the other guys first tried it out, and a picture at one of our brief stops, and an overview picture when we were done.
After we were done, we headed for the Beach Chalet, a restaurant across from the beach on the western side of San Francisco. The service was great, and we had great view of sunset.
Today dawned foggy. A thick pea fog, with only a hundred feet or so of visibility. Here in Pacifica, it was foggy around 8 when we did a coffee run, but had burned off by 10 or so when we decided to head into San Francisco to get a closer look at the Golden Gate Bridge.
As we got closer to the bridge, though, the fog closed in again. By the time we got to the bridge overlook, the fog was blowing hard, and you could only see the first hundred feet or so of it.
Fog blowing around the Golden Gate Bridge.
With the bridge invisible, it didn’t make much sense to hang around, so Tom suggested we visit the Point Bonita Lighthouse.
The lighthouse is on a small craggy island, connected to another craggy cliff by a pedestrian suspension bridge. To get to it, you walk along a path, past rocky outcrops, and through a hand-hewn tunnel through a tall cliff.
Walking there in the fog, I was struck by the sounds — the crash of the surf, and the foghorns in the distance. There were cormorants on the rocks surrounding the lighthouse.
After the lighthouse, we wanted to visit Muir Woods, but as we started to get close, we realized reservations were needed for admission — and we didn’t have one. So we turned around, and visited the Sausalito Harbor. By this time the fog had burned off, and it was bright and sunny. The harbor is very pretty, and there are a ton of shops and restaurants along the waterfront.
After lunch, we wanted to see if the fog had burned off at the Golden Gate, but no luck. It was definitely less foggy than the morning, but visibility was pretty poor, so we decided to skip it.
The one thing Matt really wanted to do today was watch the Florida State football game, so we headed back to Pacifica. Matt got settled in for the game, and Tom ran some errands. Once he got back, Mike, Brian, Tom and I headed over to nearby Rockaway Beach for sunset. There was a big cliff next to the beach, and we climbed up to get a better view.
Despite the treacherous footing, the view was awesome. Once the sun set, I looked back to the east, where I could see the fog clouds once again start to flow over the mountains.
I flew out of Boston this morning with my brother Brian and his two sons Matt and Michael to meet my other brother, Tom, in San Francisco. We’ll be here in San Francisco for three days, then shift south down the coast to wind up in Monterey.
The flight to San Francisco was long but uneventful. We ended up having to check our baggage, but baggage pickup was easy; the luggage was already on the carousel by the time we got there.
Once Tom arrived, we headed into the city. First stop: lunch. Locally, it was around noon, but for our stomachs, it was 2-ish, and we’d had breakfast around five. After lunch, we decided to head for Coit Tower, a big concrete tower on top a high hill.
My god, the hills. The hills are so steep around here. It’s like a bunch of natural roller coasters. We walked up a super steep hill to the base of the Coit Tower, and then climbed the thirteen stories (243 steps) to the top. The view was worth it, though. From one side, you could see the TransAmerica Pyramid; on another the Oakland Bridge, on another the Bay, on another Alcatraz Island, and in the distance, the Golden Gate Bridge.
After Coit Tower, we walked a few blocks to see the cable cars. The tracks have a slot running between them and the moving cable is running under the street. The car sends a grip down into the slot; and the grip grabs hold of the moving cable. To stop, the operator opens the grip. You can actually hear the cable running under the street. We saw a couple of cable cards, and got to ride one for a few blocks.
Once we got off the cable car, we walked through Chinatown, where they were having a car show of antique cars. There were cars from the 40s and 50s, as well as a bunch of Lamborghinis and Ferraris.
From there, we went back to the car. We were going to see Lombard Street, “The Curviest Street in the World”, but got stuck in traffic trying to get onto it, so we decided it wasn’t worth the wait. So instead, Brian, Tom and the boys decided to hit a couple of bars, and then head down to Pacifica where the rental house is. Along the way, we wound up getting on the Golden Gate Bridge by accident. It’s impressive, and we’ll get a better look at it tomorrow. From there, we headed to the rental house, which is really nice. Five bedrooms and a hot tub, way up in the hills.
I’ve been to the Quechee Balloon Festival three times before, the first time in 2012, when I got a ride sort of by accident, then again in 2013, and again five years ago in 2018, when I took the motorcycle … Continue reading →
I really had no idea what I was going to do about a Christmas card this year, or even if I wanted to do one. I have less free time this year, and I wasn’t really feeling it. There is a big part of me that wanted to do a jump cut to February.
Still, a tradition is a tradition, and so, at the beginning of the month, I was wracking my brain trying to come up with an idea. I didn’t get as frantic as I did in 2013 — I have more confidence in myself now that I’ll figure out something — but I was definitely feeling bereft of ideas.
And then, one day, I was looking at pictures with Mum, and for some reason, I decided to look at my iPhone pictures. And there is was, a picture I’d taken with the iPhone last year:
Ornament on tree, taken with my iPhone 12 Pro
Looking at it, it was nearly perfect. The only thing that bothered me was that you can see my hands holding the phone taking the picture. So I took it into Photoshop, and cut the hands and phone out of the picture, using Content Aware Fill, in several steps. I also bumped up the contrast a bit because printing on card stock tends to flatten the contrast a bit:
After retouching my reflected hands out of the red ball
Content Aware Fill is an amazing thing. It took me maybe two minutes to take care of it; I remember when it would have taken me hours.
Then it was time to lay out the card. Once again, I used two-up card stock, using Apple Pages to lay it out. Vertical cards are actually laid out sideways on the template, so I just grabbed one of my older cards, replaced the images in them, updated the date on the back, and then had to decide on typography.
This year, I decided on white Bodoni 75 with a thin outline and drop shadow for better separation, placed directly on top of the picture. I removed the borders on the text box this year. I’m pleased with the way it came out — the type fits well with the picture, and it looks almost like a book cover.
The hard part this year was what to say inside. This has not been a good year for me or the family, because of Mum’s situation. Do I use the space to send a Mum update? But I send cards to a variety of people, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for everyone I send cards to. And a single message isn’t appropriate for everyone. In the end, for the pre-printed part, I went with the classic “Merry Christmas & Best Wishes for a Happy New Year”.
Today is the last day of Daylight Savings Time for 2022. The trouble with the tail end of DST is that sunrise is really late – 7:24 this morning, It been really sucking on workdays for the past few weeks; I normally get up at 7 on days that I work from home, and 6:30 on days that I go into the office, and I hate having to get up in the dark.
This morning though, I figured… If I get up a little after six, I can be over at Castle Island before 7 and be there before the sun comes up. I did not set an alarm; if I blew the wake time I figured no big deal, but in fact I did wake up around six, and hauled myself out of bed and onto the road.
This has been a frustrating October. I came down with COVID the day after my niece’s wedding and even though I had a three day weekend the following weekend, and we had gorgeous weather, I still felt crummy enough, even after a week, to not want to do much of anything. It wasn’t a serious case; it just felt like a bad cold, but it hung on for about ten days. So last weekend, I moped around the house looking out at the gorgeous weather, and hoped that it would still be nice the next weekend, and that I’d finally be over the COVID enough to be able to do something fun.
One of the things the fall brings is shorter days. The earlier sunsets are the most noticeable, but sunrise is getting later too. In June, sunrise was around 4:30-ish, now it’s around 6:30, and will be getting later still over the next six weeks, until Daylight Savings Time ends.
This later sunrise makes it easier to haul my sorry behind out of bed to see the sunrise. I tend to wake up early anyway — 3:30 – 4:00 is not uncommon, but usually I just roll over and try to go back to sleep.
I decided this weekend to see if I could get up early enough to be on the Charles River for sunrise. It’s something I’ve been thinking of doing for a long time. Since downstream faces East, I figured I could get some decent pictures.
It took me a little while to come up with an idea for the card this year. I did take a second look at some of the Christmas light photos I shot in 2016 for the card that year; as it turns out, the same pictures I decided not to work with then, still didn’t speak to me now.
There is also a part of me that is getting tired of creating a new card each year; at some point the card will be a photo of all the prior year’s cards in a basket, and that will probably be the last one. I’m not quite at that point yet, though.
Mum and I got our COVID booster shots at Walgreens a few Saturdays ago; when you get a vaccine dose, you have to stick around for 15 minutes just in case you have an allergic reaction so that they can respond to it. So we fumfed around the seasonal aisle there, and they had a gingerbread house kit. I saw it, and went hmmmm.
Comes a week later, and I still hadn’t gotten any other ideas, so I decided to do it. So I went back to Walgreens and picked up a gingerbread house kit. I realized I needed something to act as a snow surface, so I went over to Michael’s to find some fake snow. I could not find any, and I couldn’t find a single staffer in the store who wasn’t running a register to help me. So I picked up a bag of white cotton, and some deer figurines and miniature trees.
Putting the kit together was pretty simple — the only surprising part was how long it took, because there were several points where you glue a couple of pieces together with icing, and then have to let it sit for 15 minutes while the icing set.
The photography was a problem. What I should have done was pick up a piece of white posterboard to act as a seamless background. What I did do was use the “desktop studio” I got a couple of years ago. It’s basically a 16″ x 16″ x 16″ lightbox, with a small pair of halogen lights to be positioned outside the studio, with red, black, white and blue backgrounds. The sides of the box are intended to diffuse the light to provide a nice soft illumination of the object inside.
Unfortunately, the studio was a little too small for the gingerbread house. It was hard to frame the picture so that the sides of the studio were not too visible. The backgrounds are not really seamless, since they came folded, and have a number of creases. I managed to get a couple of pictures, and then decided to try repositioning the lights outside the studio. While moving the right side light, the cord on the left side light got pulled, it fell off the table, and blew the bulb. So now, I had to live with one of the shots I already had.
None of them were particularly good; this one was the best of a bad lot:
Original picture, taken inside the desktop studio
It’s reasonably evenly lit, but the background is very visible, and the rightmost tree is crooked, and the cotton is pretty sparse in the left front. This turned out to be a fairly major Photoshop job.
First step was to do some basic color correction and lightening of the image.
Second step was to run a Gaussian blur against the background. I selected the area behind the scene, and run a strong blur against it.
Next, I used the stamp tool to even out the cotton “snow”
I’d created two different exposures of the photo when I ran the picture through Camera Raw; now I copied the left side roof from the darker version and combined it with the lighter version, where the roof was burned out.
Then I selected the rightmost tree, and rotated it a few degrees counter clockwise to straighten it out. I ended up using parts of the original layer underneath the working layer, but it ended up OK, even though I probably didn’t do it the right way.
The background was still too dark, so I masked the scene, and started lightening the background, to get it whiter.
Finally, I added some decorations and lights to the trees, then masked out a vignette area around the edges so that the photo would fade to white when printed on the card.
Then I brought it into Pages, using one of my prior year’s templates. When I printed it out, I found the background was still too dark. I ended up just making most of the background part of the scene transparent, so that when laid over a white background, it was white. In hindsight, I should have just extracted the scene from its background, and called it a day. I’m not thrilled with the little vestiges of the blurred background around the scene.
The next problem was what to put inside the card. The only card stock I could find at Staples when I went was half fold card stock, meaning the cards would be full size. I worked off my 2018 card, renamed the file, and changed the images inside. Unfortunately, I just haven’t done much interesting this year, so picking the pictures was hard. I ended up choosing half the pictures from our time on the Cape, and the last couple from a kayaking trip on the Charles.
Inside of the card
For the text, I decided to riff on the subject matter and wished people a Merry Christmas and a “Sweet” New Year.
Once again, I decided to include Mum on my cards. People we both knew got a card from both of us, and I basically let her decide what I would would write. She doesn’t have enough dexterity to sign them anymore. For the cards from me alone, I wrote more of a note. I had most of the cards finished and in the mail by the first week of December.
