When last I left you I was heading home and going to do some studio work and hopefully get back down to the beach and do some surfing with the Elephant Seal...maybe even get some shots of him with my underwater housing.
Got my work done (and keeping my promise to myself to exercise whenever possible) grabbed my surfboard, underwater camera and headed down to the promise of 74 degree January Avila beach weather and enjoying our beautiful Pacific Ocean.
All looks good on paper, right ?? Well it had been four weeks since I took our daughters boyfriend out to surf right after New Years. The mind is a funny thing...sometimes we forget the painful memories, just kind of slide those in the back of the brain.... Well it all came back to me as I threw my 98.6 degree body into the 51 degree salt water.. I don't care what any $50 an hour trainer tells you, my heart was racing from the electric ice cold H2O. Heavy duty cardio without doing a thing... my heart was racing as if I had just done 30 minutes at the gym (and I hadn't even paddled out past the breakers) Here's a pic of three Cal Poly college kids getting a dose of Pacific Ocean numbing
Well anyway, once my body had completely become numb I was impervious to the cold and was really enjoying the warmth of the air (not the water) So my search was on for the lone Elephant Seal I had seen that morning. This was a great excuse to paddle my board up and down the beach getting some great arm workouts without knowing it. I am still in the very early stages of this diet and I find I need to cloak any form of exercise in an enjoyable form such as surfing. I forget even more that I am excercising as I have my camera along with me and that always guarantees I am in my own little bubble of a world. Pretty devious aren't I ?? But thats the COLD truth. Sometimes the cliche of "ignorance is bliss" can be spot on. As I continue my search for this 1/2 ton body of blubber known as M. angustirostriss I realize slowly that he/she on land is slow and lethargic but in the water an adept ballerina emerges and keeps me guessing where he/she might pop up. Nothing like the sound of a 1/2 ton mammal popping up behind you letting out a loud exhale to freak you... Everytime I get a glance...boom.. I barely get a glance and he/she is probably 20 feet under me. I realize my hunt is futile but by chance get one shot of him by the pier, but once home see that I wasn't even close to capturing an image. Lets just say in this shot below you need to imagine him between me and the pier (no Photoshop to insert him in the pic. I despise Photoshop and what it has done to photography)
So, before I leave my blubbery friend ( I am not speaking about myself) I thought I would get a shot of the town I live in. This is Avila Beach.
In Winter there is usually not a soul around but come Summer the throngs emerge from Bakersfield, Fresno and other Central Valley garden spots to escape the 100 degree heat. We locals love Fall Winter and spring as we pretty much have paradise to ourselves !! As I surfed my way in and looking forward to a warm shower I snapped this shot as the wave was bringing me that much closer to warmth again !!
I will include one more shot that I took while paddling over by Port San Luis (a decent paddle away) I took this shot because I had not noticed the formations before. Once home I looked into it through Wikipedia and found out that it is "Pillow Lava" My youngest daughter, who has her PhD in Seismic Engineering would laugh at my lack of knowledge but even at 56 years I am still learning every day... Here's a short description from Wikipedia.
Pillow lava is created when magma reaches the surface but, as there is a large difference in temperature between the lava and the water, the surface of the emergent tongue cools very quickly, forming a skin. The tongue continues to lengthen and inflate with more lava, forming a lobe, until the pressure of the magma becomes sufficient to rupture the skin and start the formation of a new eruption point nearer the vent. This process produces a series of interconnecting lobate shapes that are pillow-like in cross-section.[7] The skin cools a lot faster than the inside of the pillow, so it is very fine grained, with a glassy texture. The magma inside the pillow cools more slowly, so is slightly coarser grained than the skin, but still classified as fine grained.
Here, below, is "Pillow Lava" Just for you Melanie !! Your old Dad knows all about it now !! It is amazing that thousands of years this was below the surface of the ocean and from where my house now sits you would experience volcanic eruptions... Come visit me in Avila and I will take you on a tour of the "Seven Sisters". a series of volcanic "morro's" that begin in the Edna Valley and extend to the ocean. Hence the name Morro Bay.
Okay, all this fun and learnin' and I got a huge workout to boot !! This diversion thing is working !! I am starting to dream up new adventures to take my point "n" shoot camera and get a solid workout while not realizing it... Since Sunday (four days) I have lost five pounds but just as importantly I am re-connecting, feeling more centered with myself all the while discovering and visualizing. As my Mom would say, "wide eyed and bushy tailed"... More later...
Got my work done (and keeping my promise to myself to exercise whenever possible) grabbed my surfboard, underwater camera and headed down to the promise of 74 degree January Avila beach weather and enjoying our beautiful Pacific Ocean.
All looks good on paper, right ?? Well it had been four weeks since I took our daughters boyfriend out to surf right after New Years. The mind is a funny thing...sometimes we forget the painful memories, just kind of slide those in the back of the brain.... Well it all came back to me as I threw my 98.6 degree body into the 51 degree salt water.. I don't care what any $50 an hour trainer tells you, my heart was racing from the electric ice cold H2O. Heavy duty cardio without doing a thing... my heart was racing as if I had just done 30 minutes at the gym (and I hadn't even paddled out past the breakers) Here's a pic of three Cal Poly college kids getting a dose of Pacific Ocean numbing
Well anyway, once my body had completely become numb I was impervious to the cold and was really enjoying the warmth of the air (not the water) So my search was on for the lone Elephant Seal I had seen that morning. This was a great excuse to paddle my board up and down the beach getting some great arm workouts without knowing it. I am still in the very early stages of this diet and I find I need to cloak any form of exercise in an enjoyable form such as surfing. I forget even more that I am excercising as I have my camera along with me and that always guarantees I am in my own little bubble of a world. Pretty devious aren't I ?? But thats the COLD truth. Sometimes the cliche of "ignorance is bliss" can be spot on. As I continue my search for this 1/2 ton body of blubber known as M. angustirostriss I realize slowly that he/she on land is slow and lethargic but in the water an adept ballerina emerges and keeps me guessing where he/she might pop up. Nothing like the sound of a 1/2 ton mammal popping up behind you letting out a loud exhale to freak you... Everytime I get a glance...boom.. I barely get a glance and he/she is probably 20 feet under me. I realize my hunt is futile but by chance get one shot of him by the pier, but once home see that I wasn't even close to capturing an image. Lets just say in this shot below you need to imagine him between me and the pier (no Photoshop to insert him in the pic. I despise Photoshop and what it has done to photography)
So, before I leave my blubbery friend ( I am not speaking about myself) I thought I would get a shot of the town I live in. This is Avila Beach.
In Winter there is usually not a soul around but come Summer the throngs emerge from Bakersfield, Fresno and other Central Valley garden spots to escape the 100 degree heat. We locals love Fall Winter and spring as we pretty much have paradise to ourselves !! As I surfed my way in and looking forward to a warm shower I snapped this shot as the wave was bringing me that much closer to warmth again !!
I will include one more shot that I took while paddling over by Port San Luis (a decent paddle away) I took this shot because I had not noticed the formations before. Once home I looked into it through Wikipedia and found out that it is "Pillow Lava" My youngest daughter, who has her PhD in Seismic Engineering would laugh at my lack of knowledge but even at 56 years I am still learning every day... Here's a short description from Wikipedia.
Pillow lava is created when magma reaches the surface but, as there is a large difference in temperature between the lava and the water, the surface of the emergent tongue cools very quickly, forming a skin. The tongue continues to lengthen and inflate with more lava, forming a lobe, until the pressure of the magma becomes sufficient to rupture the skin and start the formation of a new eruption point nearer the vent. This process produces a series of interconnecting lobate shapes that are pillow-like in cross-section.[7] The skin cools a lot faster than the inside of the pillow, so it is very fine grained, with a glassy texture. The magma inside the pillow cools more slowly, so is slightly coarser grained than the skin, but still classified as fine grained.
Here, below, is "Pillow Lava" Just for you Melanie !! Your old Dad knows all about it now !! It is amazing that thousands of years this was below the surface of the ocean and from where my house now sits you would experience volcanic eruptions... Come visit me in Avila and I will take you on a tour of the "Seven Sisters". a series of volcanic "morro's" that begin in the Edna Valley and extend to the ocean. Hence the name Morro Bay.
Okay, all this fun and learnin' and I got a huge workout to boot !! This diversion thing is working !! I am starting to dream up new adventures to take my point "n" shoot camera and get a solid workout while not realizing it... Since Sunday (four days) I have lost five pounds but just as importantly I am re-connecting, feeling more centered with myself all the while discovering and visualizing. As my Mom would say, "wide eyed and bushy tailed"... More later...
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