The City by the Bay

LaMonts on the dock alongside s/v "Good News"





One of the neighbors "walking" her dog.



Alameda, Ca.-- This small island city on the east side of San Francisco Bay was once known for Salmon fishing fleets that spent their time in Alaskan waters, ship-building to support the maritime military during World War Two, and then as home to a large naval air base.
Today it is mostly redeveloped into apartments and homes, a main street lined with great places to eat, and more marinas than you can count on both hands.The view from our front porch, er, deck.

It has become our second home, aboard our sailboat "Good News," which we keep at the Oakland Yacht Club which is in Alameda, across the Oakland Estuary from Jack London Square. That's a waterway that comes off of San Francisco Bay.The small red dot shows Alameda with the estuary on the east.
When we lived in cities, our cabin in the mountains was our second home. Now that we live in that cabin in the mountains, where most of our neighbors are absentee weekend folk, the boat is our happy place away from home when we need to be in touch with the ocean, the bay, the estuary.Oakland Yacht Club's marina on the Oakland Estuary
The reasons are many.
Pat and I both were raised on or near the water, we met and lived in Florida for years, and there is something therapeutic about being rocked to sleep at night by gentle waves with the sound of seabirds keeping us company.
Plus, it is a great location on and off the water. Eating out is our major recreation, and the places are plenty. The club itself offers a group of friends and part-time neighbors who share our interest in boats.
And it is within a short sail from the heart if San Francisco Bay, one of the most beautiful spots in North America.
Last week we took a mini-vacation. We motored out of the estuary, found the wind as we crossed under the Bay Bridge near the home of the San Francisco Giants, turned the corner past Pier 39 with Alcatraz off to the starboard side, and headed for the Golden Gate Bridge.
The view from the cockpit looking toward Marin.

Because it was mid-week in mid-winter, we almost had the bay to ourselves. The cold wind was blowing in the gate, pushing a layer of fog against the bridge and over toward Sausalito. The fog horns on the bridge were blowing loud, warning traffic to be aware.


We turned on the radar to watch out for big container ships that sometimes pop out of the fog, but saw none. Then we sailed back and forth across the bay, skirting the edge of the fog, and enjoying the moment.
The Palace of Fine Arts while the fog lifted

One other sailboat was near us, ghosting along on the edge of the fogbank.

Finally we began to get cold as the sun started sinking, and we turned and sailed back to our marina, where we turned on the heaters, taking away the chill below decks, and headed off for dinner.
A pretty darned nice day.
The next day we decided to drive through San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge to the Marin Headlands, the worn-down mountains that frame the north side of the entrance to the bay, part of the National Park system. This is the spot for the most spectacular views of the city of San Francisco and the nearby coast, and we had not visited for 20 years or so.
Standing above the cliffs looking down into the bay, we could see the excact spot where we had been sailing the day before. The fog is gone as Pat takes in the view

Then we wandered out to the point of land where we could see the Point Bonita lighthouse, the flashing light the guards the north side of the bay entrance. Off in the distance enormous waves were breaking, both offshore and onto the rocks.
Point Bonita Lighthouse from the Marin Headlands

We ended our day with a bit of bad timing, but it provided a cultural experience. We were stuck in awful rush-hour Friday evening traffic in the heart of the city, where normal people fear to drive.
We made it safely home after a very slow reminder of why we never enjoyed commuting, but lacking a photo proof of the event because of fear of collision with taxicabs.

It matters not. 'Twas a lovely day on the bay.

Christmas past?

This December was more like a warm Fall.
Last year we had snow, and more came almost every day.
The snow was thin in this picture, but it got much deeper!

Camp Connell, CA -- The Christmas season has been different, mostly for good reasons.
The weather has been unseasonably mild and dry. For those of you who recall last year's winter-from-Hell, that is quite a change.
My memory is that we spent most of the days between Christmas and New Years without power while snow came down and down and down. A couple of pictures will illustrate what it looked like last December.

Then this year we had an early snow, but less than a foot, and then it went away.
This week the nearby state park is crowded with visitors in shirtsleeves and tennis shoes, and there is not a sign of snow anywhere.

Another change is that this year Pat and I encouraged, and our family cooperated, giving gifts to people most in need. So while the family still exchanged small gifts, money went to the local Food Bank, and another family gift went to buy 50 meals for people somewhere in the world who are hungry. This is a good year for that.
And this year Pat and I were blessed to have Zack and Ruth and Brian and Katie and Delaney and Connor all here together.

This year we did not have to travel any further than Ruth and Brian's home 20 miles away, in sharp contrast to years past when we went from Florida to Atlanta, or the farm in Alabama, or some other distant point. Nothing can spoil a holiday quicker than sitting in an airport watching the rain, sleet and snow fall while waiting for a delayed flight.

I recall just a few years ago (40 or so) when I traveled to Birmingham to spend Christmas with my sister's family. Her husband got his first set of golf clubs, so we immediately took off that morning, found a golf course, and played a round in the snow.

Then there was a Christmas in Florida (1968) when an Apollo spacecraft was circling the moon and Pat and I were both working every day and night. Our tree was up, and partially decorated, and we never finished because we had to run off for work. We did have the pleasure of hosting Louis DeRoche of Agence France Presse as a dinner guest, a brief respite before we all went back t0 work. But our work that year included listening to Astronaut Frank Borman reading the Bible while circling the moon, something we will never forget.

Other Christmases were quieter and more normal. We went to my sister's Alabama farm a few times. Her house was always warm and welcoming, the food good and plentiful, and the children excited beyond all hope. Santa always made it, and one year my nephew taught me how to pay a new game on the television set, an astonishing invention called Mario Brothers.

Several years were spent in Florida, where Christmas weather was always a curiosity. Some years we went fishing on Christmas day, or just for a ride in the boat. Other years we watched our first child crawl around the carpet while the grandparents watched.

In later years we adapted to Ohio Christmases (stay indoors due to icy roads) and California Christmases (anything from fog to warm sunshine).

Our children's grandparents are missing now, as is my sister and any number of friends, but we were lucky enough this year to hear good news from friends all over the place and to be surrounded by all our children and grandchildren.

You can't beat that for good weather and good memories.

I said "Grin!" and they did!

No snow -- Losta wind

The entrance station is no more....
One of the biggest pieces of equipment -- a snow plow/front end loader -- took a tree.

Park,. Supt/Ranger Gary Olson, who is well over 6 feet tall, stands by a root tangle where trees went down in the campground...

The good news is when this tree crushed part of the maintenance supervisor's home in the park, they were in another part of the house. They have moved.

Camp Connell, Ca -- We are just fine thank you for asking, but some of our neighborhood did not fare so well.
In the past week we've experienced the severest winds in memory.
The steady winds were around 40-50 mph with gusts up to 60 or 70. At the ski resort where our son works winds at the crest were around 100 mph.

Power was out for four days, an cable for five, but we managed reasonably well with the wood-burning stove and a small generator to keep the freezer, a light or two, and Zack's video games going.

Within a mile of our home at least a half dozen houses/cabins were destroyed by falling trees, but no one was hurt thanks to the fact most are weekend second homes and no one was foolish enough to come listen to the wind blow. e live in an area of very large trees, mostly Incense Cedar, Fir, Sugar Pine and Ponderosa. On our lot alone we have 30 or so trees taller than 150 feet.
But we also live in a creek bottom, protected somewhat from high winds, but watching the tops dance and sway was pretty darned interesting. And hearing branches and cones rattle off the roof for two days was tiresome.
At our house the acre was covered with broken limbs and branches, but no real damage to anything. One branch small fell so far (150 feet or so) it gouged a cut in the deck railing, and stuck into the wooden deck surface like an arrow. It is still sticking up an inch or two.
I have not had a chance to get out to take pictures, but a friend took photos of the state park where we volunteer two miles away. You'll get an idea of the force of the storm.
We were lucky, and have agreed the next time the weather forecast calls for this sort of wind -- if it ever happens again -- we will go find a motel at a lower elevation, or move in with friends for a day or so.
Incidentally, even though the damage within ten miles of our home probably will total over $10 million, no news organization gave it much attention. Cities and Lake Tahoe are more interesting to the news media.
Rural life has some interesting aspects.

How we spent our summer (Which was way too short)

Hanging out in a waterfront pub in Oakland

Camp Connell, Ca- As I write this blog, there is new snow on the ground at our cabin home in the mountains, and a bit more in the forecast.
Summer was not very long, but it was busy, and I have been remiss at posting blogs so here comes a recap.

We jumped the season a bit in the Spring by going off to the desert near the Mexican border for an adventure with our friends Gary and Jeri in their BARV (Big-Assed-RV). Here we are sitting and eating after roaming the country in their Jeep, admiring wildflowers and rocks and stuff.Enjoying mild weather at Anza-Borrego State Park

As soon as the snow went away at home, which I recall was June, I started working on The Road Project. Our lane has been so damaged by snow and runoff that we had to have the road repaired, which took a lot longer ($$$$) than you would expect to arrange. I started getting bids in May and the job was finished in September.Zack was one of the laborers hired for the road crew


We managed to squeeze in a few sailing days on San Francisco Bay, after having the boat hauled out of the water at Berkeley Marine and bottom paint applied, and the electrical system worked on. Sailing on a near-perfect day
Me talking.
Pat working.

We also ran down the hill a couple of times to house-and-horse sit for Ruth and Brian and family so they could travel. Pat loves communing with the horses and chickens.Pat, Rocky and Teddi Jackson talking horse talk

Zack's daughter Katie visited her mom in the summer, than came back looking even more grown up than ever and ready for her eighth grade year at Junior High. Ruth's boy Connor is now attending the same school, which is neat, and his sister Delaney is now a High School Freshman at Brett Harte High School. It is great to have all our grandchildren so nearby. Here's some fun with the family.Zack looking good!
Connor, me and Brian at White Pines Lake
Ruth does not like wormsKatie at home during a photo session


We spent a lot of time this summer at Big Trees State Park, and even more time getting over the last hard winter (cleaning up downed trees, etc.) and getting firewood ready for the coming cold season.
A favorite spot along the North Grove Trail


So now Fall is here, the wood is stacked, and the snow has started. So Pat and I are house-sitting for a friend who has gone off to Mexico, at what we thought was below the snow line.

Guess what.

Florida Before Mickey Mouse

Sunrise off Cocoa Beach


I miss a Florida that—maybe—never was. But I have distinct memories of days before the state was swallowed by Mickey Mouse, when the Keys were a place to get away from it all, and no one knew what a condominium was.
My family’s Florida roots go deep. My grandfather discovered Florida’s beaches and fishing around 1900. The family had a place, more of a camp than a home, on Perdido Bay where Florida meets Alabama. His photo albums reflect men with their pants rolled up to the knees with very long strings of large trout.
He loved Florida, and started a weekly newspaper out of a print shop in Molina, near Pensacola. It didn’t last, but he stuck with Florida for the rest of his life.
As a young adult my father visited him, almost always for the fishing and the interesting people who hung out in the bays and bayous. One of his old photos shows him standing on the pier at Pensacola looking at a bay filled with working sailing vessels.
He told stories of a beachcomber who wore dresses. People thought it odd at the time, but he was just one of the local beach characters. The year was 1910.
He had to take a boat to get to Pensacola Beach, as there were no bridges then.
Later, when a massive hurricane destroyed the railroad bridge into the keys in the 1920s, my father went down on a rescue boat. He saw a man’s body impaled on a telephone pole and never forgot it.
By the 1920s my grandfather moved to Miami to work for the Herald as a proofreader. He had a heart attack there and died, and is buried in a cemetery just off the TaMiami Trail—back then the only road to the west coast.
My first visits came in the 1940s as a child to the Gulf Coast beaches, and then to central Florida where my aunt and uncle lived in an old farm house in a citrus grove near Ocala. It was the year Hank Williams’ record “Honky Tonkin’” was a big hit. There was a packing house on the railroad and a general store.
I accompanied my father as he traveled Florida on business. He would reward me for not being a pest by taking me to any tourist attraction we passed on our way to his appointments. I became an expert on Silver Springs, then the biggest attraction in the state, and particularly on Ross Allen’s Reptile Institute where I watched amazed as the man milked rattlesnakes and water moccasins, and the Seminoles wrestled alligators. I loved the mermaids at Weeki Watchie Springs.

My mother father in the 1930s near Daytona Beach
We took day-long drives down very straight two-lane roads, often surrounded by orange groves. On hot days (this was before air conditioning) we would stop at the Suwanee River and take a swim. In fact, any good creek crossing was an excuse to stop and get wet in rural interior Florida in the summer.
Eventually my father moved to Coral Gables and I would spend every summer there. Hanging out with my father in the early 1950's at Crandon Park in Miami
Our idea of a big deal vacation was to go to North Miami Beach and spend the Fourth of July in a cheap motel right on the ocean. If my dad had a few more days off he would take me down to Islamorada and we would fish off the bridges, hanging over the side and being careful not to step back into the path of the few automobiles that passed us by.
Coral Gables was a great place for a twelve-year-old. I could ride a city bus to the best swimming pool in the state—the Venetian Pool—or walk to the Coliseum where I learned to ice skate.
I finally moved to Florida to live as an adult, to work for the same newspaper my grandfather had worked for four decades earlier, but assigned to a bureau office in Cocoa.
The highway from Orlando still had oyster shell shoulders in 1965, but the space program was booming and it was an exciting time to live on the beach and watch the world change.
Cocoa Beach was a party town, just suited to an ex-Army guy looking for a good time with late dinners at Wolfie’s and dancing to the bands at the Carnival Club.
I found a treasure on the beach, married her, and started a family from our first home—three bedrooms on a canal on Merritt Island purchased at a premium price of $21,000.
Once the bridge was built across Sebastian Inlet I would take off at night to fish with friends, hanging from the bumpers as the tide ripped along underneath us, trying to catch a snook, any snook. Never did.
We were there when Walt Disney began to build his dream in the Palmetto scrub, changing the state forever.
Our Florida days were numbered, but we managed to stay a few more years, moving from Cape Canaveral to Tallahassee, a different kind of Florida, and then to Fort Myers. At that time there was one condo on the beach, and lots of small motels and rental cottages.
We left the state when new opportunities came up, and have returned periodically to see how the place manages to survive.
Most of the things we enjoyed are gone.
The funky beach towns now are polished and expensive.
The Florida Keys have been so urbanized you can’t tell where Miami stops.
Cocoa Beach has been through so many boom and bust cycles no one remembers where the astronauts used to drink late at night, or which car dealer loaned them red, white and blue Corvettes when they were assigned to fly into space.
The beaches no longer allow driving, which is probably a good thing.
The manatees are making a comeback which is definitely a good thing.
The broad expanse of open beaches has been walled off by condominiums that sit empty most of the time.
Tingley’s Fish Camp on the Intra Coastal Waterway no longer is a hangout for fishermen, and doesn’t serve great seafood the way it once did. The mega-yachts have taken over.
But the old fish camp in the mangrove along the Indian River just south of Melbourne Beach is still there, with the weird chickens and the dog that retrieves conch shells from deep in the water.
And if you take a long enough walk along the beach after high tide near Sebastian Inlet you can still smell Florida as it once was, and feel the wind blow, and not hear anything but the cry of the gulls.
In Florida Bay off the Everglades in 2005

(Credit for this article, and the editing that helped it, go to Florence Poor of Melbourne, Florida, who publishes "The Contributor" a quarterly. She recently celebrated a big birthday among friends, and threatens to retire. I hope she won't.)

Goodby Shuttle, Hello ???

Camp Connell, Ca -- The first time I watched a man fly into space from the sands of Cape Canaveral, in 1965, I thought it was the most exciting thing I had ever seen in my life.
I managed to calm down long enough to write a story for the Miami Herald about the adventures the crew of Gemini 4, including America's first spacewalker Ed White.
But I will never forget the experience.
Any more than I will forget the excitement surrounding the world's first landing of human beings on another body in space -- the moon -- in 1969. I was working at my temporary desk at Mission Control's press center in Houston.
My good friend Louis DeRoche, correspondent for the French Press Agency, popped open a bottle of vermouth (awful stuff) and toasted the event even as he was filing bulletins to the people of Europe and Asia.
"You Americans," he said, "have no idea how important this is to the world."
Alas, Louie was correct.
We really don't get it, and now America's exploring years are behind us.
We can afford wars, and we can afford Wall Street institutional financial rescues, but we have forgotten how to explore. Just can't afford it.
Back when space was big news the television networks would start coverage in the middle of the night and stay live on the air until the flights ended. Gradually they backed off, of course, but they still reported constantly on the dangerous adventure of the men flying in space, carrying the American flag as the world leader in exploration.
Today the main networks devoted about five minutes or air time after liftoff, and cut away to commercials and other programs (including cooking shows) before the shuttle reached earth orbit.
Good things never last forever, but there is something very sad about a nation that seeks instant gratification from news of a murder trial in Florida, or a celebrity's drug problems, and doesn't care about exploring the universe.
I am reasonably optimistic that my grandchildren will live to see the United States send men and women into space again. I am sure a later generation will have the will and the means.
But I think the prediction the next manned space flight from the U.S. might happen in ten years or so is way off.
I do not expect to live long enough to see another U.S. manned space flight.
And that ticks me off.

Friends, sailing and music

Pat showing our guests the sites on San Francisco Bay.


Gary and Jeri just south of the Bay Bridge.

Jeri hauling on the staysail sheet, trimming the sail.

Alameda, Ca -- Pat and I looked hard last week at all the chores we needed to tackle after a hard winter, and immediately left the cabin and headed for San Francisco Bay to go sailing.
It wasn't difficult to talk our friends Gary and Jeri into joining us.
They arrived at our marina on Wednesday afternoon, just in time to watch the Beer Can Race Series from the upper deck at the Oakland Yacht Club.
We got very lucky and ran into an expert on racing -- he got there too late to join a crew -- and he explained the complexities of the races to us. I can't remember it all, but I know there were four different races, numerous types of boats, and a shotgun or horn going off every few minutes.
The wind was light but that made the race into a slow motion dance. We didn't know or care who won, but it was a pretty event followed by a good meal with friends.
Thursday morning we were up at the crack of dawn (about 9 a.m.) after proving four adults actually can sleep on our boat, ate muffin's Gary had cooked, and left the dock in time to catch the outgoing tide. (I always wanted to be able to say that. It sounds so darned nautical.)

We showed them the usual sights, like the port of Oakland cranes loading containers, and a very pretty schooner taking tourists along the cityfront;

And more unusual sites, like the workers building the new Bay Bridge high above the water, Japanese Navy ship tied up at the city docks, and an amphibious "Duck" that takes tourist into McCovey Cove at the baseball stadium.




And a special treat appeared as we approached Alcatraz. One of the Oracle catamarans built for races leading up to the America's Cup was practicing. You might remember the catamaran from the evening news. Two days earlier the twin to this boat flipped over, throwing the skipper through the wing (they have wings, not sails) and dumping everybody into the chilly bay on national television. Undaunted, the crew was back and we watched her fly along for quite awhile, moving at least four times faster than we were, and appearing to outrun her chase boat.

And we wrapped up a perfect day at Quinn's Lighthouse Restaurant for an evening of Chanty music in the pub, one of the best shows on the waterfront. I knew it was going to be good when the very first song was "Eddystone Light," a tune I learned 30 years ago, and then the rest of the set was all familiar from our visit to Mystic Seaport a few years ago.
A birthday party at the next table made it festive for everyone in the room.
Skip Henderson and the Starboard Watch entertain every Thursday at Quinn's
Jeri and Gary feeling mellow.

Sanders (after a pint) and Pat (after a dinner) also feeling mellow.