What a Difference a Day Makes

My friend Bri's been visiting for a few days. He's from Down South, and he alternated between disbelief that anybody would drive this far (sometimes twice a day) for surf, and being overwhelmed at how beautiful the commute to the coast is.
We scored fun, clean peelers one day and unfun, unclean, foggy mungus the next. The following photo montage captures the same spot, from the same angle, with only 24 hours of separation.


During the commute, we crested a hill and stopped to take pictures of a vineyard fading into a redwood stand. Bri took it upon himself to remind me how much I take the Northcoast for granted. I assured him I didn't.
"Yes you do," he said, then got back in the truck.
A few minutes later we stopped again for some pictures--this time of a rolling cattle pasture, a deep shade of green despite the already-scorched inland grasses, and another reminder that I take "all of this" for granted. During the third stop he again scolded me, this time in a eucalpytus grove. I gently reminded him that I didn't take all of this for granted.
"You you do," he said.
I submitted as evidence the fifty pictures I had taken in the last twenty minutes. Brian remained nonplussed. He popped a fresh stick of gum in his mouth.
"I drive past three power plants in my twelve-minute commute to the beach," he said.
He stared out the window. "In the dark one morning, I once ran over a bag of clothes that turned out to be a dude." Noting my expression he added, "He was already dead."
My friend continued, and I let him. People come up here for retreats, for escape, sometimes for surf, but mostly to remind themselves that places like this exist. That the not-so-distant California Coastline can still hold a community with more opossums than household wi-fi connections.
"...somebody once threw a dead cat at me in the lineup..." he continued. I let his list fill the car, then drift out the windows into the fields and hills beyond.
"...I think I caught a venereal disease walking across my parking lot with bare feet..."
I was starting to feel pretty good about myself at this point, and almost didn't mind when we checked another spot, a rocky pocket cove, to find blown out, uninspired lines dribbling onto the beach. The wind was up, the air as crisp as a fresh slip of paper. We watched as two seals made their way north, their heads disappearing and reappearing until they dissolved into the fog.
"What next?" my friend asked.
"Coffee," I said. "Maybe a sandwich."
We got back in the truck, turned on the heat, and rode for a while in silence, our cameras on our laps.

Just a hint of board porn, but it's mostly a plug for my buddy Jim, who designed my bitchin' dragonfly logo. Recently, he left his design firm to open his own. Even more recently, he should be scoring waves in Nicaragua right...about...now...
Anyway, I've linked his site somewhere over here--------------->