I didn’t take a lot of pictures on vacation last week. All the running around for gigs and meals and stuff was pretty hectic, and half the time I didn’t even bring my camera. I did, however, spend good quality beach time in the early mornings. The beach was right across the street, and I was out there around 8am each morning running, taking photos, drinking iced tea, and mellowing out. So this is what the beach in Cayucos, CA looks like…foggy in the mornings:

Good waves pretty much all of the time. I was up before the surfers. Cool to see dolphins in the water fairly frequently.

Here’s a shot of the beach looking back towards town:

This rock had all kinds of things living on it, including a pair of colorful starfish. No starfish pics, though…out of batteries!

Really large barnacles:

A 3-inch crab:

These anemone things were everywhere:

Finally, one last look at the big rock by the 8th street public access:

This story reminded me of my first day in London in 1989:  Blair ‘caught riding without a ticket’

Actually, the situation was totally different with my friend Ed and me.  We were on a high school trip and the first day they let us loose for the afternoon with very little in the way of instruction or supervision.  Ed and I decided to go to Piccadilly Circus and the Hard Rock Cafe.  (It would be a few years before I developed a sense of shame for doing anything so typically touristy…)  We headed directly for the Underground (aka. The Tube) never having taken urban mass transit before.  It’s hard for me to grasp now, being a 12-year veteran of New York City with the subway map virtually ingrained in my mind, but that Underground map made no sense to us whatsoever!

The shocker, though, was the fact that neither of us knew you had to pay to ride the Tube!  We just walked in and out of station after station without any idea we were breaking any rules!  That would never work in NYC, where the turnstiles don’t cooperate if you don’t pay your fare.  At one point, someone in a uniform ran after us, but his accent was so heavy and British that we truly had no idea what he was saying.  We just looked at him like he was crazy, and I suppose he found it easier to grant us our assessment and wander off.

We never did find our way to Piccadilly Circus.  We just got plenty lost.  The next day on the bus, everybody had these little Underground ticket stubs.  They were cool.  We asked where they got them.  "Umm…from the Underground?"  And that’s when it started to put two and two together.

That day, we couldn’t figure out how we managed to get into the stations without paying.  There were barriers, guards, ticket booths, all of that.  There was no way we could have got on without a ticket!

In hindsight, it was nice of that guard to let us ride without tickets.  I suppose in London, you don’t have to be Tony Blair to be treated like the former prime minister!

I was scheduled to fly out of San Diego Thursday at 1:30pm and catch a connecting flight in Chicago on my way to Newark, NJ.  My departure was delayed 2 1/2 hours, though, since snow in the midwest had caused a lot of delays and cancellations in Chicago.  With the delay, my flight would have landed after my connection took off.  There were no other flights to Newark that evening, so I would have had to stay at a hotel in Chicago and miss work on Friday.

I was able to switch to a flight to San Francisco where I would have a 5 hour layover before a red eye to Newark.  They even moved my luggage to the new plane.  I figured this would work out fine, since I’d be able to sleep on the plane and arrive in NYC in time to get to work.  I even might be able to catch dinner with my aunt and uncle in SF if they were around.

This is where it got really funny…  As soon as I arrived at the gate in San Francisco, I checked my phone to see if my uncle returned the voice mail I left him.  When I looked up, I saw Jen’s cousin Matt walking by!  After a hearty double take, we posed for this photo:

He was on his way to Chicago with some friends.  I joked that we got to talk more at the airport than at Jen’s grandmother’s Christmas party in LA four days earlier. (Jen and I almost missed it because our flight was "delayed"  overnight 12 hours in Chicago for mechanical reasons, but technically not "cancelled", so we didn’t get flight vouchers…  That’s a whole nother story that isn’t as fun.)

After Matt and his friends left for their plane, I met with my aunt and uncle for Thai food in San Mateo.  I really have to get out there soon to visit them on purpose, but an accidental visit was a lot of fun!

My red eye flight didn’t go smoothly, either.  We were delayed a half hour on the tarmac while a mechanic replaced a broken black box.  I was sitting next to a father and son who looked like they walked out of a Far Side cartoon.  I joked to the father that black boxes were supposed to be indestructible, but he had no sense of humor and quickly returned to his Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.  Once in the air, I paid (they aren’t free anymore) five bucks for a meal that including 45 breath mints…mmm, nutritious!  Slept til 100 miles from Newark, and busted the zipper off my carry on when I took it out of the overhead.  That’s how we muggles have to travel without floo powder or apparating, but half the fun is the journey itself.

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