Final Trip Report

As I mentioned in a previous report, in late October I visited a number of Holy Shrines in the Bay Area. Here's the second half of my itinerary.

Start with pre-Halloween festivities at Orchard Supply Hardware with Ken, where one can still purchase many lengths of 2-52 nuts and bolts, in contrast to my local Ace Hardware where I'm lucky to find anything smaller than a miniscule selection of 4-40's...

punkInHead.jpg

Later that week I BARTed to SFMoMA for some more culture. Besides a lovely Weston Pepper print they had an installation by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer -- whose pieces I'd just seen at Bitforms in NYC:

Voice Array

and

Last Breath

Ed Osborn's Night-Sea Music -- which I'd seen in a SF gallery some years ago before he was famous...hah hah...and didn't know was on display here:

And the last day of Jim Campbell's Exploded Views, which I just happened to be viewing when he arrived to do an artist's talk:

After a march down Market Street to The Zuni Cafe I managed to scam onto the prow-window-seat for dinner with Ken and Brian. I was too busy eating everything on the appetizer menu, including oysters of course, to take any photos. But I'll always have the memories, won't I?


Then down to Santa Cruz for a tour of the Art, Music, and DARC -- Digital Arts Research Center -- facilities with Sudhu, who is collecting keys and access codes at an alarming rate (he is also angling to get my old job running the electronic music studios). It took about 45 minutes to finally find the tiny buildings I remembered, hidden away in the forest.

On the way out I stopped at Waddell Creek, one of my favorite beaches just north of Santa Cruz, and touched the Pacific. There I found this small rivulet draining into the sea. I was too lazy to go back to the truck for the real camera so all I have is this schmutzy cell phone image:

Scale Free Image

Three days in the sun at Jasper Ridge with Brooke and Deanna were capped by a Horse Vaulting Halloween party in Saratoga. Here's Natasha as Doctor Who getting some air on a barrel:

natashaJump.jpg

I got all setup to get some good photos of the main event but unfortunately she was always just getting into position as she passed my frame, so I didn't get a good picture on a real horse. However the place was chock-a-block with cute young devil-eared things so I managed to snap one of her team mates instead:

vaulting.jpg

Then the excrutiating drive home via Eisenhower's lovely Interstate system. I hit Mojave at sunset just in time to see the full moon rise over the Eastern desert and found this in my Barstow motel room. I think it's a dog, but it could be a bunny:

towelDog.jpg

Night two was spent in Flagstaff's Hotel Monte Vista:

http://www.hotelmontevista.com/

 which features two bars. I selected the wrong one for my first martini(s) and then felt it necessary to sample the "correct" one. So the next day's drive to Santa Fe was a bit more challenging than it really needed to be...

But all in all it was an amazingly scenic and reasonably painless trip.
We now return you to our regular programming.