A Little Bit Of Beach Time

In the span of ten days I've travelled from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. Tonight I find myself in a small beach town on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Today's rainy, cloudy weather kept pretty much everyone except the fishing enthusiasts inside. It was a great day to do a bit of shopping and napping.

By about 6:00 pm the storms had passed and the sunshine streamed through the clouds. In turn, groups of people streamed from their rental houses and headed toward the beach. My group shuffled off with them.

Like everyone else that made their way over the dunes we knew that even one hour on the beach is better than no time all.

Travels with family

7,000 miles of travel from Virginia to California and back again...

Alexandria

Baltimore

Phoenix

San Jose

Santa Cruz

Salinas

Lost Hills

Anaheim

Venice Beach

Los Angeles

Studio City

Pacific Coast Highway

Monterey

Big Sur

San Jose

Phoenix

Baltimore

and finally back to Alexandria

Many miles, many sights and a whole bunch of pictures.

Fun?

Oh, yeah.

The Rewards of the Sky

Airline travel, the way it can so quickly and efficiently shuttle groups of people from one place on earth to another, is a pretty great thing. It can also be pretty boring.

I realized that three hours into my seven-hour journey from Baltimore to San Jose this morning. I looked around at the other people around me, some napping-others reading, and wished I had the focus they had while speeding along above the earth. Too many things distract me on a plane. If it's not the strange noises of the engine it's the bumps and dips that come out of nowhere. Sleep is difficult and reading more than a page or two in the span of 15 minutes is near impossible.

Of course there is always the reward of arriving at the destination. I stepped out into a glorious day in San Jose around noon this morning. The temperature hovered around 68 degrees and there wasn't a hint of humidity in the air. The azure sky was clear as far as the eye could see. It was a welcome change from the heat and humidity I left on the east coast. Three hours after my plane touched down I was enjoying the comforts of the hotel pool, my eyes squinting as they looked past the tall palm tree towards the sun. The boring plane ride pretty much left my head as soon as I stretched into a back float and felt the cool water lap up around my body.

Eagle Eye Cherry

I've spent the last few days going through the stacks and stacks of music CDs that I've accumulated over the last twenty-some years. It's funny, I clearly recall buying my first album--Boston's debut album with that infectious tune, "More Than A Feeling,"--but have no idea what the first music CD was that I purchased. Nor do I remember the first song I downloaded, legally or otherwise.

Today I made a discovery. The music I had that came out between the years 1989 or so to the mid 90s is pretty forgettable. I recognized a lot of the band names but when it came to the songs listed I was lost. Which ones had I liked? Was it worth holding onto or should I let it go?

I spent a few hours plowing through the music of the early 90s. In the end I downloaded about 1o0 songs from 78 different CDs.

Tomorrow I'll take a large grocery bag of "oldies with a few goodies" to see if the local Record and Tape Exchange is interested in buying what I no longer need. Maybe, just maybe, there will be a little bit of money in those foggy musical memories.