So there I was in downtown San Jose, hoping to see how the free wireless Internet access works.
Before I got sat down to fire up my laptop, I heard this drumming coming from
down the street. I notice a bunch of people lined up along the street and I
realize, "hey, a parade. How cool is that?"

The event is Fiestas Patrias, which means a celebration of the fatherland.
An announcer tells us the Aztec Dancers are heading our way.

The outfits are pretty ornate. They dance in formation, pound drums and look
outlandish.

One of the dancers walks right past me. He seems a bit pale for an Aztec, but
a few more hours in the sun’ll take care of that.

The home country is Mexico, if you haven’t figured that out already.

There were lots of people on horseback. This guy had quite a way with a rope.

Here’s a car I saw in the parade. It’s about a half-hour after it’s over, and
some of the participants are heading home.

This is one of my favorite sights in downtown San Jose: People on horseback
waiting in the turn lane for the arrow to give them permission to execute a
legal left turn. It would’ve been even better to see this without having seen
the parade — the surprise/incongrousness factor would’ve been at least double.

Next week the annual Art Car Fest returns, and I hope to blog it live. Should
be lots o’ fun.

Driving up the Coast Highway from Monterey to the San Francisco suburbs is
one of my favorite ways to kill a day off. Melissa and I hadn’t done it since
last summer so we decided to go for it again yesterday, for old time’s sake.
On Tuesday I hiked for four hours through Sunol Wilderness, which I
had been to a few weeks back and meant to explore in more detail. The place
rocks. But first, the road trip.

Melissa in the co-pilot’s seat, parked on Skyline Drive overlooking Silicon
Valley. This is near the end of the drive, about mile 220 in a 280-mile loop
that went south to Monterey and north to Pacifica, then back down California
Route 35 atop the Santa Cruz Mountains, then down to Saratoga and back home.

To get things back in order, let’s get down to the Monterey Bay.

This is actually near Pacific Grove, the next town south of Monterey. We clambered
down on the rocks, hoping to see some starfish or octopi in the tidal pools.
The coast was still clouded in, so no brilliant sky for a backdrop. Still, not
bad scenery for a Monday.

No luck on exotic aquatic species, but Melissa found these fine little empty
shells, possibly the former homes of hermit crabs.

Remember the Chicken Heart That Ate Cleveland? This appears to be one of the chicken’s eggs.

Monterey has turned Steinbeck’s Cannery Row into an appalling tourist trap,
which we skipped. Instead we headed over to Fisherman’s Wharf for a taste of
what’s left of the Monterey that matters. You know, where people take boats
out into the ocean, scrape the bottom with nets, bring back seafood, sell it
to a distributor and hope to have enough left over after their boat payments
to buy a Filet o’ Fish at McDonald’s.

One of those big fishing vessels is right over Melissa’s shoulder in the marina.

The coolest thing about the wharf is this little greasy-spoon called LouLou’s.
It’s got room for about 12 people inside, not counting the four or so who work
there.

Our first-ever meal in Monterey was served at this very spot, though it was
under different management, I believe. In any case, the fish is fresh and tasty.
Service is quick, and the staff is way cool.

I had the fried calamari. Salty and tasty — who’d a thunk those little O’s
were squid tentacles? Melissa had the broiled white fish. Loved it.

Remnants of the lunch crowd … everybody knew everybody else by name. Regulars.
Somebody left a box of Hostess HoHo’s on the counter. The proprietress vowed
she’d pop a couple in the deep-fryer — and she kept her word.

We must’ve exuded that an of people who are game for an experiment, because
the waitress handed us this deep-fried HoHo with our check. It was a bit rich
for my palate but Melissa loved it.

From there, it was on to Santa Cruz. Surf City.

The Surfer Statue along the Santa Cruz coastline. This little spot gets the
best waves, and the best surfers.

The waves were breaking close to the cliffs; this guy was wearing a helmet
to avoid breaking his skull in a wipeout.

A tribute to a beloved local surfer who died recently. It was a guy in his
50s. Surfing draws people of every generation; it’s not unusual to see gray-haired
guys out there next to teen-agers.

After that we headed north again. We stopped at one of the public beaches and
waded into the ocean. Ankle-deep is plenty in this water, which isn’t exactly
ice cold but is chilly enough to wake up the road weary. I was feeling a bit
sleepy till my toes got a taste of that chill.

Waves doing what they do at the beach.

Those are the highlights of our little Highway One drive, though these few
pictures barely convey the splendor. A coast like this is worth a thousand pictures.

Next up: Sunol Regional Wilderness.

I brought my digi-cam to the park Tuesday feeling fully sick and tired of
the same old stately trees and majestic hillsides. Well, not tired of seeing them, just tired
of taking pictures of them. Turns out Sunol was just where I needed to be, because
it has two of my favorite things: water and rocks.

I started my hike along the Alameda Creek, which is barely deep enough to carry
a current at this time of the year, but can turn into a raging river when the
rains come. I noticed a rain gauge in a dry riverbed that went up to 12 feet.

If, like me, your mind is in the gutter you will fully understand the need
to take and post this picture.

I was looking for an area of the park called Little Yosemite. When I got there
I did see some wild rock formations, though comparing it to Yosemite is a bit
ambitious. But even 10 percent of Yosemite is plenty amazing.

Rocks, many of them broken in half. This one looks like a Godzilla gave it
a good karate chop.

I saw a couple of these, apparently split by earthquake forces.

Another rock jutting up out of the ground — it goes up about 15 feet or so.
Wants to be El Capitan when it grows up.

The hillside had these big bluish rocks jutting out of it. And a privy tucked
back in there for those who insist on privacy when they run back behind the
rock.

I had to huff and puff to get up here. It’s about 2000 feet up, and about four
miles into the hike. That’s the peak of the ridge in the background.

On the way down I came across this huge pile of huge rocks. I’m guessing it’s
crawling with climbers on weekends. I had it all to myself … but fortunately
I neglected to bring any climbing gear (on account of not owning any), so I
was free to walk on past. I have a hard enough time keeping my footing on level
ground … seeking out ways to lose traction and fall embarrassingly doesn’t
suit my style.

Sunol Wilderness is full of surprises .. great trails, stunning rocks, and
I covered perhaps a quarter of it. It’s on my return list, for sure.

Not that this is becoming an obsession or anything, but I’ve been waiting for
a full moon to see what kind of shot I could get … little did I realize that
the moon takes this position in the western sky only at absurdly early hours
of the morning. This morning I got up about 4:10 a.m. and the first thing I
wondered was: how’s that moon gonna look? So far I haven’t quite figured out
how to get the best settings on my camera; this is a 10-second time exposure.
The moon had set before I finished fiddling with all the settings. But it’ll
do till the next full moon.

 

When we first came up the hill to our new place, we were fascinated and amused by these signs saying “Marsh Rd. Closed” because some enterprising delinquents had painted “Dead Bodies Found!” across them.

Some enterprising do-gooders tried to clean up the signs but you can still see the “ND!” at the end of this one.

I asked the landlord what was up with those signs, and he said, “oh, some murder 20 years ago — a body got dumped back there.”

Lately I’ve been passing the sign on my morning walks, and going about a mile and a half down Marsh Road.

The road is quiet and scenic, with hardly any traffic. Hard to believe anything ontoward could’ve happened out here.

That’s the Calaveras Reservoir off in the distance. I’m basically down at valley floor level here.

By now you’re thinking, “get to the good stuff, what about the murder?”

OK, if you’ve seen the movie “River’s Edge” you already know about it: Co-stars Crispin Glover and Keanu Reeves are pals of this spooky, twisted teenager who flips out, raping and killing a teen-age girl and dumping her body out in the countryside. What made the movie really disturbing is what happened next: The killer goes back to his school and brags to all his friends about how he killed this girl, and he takes his friends out to view the corpse in the woods somewhere.

All this really happened, except it wasn’t in the Pacific Northwest — it was in Milpitas, the town right down the road from us. Some guy at the local high school raped and killed a teen-aged girl and dumped her body in a ravine on Marsh Road.

Here’s one of the ravines I walk past. There are lots of ravines out here so I doubt it’s anywhere near the fatal spot.

The guy who killed her really did go back to school and brag to his pals that he had done the deed, and had brought some of them out here to look at the body. It lay there for several days before it occurred to somebody to call the cops, who stopped a carload of local high school students on their way up to view the body. I suspect the perp will remain incarcerated for a very long time.

As for Marsh Road, it became a notorious party hangout for local teenagers. Sometimes things got out of hand and the locals complained.

My understanding is that a car fire — here’s the burnt spot — was the final straw: county authorities declared the road closed to the public and put in this gate so that only authorized vehicles can pass.

So that’s the story of the Marsh Road murder.

Melissa asked me to take some pictures of her flowerbed for the folks back
home, so I popped off a few shots Sunday afternoon.

Lately I’ve been trying to show more discipline in choosing which photos to
post. I get a few notes saying "please post more!" and I’m grateful
for the encouragement and indulgence. Nevertheless, every minute here is a minute
away from your favorite "Everybody Loves Raymond" reruns. That’s a
lot to ask of anyone. And besides, the pros take dozens of rolls of film and
distill them to a single shot for publication. I don’t need to be that brutal,
but the least I could do is emulate people who know what they’re doing.

Anyway, these are the pics I winnowed from the dozen I shot.

Looking straight down from our porch on Melissa’s flowerbed. I like to try
shooting at odd angles, but most of my results are too wacked-out.

Something I learned early after moving here: getting the hills in the background
almost always makes the picture prettier.

A box of marigolds.

Another wacky-angle attempt.

Green tomatoes. Soon we’ll be swimming in fat, juicy red ones. Melissa put
these in planters because months of sun and wind (and no rain) have made the
soil nearby impervious just about anything this side of a laser-guided bomb.
Shovel blades just ricochet off this dirt.

So, those are today’s pics. Now get back in front of your television where
you belong.

Actually there’s probably a more accurate term for the hoods these horses are wearing … but the principle’s the same: they see through a screen.

These, however, are not designed to protect the females’ chastity or help the men avoid temptation. They just keep the flies out of their owners’ eyes.

Tonight I did some fiddling with my digicam’s settings, figured out how to do a time exposure and took this shot of Silicon Valley. It’s a three-second exposure using the cam’s shutter-priority setting. I let it rest on the handrail of the landing on our stairs outside, and used the delayed-release timer to get this effect.

I may fiddle some more to figure out how to get some of the grain out of it. But for now it’s pretty cool.