John & Anne Wiley

2011/01/11

Night Flight

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Random,SB Region — John @ 05:28

We love to fly at night, especially over familiar Santa Barbara where so many scenes are no longer familiar. As the light fades over the harbor, a whole different look comes over everything.

4352 SB Nightfall

4352 SB Nightfall

Same with nearby Carpinteria, as unlit areas form into black shapes nestled among streets and homes.

4363 Carp Darkening

4363 Carp Darkening

Shopping center parking lots become oddly shaped pools of light surrounding the dark roofs of buildings, sprinkled among traffic and lights of all sorts.

4403 Five Point Lights

4403 Five Point Lights

The familiar downtown bus depot becomes a geometric study in light and dark.

4429 Depot & Darkness

4429 Depot & Darkness

2011/01/09

Again

Filed under: Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 01:57

Every evening the sun sets of course. Sometimes we don’t see it due to clouds, but more often it’s uneventful because there aren’t any clouds. Tonight was yet another of those less common SB sunsets with just the right mix of Goldilocks perfection blending clouds and orange-red afterglow. So we went for a short walk. First we paused to check on monkeys for a dear friend.

1248 Monkey Business

1248 Monkey Business

She’d sold her home and moved away, only to discover that these monkeys she’d left behind are wanted by her daughter. So we stopped by to ensure that they are indeed removed to a neighbor’s home to wait for transportation to their new yard.

Reassured, we headed up a small hill to survey the surrounds. I’m happy to report that all’s well, and we were rewarded with some panoramic “air-brushed” SoCal sunset skies.

1252 Soft Sunset

1252 Soft Sunset

The most gentle breeze, a mere waft really, carried the last sounds of the day as we soaked in the warm colors shifting toward indigo darkness. Luckily for this post, Anne had brought along her camera so I borrowed it to snap these pix using manual settings.

1250 Layers of Light

1250 Layers of Light

The dust blotches on Anne’s camera refreshed my temptation to look up the directions I saw online a few months ago, on how to open and clean the internal sensor. Of course, the first time she forgets to keep it out of strong wind and sticks it out of Tripp’s window to capture one of her great photos the sensor will be re-coated with blotches. There’s also some chance of messing it up during the delicate brain surgery. Is it worth the effort and risk, or should we just buy her a new and more “rugged” camera?

2011/01/06

Sunset Bird

Filed under: Aviation,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Random,SB Region — John @ 02:13

Strolling a nearby knoll this evening, we heard the quiet hum of a small plane (looked like a C-172 similar to Tripp) descending toward SBA in the West where we’d been watching the sunset. Looking back toward that familiar and beloved music we saw this explosion of cloud color contrasting with the gentle plane at the top-right corner.

4291 Sunset Approach

4291 Sunset Approach

It’s an enchanting time to fly, and we were transported aloft as we watched in rapt silence.

2011/01/03

Fresh Snow

Filed under: Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,Random,SB Region — John @ 06:54

This morning there was fresh snow on the local mountains, but we couldn’t see it until the clouds lifted. The wind was ripping the trees around and clouds were marching past the slopes, but we saw several gulls and crows doing aerobatics as if to mock our inability to go flying in Tripp.

4258 As the Crow Flies

4258 As the Crow Flies

It seemed as if the crow was returning from having created the storm and capped the hills in white. In reality, he was just flying down to join his friends in the stark branches of a dead tree on a small knoll.

4251 Murder of Crows

4251 Murder of Crows

Can you make out the “murder” (group) of crows at the bottom center of this pic? Well, turns out Anne couldn’t either so here’s a cropped version.

4251 Cackle Choir

4251 Cackle Choir

They seemed to be quite enjoying the weather, and were bragging loudly about it. We saw them fly around noisily celebrating, arguing, chasing, or whatever it was they were excited about. Then they’d glide back to perch there watching, with an occasional eruption of “crowing.” Tooth Rock (aka Cathedral Peak) looked especially mystical in the dark of thickening clouds.

4259 Tooth Rock

4259 Tooth Rock

It’s the pyramid-shaped rock on the right. Can you make out the caves in the face? There’s an especially big one at the base, though they’re all fairly shallow. I like to imagine ancient people living or at least having ceremonies in them, and some day it would be cool to find a way of reaching them. I’ve yet to see a good trail, despite flying all around it several times. I wonder if the crows visit it.

2011/01/01

Muddy Waters

Filed under: Flying,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 00:17

We’re finally feeling better from PHFP syndrome (post-holiday food poisoning). We’ve decided it was a bad egg, and we’re not recommending this as a weight loss plan even though I’m down a cool ten pounds. Instead we’re enjoying a look back at photos, and preparing to venture out and join the fun of New Year’s Eve. Maybe that will produce some new pix that we’ll share whenever we recover from tonight. 🙂

Meanwhile, here’s one I liked from offshore of Huntington Beach on our flight to Sandy Eggo.

4074 Human Footprint

4074 Human Footprint

A few generations back, what is now the concrete-captured Santa Ana River meandered through the desert marshes into a pristine blue Pacific. Nowadays it’s mostly dry, but after a storm the accumulated toxic runoff rushes along picking up topsoil from denuded lots and strip-mined industrial farming. The shape of this edge reminds me of the yen/yang circle, here mingling life and death.

As you can see, I’m in a cheerful mood from the recent days of discomfort. OK, off to join some revelry!

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