From the hills between Santa Barbara and Santa Inez, the day’s/year’s end sunset, reflected in trusty Tripp’s wing.
0701 Sunset Wing
GrandGirl turned one year just days ago and is about to experience her 1st Santa.
Grandpa drums her a tune…and is enchanted with their bright connection, reflected in her eyes.
1647 G'Daughter & G'pa with Great Aunt
~by Anne
Unlike my early life, happiness is all around now. Inside and out. Filling me up. Lots of things get me giggling, smiling, and laughing out loud. There are also many things that evoke in me the sort of happiness that simply glows in radiant beams of inner joy. Time with friends and family. Deep conversation, playful moments, and just Being with Anne. Flying of course, as when we flew past L.A. on a recent moderately smoggy and overcast day.
1455 L.A.
…and out the other window is the view of L.A. perhaps more familiar to most people.
8430 Hollywood
I deeply enjoy time with children, and there’s a new special child in my life now of course. Her good nature and frequent squeals of delight just thrill my heart, and she often reminds me of another baby girl who is now her mother.
1678 Grandpa Is Happy
Surfing the air offshore along SoCA beaches is popular with birds, hang gliders, and a few aviators like us. In sunset light, the sandstone bluffs are even more colorful as the mood of beachcombers shifts toward evening.
8322 Beach Bluff
Nearby the neighbors seem to have pooled their resources, investing their individual resources in a surfside pool rather than share a collective one.
8232 Tide Pools
I wonder if some of them are low enough to be reached by waves, but maybe they all use sea water pumped up from offshore. Other neighbors have their own large grotto, at least for now.
8230 Hollow Lawn
Flying along the coast is ordinary magic. Places we’ve walked, ridden bikes, and boated reveal themselves anew. The enchantment that shorelines have on human consciousness is expanded and enhanced when we fly low and slow along the beaches and bluffs. Having done that so much now in the last several years, for us it has become ordinary magic. Luckily for us, the magic itself is never ordinary. A constant feast of serene beauty flows past in a sedately moving panorama.
7950 Dume to SMO
Point Dume in the foreground, past Santa Monica (KSMO) and into the haze of L.A. All along this path secrets are revealed. Patterns of kelp and sea floor appear in the ocean.
7961 Past Dume
We see the patterns of human activity, and the way buildings, streets and cities fit in relation to one another.
7988 SMO to LA
Part of the magic is how flying along shores we’ve strolled takes us to new lands of memory, mingling past with present. There’s even a future element, as charming new spots like Venice beckon us to explore from ground and water level.
8005 Venice Grid
When we experience L.A. from the ground it usually involves a lot of time in traffic, enclosed in a metal cocoon and surrounded by concrete. From the air, it still has a romantic relationship with the terrain from which it emerged.
8020 L.A. Story
Does a missing word come to mind in the title of this post? Well, to start off here’s a rock.
7925 Rock and Road
Guess that’s the old Highway 1 in front of the rock near Mugu, but in the contest with engineers the rock seems to have won. Looks like there were some great pullouts there for tourists and lovers, but now all the action is around the white catering truck with blue awning at the upper right. Next some rocks circling a circular structure surrounded by “beehive” huts in homage to ancient peoples’ village life.
7932 Rock Around
Further past Mugu if you combine rocks and a big bank roll, you can put a beautifully curved mansion on the water like this.
7940 Rock and Bankroll
Last up tonight, a hard place with a scary name. Well, it sounds scary aloud but on the chart it’s just Point Dume. There is a nearby invisible line pilots must not cross though. It’s the restricted airspace for jets taking off from LAX that passes just a few hundred yards past this rock. No jets ever fly there, but it’s a hard rule regardless.
7953 Rock & Hard Place
So to fly low there for a good look you have to fly offshore to avoid annoying people on the beaches and trails, but close enough to shore to avoid the hard and fast LAX airspace. Carefully flying between the rock and the hard place, you get this nice view of Point Dume with no downside.
John & Anne Wiley 
You must be logged in to post a comment.