Where have I been for all this time?

Introducing… The Wailer™

He might have had something to do with it...

3 things I saw this morning...

1/10/2009

I was more than happy to see 2008 end, for many, many reasons, it will not go down as a year I remember fondly. Cresencia and I opted to spend the holidays virtually to ourselves, spending quiet days and meals together. Ending not with a bang, but with a content wimper.


We went for a hike along the same ridge with our friend Chris. It was a wildly windy day here, with wind gusts reportedly up to 60-80mph in the desert areas of SD county. But that also meant you could see very far from the ridge. The little black bump in the middle of the photo, and the two bumps to the left of it? Those are these two islands in Mexico....over thirty miles away:

(yeah, this picture actually kinda sucks... but my camera is only a point'n'shoot (no SLR for me!), and really does not do well in low light situations)

As the sun was past setting, I spied Cres and Chris' silhoutte against the vibrant hues. I let them walk ahead and started taking their photos. Unbeknownst to me (since I was looking through a tiny viewfinder, thusly I could not actually see them very well), they saw me snapping and were "kung-fu'ing" [is that even close to a word?] around for my benefit. Again, iconic, and I love this photo!:

New Years Day 2009

We went back to a different part of Mission Trails with two friends of ours, Jim and Aysa, up along a ridgeline. This almost a mile and a half from the previous part of the park. Here is a shot looking down into a valley:


Here is a shot of my buddy Jim with his dog Ari poking around behind him. Another one of those candids I love, as Jim just happened to glance at me at that second, and had no idea Ari was behind him. Trivia note: Jim was a potential Olympic swimmer in 1980... before the boycott:

Christmas Day 2008

It actually rained most of the day here, but during a break in the late afternoon, we went for a hike to Mission Trails Regional Park [info here]. The Mission Trails Park is almost 6,000 acres [google map here] within (and this is the mind-blowing part to me) the City of San Diego itself. Not some remote part of the county or some suburb... the city itself.

We went to an area I tend to call the grasslands:


You may say "ok, looks nice, but what is the big deal?"... the pathway then opens up to this [photo is facing west]:


Further in, here are Cresencia and Blue sitting at an overlook of the San Diego Dam:

[there is a part of an optical illusion going on, as they are about 3-4 stories above the dam itself]

Opposite the dam bench, is this view (photo facing northwestly):

[that black bit in the middle is Blue, running around wildly]

A couple of years ago, I was taking a lot of photos from a vantage that was extremely close to the ground. I have not done that in a while, but on the way back, I took this one:

(this is more of what I am talking about in regards to an 'iconic' moment... I love this photo!)