Listing Through Life

Plans for breakfast on Wednesday fell apart. Most of my friends decided to sleep in. That left me with three hours and a rental van. I drove the five miles to Mission Beach and parked as close to the ocean as I could. On a two- or three-mile stretch of beach, I only saw three other people, and them only briefly. There was probably a good reason for this — the wind was howling off the ocean at what had to be at 40 mph with some stronger gusts. I started walking north to get away from the two graders that were going back and forth smoothing the sand. It was probably their tires that had turned the entire expanse of beach into a waffle pattern. That’s La Jolla in the distance.

I hadn’t gone far when I noticed a flock of about 200 Sanderlings flying back and forth. They landed perhaps a quarter mile from where I’d parked, so I wandered up that way. Sanderlings can be identified by their feeding method alone. They pick at the sand right at the water’s edge. So, as the waves move up and down the beach, the birds follow, their legs moving so fast that it’s difficult to see them — up and back, up and back.

I soon noticed that this flock was doing something else too. To get out of the wind, the birds would frequently take cover behind clumps of kelp that had washed ashore. They’d stand there in bunches for a couple minutes, than head out to feed again. Sometimes there were only three or four birds behind the clumps — at other times the entire flock seemed to be seeking shelter.

I had the little red chair with me, and I set it in the sand to get some photographs. The wind knocked it over and carried it away from the water. I chased it, and that’s when I noticed the Snowy Plovers huddling in a tire track.

Not far from where they stood, there was another large flock of sandpipers crouching out of the wind. The few pale birds are Sanderlings. I think the smaller, darker ones are Western Sandpipers.

As I was driving back from Mission Beach, I passed Belmont Park, a small amusement park with an old wooden roller coaster. I parked and wandered around looking for photos, but the only ones I saw would have required jumping fences, which I am both too old and too law-abiding to do.

All my life I’ve heard three things about San Diego:

1. It’s always 72 degrees.
2. It never rains.
3. There are no bugs.

To be fair, I haven’t seen a lot of bugs. But this is the second year in a row that I’ve been in San Diego when it was in the 40s and raining.

The booth team has a tradition to go out for pie on at least one evening after things shut down. This year we picked Tuesday and Cafe Bassam. As it turned out, they didn’t have pie, but we all got something to drink (I had a raspberry Italian soda) and sat around playing Golf (a card game) until we started to fall asleep.

It was a weird place. The girl behind the counter steadfastly refused to show us the smallest glimpse of civility in spite of all our efforts to be friendly. The owner wore a fedora and acted as though he thought himself quite the character. The entire place was decorated with an eclectic mix of antiques and art, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I wasn’t paying attention, but I was told by my friends that the unfriendly girl was glaring at me when I put the chair on a piece of furniture for this photo. She probably would have said something if she could have done it without actually talking to me.

On Tuesday morning before the booth opened, seven of us drove to Imperial Beach, the southernmost town on the Pacific coast of the United States. We ate breakfast at The Wave Cafe. As we drove through town, I noticed this statue of a surfer in a small plaza along the beach. As always, I eat faster than I should, so I had time to walk the few blocks to get this photo and be back before the others were ready to leave.

Imperial Beach has a surfing culture. Many of the world’s most famous surfers are from the area. The statue, The Spirit of Imperial Beach, was put up in 2008 in honor of the town’s heritage. Some surfers consider it good luck to touch it before heading out to sea. The base of the statue is a tribute to the annual Sand Castle Days.

After breakfast at The Wave Cafe, we wandered over to the pier. I had a great idea — go down under the pier, put the chair in the sand and take a photo as a wave washed around it, as you see below. What you don’t see is what happened two seconds later, as I rushed ankle-deep into the water to keep the chair from being washed out to sea. That’s why the photo is slightly blurry and not very well composed. And why my shoes, socks and pants were wet.

I am capable of learning from experience, so I set the chair a bit further up the beach and took another photo.

That’s a Western Gull standing under the pier. The Coronado Islands, owned by Mexico, are visible in the left distance.

If one were so inclined, it would be an easy thing to kick, step on or probably grab the Rock Doves on Imperial Beach Pier. I was only inclined to photograph them with a small red chair. They paid me very little attention.

Confession. I saw this done somewhere else — I don’t remember where — but without a chair. I had it in the back of my mind to try it the next time I saw words painted on pavement. It just happened to be on Elm Avenue,  a side street on our way from the pier back to the car.