Spitting distance to California

We had a great adventure to Sidney Spit yesterday. It nearly indirectly led me to California!?! Can you tell that we started the trip out with a gloomy and wet ride in a wee boat?


How many home schooly types does it take to put up a rain tarp? Several at least. But not as many as it takes to stand around and criticize of course.


We made all the nursing mammas roll large boulders across the sand to help support the structure.


Sport of the future: Off-A-Cliff Disc Golfing.


We collected a few washed up crab traps and hefted/ raced them long distances in an attempt to set up a “proper” disc golf course. But by then the wee ferry had returned and we had to go. Damn wee ferry!


Three posers:


Despite the weather (it's saving the best stuff for July ya know!), it was an awesome day. Peace out dude!
Oh wait... that's not a peace sign Belle's giving me!


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Special Bonus “I-don’t-just-visit-this-blogsite-for-the-pretty-pictures-I-visit-it-to-hear-about-obsure-musical-obsessions-too” Section... Below is visual proof*, via Sam’s iPhone, that I was able to tune into a Santa Monica radio station’s broadcast of James playing their new album live in studio. Mary had given me the heads up so I wanted to document just how dedicated to the cause I was despite being stranded on a remote, far flung beach. I figured that even though she was the one who found out about it, I was the superior fan for going to such lengths.

But dang blast-it, she done gone and proved me inferior yet again (I say again because she’s planning a James-themed tattoo and I’m on the James-themed tattoo fence… a very distant and razor-wire-topped fence). When we returned from our long day out yesterday there was a voice message from a remarkably calm Mary indicating that her powers of persuasion had worked and that James were set to play at a club in L.A. the next night, and oh by the way did I think I could make it because she was sure as hell-fire going. It was just less than two weeks ago, at the conference, that Mary had announced that she was willing (the law of attraction?) James to come play somewhere in her vicinity (James had no plans to leave the UK and their new album is still yet to be released in the States, so I just nodded politely at the fool her). So now, aaaarrrgh yeah, Mary and Diana are in L.A. after driving all night from Oregon like a couple of hepped-up teenaged groupies. And (!) there’s a ticket waiting for me at the door since for a few hours there last night I thought that I might actually be able to get there through a combination of air miles and a complete disregard for familial obligations. Turns out that the ability to use my obviously measly amount of points, seemingly articulated as a definite possibility via aeroplan’s website, was quickly** dismissed by the utterly ineffectual and moronic real-live-person/ non-service agent. And here I am… at home… sitting at the computer for hours and hours and not in any way necessarily responding to familial obligations. Or watching James perform live.

* Actually the iPhone didn’t have the proper player installed so we couldn’t pick up any sound… but hopefully no one reads to the end of this extremely long, boring and not at all self-effacing post anyway.

** Quickly dismissed… after an hour on hold of course.

UPDATE - 5 pm Pacific:

Look, Flat Craig is now there... in Los Angeles... in all his non-receding hair, backward flag waving, daisy necked, already relegated to number 2 fan status glory: