{"id":6703,"date":"2015-10-15T03:23:15","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T10:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=6703"},"modified":"2016-08-26T10:14:59","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T17:14:59","slug":"raiders-great-pumpkin-tunitas-pigeon-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/15\/raiders-great-pumpkin-tunitas-pigeon-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Raiders, Great Pumpkin, Tunitas, Pigeon Point, Perfection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s post is photocentric, and the theme is Nature’s perfection.<\/p>\n

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Kicking it off is this nice shot of a sunset at Pigeon Point lighthouse on Route 1 south of Half Moon Bay. I like how the roughness of sea echoes the clouds. And the vertical shadows of the clouds along the band above the horizon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Backing up a week, I went to see the Oakland Raiders with some of my SF writer friends. This dude shown above is not, so far as I know, an SF writer, he is, rather, the ultimate exponent of a certain type of pregame festivity. Note how his sunglasses are adjusted to hold the empty 12-pack in place.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Cecelia Holland organized our outing. She\u2019s published about 40 novels, some with warriors and Vikings, and she feels at home in the endzone \u201cblack hole\u201d\u009d seating in Oaktown. I really get a kick out of her. A full-on writer.<\/p>\n

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Lively, passionate fans all around us. Imposing, but friendly. We were all in it together.<\/p>\n

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I dug this hat, which was in effect a football.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Very loud in the crowd and I forgot my ear plugs. I tore off the margins of a draft book proposal for Million Mile Road Trip <\/em>that I had in my pocket and chewed them up to make something to put in my ears, and when that didn\u2019t de-decibel-ize me enough, I tore strips off my handkerchief. At one point the Blue Angels few by overhead as well, but you could hardly hear them. Peaceful in the BART car riding home.<\/p>\n

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A few days later, my daughter Isabel and I spent the afternoon along Route 1 driving from Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. Isabel was visiting from Wyoming. Our initial goal in Half Moon Bay was to find the 1,969 pound biggest pumpkin of the year 2015. It\u2019ll be the star of the annual Pumpkin Festival on Oct 18, 2015, but it\u2019s already in place there, a captive alien, on a stage in front of a building called I.D.E.S. We had to ask around for awhile to find it, but it was wonderful to see it there, and nice to be there before the crowds arrive\u2026all these years I\u2019ve wanted to see the Great Pumpkin without the crowds.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s me posed as city-slicker alien-hunter with his big-game trophy. A slain Freeth. Soon to appear in Million Mile Road Trip<\/em>. \u201cYou\u2026you made my sister into pie<\/em>?\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

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\nMaverick\u2019s wave mural in Half Moon Bay. Click here <\/a>to see larger version.<\/em><\/p>\n

Isabel spotted this life-size (?) Mavericks wave mural. Dig how the surfer has a 3D lightbulb in his path. Very Magritte, especially with the window on the wall. SFictional flash: mappyworld (or maybe even our own world) is a hypermural \u201cpainted\u201d\u009d on the 3D hypersurface of\u2026some 4D alien structure\u2026and you notice\u2014huh?\u2014a 4D dvoornik<\/em>\u2019s 3D cross-section hanging in the air in middle of the room, the dvoornik being part of the underling hyperobject that our world is \u201cpainted\u201d\u009d onto. And the window is a hole into unspace. Obv, right?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A few miles south of Half Moon Bay we came to a sheer roadside bluff with the Tunitas Creek Beach at its base. The path down was so steep that there\u2019s a fixed rope that you have to hang onto. It was basically insane for an old man with a bad hip like me to follow Isabel down the path, but I did.<\/p>\n

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\nClick here <\/a>for a larger image.<\/p>\n

Wonderful to have all this space to ourselves. That\u2019s Isabel in the middle, and that giant puddle is where Tunitas Creek pools out. <\/p>\n

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We walked around for quite awhile there. Nature on her own is so perfect. The artful disorder, not too regular, not too random, on the edge of chaos, ever-changing, the waves, the ripples, the birds scattered just so<\/em>, and in motion as well, and don\u2019t forget the clouds, it\u2019s an endless dance of beauty. \u201cNature is god!\u201d\u009d I exclaimed, trying to express what I felt. \u201cTotally<\/em>,\u201d\u009d agreed Isabel, who\u2019s known this all along.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It was getting dark and we still had a way to go. We scored some halibut chowder and “Mexican coleslaw” at Duarte\u2019s tavern in Pescadero, and stopped by the Pigeon Point lighthouse hostel <\/a>at sunset. One of these days I\u2019d like to spend a couple of nights there. So fully off the grid.<\/p>\n

A whale bone was hanging there by the ocean in a wood frame with the sunset in the background.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The lighthouse is kind of rundown\u2026they\u2019ve been raising money to refurbish it for about 10 or 15 years, but it\u2019s fine as it is. Better than fine, perfect. Everything\u2019s perfect, okay?<\/p>\n

Perfect? Aren\u2019t there still all the problems in the newspapers? And the issue that each of us is going to age and die? Well, you could, on a given day, and in a certain mood, suggest that we live in the best of all possible <\/em>worlds\u2014\u201cpossible\u201d\u009d relative to the various ineluctable physical, statistical, and sociological constraints of it having to be a real world.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Perfect for that afternoon, anyway. An afternoon of peace.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Great to see you, Isabel!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s post is photocentric, and the theme is Nature’s perfection. Kicking it off is this nice shot of a sunset at Pigeon Point lighthouse on Route 1 south of Half Moon Bay. I like how the roughness of sea echoes the clouds. And the vertical shadows of the clouds along the band above the horizon. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-million-mile-road-trip","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6703"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6714,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6703\/revisions\/6714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}