End of a Quest!

Well, well! Here is a historic photo. This is a carton of my favorite Australian beer, Victoria Bitter, henceforth referred to by its popular name VB. I have loved this beer for 20 years but have never found it for sale closer to home than New Zealand. But this pic is not taken from some rental house or motel in Australia...this is on my back deck right here in Cali!! I always bring home a few bottles from my trips Down Under but this is the first time I have ever had a 24 bottle carton of VB here in Los Estados Unidos! The other day, I was raving about VB to a couple friends in Palo Alto. After I left, one of them dug into the internet and discovered that, unknown to me, VB is indeed sold in North America...at ONE place and only one. Fortunately, that spot is in Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, close at hand. I went up there and sure enough...cartons for sale at 38 bucks per. This is virtually the same price I pay for VB in Oz...it's about 35 Australian there, and of course the Ozzie dollar is almost at par with the US dollar these days. Wonderful!

La Casa de los Gigantes

I went to the Giants' game last Saturday with a couple of friends, also old retired meteorologists. A bunch of us got together for lunch in San Francisco; such events are scheduled several times a year. It occurred to me that I have never blogged the Giants' fine home, AT&T Park. Here it is, before the game. No other major league park is so close to the water. Almost every seat is good; the food and drink is excellent, if a bit pricey; and the downtown location is convenient to Caltrain, Muni, and BART. It's a great place to watch a ballgame! You can watch ships and boats move around in the bay as pelicans cruise and Mount Diablo looms in the background.

As dusk goes down, the ballpark becomes an oasis of light. As for the game, the Giants lost, as usual. They're lousy this year. In one way it's almost easier going to a game when your team is not in contention. You can relax! If they win, fine; if they don't, well, darn, but it's not really important. Still, I'd rather be barracking for a team with something on the line. On this occasion the Giants' young phenom, Tim Lincecum (is 24, looks 17) struck out 13 Arizona Diamondbacks in seven innings, only to see his bullpen fritter the game away. That sort of thing happens a lot to losing teams.

This massive glove looms in left field beyond the bleachers. I don't know what the glove is made of but it's not leather. It is supposedly 501 feet from home plate; nobody has ever hit a ball there in a game. I think the distance is close to that, but it may not be precise; notice the Levis advertising sign (501 jeans).

Mono/Yosemite

One of the luxuries of being retired is time. You can go at your own pace, which in the Old Sloat's case means ambling instead of scurrying. Coming home from Tahoe I opted to drive south along the east slope of the Sierra, then come thru Yosemite over Tioga Pass on the way home. It turned out to be a 10 hour drive, instead of the 5 hour trip via Placerville and Sacramento, but it was fine. Here's Mono Lake, brooding under towering cumulus in early afternoon.

Traveling over Tioga Pass, I drove by Lembert Dome, near Tuolumne Meadows. This was a perfect spot to engage in granitic sloatation and down a cold one. I love the granite of the Sierra. It's clean and stark, and very fine to lay upon.

An Alpine Lake Under a Glowering Sky

Last Sunday, after four clear days in the Sierra, the weather turned. Gray skies spit rain and a cold wind blew. I was hiking at Winnemucca Lake, near Carson Pass, at 9000 feet elevation just below timberline. The whitebark pine is a signature tree here, a hardy survivor of the alpine climate. That's one on the left side of the picture.

The intersection of forest and tundra is always dramatic. There are no wussy trees here! These plants survive everything Ma Nature throws at them...but not without getting a bit gnarly.

The meadows near Winnemucca Lake are famous for their wildflowers, and on the 20th of July, they were at their peak. Though you don't see any people in this picture, on a summer Sunday there were a lot of folks around...many of them backpacking. Actually, literally everyone and their dog were there! The hounds loved it. I would love to spend a lot of time in the mountains, but I'm a bit too old and decadent to really enjoy sleeping in a tent, cold and sweaty. I was staying at the home of some friends and that was much better. It occurs to me that I'd love to spend the entire summer in the Sierra, surrounded by alpine beauty and far away from the coastal fog. I may just do it some year! And, the Venerable Pinniped would work off a considerable amount of blubber doing serious hiking several times a week.

I like the contrast between the delicate beauty of the summer wildflowers and the gnarly, rugged, all season timberline trees.

Beautiful Tahoe

Lake Tahoe is an ideal summer place. The water is a deep, mesmerizing blue. I enjoy just staring at it, soaking up its beauty. And it's a perfect spot for water recreation! As you can see, there are gorgeous beaches, this one on the Nevada side. There are fine sunning rocks a short distance offshore, perfect hauling out spots for an old

sloat. And, surprisingly for a place 6200 feet above sea level, on a typical flawless 80 degree summer day, the water temperature close to shore is very swimmable..70-75 degrees! The only blot on perfection is that, after a day on the beach, you have to slog up a steep trail to return to your vehicle...but a lot of people do it as it's too beautiful a spot to pass up.

The summer weather at Tahoe is close to perfection. The majority of days are ideal with

toasty days around 80 with a hot high altitude sun...and crisp nights requiring a blanket or even two. As you can see in other posts, when the sun does go away, the clouds are dramatic. Either way, the weather complements the lake.

The Sierra are full of abstract scenes of stark natural beauty. Here's a classic Tahoe shot...rock and water.

This tree is near the lakeshore. Some rather large bird has built a massive nest near the top...perhaps an osprey.

Tahoe Wanderings

I spent five days in the Lake Tahoe area recently, enjoying the beauty of the mountains and the lake. At the same time, all the modcons are readily available. It's a nice juxtaposition of civilization and wilderness. Here is Round Lake, about ten miles south of Tahoe...took a hike up there one day. The cliffs in the background are volcanic and there is a lot of old lava around the area, which gives it a different atmosphere from most of the region.

One of the premier attractions of the Sierra for the Old Sloat is the huge amount of granite, which is an ideal surface for sloatation! Here I have found a choice spot right near Round Lake. Nothing beats granitic sloatation after a vigorous mountain hike.

Cactus Flower

A cactus on my deck bloomed last week. It produces a remarkably large flower for its size...the chunk of cactus from which the flower extends is only about the size of a baseball; the flower stalk is about ten inches long!

The cactus blooms about once a year, sometimes twice; the blooming schedule seems to have no rhyme or reason to it as I have seen flowers in every season except winter. Once, two flowers bloomed simultaneously.

Like many pretty things, my cactus flower was ephemeral. It was in full bloom for only two days; then the flower closed up and the stalk went limp. But it was nice while it lasted.