Peeking into the rock

It rained yesterday, but the rain is gone today, I think.

On the subject of other things we have been waiting for, there are big waves at Mavericks. This is on the heels of the news that big waves down by Monterey killed one of the first surfers to do Mavericks. I don't know anything about the man but what they wrote in the article. What you need to realize is that this is not ordinary surfing where you paddle out on the bay and wait for a decent wave and ride it some hundreds of feet to the shore (or to a place in the water where you can stop short of the rocks, in some corners of Steamer Lane and Pleasure Point). These waves are bigger than some city buildings and start way offshore, and the surfers get towed out by jetski or helicopter to the waves as they form. It's extreme -- aren't you glad that advertisers have stopped using that word so much and I'm allowed to use it again? -- and there may be something decadent about it.

There are other things to say about a struggling plan to use some extra but inadequate transportation money -- how much will go to widening Highway One? How much to improving roads and streets? how much to public transportation -- and how much of that to improving the existing bus system and how much to a proposed rail system? But I don't have time to do the research and write it up.

All the persimmon trees have lost their leaves. This leaves the trees standing with their lovely bare raw-umber branches and the scarlet fruit hanging like ornaments. I wish I liked to eat them, because the trees are small enough for a yard like mine and they are so beautiful.