I noticed the last two nights just how much people have retreated into fantasy here in Southern California as an intuitive. For me, it's easiest to notice while I'm asleep because in a sense reality ends in southern California when you are asleep now. Part of it likely is that my wife is dealing with her mother's house that we are visiting but her Mom died in 1999 and her step father died about 1 1/2 years ago now and so she is having to deal with her past with her Mom gone. For me, Southern California is about beaches (where I used to surf) and a lot of people (about 20 million or more now from Santa Barbara to San Diego). My oldest daughter lives now in San Diego and her husband and she own a home there now.
Santa Barbara is an interesting place because it seems more like Los Angeles and San Diego than it did in the past when I was growing up. It used to be more it's own thing and in some ways still is. In some ways Santa Barbara is the "Last Southern Californian city as you head north on 101 along the coast now.
Or you could call it the first city that is both a Southern California city and a Northern California city at the same time. Wealthy people have always liked Santa Barbara because it is within an hour or two of Los Angeles so many wealthy people live here like Steve Martin and Oprah and others where they can drive a short distance to Los Angeles but still enjoy the Southern California warmer weather without worrying about smog or too much traffic.
There are islands off the coast if you are a sailor or boater too. Or you can rent a jet ski like I have with my son and daughters on many occasions in the past in the last 10 years or so. However, there was an incident within the last 5 years or so where I'm less sure about getting on another jet ski where I rented one that wasn't in the best shape, had my wife on the back of this one and since the jet ski wasn't stable I couldn't keep it upright when we hit the wake of a boat. Meanwhile the lightning and rain were starting to come down onto Lake Tahoe and if you know anything about Jet skis if you turn them upside down you are never going to be able to restart them because water is going to get into the carburetor if they go upside down. So, when you are going to go over you have to jump off so it can stay running before you go all the way down. So, knowing this when I realized we were going over I jumped off and my wife went with me. The problem with this was (I was about 65 at the time) and both of us are excellent swimmers but that didn't mean that I was going to be able to get up on the thing again or get my wife up on the jet ski either by ourselves. Luckily my oldest daughter's boyfriend was on another jet ski as we had rented 3 jet skis that day on Lake Tahoe so he was 25 and in excellent shape so he jumped off his jet ski and climbed up onto ours which was still running in a circle and helped me board and then we both helped my wife board the jet ski in the middle of the lake away from shore. So, now at 70 I'm a little more leery of renting any more jet skis (even though I still ski and snorkel). But, that doesn't mean eventually I won't rent another jet ski it just means I might not put my wife on a jet ski behind me again. But, it definitely means I won't rent one jet ski but two or three for safety reasons with some of the people being young under 40 to help rescue me or others in an emergency.
Within the last few years my cousin and I were sailing his 25 foot Sailboat that sleeps about 6 people like a camper. He has owned one sailboat or another since 1968 when we started to sail together. His First boat when he first became a lawyer was a 1968 Columbia 22 which is a very stable boat that also sleeps 6 people and can be sailed all around the world if you were up for it. We sailed over to Catalina Island over weekends and one weekend I took my girlfriend with us around 1968 likely in the summer where we snorkeled there. Another time we went up to Malibu from Marina Del Rey where he moored his boat then. We were new sailors and didn't know what a Red Flag was. What it actually meant was that it was dangerous to go out of the harbor because a bad storm was coming but we didn't know that then.
A different girlfriend of mine than the one that went to Catalina island with us was on board that day while I SCUBA dived off of Malibu. I was wondering why the undersea was so moving around so much that day. When I returned to the surface my cousin was angry and told me I had to unfoul the anchor which had gotten wound up in seaweed. The waves breaking on the shore near us were now about 10 feet high and the seas looked angry.
We were lucky to survive that day at all. In fact, my cousin was considering beaching our sailboat at Malibu because we had made a major mistake regarding the weather and might not survive the day because of it. Beaching the boat likely would have killed at least my girlfriend because she wasn't a swimming or boating person by the way.
We lucked out that day ONLY because the storm was going in the direction of Marina Del Rey. The winds were at least 35 miles an hour blowing in that direction and so the seas were going on that direction too. So, by some miracle we didn't have to beach the boat and it didn't sink that day and we made it into the harbor at Marina Del Rey after surfing down the side of 16 to 20 foot rollers all the way back to Marina Del Rey. However, after surviving that near catastrophe we didn't do anything like that ever again.
We were green sailors but were also quick learners. That's the only kind of sailor that survives ongoing in conditions like those that day in the summer of 1968. I was 20 that year and my cousin was 25 or 26 and had just become a lawyer then. It's amazing what you can survive when you are young!
By God's Grace
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