Put my daughter on a domestic flight yesterday and then headed north. Getting everyone ready for this flight was a lot because we were also taking care of her 5 month old Daughter just the two of us. Her husband had to go back to Europe for awhile for work and she was going to visit relatives for awhile. My wife was home in San Francisco because it's painful for her to travel as her knee replacement is still healing. However, hopefully we can all travel to Mt. Shasta in March. I don't think I've been there since around September I believe because of my wife's last knee replacement in November.
I wanted her to get all her joint replacements done before she was 70 because it's much easier to heal up from something like this before you're 70.
I had to get enough Caffeine any way I could to make the drive because my daughter and I were pretty tired from getting she and her baby ready for this trip to visit relatives. Santa Barbara was nice because the daytime temperatures stayed pretty much between 61 and almost 70 so this was nice. I also enjoyed the Beaches there too and especially driving past the Santa Barbara Yacht Club where my wife and her father used to sail out of with their 41 foot Concordia Sail Boat which is a Yawl which means a tall mast and a shorter mast behind. Her father also sailed the TransPacific Race to Hawaii which I think sails from Newport Beach to Diamondhead in the Honolulu area of Hawaii. The Concordia was the supreme Wooden Sailboat of that era. They had a 1957 Concordia as she was growing up in her teens 12 years old on in Santa Barbara.
Driving home to the SF Bay area was okay as long as I could stay awake because I had trouble sleeping before I took my daughter to the airport. She has been living in Europe the last 1 1/2 years so it was good to have some time with my daughter with just myself and her and my grand daughter before she headed north to visit more relatives.
Where she is presently it is minus 7 degrees Fahrenheit right now. However, even where I am I woke up to 46 degrees here on the Coast near San Francisco. In my coastal county there was an inland temperature of around 32 degrees last night which is cold even for the SF Coast because the Pacific Ocean tends to keep us warmer than most places deeper inland. But even this time of year the water is 55 to 57 degrees but today it is especially cold at 53 degrees.
If you get swept out to sea on a rogue wave from standing on rocks or a beach on the coast here this would likely be fatal within 10 to 15 minutes at this present water temperature.
Mostly tourists not used to the ocean make this kind of mistake this time of year when storms and rain bring rogue waves that come 50 to 300 feet further onto the shores than normal. So, we lost at least 3 tourists in the last big set of Storms this winter season so far in the SF Bay area from these rogue waves sweeping their bodies out to sea. Often the bodies are never found or eaten by killer whales or sharks so this is a problem too for the relatives left behind.
Unless you are really surefooted a wave of only about knee high or higher can knock you off your feet ans sweep you out to see this time of year. Surfers in wetsuits can survive these conditions if they are young enough and skilled enough though.
In case you were wondering Google maps says that it is 5 hours and 19 minutes to drive from Santa Barbara to San Francisco (although with any traffic at all in the Pismo beach to Paso Robles area or from Gilroy to San Francisco it could be much much longer. So, the day you go and the time of day you go is really important if you want to get there in 5 hours and 19 minutes because it could be with traffic up to 7 or more hours driving too.
No comments:
Post a Comment