Elenor & Andre

A long overdue visit with our friends Elenor & Andre (Zoe's birthday twin).

Samba samba samba!

Vicar & Stacey samba in the annual Mission Carnival parade.

Hung!

Ferry Building

Bed Head

ABC's before Zzzzs

At The Lake

Uncle Tony gives some sand castle pointers to Zoe during a family visit to Lake Henderson. Zoe's cousins Kyle, Kaily and Emerald splash nearby.

What better way to spend a dripping hot day than at the local fishin' hole.
Now, my dad has a saying about the lakes in Florida. The bigger the lake, the bigger the gators.
"Will you swim in Lake Henderson, dad?"
"Hell no."
Evidently he used to swim in these lakes as a boy. I thought this was because kids are so fearless. Not so.
As it turns out, he used to swim in the lakes because back then, once a gator got to be the size where he might eat the family dog, he became "freezer meat". Everyone used to shoot the big gators, so gators were never much of a threat. Now, the gators are protected and people are nabbed all the time by giant gators. We'll drive by a big lake and dad will say, "back in '98, a lady was minding her own business, enjoying a beer down by the water when a huge gator come up on shore and grabbed her. Her husband who was right there jumped in and beat off that gator with all his might, thrashing and kicking, playing tug-o-war with his wife. There wasn't much left of her foot, but he managed to wrestle her away from him." My dad can recite one of these stories for a number of lakes we pass on the highway. Those lakes are so enticing. All cool and refreshing in the thick southern heat. Swimming is a gamble, and the losses are huge.
I felt uneasy about letting Zoe play near the water's edge.
But my brother Tony didn't seem concerned, and he grew up swimming and fishing in this water. So little Zoe splashed in the tannic tea water and dug holes in the fine white sugar sand with her cousins. She doesn't need to know about gators yet.




Kaily shows off her water moves in the shallows of Lake Henderson

Lake Baby

Angel's Wedding Day

Destiny's back yard

"I'll stand next to the dandylion"

Zoe meets the Reynolds

Cousin Patty with daughter Becca and son Billy- (It's only kinky the first time...)



Zoe hangs out with her auntie Angel

A visit to Inverness

Zoe and I fly to Florida so she may meet my father's family and attend my sister Angel's wedding aside the dark and winding Crystal River. Years ago, when I first met them, they took me to this river where we snorkled from the mouth in the bay with a spring at the bottom, up into the narrow river bed lined with white sand and tangles of cypress roots whose tannins turn the water a rich brown. I saw turtles and fish; we looked for manatees, but the mysterious sea cows eluded us.
There are a lot of people for Zoe to meet: my brothers Chris & Tony, my sister Angel. Cousin Patty and her kids, Tony's little ones- Zoe's new cousins, and of course Grandpa Bobby & Sharon. Not to mention numerous cousins and aunts & uncles.
My father lives in Inverness, Florida. On a map if you point to Daytona (where Tony lives) draw your finger directly across the state until you are a couple of centimeters from the gulf coast, you'll find Inverness.
Miles from what we know.
The air is warm and thick as magnolia flowers, trees dripping with tangled gray moss, tea water lakes everywhere- full of gators, country music on the radio. The landscape is eternally green. Towns are small, trucks are big, life is slow. Lightning bugs hide among the thin pine trees and palmettos. If the Winn Dixie doesn't have what you need, you'll find it at Walmart. There isn't a whole lot that a day of fishing can't fix.
For a state where you can't throw a cooter without hitting a hyacinth laden pond, lazy river or wide lake, it's hard to imagine that they are suffering a terrible drought. As the ashes and smoke from a distant forest fire darken the sky and choke my lungs, I find it hard to imagine that there is anything dry enough to be on fire. The airconditioned car that drives me to the airconditioned store or cool house drives along rambling highways dotted with ancient oak trees covered in moss, lawns the size of strip malls, sticks of pine trees, little purple flowers, brown cows growing fat on endless expanses of green, green grass. As the radio plays country hits we pass "Ouch tatoo parlor", Bait shops, gun superstores, and "paradise lost" trailer parks. A giant pink elephant grabs attention for a flea market. BP sells gas for $3.23 a gallon.
The songs vacillate from aching tearjerkers of lost love to witty comic ditties about machismo and small-town red-state way of life. I laugh as they rise to the chorus, "I want to drive with you into the sticks /I want to kiss you in a field of wild flowers /I want to check you for ticks". When a crooning but ageing cowboy is greeted in a bar by two cute sisters looking to party, he replies, "I'm not as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was". There you go buddy, cowboy up.

The end to the heat wave

Suburban Kitty

At night, on the Serengeti of Florida Street, a big cat slinks to the edge of the water hole to drink.

Out with NMP

Meltdown

Nico and I sure received a lot of calls on Sunday. No, we weren't on the bridge when it fell down like an ashen blanket. Yes, it does affect my already barely bareable commute. Fortunately, not the worst direction which is the morning commute into the City, but I drive (or did previously) over that stretch of melted highway nearly every day on my way home. The piece that is gone is the connector that goes from the bridge (once you land on the East Bay side) up to the 580 (which goes right past my house). Tonight, Zoe and I drove in to the Haight to meet Stacey's clan for dinner at Cha Cha Cha to celebrate Michael's birthday. (Happy studly 16, buddy!) On the way in, I shot the picture above. I know it's not great, but you can see the charred edge where the bulldozer is, then the empty place where the ramp used to be. On the way home, we took one of the detours that took us off the freeway at Grand, down onto the Oakland city streets. A couple of miles of two-lane city streets with a light at every other block and we wound our way onto the 580 again. At 9pm, it wasn't that bad, but at 6 pm? Ugh. That can't be good. Any way we go, we'll be adding 10-15 minutes. There's no way around it except to go around.
And no mom, the Governator only gave us free BART on Monday. But we also get free commuter time BART for the first 5 hottest days of the summer (every year).
You can learn more about the Maze Meltdown over there on the right at the "Link of the Week" link. I really do change it...
Check it out