A Rookie At Spring Training

I have a number of friends who make annual pilgrimages to Arizona for Spring Training baseball. It’s something I’ve talked about doing for years but due to being busy at work, personal commitments and often excess procrastination I just never got around to making the arrangements. Before I knew it, Spring Training would be over and the Regular Baseball season had begun. This years Christmas present from my darling wife was a week-long trip to Arizona for Spring Training.  No more excuses, time to order a beer from your seat and PLAY BALL!

So, I thought I’d do a little piece on my trip from the perspective of the neophyte and share my experiences and hopefully inform others who, like myself, might be embarking on their first trip.

California Canoe / Kayak Paddling Guidebooks

California is a simply spectacular place for anyone interested in paddlesports. Short of the multi-day paddle-portage-paddle style tripping done in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, Algonquin and Quetico there really isn't a form of paddling one can't participate in here. The lack of this traditional style "tripping" is a matter of topography. Most CA lakes are man made, dammed rivers. As such they reside in deep, rough terrain river canyons which makes the prospect of portaging to the next lake in a chain difficult if not impossible. There are very few locations in CA that support this type of tripping and none that I can think of that encompass more than a single days worth of travel. That aside, there is much to be found for the CA paddler; We have Hawaiian Style Outrigger Canoe Racing clubs in the Bay Area & So-Cal, Sea & Surf kayaking and touring, tons of spectacular whitewater opportunities in the Sierras, Cascades and Siskiyou ranges and scores inland & alpine of lakes that are perfect for the flatwater canoeist or kayaker. Depending on how much time you have available and  how far away from it all you want to get there is literally, something for everyone and a place for nearly every type of desired experience.

So how does one locate a destination suitable to the experience they seek? You can only glean so much info from staring at a satellite image on Google maps and even the web will leave you wanting for information on the more remote destinations as I found when researching Lake McCloud in my previous post. The largest online resource is www.paddling.net. It's ok, but the user interface is at best clunky and there isn't much in the way of CA content. There is a small Nor-Cal specific web-forum called www.norcalcanoeing.com but it's just getting started. I'm a member there and we are trying to build the database of destination information but it's going to take time and more participating members to turn it into a good resource. Paddling is an ancient art, and it seems the dissemination of information regarding paddling is best or at least most commonly done by a similarly "old school" means. Books. The intent of this post is to briefly review a few of best.

There are four different resources that I find myself referring to when researching a future trip.

• Paddling Northern California - By Charlie Pike

• Up The Lake With A Paddle (Vol 1-4) - By William Van Der Ven

• Paddling The California Highlands - By John Coale

• Kayaking California's Flat Waters - By Janice L. Green

Morimoto – Napa

A bit behind on blog postings of late due to overwhelming personal commitments but I wanted to get this review up before the memories escaped me. Last month Kathy treated me to a weekend in Napa to celebrate my 42^nd birthday. The celebratory mood was slightly tarnished by the anniversary of the September 11^th attacks (my personal thoughts here: 9/11 )   but despite that we had a wonderful weekend kicking around Napa Valley. We visited one of our favorite wineries in Napa, Grgich Cellars, took in the fantastic cellar tour at Schramsburgh (more on that in another post), and to thank Kathy for the weekend I bought her a couple of very nice one of a kind dresses from a local fashion designer.

On to the dinner at Morimoto; Masuharu Morimoto is among the best known of the Food Network’s “Celebrity Chefs". His extensive resume led him to stardom on the original Japanese “Iron Chef” TV show before the Food Network version. The most interesting element of his resume, to me, is that he spent some time as a professional baseball player in Japan as a catcher. Apparently a shoulder injury ended his athletic career, but as a baseball fan and foodie I found the information interesting.

A Central Coast Sojourn - Paso Robles, Cambria & Cayucos

This last weekend Kathy and I celebrated our 5^th wedding anniversary. Nothing could make me happier. When we got married 5 years ago in Italy we rented a villa in Tuscany and invited 30 of our friends to join us. We’d toyed with the idea of repeating that for our 5^th but neither of us could spare the two weeks off and the exchange rate is horrible right now anyway. Besides, we’d just gone to Barcelona in March to celebrate Kathy’s birthday. Hence a little more low-key, but no less treasured celebration was called for.

We decided a quiet weekend within a day’s drive was better in terms of direct cost, opportunity cost at work and the reduced stress of not having to deal with airports and long flights was just a bonus. After looking around a bit we chose the wine region surrounding Paso Robles for our daytime knocking around with overnights in Cambria and Cayucos.

Photo Essay – The Magnum Opus of Antoni Gaudi, La Sagrada di Familia

By most accounts La Sagrada Familia (Basilica and Expiatory Church of the Holy Family) stands as the finest work of one of the great icons of modern architecture, Antoni Gaudi. The inspiration for the project came from a prominent Catalan bookseller, Josep Maria Bocabella. A devout Catholic, Bocabella was inspired by an 1872 trip to the Vatican to champion the construction of an iconic Cathedral as a means to encourage greater church attendance in Barcellona. 

(the above photo is borrowed from bearcave.com because the pic I took from this angle had an ugly bus in the foreground. the rest are mine)

Photo Essay - Mercat de La Boqueria de Barcelona

Kathy and I recently spent a little over a week in Barcelona in celebration of her birthday. We were looking for a city in Europe that neither of us had visited that was large enough to keep us busy for an entire week. We were more than satisfied with our selection.

One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to Mercat de La Boqueria de Barcelona, or simply La Boqueria. It’s an absolutely enormous public market just off La Rambla in the old part of town. It dates back to 1217 when tables were set up outside the old Gothic city gates for local ranchers to sell meat to the citizens of the city. Today La Boqueria resides under a massive open sided roof structure covering an area roughly equal to 3 American Football fields and I’ve been told that it’s the largest open air market in Europe. It makes Seattle's "Pikes Place Market" look like your local grocery store.

La Boqueria offers a cross-sectional view of the best of Mediterranean ingredients. Seasonal, mostly local, fresh and astonishing in variety. 

The widest variety of goods is found in the market’s fish sellers. The Mediterranean sea is, to this day one of the most vibrant commercial fisheries on the planet. It’s bounty is placed on display in mind-numbing fashion

 

Canoeing The Green River in Utah, 120mi Solo

I wanted to share an account of my September 19-26 trip on the Green River in Utah. Over the course of my trip I kept a journal. The original intent was to record what I did and when so that when I had a chance to look at my photos I’d not forget what they were. It wound up morphing into something more than that. Upon review the journal became surprisingly introspective and a bit personal.

The following, is an unedited transcription of the journal accompanied by a slideshow of my photos from the trip:

The Truth About New Orleans

If your only source of information regarding the City of New Orleans is CNN you most likely believe the place remains in shambles.

Step #1 – Stop listening to this douchebag:

A handsome fellow to be sure, but he’s full of shit and he and the network he works for need the current narrative to continue…at least until the next epic tale of misery on which he can breathlessly emote....with killer ratings.