See - Do - Hear - Think

Things I've seen, done, heard or thought about in the past few weeks

• Cleaned the fish bowl for my black and blue beta fish at work who's name is Rick James (thanks Metricken & Kay)
  
• Ran close to three miles, three times per week for the past 3 months regularly
  
• Watched the LA Lakers take down San Antonio in the final minutes in game one of some playoffs with MT
• Finished a final cut of Los Toros Films 'One Armed Bartender' with David Fortner
  
• Got my next travel photography assignment for RG - (TBA, contract pending)
• Played four sets of tennis for the first time in more than three years up in San Rafael
  
• Ate some expensive tacos at the newly remodeled El Toro taqueria en El Mision, the same El Toro @ 17th and Valencia that gave me one of my very first taco experiences in SF
• I also ate a peanut butter and mayo sandwich - yep, you read right!
• Edited some old FILM in the storage box archives... cutting and sleeving of old negatives (which should really be on my list of things NOT to do... but since I'm oh so nostalgic... )
• Answered my phone more times than I made outgoing calls (today @ least)
• Canceled last minute on a camping trip to the Modoc Lava Beds up on the Oregon border. The trip has now (un) officially been postponed due to RAIN!
  
• Speaking of rain and photography, here are a couple of totally random shots from last year in Costa Rica while shooting on assignment for RG. I think it rained all but two days for the enitre 4 weeks I was there.
  

please note: all photographs posted above are resized copies from the original camera RAW CR2 Canon file and have had no adjustments made to them. you can see the whites are pretty hot and blown out as well as very weak contrast and flat color. most of that has to do with lighting conditions but also the need to be properly managed in Adobe Lightroom before they can be printed.

Berkeley, Bread and Blood

The price of sandwiches at the Westside Cafe across the street from work in West Berkeley, specifically the basic turkey on homemade marble swirl bread, suddenly rose $0.75 today. Up until now it had been what I considered to be a pretty good Bay Area value at $5 a person. Now, at a whopping $5.75 por cabeza, I'm not so sure. It's still not a bad deal as far as lopped off, no frill standards go and healthy Bay Area sandwiches are definitely not cheap, not anymore.

"So... you guys raised your sandwich prices?" I asked the clerk behind the register.

"Dude... the price of flour like doubled over the past two months. It's not the actual flour but the cost of getting it here," the young pudgy faced counterman told me in semi-confidence and partial disgust.

My immediate thought was Argentina and their struggle against hyper inflation and prohibitively exorbitant ever-increasing food prices in those months before the crash in December of 2001. Pictures of young men, women and children - entire families - commandeering giant dump trucks filled with scrap meat and animal carcasses desperately searching for any and every last salvageable piece of meat, quickly entered my mind.

We're going down, just like what happened in Argentina and no one's looking, no one's watching,.. no one paying attention. That lonesome road and the price we pay for gas and bread.

* picture above brought to my attention by Cal Santos - Thai artist Kittiwat Unarrom and his gruesomely creative bread sculptures

Pura Vida en La Bahia de San Francisco

Here's a brief synopsis for all you budding weather fans and forecasters out there.

SAN FRANCISCO BAY WIND ARCHIVES

unfortunately this graphic didn't stay on my blog. just picture a map of the golden gate bridge with a giant red arrow indicating strong steady winds greater than 25 knots per hour.

SITE MAP Francis L. Ludwig Observed Winds for 5/4/2008 1400 PST

Look at Most Recent Model Output		Click on the map to get a precise reading
	January February March April May June July August September October November December 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 , 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 A.M. P.M. PST Model Observations

Wind speeds are in knots. Arrow size indicates exact speed, color gives approximate speed.
All speeds are for the wind at 10 meters above the surface elevation.

Note: See the big red arrow above?! That's over 25 nautical miles per hour (just under 30mph) and that's the baseline. Now, try sailing a 29' Ericson from Sausalito to just South of Jack London Square in Oakland - out towards Alcatraz, past San Francisco in front of Treasure Island, steady swells the entire time to your back and then under the Bay Bridge and into the safety of the Oakland estuary in the above pictured scenario.

The National Weather Service still has its small craft advisory up with a gale force wind warning from Point Arena to Point Conception in the outer waters.

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

 PZZ530-051130-
/O.CON.KMTR.SC.Y.0043.000000T0000Z-080505T0700Z/
/O.EXB.KMTR.SC.Y.0043.080505T1900Z-080506T0600Z/
SAN FRANCISCO SAN PABLO SUISUN BAY AND THE WEST DELTA-
821 PM PDT SUN MAY 4 2008

...SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT PDT
TONIGHT...
...SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM MONDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH
MONDAY EVENING...

.TONIGHT...SW WINDS 15 TO 25 KT WITH GUSTS TO 30 KT...DECREASING TO
10 TO 20 KT AFTER MIDNIGHT.
.MON...SW WINDS 5 TO 15 KT...INCREASING TO 15 TO 30 KT IN THE
AFTERNOON.
.MON NIGHT...SW WINDS 15 TO 30 KT...DECREASING TO 10 TO 20 KT BY
MIDNIGHT.
.TUE...SW WINDS 5 TO 15 KT.
.TUE NIGHT...W WINDS 10 TO 20 KT. PATCHY FOG.
.WED...W WINDS 5 TO 15 KT. PATCHY FOG.
.THU...SW WINDS 5 TO 10 KT...BECOMING W 10 TO 15 KT. PATCHY FOG.
.FRI...SW WINDS 5 TO 10 KT...BECOMING W 10 TO 15 KT.

Cap'n Super Dave piloted the Res Ipsa right through like there was no tomorrow. And there was a couple of times where tomorrow did run across my brain, especially when we saw this as we were leaving the Sausalito channel.

Click on the pic above to see that it is not a tiny sailboat nor is it a larger sailboat underneath a swell. It is in fact the advisory the Coast Guard posted all day long about a sunken vessel in the Sausalito straight. No wonder we didn't see many boats out today.

May Day... MAY DAY!

Joy to all of my international brothers and sisters who are actually WORKING today as opposed to the rest of the world that has this glorious day - directly between the summer and winter solstice - OFF. Power to the workers... y los pobres tambien.