My birthday: June 19th, 2011: my fiftieth, which I find hard to believe and which I am honoring. In my head, over and over: What kid ever thinks he's going to be fifty? I'm fifty? Here, I'm at Monterey Bay Kayaks, getting ready to go out on (and under) the water. Breezy, choppy day with a lot of sun. The breeze from the west and northwest meant a good amount of work heading down Cannery Row toward the Aquarium. It also meant a quick ride back, though effort was needed to keep straight and not capsize at times, especially while focusing on taking photos. In fact, this was a rough day for pictures from all that bobbing about. I did better --as you'll see-- while underwater and less subject to the quirks of wind and swell.
I picked the photo above because it reminds me of my father, oddly enough, and that was Father's Day also. Something about my stance here recalls pictures from the 60's and early 70's of my father getting set for a fishing trip or a motorcycle ride.
Today, June 20th: Monastery Beach, Carmel, CA. I like waves, flat out, but this one held me with the echo between spray and fog-line. 
Also today, June 20th: Monastery Beach, Carmel, CA. I like the texture here, and the scene itself was fairly mesmerizing, the colors and textures. A bit of energy, but not too much. (If you can, click on the photo and enlarge it to see the layers and rolling here.)I didn't dive, but I was sorely tempted, though I'd have been solo in the water. (Monastery has a nasty reputation for treating hubris harshly, and I'd paddled and swam to exhaustion, happily, the day before.) I plotted my free diving from the north end of the beach out through the kelp bed (where you can see the rolling swell but no breaking waves) and then down, down and up, down and up. The last time I dove here, I used a tank, and my partner Jeff had a harbor seal making advances to him. We had gear failures, so we had to shift our original plan, but still had a nice dive down to about 50 feet and then up the north wall to the shallows.
I need to call Jeff for a dive at Jade Cove down Big Sur way. That would be cool.
