It's a girl!

We got no phone call in the middle of the night and we'd been told that most mares deliver at night, so Jim accepted an offer of work for the day. I had work to do including writing paychecks for the ranch, so I headed over there mid afternoon to hand them out and go over a number of things with Sue. She and I noticed that the horses who were outside were all clustered around the barn looking in the windows - possibly an indication that something was going on. We crept inside to see and low and behold there was a baby! She must have been no more than an hour or two old. The vet arrived soon after and pronounced everyone healthy. Jim was quite disappointed to have missed it. The good news is that another mare is pregnant and due probably within a week. Photos tomorrow, I promise.

Baby Watch.

We've been on baby watch since last night, horse baby, that is. Jeep, the favorite horse at the ranch is about to deliver and everyone is waiting. (Sue is up from Pasadena and Joe has been sleeping in the barn in case she (Jeep) needs help.) Meanwhile it's been raining on and off, mostly on and is supposed to continue to do so for the next ten days. Jim has been working on Bungalow Heaven Home Tour research from afar and I've been getting ready for our taxes. On a more positive note, I've also been putting together a chart comparing the various climates of the places we're considering moving to: sunshine, rainfall and average temperatures by month. Northern California keeps looking better and better. Did I mention it's still raining?

Ona Beach.

The weather was cloudy with increasing rain, and it would have been easy to stay inside, but we got out in the afternoon and drove a couple of miles up the highway to Ona Beach, where Beaver Creek meets the sea. It was raining slightly and there were only a few other folks poking around, but we were geared up with our mud boots and gore-tex jackets, so we walked around for an hour or so. The rain started coming down in earnest after we got back to the car. We ran by a couple of the drive-thru expresso stands on the way back to the house, but as it was Sunday everyone had gone home early.

Lunch in Town.

We did some work inside in the morning; at midday we cut loose from the computers and met Sue in Newport for lunch at the little "French" cafe - actually a small hollowed-out bungalow. The serving counter seems to be an amalgam of cabinetry from the original house: the built-in buffet cabinet sandwiched between the bookcases from the mantle wall (or so I would guess). Good sandwiches!

The Market.

It was a work day for both of us and I had to go into Newport to do some banking and grocery shopping. It was clear that something was up when I had to wait for ten cars to go past before I could pull out of our driveway. Once on the road there were even more cars, not enough to slow the speed of traffic, just more company on the road than we're used to. Then I saw the signs. The Newport Seafood and Wine Festival started today. As I pulled into town there were flashing signs warning of congestion ahead, though no traffic jam materialized. After banking I went to the market. The parking lot was two-thirds full! Once inside I had to share isles with other people and even had to wait for another customer to finish checking out before it was my turn - in spite of the fact that there were four checkers working! When I was finished the girl who had bagged my gorceries insisted on walking my cart out to the car and loading the bags inside. She explained that the owners of the market were insistent upon good customer service, that this was "part of my job." This, in spite of the sudden swell in population for the weekend. If we drive around enough we may actually have to wait for more than one cycle of traffic lights! On the practical side though, it gives us a taste of what these coastal towns are like in the summer: more crowded for sure, but still nothing like standard Southern CA traffic.

Exploring Rural Oregon.

We completed our short tour, returning to Seal Rock by way of Eugene. We took different routes on the way back, always on the lookout for some fair valley or stretch of country road, one filled with handsome homes and barns nicely spaced on larger plots of land. Unfortunately, this circumstance is exists in far lower frequency than daydreaming city-bred folk such as ourselves might have imagined. In reality, most of these groupings of small properties seem to be a mix of retiree ranchettes (at many levels of prosperity) and plots occupied by the working (or not working) rural poor. So, yes, one could find a 5-10 acre property with a house, one that would seem affordable by southern Californian standards; but the odds of being in close proximity to a neighbor who collects dead cars in their yard would be very, very high.
These forays into the countryside always leave me mentally exhausted. My mind fills with questions. How long did take for that creeping vine to engulf that 78 Buick? How many old travel trailers is too many on a two-acre lot? When your front door is only 30 feet from a busy 2-lane highway, what inspires you to erect a miniature split-rail fence and faux wishing-well in your front yard?
Are we just thin-skinned? Is this just the way it is, where land is counted by acres rather than square feet? It is likely we will have to adjust our expectations of rural life.


A "paintable" vista.


30 degrees of view away: a decaying (and engine-less) powerboat, 2 decrepit fifth-wheel trailers in a metal shed, misc. retired farm equipment and dead appliances. Not an egregious example by any means.


Hmm, this could be nice. Can this reward be honestly earned by an ordinary man in one lifetime?

Road Trip.

This evening finds us in Bend, Oregon, enjoying a little get-away after some five weeks almost entirely within twenty miles of Seal Rock. We headed east over the coastal range into the Willamette Valley, then over the Cascades to Bend. The west side of the mountains was wet and mossy, the passes deep in winter snow; here on the east side we are still among trees, but in a much drier ecosystem (not unlike the area around Bishop).
We are here sightseeing, and checking the area as a potential place to live. It seems fairly nice, but seems not much different, from many places in California. Surprisingly, real estate prices are not all that low, either.

Hanging Out.

Sunday was beautifully sunny but cold, in the 40's. We did a little driving around with our friends from Seattle and took a sunset walk on the beach, but mostly sat around and ate and talked and talked and talked.

Monday we went into Newport for breakfast with Nate and Cyndi at a great little place that's just open for breakfast and lunch. It has wonderful pastries, omlettes, and sandwiches and very good coffee. After breakfast we said "goodbye" and they headed back up north. By then the clouds were drifting in and Jim had a little work to do. Nancy managed to take a nap and waste most of the day.

Today seems to be a mixture of patches of sun and showers. We're both back to the work routine.

Nancy's BD.

A beautiful clear day - and a little warmer - in honor of Nancy's birthday. Nancy opened her prizes in the morning, and in the afternoon we welcomed our first visitors to the house, our friends Nate and Cyndi, who live outside of Seattle. We had a nice dinner at home with a good bottle of wine and good conversation.

Cold.

Well, cold is relative, but 32(F) is pretty cold for us. Apparently it's considered fairly cold for here too, since it seemed to be the topic of the day everywhere we went.
Nancy wanted today to be considered her "pre-birthday" since tomorrow is her actual birthday. For several years she has been trying to sell the idea of a "birthday week," although that hasn't caught on yet.
In celebration of the pseudo-occasion we went into Newport for lunch at our new favorite Mexican restaurant (we think it tops most anything in Pasadena) and a little shopping. We got a couple of clothing items at the feed store and the nice lady there explained how we (Nancy) could mend my ripped leather gloves with a "baseball stitch" to avoid having to buy new ones.
If the car looks unusually clean, it's because it has been washed. We didn't do it, of course. But Nancy took the Pathfinder in for the repair of a broken door latch (the tab, about $60, the time, about an hour) and the dealership threw in a free shine-up. Nice.

Routine

We seem to have slipped into a routine. Jim works most week days standard hours. I work Tuesday and Thursday for somewhat shorter hours and for a few hours on Wednesdays. Trips into town are made every other day, more or less. We can usually eke out one workday a week for non work related exploration. We get cable up here from the same company that provides ours in Pasadena but with slightly different channels. This is a good thing as we've found a new science channel that has very interesting programming, at least so far. The weather had been beautiful lately, sunny, though suddenly unseasonably cold (so they say). Today it stayed in the 40's. Yes, we know it's been consistently over 75 in Pasadena since our departure. See, we really are trying to sample a different climate!

Video chat.

Today was mostly an inside, working day. We did have a long (45 min?) video chat with my parents over iChat (Mac). It was my mother's birthday.
It's surprising, really, how quickly everyone can adapt to the experience: the "okay" sound and the fairly poor video - and just engage in the conversation. The greatest distraction, I have come to believe, is the small window on the video which shows YOU (the image you are sending). We need to get that turned off.
It's an amazing technology, I guess, considering how long it took to get here. I was promised videophones at the GE attraction at Disneyland in 1963. Now there are several competing avenues for free (for now) communications over the net. Most of them work most of the time. None of them work all the time. My cousins Roland and Vivienne in Italy use Skype, which works beautifully for sound, but Skype does not offer video for their Mac version. We use (or TRY to use) iChat for everyone else here in the States, but it often fails to work beyond text messaging, especially when PCs are involved.

Milk and Coffee.

A work day fo both us; a bit lighter for me (Jim), just tying some loose ends. Nancy sent me to deliver the paychecks to the ranch ( yes, in a very small way, we have a part to play here - Nancy is the bookkeeper for the ranch ) and I ran some errands while I had the truck. The weather was changing all afternoon, and driving back and forth on PCH I passed through episodes of fog, then sunshine, then hail, then back to sunshine. Good Fun.
I stopped into Waldport for a sandwich at the Grocery Deli and got some coffee on the way out - I confused the lady at the counter by asking for "Cafe Latte" instead of just of "Latte"; we are now so far from Italy that the word for "milk" ONLY refers to a coffee.
Nice folks though.

A Trip to the Market.

Today was rather routine: a work day for Jim, but not for me, so I split my day between cooking and art making. We needed supplies so I wandered into the grocery store in Waldport, the town nearest to us, population 2,050. As usual, I was spotted as someone new in town. The butcher came up to me while I was on my second pass by the meat counter and asked if he could help me, saying "you look like you're cruising the Hollywood Freeway, is there something I can help you find?" As usual, that developed into a very friendly 10 minute conversation including a rundown on why Jim and I are here, his relocation from California, locations and career paths of family members, benefits and drawbacks of living in Oregon, and the weather (unusually wet and stormy). It has become clear that up here when anyone, regardless of whether or not you've ever met, asks "how's you day?" they expect more than a "fine" and rush to the door. If you see someone you know on the road they pull over, turn off their engine and expect to have a real conversation for 5 to 10 minutes. It's one aspect of small town life we're liking.

I, on the other hand headed down to the water. I made it quite a ways down the beach to a cluster of enormous rocks where there are reported to be tide pools. They must be a bit further down. By this time I had misjudged the surf once or twice so that I was slogging around in water-filled rubber boots. Next sunny day: tide pools.

hmmm...Sunday.

I did some work until midday, then the (relatively) rare sunny weather obliged me to try for a bike ride.
We had procured a local Forest Service map of the area, and I thought I had identified a fire-road loop near the house. I found the entrance off PCH, next to a swamp, and headed down the gravel road. I had only gone a half mile and decided better of it: the local residents, mostly living in older trailers, did not seem to appreciate my passing, or be impressed my nifty mountain bike or my Team Italia bib tights. Their dogs didn't seem to like me, either.
Remembering the regional reputation for meth labs, I left and found another route into the hills, this time with more success. Once away from the highway, I was climbing up fairly steep hills among very young fir trees. This area had obviously been cleared some time ago, and it seems that developers are gradually extending the small community of homes around Seal Rock.
Eventually I found the ridgeline, and on it, a small cemetery. I spent some time there, looking for the oldest markers (1890's?) and trying to remember some of the names so that I could look them up in the online databases when I got back.

A Quiet Saturday.

We should have taken a bike ride, or a hike, or gone out to the ranch to shovel s--t; but we didn't do any of those things. Nancy went into town for a bit to do small errands, but mainly we stayed inside. I played at learning an art program on the computer, Nancy gazed out the window. Just before sunset I overcame my inertia and climbed down the stairs for a walk on the beach. The atmosphere was so pervasively purple and pink that it was a bit spooky. I watched some shore birds working the water's edge, and took some snaps; suddenly all of the little ones took flight en masse, even though I had not moved closer. Twenty seconds later I realized the reason: the tide had turned, and it was coming in fast. Dinner was done.

Beach walk

Another spectacular day weather wise. Jim worked all day, but I was off so I got started doing "art stuff". After a late lunch the weather was so perfect that the sun and the water were screaming my name. The climb down to the beach is much easier when the path has had several consecutive days to dry out. It was low tide (obviously) and I shared the entire beach with just a small flock of gulls. It was as lovely as it looks. And the forecasters are promising more sun!

A Ride in the Woods.

I took the mountain bike off in the direction of our mountain exploration (truck and hike) the other day; most of this road is paved, though covered with so much tree debris from recent storms that a skinny-tired road bike wouldn't have made it too far. The climbs were much steeper than they appeared from the windows of Joe's truck (funny how that works) and my body's still in winter hibernation mode. Still, the scenery made it all worthwhile.

Visiting Florence.

Florence, Oregon is the next "large" coastal town south of us, about 40 miles away. Many people are familiar with it because it is on the coast adjacent to Eugene (in the Valley) where there is a large university. We had passed through Florence before- but after sundown - and in the darkness we had not actually been able to see the dramatic coastline near there.
We met more friendly folks there, in the bike store (always need something) and at the bar/restaurant down in the Florence's old town / harbor area. All in all a very pleasant day for us, with good weather: sunny with pockets of fog along the sea.

Another work day

Today began with clear blue skies and lots of fishing boats offshore. Sadly it was a work day for both of us, but be found time to go outside on the deck and soak it all up for a few minutes at a time. By mid afternoon the fog began to roll in. The long term forecast promises entire days of sunshine, so we're not giving up. We may even go a full week without real rain!

Four Wheeling.

More fun at the ranch today: Jim got friendly with some horses, the donkey and a rather tame bull that's more of a pet than anything else. (There are other bulls around for the normal bull duties.) He also helped wrangle the bull Joe bought last week at the cattle auction in Red Bluff that needed shots among other things. We then took a pasture tour on four wheelers - that was REALLY fun! Everyone came back to the beach house later for an elk steak dinner. Beautiful weather all day.

A Hike in the Woods

A beautiful sunny day! We put on our new mud boots and met up at the cow barn to help feed the cows and check on the newborn calves. After tramping around muddy fields (more fun than it probably sounds) we jumped in the pick-up (Sue, Joe, Jim and I) with a picnic lunch and Joe's 3 dogs for a hike in the woods. It's a rain forest up here really: enormously tall trees, mostly hemlock, a few fir, with a carpet of ferns below and a wide variety of moss growing on everything. The sunlight filtering through the canopy was spectacular. Not another soul around (although we heard a few gun shots in the distance.) We got back to the ranch in time to test drive a few 4-wheelers; that's going to be really fun! Tomorrow: more sun and more fun with animals.

Wet Cows.

We were told to expect very high winds last night (gusts 75 mph plus) but the worst never materialized, and the blow was less severe than last week-end. Our friend/host/homeowner Sue joined us for the evening and overnight, which was very pleasant and a welcome break from our routine. Today she took us back out to the ranch, and we had more opportunity to look around, and for me to begin taking photos in earnest. Cows, bulls, dogs, horses and the occasionally donkey were available for our consideration, and we were briefed on the particulars of more of the outbuildings and of the new main house, now under construction. Apparently a couple of ducks were lost overnight to predators, and later this afternoon a bald eagle was spotted with one of the unfortunates.
We have bought new rubber boots this evening in anticipation of muddy adventures on the ranch tomorrow. Sounds like fun.

Nancy and Sue in the Tack Room.

Storm Tonight?

Trying to finish up computer work in case of another power failure; we've stocked up on flashlights and firewood just in case.

Another day with no reason to shave.

Yes, well, another grey day with occasional showers; but no matter, we had plenty of computer-type work to occupy us inside. We're realizing, I think, that it's not the rain, but high winds that tend to keep us inside. There's just not a lot to be said for going outside when it's blowing hard. Certainly it is not biking weather. We are adapting, though: already I find myself wearing one less layer of clothing than when we first arrived. It's not warm here, but really, 45 isn't that cold either.
We did receive an unusual number of phone calls from other states today - mostly friends - so that was nice. Also we at had a video-iChat with my parents, who are headed up to Mammoth to play in the snow for a few days.
For whatever reason, we seem to be reading more here, the TV seems too frantic in relation to the surroundings. I've got a couple of history books going, and I found a geometry textbook in the garage which I been having a look at - I used to know this stuff, it's kind of nostalgic to see what bits of it are still rattling around in therre.

More showers

Showers on and off today. Both of us worked all day so we watched patches of blue sky move by overhead. At quitting time we decided to run into Newport for some essentials. We're between two small towns: Newport to the north about 12 miles, population just under 10,000 and Waldport to the south about 5 miles, population about 2,000. Newport is large enough to have a historic town center as well as a section of town that has seen better days. We discovered that good Mexican food can be had in the tired part of town! We're also congratulating ourselves (or more accurately, we're congratulating Jim) on correctly diagnosing and repairing the problem we've been having with the main computer we brought from home. (Fortunately we brought more than one.) Patience, thorough research and deductive reasoning pay off!