The moment I walked in, I struck gold (not grocery-wise)! What before my eyes did appear? A woofy fully-bearded man in a kilt — but it gets better! He was an EMPLOYEE. This is Castro Valley, a relatively conservative suburb near a working class suburb that I actually live in, although it’s relatively progressive compared to many parts of the world and the country. Then I started observing that some of the other employees were bearded and handsome and seemed to love working there, and I know one of them did a double take when he saw me. He was a ruggedly handsome, silver-haired foxy cub type and I felt coy when he seemed to followed me down some aisles with the excuse to sort some product, which required that he step away from his register. He was adorning shorts and spandex sleeves (which are pretty sexy). I had never seen attire like that before, but I suspect they were to keep his arms warm while still being able to wear a short-sleeved shirt to mitigate the draft as the registers are right by the automatic doors. It does get brisk in the evenings in California.

We made idle chit-chat and hopefully he noticed I waited in a longer line just to have him be my cashier. Among other things I said, “it looks like it’s fun to work here.” With all the creatively-pierced guys working there, and the metrosexual and gay guys who come in for their macrobiotic food, I can only imagine that it’s a hospitable place for flirtation, even if just an oasis outside of the Mecca of San Francisco across the bay.

I saw my Aunt Sharren.  She’s the sweetest thing, but she wouldn’t let me take her picture!  We stayed overnight at her place and did some major catching up through breakfast the next day.  I hadn’t seen her since I was probably about five years old!  Fortunately we chat regularly online.  Our two little dogs got along surprisingly well.

The road trip back was the slow one, and it included lots of beaches, redwoods, gorges, sand dunes and lighthouses.  Besides spending several days in Seattle, we made stops in Portland, Astoria, Canon Beach, Florence, Port Orford, Eureka, Orick, Fort Bragg, Mendocino, Guerneville and countless other unmarked places on Highways 101 and 1, mostly.

I split up the galleries to consist of one with people and dogs and one that consists of views and vistas.

[Show as slideshow]

[Show as slideshow]

Unfortunately it looks like the video part of my expensive Nikon 5100 is going south, as did my photography portion of the camera several months ago. I’ll see if there is a way to increase the contrast and decrease the flushed areas of sand and sky that seem to blur a lot of the details in some of the videos.