What I should write about is our quest for California cliches. This weekend, loosely entitled “Beach Blanket Bingo,” we dragged the grill to the beach to light a fire, sear some meet and watch the sun settle over the Pacific.

As Americans, it was essentially a game of how many provisions we could carry a short distance. [image:4002:l][newline]

The side game was “I’ll follow the sun.” Fucking microclimates. No shit, and I may never get used to this reality, in Northern Cali you could wake up to 80 or 90 degrees of dry heat with a lightbulb hovering headward and illuminating the idea, “BEACH DAY!” A few miles down the road, the temperature has sunk by 30 degrees and fog has clouded blue skies.

Our first beach stop in Santa Cruz was Hitchcockian cool with a flurry of pelicans and gulls. [image:3998:l][newline] [image:3987:l][newline]
Cool as it was with riots of birds and a rusted out shipwreck, it was fucking cold.

Eventually, we landed. [image:4008:l][newline]
The lighthouse started moaning out a fog warning. We cooked and the fog rolled in. [image:4006:l][newline] [image:4012:l][newline]
Just call me Gidget.