Tanya Tries Tomakua

Tanya becomes Tomakua. (Tomasito photo, 2010)

Tanya thought she would try the Tomakua head-dress and struck a pose, 

Very nice!

This dancing mask is fairly thick  papier mache and "Heavy." she said.

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Why Smile?

Why is This Man Smiling?


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Simple Is

Kitchen View. (Tomasito photo, 2010)


As simple does.



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Jury Duty

Tanya photo.

I did the San Diego jury duty as required.

I was highly pleased that I was able to take the "Sprinter" train from Escondido to the Vista station and ride my bike on over to the court house through the very heavy morning traffic--and arrive before the 0800 deadline.

We 250 prospective jurors whiled away the time from 8 until noon when we were ALL sent home.

How lucky we are in this country and state to have a jury trial guaranteed to us--a jury of our peers----just plain ordinary citizens chosen at random--random?--well from the DMV lists so not entirely at random--no homeless folks, etc. but almost random.

Still, it is pretty impressive that it can happen.

When we were told we could leave, the lady in charge said--"Take it easy driving out of the parking lot since there will be 250 cars all trying to exit at once".

"No", I thought, "249 cars and one bicycle!"

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Dry Run

At the Vista Station. (Tomasito photo, 2010)

I have been selected by random to do jury duty next week.

To see if it could be done by bicycle and electric train, I went on a dry run yesterday to the Vista, CA Courthouse--and can report that it can.

The main difference it this trip from my others was that the train was full--mainly of members of "The Tattooed Generation"--people from about 16 years of age to about 30.

There was an armed security man aboard and the riders were pretty polite for afternoon on a Very Hot Day. For example when four obvious thugs got on, I said to myself--"Here comes Trouble"--the security--a big black man, moved right into their midst and they became the sweetest little sweetie-pies you ever saw.

Nothing like a uniform and size and strength and the law on your hip to calm things down.

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New Doves?

New Doves? (Tomasito photo, 2010)

Now there are several doves that pretty much hang out in this general area--sporting in the big trees across the street at the rest home or lollygagging on the telephone pole near our bedroom window.

BUT--today there was a pair of them and they look a little younger--maybe smaller--than the usual suspects. They let me approach to within a few feet of them too--highly suspicious behavior for OUR doves!

Maybe they are a NEW pair?

I hope so! The same old doves all the time can be QUITE boring!

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zxc

A Gift of Flowers

A Gift of Flowers

(Tomasito photo, 2010)

We visited San Luis Rey Mission last week.

The old place is being maintained in very good condition.

There was a funeral being held for some important person so we could not enter the main church--it is part of a living congregation after all--but the cemetery, gift shop and other portions of the complex were open to visitors like us.

The mission congregation offers workshops. lectures and retreats but all are pricey.

Well, it takes lots of money to keep the thing going, of course so if you want to be religious--in this way--you've gotta have bucks.

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Visit Valley Center

T &T & Stuffed Bear. (Museum Volunteer photo.)

Just over a pass in the foothills north of Escondido lies the very odd "community" --I guess you could call it--of Valley Center which used to be called Bear Valley Center.

The "Center" consists of a broad valley ringed by foothills with some very expensive looking mansions and some fixer-upper shacks set into groves, orchards and pastures. It looks to me like the southern California I knew sixty or so years ago. There is no "town" here but there are a few roadside businesses--a branch bank, a couple of gas stations and an eatery or two.

We went to visit the local history museum and found it after a back and forth search next to a very new public library building.

The museum is small but crammed with artifacts and historic junk. Very interesting, of course--and the public library is so spacious and commands such a beautiful view of the valley that it is really a marvelous one of a kind. (The library is a part of the San Diego County library system so you can check out their DVDs for FREE! You gotta PAY 50 cents each at the Escondido library.)

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North County Transportation

Oceanside Pier

Sprinter Tickets

Bike Route Datura

My bike had a flat tire the other day and I had the fun of buying a new tire and repairing the punctured tube. I hadn't repaired a puncture in a long time--in fact I think it was back in my pilgrim days when the old bike I was using had awfully thin tires--it was nothing for me to repair flat tires two or three times a day back then.

Anyway, to test my brand new tire I made a couple of nice rides.

I found a pretty datura plant blooming near the Escondido Bike Route which goes several miles through Escondido town (photo) and I took the very nice Breeze electric train down to the Oceanside Beach for a solitary picnic lunch. (tickets and view above) You can take your bike with you on the train free.

As you can see a Senior with a bike can make a pretty good, inexpensive day of it transportation-wise here in the north of San Diego County, California.

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Santa Ysabel Visit

Santa Ysabel Parish Cemetery. (Tomasito photo, 2010)

Grotto at Santa Ysabel.

This assistancia to the San Diego Mission is located near Julian, California, which is a pleasant scenic drive from our apartment--about twenty miles of rolling hills oaks and sunburned wild oat grass at this time of year.

The assistancia today is a small but active Catholic church with a museum and a gift shop.

It was the center of a large cattle ranch in the days of Spanish California--now it stands pretty much alone in a wide valley.

Local families keep the assistancia in very good repair and the community cemetery adjacent to the church is very typically "Mexican"--with imaginatively decorated graves and lots of bright colors.

We especially like to visit this quiet place--and there is hot coffee and tasty "Julian Pie" for sale to visitors like us--by the piece or by the whole--at a nearby crossroads bakery and cafe.

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Fast Food

Fast Food Drive-in

Fast Food

Line-up. (Tomas photo, 2010)

There is a very popular fast food drive-in a couple of blocks from our apartment. A few of the customers park and go in to order and eat, but most stay in their vehicle, order, pick up their order and drive away--eating and drinking as they go.

This is a VERY popular thing to do here.

Of course almost everyone who lives here must have a car and most spend hours in the car every day. (I almost wrote "week", but caught myself since most commute many miles to work.)

This is one of the peculiarly wasteful bad habits which will bring this country down.

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Pathways of the Heart

Concrete Path, Ohio Avenue.

Dirt Path Felicita Park.

Some trails are easy, some are not--

BUT

It doesn't really matter where your journey takes you.

It can ALL be good.

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Creative Auto Repair

Creative Headlight Repair. (Tanya photo, 2010)

There is a certain class of automobile drivers around here that come up with some inspired solutions for their car repairs.

Can't blame them too much because car repairmen around here make dentist's wages. (Which is why some of us suffer creative dental solutions!)

Our favorite repair though, which we have only seen ONCE, is when the driver's side front door was secured closed with a piece of rope!

We are still wondering HOW the driver managed to get in and out!

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T on a Rock

T on a Rock. (Tomas photo, 2010)

Felicita Park, Escondido, CA.

The wild oats are white dry. The brook is a mid-summer trickle.

But the company is one-of-a-kind great!

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Butterfly Garb

Butterflies' Dresses. (Tomasito photo, 2010)

One thing you CAN say about people. We know a GOOD IDEA when we see one!

The butterflies are getting rarer ("Silent Spring"), but dresses are very colorfully attractive this summer!

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Roadside Attractions

Many Oaks Path, Felicita Park.

Corner Ads, Ash Street

(Tomasito photos, 2010)

Worlds apart but close--we experience these roadside attractions often--almost every day.

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Golden Bush and Traffic

Daley Ranch Coast Golden Bush Slope.

Normal Daily Traffic. (Tomasito photos, July, 2010)

The above photos were made about a twenty minute drive and a half hour hike apart.

Southern California in the summertime.

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Happy Fourth of July

Patriotic Potatoes

Packed Park Parking Lot

(Tomasito photos, 2010)

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY

We hope all of you readers of our Trends of the Day blog have a very fun-filled day!

All of you in the United States especially. We Californios are joining you in celebrating our young country's birthday.

All the rest of of you scattered around the world--we hope your day is especially good in every way. Let us know who you are and where you are so we can enjoy your presence even more.

. .

Water

Escondido Water July 2010. (Tomasito photos)

Nightingale

Balboa Park, San Diego, CA. (Tomasito photo 2009)

(I don't have any photos of nightingales
and the one that sings around here is shy.)

Another bird that has been making music around here lately is a nightingale.

This very melodious critter starts his or her concert at about two in the morning and continues for an hour or two of solid music.

I don't know if she uses the telephone pole perch the other birds use in the daytime on sings out of one of the nearby treetops. I have never seen the bird--but the music is quite, could I say, professional.

Surely all this music is not necessary for the bird's survival--I can only imagine that he/she just LOVES to sing!

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Bird Talk

Bird on Telephone Pole. (Tomasito photo, 2010)

I have been having more fun "talking" to some birds that come to visit.

There is a telephone pole about 50 feet from our apartment window and lately two doves and a mockingbird have been showing up on the top of the pole and singing.

Their songs are quite loud in our bedroom and I have been whistling back to the mockingbird and "cooing" back to the pigeons and they seem to be interested in talking back to me! They sometimes seem to "reply!"

The mockingbird occasionally even springs up, does a fluttering flip and returns to the pole to continue the "conversation". It is SO cute!

A little "inter species communication" is a good way to start the day!

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Motorcycles at McDonalds

Plenty Served! (Tomas photo, 2010)

Summertime.

Time for the bikers to cruise thru town--and they DO in their thundering hundreds.

Often they just roll by on Grand Street, but last Saturday I caught them at a local McDonald's having a fuel-stop.


ALL have big sparkly, polished bikes--it's a fun tribal outing for them. For us it's a peculiar parade.

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Yuccas in Bloom

A view from on of the wild trails in Dailey Ranch park.

Boulder to boulder

The picture above is taken on Boulder Loop, a trail that is part of the trail system of Dailey ranch, a desert park area of Escondido.

It's a very pleasant walk and now is the best season to be there: the grass is green, the flowers are in bloom and the bees are buzzing all over them.

New Food

New Breakfast Food

Tasty "Wheaties" as everyone on earth knows, is "The Breakfast of Champions", and I have known about this cereal all my life.

In fact I think I remember hearing the radio jingle: "Have you tried Wheaties? The best breakfast food in the land!" sung before and after the daily (or weekly, I forget) dose of "Jack Armstrong--The All-American Boy", quite a while ago.

I have recently noticed, in the breakfast food department of our local supermarkets, a new Wheaties knock-off named "Fuel" in a narrow black package with some rather sinister-looking sports heroes in full-face portraits.

These men definitely seem more from the dark side of sports--they are tough and rather mean-looking.

No Jack Armstrong here!

So goes the new role-model for today's youth.

Different world, isn't it?

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Hawk and Crow

Hawk and Crow

A little brush with in-the-raw nature today.

I was walking down to get some groceries at Vallarta, our neighborhood market, when I noticed a small flock of crows dive-bombing a hawk perched on the roof of a cell-phone shop.

The crows were giving the hawk a very bad time and he looked quite frustrated--but the crows took care to attack him from the rear and to stay out of harm's way!

This was right above a very busy intersection with plenty of traffic.

Nice to see a little 'nature" mixed in with all the human activity--even if it was a dust-up between bird species!

When I paused to snap this photo, the crows retreated to a nearby eucalyptus tree to observe--they didn't return to the attack until I walked away.

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Happy Easter 2010

Happy Easter!


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Saint Patrick's Day

In the Green. (Click photo to see Leprechaun!)

Every year--after the spring rains --Southern California is almost Irish Green--it doesn't last very long--but long enough to be good and green for Saint Patrick's Day.

So all of you colleens and lads out there (And EVERYBODY is a little Irish on Saint Patrick's Day!)

have a Happy Saint Paddy's Day!

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Mission San Juan Capistrano

We have been to every mission in California and tok pictures of every mission except this one... until now. The reason that we failed to take photographs before was that Mission San Juan Capistrano was being renovated and it was just too crowded.

This time the reconstruction was done and while it was still pretty crowded, it was not nearly as bad as it could be.


I must say, the mission is really impressive. They made a good job at restoration. I especially liked the old walls and a niche that they left just like it was. The church was rebuilt. There was also a garden and even vegetable patch where they grow all kinds of greens.


There are also traditional arches on the porch and a very good museum scattered all over the mission showing what it was in the early day of missionaries and Indians.

This mission is very well worth visiting. It's a wonderful historic site. Considering it is in the middle of a metropolis right between los Angeles and San Diego it's wonder to see it preserved.

Wild Animal Park

Today we went to Wild Animal Park. It was overcast and a little cool so we thought the place would not be too crowded. It wasn't. This park is actually part of San Diego zoo and the ticket for one place is valid for another provided you can make it in one day. The place is a lot like a zoo. We saw a baby elephant who was born on Valentine day (guess his name).

We also took a ride in a train through "savannah" with wild beasts, mainly all kinds of antelopes and giraffes.

The park features balloon rides but we didn't ride a balloon.

And of course we made a new friend who insisted we took his picture before we went.

We had a great time.

Fear and Loathing in Escondido

Another historic picture from my archives. The sign is no longer there. I don't know what it is supposed to mean but it was curious to see it there. It looked like it could be a gang work. There are lots of tags around in that area.

And doesn't he just look like a gangster?

Cruising Grand

Escondido, like many other American towns, has a tradition to show off antiques cars, whether restored or new (saved) I do not know. Anyway, back from the old days when a person shown in this photograph used to own a car just like the one in the photo only his was brown and white, not blue and white.

It's an old Chevy. Strangely enough, Tom owns a Chevy now too. Only this time it's a new Chevy.