New Year's Day - Santa Monica Beach

This is probably a land mark. The Santa Monica Pier Carousel.
So it's about a month and a week overdue but here it is. This is my New Year's Day outing to Santa Monica Beach in California. I totally expected the weather to be uncooperative but to my surprise we had a nice warm sunny day with nothing but clear skies. The morning was a little chilly but by 1:00 all we needed was a sweater and lots of "ganas" to walk down the beach.

Lots of walking we did on those pathways along the beach.
I had not been to Santa Monica in well over 25 years so it felt like it was all new to me. The pier is actually a nice place to spend a Sunday afternoon, and if you have some moulla to spend (which we did not) then it's even better. The only thing familiar to me was The Carousel and it's building, everything else was new.



Scenes from Santa Monica, California.
Lots of photo ops for a camera junkie like me. The ocean, the beach line, the pier, the rides, the sunset, and best of all the people walking around there and the ones displaying their talents for a few coins. It was all good and we definetely had a great time.




I so want to go in the summer and ride my bike from Santa Monica to Venice Beach and back. Spend a whole Sunday there watching all the side shows and seeing all these talented people do and display their stuff. I think maybe I will go this summer and do this.



In the meantime I hope you enjoy these images from that day.

Is it too late to say HAPPY NEW YEAR? :-)

Dreams

I'm sailing in the vast emptiness of an ocean, the sea breeze, the seagulls, the odor of salt in the water, and the occasional dolphins, occasionally stopping to pet the whales and take a dive in the near freezing ocean water. Above me only the sun, a cloudless sky and... OK, OK, you know and I know that I am lying through my typing fingers, I'm actually dreaming of doing what I just described, but here in the middle of the dessert that would be a little hard to do.

Was it the trees in the background that gave it away that I was not sailing in the ocean? But I do look good in command of the helm don't I?

Instead I sail in my mind, in the middle of a very crowded shopping center mall. Some dizzy pigeons were flying, and the only breeze I felt was the one coming from the inside of a store as the doors opened, and the only dive I took was the one to go through a bunch of mad shoppers on a hot Phoenix day.

Perhaps I could use those $112,000 extra dollars burning a hole in my left pocket to buy this baby.

Yet, to dream does not cost a thing, dreams are just dreams and they are free of charge yet the imagination of actually being in an ocean, heck even in a local lake on a nice boat like this is definitely priceless. The last boat on our little tour actually had sleeping quarters and it had it's own little (literally) restroom.

Today I sailed, and in my mind I did feel the fresh ocean breeze, I did see the seagulls perform many flyovers, the dolphins and the whales did come to visit, and the ocean water was perfect to dive into and take a dip, and the beauty of it all is that after my imaginary voyage, when I crossed the huge paring lot packed with cars, and joined the many shoppers at the store, nothing seemed to bug me.

So, if there's a moral to this story, I think it's obvious to assume that the moral would be DARE TO DREAM!

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