This music video by Martha Stromberg always makes me want to go back, and I have only just returned from a holiday visit. I have walked the streets in this video many times. Notice how the homes there are all built differently. I love that. Everyone puts their mark on their homes in a place where there’s no master developer plan, just lots people could build on. You don’t really see it in this video but there is an impressive amount of agriculture going on around there, and in the towns south of it along the coast. There’s a strawberry field where when in season you can get the best strawberries you have ever had. The food everywhere in that “five cities” area is amazing. The best clam chowder you will ever taste is found in a little place on the Pismo main drag called Splash, which usually has a long line out the door.

I love it there…the plan originally was to retire back to Oceano. I was born in Pasadena and my dad’s side of the family is from Oceano and it has always called to me, ever since my first visit when I was 15. But alas, the cost of even basic housing there is way out of my retirement income reach and I can’t afford it. Home prices and rents there have exploded even more than they have here in central Maryland. I suppose because the climate is so perfect, and the nearby coastline is so beautiful. My brother often says he lives in a postcard. So I’m probably remaining here in my little Baltimore rowhouse forever. But at least I can visit. I visit often enough that the bartenders at Old Juan’s  (you see their sign in this video) know me and what I’m likely to have.

I’m back home from a holiday visit to my brother and family that live in Oceano, and I have stories to tell. But they’ll have to wait until I’m recovered from the bug I caught on the train ride back.

In the meantime my brother there is suffering under winter conditions of 40s and 50s, and here in central Maryland they’re calling for 9 degrees tonight. Count your blessings brother mine.

I see the strawberries are in season now…

This is a big strawberry field less than a mile from my brother’s house. This shot is maybe one-forth of the area of the field. When I arrived last month the strawberries weren’t ready to harvest. They’ve a little shack on the street corner where you can buy fresh from the field strawberries. When they’re open they’re always busy.

This vacation spot where my brother lives…the Five Cities…has a surprising amount of agriculture going on. This is just one of several large and productive fields growing things in the area. It’s maybe a mile south of Pismo Beach. To our north it’s wine country. The grape fields are everywhere as far as the eye can see. To our south it’s all fields of various kinds of fruits and veggies. I pass through orange groves driving here from Barstow.

Driving from Baltimore I pass through vast fields of wheat and corn. Then there is cattle country. It seems like the rest of the dinner table is here in California. 

There’s probably some sort of enlightenment in that fact…

I should have posted this here earlier. It’s sunset in Oceano California, looking off my brother’s backyard deck toward the Pacific ocean, the evening that hurricane Hillary came inland. I was expecting a more impressive than usual sunset over the Pacific that evening and I wasn’t disappointed. It was a Frederic Church level sunset.

I took this with the Canon 6D and 24mm f1.4 lens. Coulda used a 17 or better but the only one of those I have is an FD lens for my film cameras. So after this I priced getting one for the 6D but I would use it so infrequently that spending the money just doesn’t make sense at this stage in my life, and being on retirement income.

This is looking east toward the central valley where Hillary tracked, from my brother’s front porch…

Bakersfield is maybe 100 miles as the crow flies past those mountains in the distance. Barstow, a place I drive through often on my way here and back to Maryland, took a direct hit. Here in Oceano we got a little rain and a little wind and nothing more. Everything on the coast north of Vandenberg was pretty much untouched. But the skies were lovely.

Currently 56 degrees and sunny here in Oceano. I took a short camera walk around the neighborhood and you do get a bit heated in the direct sunlight, but not to the point that it gets uncomfortable. I’m back in my brother’s house now, working on a software project for him, and the next episode of A Coming Out Story.

This must be how my friends who live in warmer climates feel about teasing those of us who live where it freezes and snows. Oh, cold is it where you live? Yes, yes, I know just how you feel…I had to put a light jacket on just the other day! And here I am where it’s a bit chilly, but just a bit, and it seems like the rest of the country is baking, and I’m basking in the cool ocean breezes here.

I have a thermostat at home I can check and set remotely. Right now it’s telling me it’s 106 outside my house in Baltimore. Wow…

The southern hemisphere is really going to get it bad when their summer hits I think.

Downside to those cool ocean breezes is they come with beach sand and it dusts your car and you don’t dare just wipe it off because it’s hard little sand particles that will scratch your paint. You have to hose the car down and then make sure you dry it off so the hard water here doesn’t leave water stains which are nearly impossible to remove.

I think it was something like 58-59 degrees when I took this off my brother’s balcony. 

…since my last post here, I know.  I’ve been on a wee road trip to the ancient Garrett homelands in Oceano, California. It took me through the amber waves of grain, up to nearly the tree line in altitude on I-70 in the purple mountain majesties, through stunningly beautiful canyons and across the Utah/Nevada/California desert in the ongoing blistering heat wave. Car trouble was experienced and diagnosed at a Mercedes dealer in Utah, I was able to proceed to my brother’s house in Oceano, where I shall hopefully and shortly finally get the emission system recall done and give my car some detailing love at a local place that always does excellent work.

I’ll tell more about it later. But I just want to add that I’m not kidding about how hot it was going from Grand Junction almost to the California coast. You stepped out of your motel room or your air conditioned car and into a furnace. Then I get to Oceano and start unpacking the car and it’s in the high 60s and there’s lovely cool breeze and I might not go back home until there is snow on the ground in Maryland.

As I write this it’s sunny blue skies and 56 degrees here in Oceano. 

Around noon today I felt a hankering for a Five Guys burger. I vaguely remembered seeing one here and I checked with Google maps and saw it was not far from me.

Then I thought, I can get a Five Guys burger anytime I want back in Baltimore.

So I went to Sylvester’s.

Another grey drizzly rainy day here in Oceano. Normally I’d complain that I’m not getting my fair allocation of California sunshine and blue sky, but they really Really need the rain out here. So this is good.

Rain, rain, rain here in sunny Oceano California. But nobody is complaining because it is sorely needed here. Today we’re getting a good soaking rain. Forecast is for more later throughout the week.

My brother put up the Casa del Garrett West Christmas Tree last night and we’ve put each other’s presents under it.

Yes, I packed a sweater. One of my pet peeves listening to people back east talking about my beloved California is they seem to think it’s all either LA or San Francisco. I awoke to 36 degrees this morning in sunny California! Oh…did you think it never gets cold here? It’s Sunny California after all! But yes, and this isn’t even north California in the mountains.

Admittedly it never gets much colder than this here in Oceano. But picture a bunch of houses built here before the first energy crisis. No insulation? Check. Thin single pane glass windows? Check. Exterior walls my mom used to say were chicken wire and paper mache? Check!

I told my brother what my mom said about the homes here once and he reminded me that the houses here have to be built to sometimes take a shake. Which I’m sure mine made of concrete block and brick veneer would probably not. And of course mine back in Charm City isn’t any better insulation wise, being built in 1953, and we dip down into the single digits every now and then. But at least mine has double pane windows now and insulated exterior doors now.

Back home I budget for the utilities first, no kidding. I will not endure a cold house or an overly warm one in the summer. So I’ve asked Bill to let me know how much extra I’m costing him in utilities for these visits and I’ll send it to him, since he’s still a working stiff and usually isn’t home most workdays.

Henry, my brother’s cat, being a Maine Coon, could of course not care less.