The Serpent Jetty, Visit #2

Every surfer knows how much sand can move around from week to week.  It becomes really apparent when you have a point of reference like a jetty.  This morning, I went back to the Serpent Jetty to see how different it looked today from a month ago.

The berm that I was standing on last time wasn’t nearly as big as it was last month so I didn’t try to match the same perspectives as before.  Regardless, you can see in the final two images how much more sand was built up around the jetty today.

It’s this constant movement of sand that plays a major factor in the shape of the waves at your typical beach break.  You could have super fun corners one week and beach-long closeouts the next.

Serpent Jetty, Perspective 1

Serpent Jetty, Perspective 2

Serpent Jetty, Perspective 3

Serpent Jetty, Perspective 3 (from January 25th)

Nate, Bean, and the Power for Bribes

So it took a few shots to get this portrait of Nate and his buddy, Bean.  The first few shots were all about getting their silly faces.  Once that was done, I bribed them with a cookie (great parenting, I know) to get them to smile nice for the camera.  It worked.

Nate and Bean, pre-bribe

Nate and Bean, post-bribe

Shells

Here are some shells and a sand dollar that Nate and I have collected over the past couple weeks.

Spiral Shell 1

Spiral Shell 2

Scallop Shell

Sand Dollar

Our Friday Night

I was up late last night trying to catch up on all the Olympics coverage that I had missed this week.  So I slept in this morning meaning that I woke up a little after 7AM instead of 5AM like I did yesterday morning.  So without my morning photos, I decided to keep things low key by shooting our evening activities.

My wife’s birthday is this Wednesday so we decided to celebrate early by going to our favorite sushi joint with Nate Dogg.  Nate enjoyed his smelt egg sushi and shrimp tempura.  He kept us entertained by making funny faces throughout dinner.  After dinner, we headed over to the Westfield Culver City for some ice cream and some running around.

The mall used to be called the Fox Hills Mall, but it was remodeled recently and they changed the name to go with the new digs.  I’ve been to the mall a couple times since they reopened and I have to say that the entire mall looks really nice.

Now we’re at home, Nate is down for the night, and my wife just cracked open a bottle of wine.  Time to sign off.

The sushi chefs at Sakura

Seared rib-eye sushi with avocado and sea urchin - amazing!

Nate, mugging for the camera

Nate at Westfield Culver City

Nate Dogg and Marie-Z

@Nate

The Westfiled Culver City, post remodel

Cabrillo Beach

Shortly after starting this project, I knew that if I was going to keep it fresh and interesting for myself, I would need to be willing to explore a bit and find some new places. This past week, thanks to the suggestion of a few friends, I’ve hiked a couple trails that I’ve never hiked before and got to see some really cool stuff.

A friend on Facebook mentioned Cabrillo Beach in a message on Wednesday, and so last night, after I looked it up on a map I decided that I’d get up a little earlier and make the drive down to check it out.  These are some of the images I got this morning.  The clouds killed any chances of me getting a colorful sky, but based on what I saw, I think I will definitely be going back for some more pictures at some point soon.

Cabrillo Beach, looking west

The lifeguard station

The Cabrillo Beach Jetty

The Breakwall

Manhattan Dawn

I was up pretty late catching up on a few days worth of Olympics coverage on my DVR so I wasn’t able to get up quite as early as I had hoped.  So, I just drove to Manhattan Beach to grab a photo for today’s 365.

I was surprised to see a bunch of people down at the pier this morning.  Apparently, they were all there to work out as a group where some big dude was yelling at everybody to run harder.  Funny thing was that the guy doing all the yelling didn’t seem to be very fit himself.  But I guess if all you need is for somebody to scare you into working out harder, he would definitely do the trick!  As for me, I’ll stick with my virtual coach who lives inside my Wii.  (Did I mention that she has a crush on me?)

Manhattan Dawn