| January 2005: some of the Salty Sisters & Briny Bros heading out at Devereux, Isla Vista: with Ben Colman, Corinne Williams, Maura Jess, and Sara Soltau |
| December 22, 2005: the biggest swell I've ever seen at Campus Point. Surfers trying to paddle out at thepoint were getting swept as though in a river down to Goleta beach, where massive tubes like these were preventing them from getting in. Many rescues, many exhausted survivors, and some amazing rides by the best of the best that day: Kelly Slater paddled out at one point, because his girlfriend was going to UCSB at the time, and just another fun day at the water park for him. |
Corinne, Campus point, April 2006
A very special and inspirational friend, April 2006
| During this time as a volunteer for Hospice of Santa Barbara, a benefactor gave me the gate code to her neighbor Kevin Costner's beach house gate near Sandyland. Below: the unparallelled bliss of an empty lineup, Padaro Point, July 2006. I worked with the above patient, who had ALS, for two years longer than his doctors predicted. We became extremely close, and when he died one night of pneumonia, I was shattered. His wife, who was by his side the whole time, passed away not long afterward. I went back to volunteering for Snowy Plovers for a while and never did hospice work again ... not yet, anyway, and maybe not ever. |
Francie on Christmas Holiday visit, December 2006
Marshall and me, Santa Cruz overlooking Monterey Bay, July 2009
Cowells to Steamer Lane, same Santa Cruz trip
| Francie with her Ethiopian AIDS education co-workers on a work trip to Israel, November 2007 |
| This was one of the nicest places ever to play a gig: every weekend for a couple of summers our iittle Bossa Blue jazz quartet played Brazilian jazz upstairs from the Sea Center on Santa Barbara's Stearns Wharf, at a little wine bar patio. With Carmen Kuchera, Dean Janoff, and Joe Gram. Summer 2008 |
Civilized times: six-card Omaha hi-low split poker aboard friend Michael Haber's craft in Slip 1, Santa Barbara Harbor, October 2008. The cerveza is obviously a prop, as I'm exclusively an herbivore |
| After an exceptional twenty-two years, Janni and I went separate ways around 2005. Met Connie around 2007. We were pretty much instantly a couple, which lasted for three-ish years, as pictured below. We are still best of friends, as pictured in the surf photos from a more recent shorebreak session at Santa Claus Lane |
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| During the last few photos, this buzzcut underlay the baseball cap; I kept it like this for a couple of years; it probably had something to do with my connection to the Vietnamese monastics at Deer Park in Escondido and something to do with starting over |
| ... speaking of Deer Park, here's Sangha sister and corazón con cola Chris Dawkins leading Thầy-informed meditation practice in her garage on Shoreline Drive – converted to the then-thriving and whimsically deep Wabi Sabi Sangha – with the one bowl of true power |
| Annie Hjelstrom moved to Santa Barbara after a Peace Corps stint in Vanuatu and stayed with her brother Eric, who at the time was iving at El Capitan as Park Ranger; much more about him and family later. Annie took up surfing along with the Salties and Brinies pictured atop this page. She got good, and we became surf buds and weekly post-surf dinner companions at Super Cucas in Isla Vista. She met and moved in with Beth Kirby during that period. After some months of togetherness and deliberation they took me out to a mystery dinner at the now-defunct and much-missed Sojourner Cafe, where they asked me to help them make a family. I tearfully and gratefully embraced the project, since in all the marriages and relationships documented here, babies never happened. That was my life's one regret, not being a father; several were conceived, but all went unborn for various reasons, all sad. However, with Annie and Beth: success! The Kirby family flourished, and you can see the results from 2013 on, in this document. Here is Annie, pre-marriage and pre-babies, playing my carbon fiber Rainsong guitar at Ben and Corinne's wedding reception at SB Sea Center, March 29, 2008 |
