Arrival at the Pacific Coast

It’s almost too ideal, this moment here, sitting by a fire in a lovely quaint living room, over-sized windows to a sunset on the Pacific, wife with great new haircut doing crosswords over there. Roderick’s wife sitting doing Sudoku puzzles, quietly saying song titles to keep the music going as Roderick just there picks tastefully at a cool, black, graphite acoustic guitar. (A graphite guitar? Da hell?)

“Mr. Lucky,” she requests.

Roderick’s wife does not yet have a blog name. Misty she shall henceforth be.









I write two blogs, which is excessive, yes. One is this one, about my family, and the other is about my creative pursuits and related or not so related topics. It seems this trip may not fit neatly into either category.

What to do? This is clearly a family trip. But there is also a keyboard set up just over there, a barbecue / jam session is scheduled, and a gig with Roderick, a friend of his, and me forthcoming. There is more than a little talk about creativity and music and all of that.

“I Will.”

We woke at 4:00 AM to catch an early flight, stopped a moment in Minneapolis, where I’m pretty darned certain I bumped into Bobby McFerrin, who has had a pretty profound effect on me in a whole lot of ways, but I wasn’t sure enough it was him to say anything. I don’t want to be the white guy who is wrong when he says to the black dread-locked guy "Aren't you Bobby McFerrin?"

“Blackbird.”

We arrived in Portland at 11:00 AM West Coast Time. Our family had an elaborate scheme planned, based on an old, too-hard-to-explain inside joke. So we walked out of the gate with each member of our family wearing a fake mustache. We walked around the corner, and there they were, Roderick, Misty and their two boys, all wearing fake mustaches.

“Crazy Love.”

A terrific meal at Moe’s – believe it, I had never had clam chowder before. This was a very good place to start. I had a cup of clam chowder as an appetizer, then crab stuffed avocado, then a cup of clam chowder for dessert. So I'm not sure what the marionberry cobbler was if the chowder was dessert. I was just surprised that the crack smoking mayor of D.C. could bake so well.

A long walk on the beach to wait for check-in time, and then to the house from which I'm typing just this moment.

“Why Georgia Why.”

I’ve never been to the west coast, and am struck by the different character here. I’ve only been here half of one overcast day, but it seems to me that this end of the county has it all over the other end. I've always loved the ocean, both of them, but while I'm way over here, out of earshot, let's be honest. The Atlantic coast is great, but it just tries too hard. The Pacific just has it the whole beach thing down. It doesn’t try to be a bad ass with how hot it can get, it knows the classy impact of a big land mass here and there, maybe some rocks to break up the sand. You wanna bring a beer or twenty-four down here with you buds, maybe have a fire? 'scool. The Pacific knows you’ll take good care of things; you’re responsible, good folk, after all, and it trusts you. And your dogs. Dogs are cool.

“These Days.”

So, we got here. Beautiful house. We settled in, kids shot pool and tried to fly a broken kite for a while. I had a big self-indulgent run on the beach, and now here we are.

“You’ve Got A Friend”