| The house & the car | | Chris & Kim's house in Modesto, CA. In front is Chris' car, where, as usual, we spent most of our time. | As Kim put it, "The action shot" | | Returning from provisioning at O'Brien's Market, one of my new favorite places, where... |
| ...we picked up some key ingredients | | Free-range chicken stock, a jar of brine cured black olives from the Santa Barbara Olive Company, a Guinness, a bizzaro brand of Polish vodka we got at Trader Joe's, and Chris' Global chef's knife, a lovely instrument which he bought at a local blade shop, where they subseqently sold him a lame cleaver. |
| Guitar | | Chris' Takamine classical guitar, on which I composed an amalgam of David Bowie's "Young Americans" and "I'm Afraid of Americans" (thus, "I'm Afraid of Young Americans"). To be honest, it really didn't work. |
| A portrait of the artist as a culinary fiend | | Chris preparing dinner. Dammit, but the man can cook. |
| The Grill | | Enough said. |
| Fog | | A view on the road into Big Sur. The June fog had rolled in, right up to the rim of the surfside cliffs. |
| A precipitous view | | Looking down over the cliffsides; you can just see the surf at the bottom. |
| Further on down the road | | Even though we couldn't see the ocean, the view was tremendous. |
| ME! | | By the roadside at Big Sur. I am only here to provide proportion. |
| Chris & Kim | | A good one of Chris & Kim on the beach at Big Sur. |
| The Ocean | | Me, indicating the obvious. |
| The Surf | | The surf at Big Sur. At the far right, you can see the head of a sea-lion, frolicking in the surf. This picture is in full color, believe it or not. |
| Precipices continued | | A view of one of the many reservoires in the hill country leading to Yosemite. This year, owing to huge yields of snowfall, the thing is damned near full. |
| A Stairway to... Paradise? Purgatory? You name it | | On the Upper Yosemite Falls Trail. As you can see by the progression of hikers, it's basically a granite staricase. The kid you see in foreground laughed when I told him that I was taking this picture so that people wouldn't call me a liar when I told them how tough the climb was. |
| Chris at Yosemite; these are the vistas | | There is little if no point to trying to take pictures at Yosemite. By this point, we were stopping every ten steps to take in the view. (And, Chris insists on noting, to suck air and rest joints, although we did dust a trio of 20-year-olds who started out just ahead of us.) |