Holy smokes, has it really been 3 weeks or a month, since I got my paws on this key board?  Well let me start most recent and work backwards; given my age (just turned six) my memory isn’t what it used to be!

So, today I had a decent walk on the beach (illegally– as dogs aren’t welcomed on most California beaches), in a place called Carpenteria—-Just south of Santa Barbara.  There’s this real active railroad on one side, and then there is the beach with surfers in the foreground and these 7 oil platforms a couple miles out, that break the vista toward the Channel Islands.  Sleep has been a bit ‘catch as catch can’ given the raccoons, ground squirrels, gulls, coyotes, people and train bells and whistles, to say nothing of the surf that seeps in and around the window that the boss man keeps open at night (he claims it’s needed for the sake of his beauty sleep?!).  This beach has black gooo seeping naturally out of the rock formations just above the beach, and lots of oil soaked outcroppings—the Beverly hillbillies  must have seen this and sold the rights to the petrol companies that have been active in this beautiful chunk of semi wild California.    O—and did I mention being attacked by three more yappy Chihuahuas on the beach today?  Boss man was unhappy and loudly cursed out the errant and ‘out to lunch’ dog owners that did nothing to curb the curr’s!  I just danced around them and tried to keep my heels from getting bit.  We also met up with another in a string of old Alaskana, by the name of Culbertson—-some connection with the Koponens , from the little bit I was able to gather as they sipped

black java from the French press.

Ok now for yesterday—em, it seems so long ago—there have been so many places, people and things—-I think even the two leggeds are getting a bit tired of being on the move so much! Yesterday I hung out with Big, I mean really BIG dogs in Santa Barbara, called Great Danes— 165 pounds worth!  That was the hallmark of yesterday, as bossman and ‘The Lady’ hung out with some old Pipeline friend called Mertens and another called Ben/Barb Fitzgerald—they watched the Irish get crushed and Seattle win a big one and get this; ate eggs Benedict with lobster  and drank 10 year old Rye Whiskey—-Boss man was in hog heaven, especially as Mertens has a steam bath and a hot tub!  I got a nice consolation prize in the form of a beef rib that Alpha got at some farmers market thingie that happens every Thursday in what the locals call SLO—San luis Obispo—another one of the pretty cool places we’ve over nighted in!

“Kooks”, lots of kooks out here wandering the byways and highways that we seem to be crisscrossing;  like the elderly couple (nearly as old as my two humans—hangovers from the wild and wooly 60’s I think!–) that buy a $95 annual parking sticker and just live free and legal on the streets and along the beaches of Santa Barbara in their modified hippie wagon.  I think ‘boss man’ is getting some new survival ideas on how to do South California on a dollar a day—–seems there was a book out some years back, that he used in Europe and was/still is, his ‘bible’?  We are supposed to meet up in Venice Beach with a university professor they met at a natural Death Valley hot springs, who is writing a book about living for 6 months on gleaned food from the fields/trees and dumpsters of L.A.—-no doubt more fodder for his $1/day inclinations!!!!

In days past we have had some very interesting times at places like the cemetery above  Cambria, that had the most varied and interesting head stones and paraphernalia one could ever imagine—bossman even said he wanted to be buried there?!   O—lordie beeee, I could go on and on, but its time for me to yawn and stretch and let these two ‘chowder heads’ know its my time to get out and relieve myself—-they sometimes forget that I too have needs!

Signing off for now—your friend, Jack—-ps  Steve got a big kick out of The Mrs. and me  watching Dr. Who on her smart phone the other night—me in the drivers seat and she sitting all bundled up in the passengers seat, reaching over scratching my head—-seemed just right to me!!