The beach... is THAT WAY.
Dec. 25th, 2010 12:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
batskeetsCalifornia beaches are a different animal from the ones we're accustomed to up in the Northwest. I'm sure that sounds like a wildly obvious point to be stating, but hey, it's true.
The family plans for today didn't pan out like we expected, so I headed down to Santa Monica, to skate the beach and snap some photos towards sunset. Sun, sand, ocean, people milling up and down the path, and 19+ miles of bike path ripe for skating? Yeah, I can go for that. No, I didn't skate the whole 19 miles, but it was still a kick in the pants, and I think I may have spied another derby girl skating the path, too. I probably should've just asked, but we were skating in opposite directions. (note to self: get more RCR swag to wear about town)
It was something of an exercise in people-watching, too. In Venice Beach, there are swings, rings, pull-up bars, and people engaging in various forms of physical conditioning on the equipment. Plenty of people on bikes and rollerblades, and people going on afternoon jogs passed by me; there were parkour tricksters in action, and even a guy or two running through Taiji forms. I probably should've just been happy for Taiji Guy, but I couldn't help mentally noting his awful flow and middling stance work. Because I'm a big jerk like that. ;)
The closest parallel I can think of for that phenomenon is, well, the parks in Beijing. It's not exactly a common sight to see so many people clustered together in the same area, doing conditioning on publicly available, outdoor equipment. Or at least, *I'm* not used to seeing it. That was something I saw pretty frequently in Beijing, though: exercising in the parks seemed to be something that practically everyone did, no matter what their age, and you'd see people getting buffed up on outdoor apparatus while cars flew by on the road, maybe 10 or 20 feet away. That continually struck me as unusual, while I was there.
Anyhoo, yes. Things are different here. The beach in Oregon always feels like a place I can go to lose myself, for a bit. It's colder, cloudier, and it's easy to just avoid all human contact, and let the salt air and the sounds of waves crashing on rocks take over. The beach in Santa Monica is very sandy, sunny, and pretty, and you basically *can't* get away from people for more than a precious minute or two. It's no wonder the seagulls seem less people-shy here than they are up North.
On a somewhat-related note, one of many reasons why we wear pads in derby: while I was skating the beach path, I ran into a drift of sand that was deeper than it looked, so I pitched forward and went into a double-knee fall. It was a proper, trained fall, but the impact alone still would've hurt like a bitch, without the pads, and this would've been my knee. Sand + scraping = hamburger flesh.
Christmas Eve-Eve was also amusing in a completely different way, but I'm going to thumb my nose at chronology and save that one for later. But, a sneak preview: My god, it's full of BABIES. They do make the best bacon, after all. ;)
The family plans for today didn't pan out like we expected, so I headed down to Santa Monica, to skate the beach and snap some photos towards sunset. Sun, sand, ocean, people milling up and down the path, and 19+ miles of bike path ripe for skating? Yeah, I can go for that. No, I didn't skate the whole 19 miles, but it was still a kick in the pants, and I think I may have spied another derby girl skating the path, too. I probably should've just asked, but we were skating in opposite directions. (note to self: get more RCR swag to wear about town)
It was something of an exercise in people-watching, too. In Venice Beach, there are swings, rings, pull-up bars, and people engaging in various forms of physical conditioning on the equipment. Plenty of people on bikes and rollerblades, and people going on afternoon jogs passed by me; there were parkour tricksters in action, and even a guy or two running through Taiji forms. I probably should've just been happy for Taiji Guy, but I couldn't help mentally noting his awful flow and middling stance work. Because I'm a big jerk like that. ;)
The closest parallel I can think of for that phenomenon is, well, the parks in Beijing. It's not exactly a common sight to see so many people clustered together in the same area, doing conditioning on publicly available, outdoor equipment. Or at least, *I'm* not used to seeing it. That was something I saw pretty frequently in Beijing, though: exercising in the parks seemed to be something that practically everyone did, no matter what their age, and you'd see people getting buffed up on outdoor apparatus while cars flew by on the road, maybe 10 or 20 feet away. That continually struck me as unusual, while I was there.
Anyhoo, yes. Things are different here. The beach in Oregon always feels like a place I can go to lose myself, for a bit. It's colder, cloudier, and it's easy to just avoid all human contact, and let the salt air and the sounds of waves crashing on rocks take over. The beach in Santa Monica is very sandy, sunny, and pretty, and you basically *can't* get away from people for more than a precious minute or two. It's no wonder the seagulls seem less people-shy here than they are up North.
On a somewhat-related note, one of many reasons why we wear pads in derby: while I was skating the beach path, I ran into a drift of sand that was deeper than it looked, so I pitched forward and went into a double-knee fall. It was a proper, trained fall, but the impact alone still would've hurt like a bitch, without the pads, and this would've been my knee. Sand + scraping = hamburger flesh.
Christmas Eve-Eve was also amusing in a completely different way, but I'm going to thumb my nose at chronology and save that one for later. But, a sneak preview: My god, it's full of BABIES. They do make the best bacon, after all. ;)
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no subject
Date: 2010-12-25 10:46 am (UTC)Have a Merry Christmas with your family. :)
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Date: 2010-12-26 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-26 11:48 pm (UTC)