No kayaking gets done, but there's lots to talk about anyway.
I found a way to make my Radio Shack Weather Radio work: If I walk 400 meters up the road, (which means about 100 meters up as well) there is a clearing next to a house called Valley View. Standing on the side of the road here gives a spectacular view of the Russian River Valley, and also allows the radio signals from Sutro Tower to reach me. If I hold the radio in just the right spot, it gets clear reception! If I move it 20 cm in any direction it fades out, then in again 20 cm later. This is a problem with sinusoidal radio communications (I'm working on a non-sinusoidal based project): Sine waves, and especially high frequency like Weather Radio at ~160MHz, can have null points like this where the waves interfere and cancel. So I have been getting my morning exercise, when I cannot kayak, by walking up the hill to Valley View every morning and listening to the Marine Buoy Report. I have listened with interest as the waves decreased in amplitude every day until I could have gone out Wednesday, if I didn't have classes to attend. I resolved to go out Thursday morning. I called my Mom Wednesday and arranged to have her pick me up at Black Point Beach so I could finally do the 10 mile stretch between Stump beach and Sea Ranch.
I know lots of people who have never been able to communicate with their parents. Marty's mom would "communicate" displeasure with her daughter by giving her the silent treatment. I swear Marty's dad can make her mad just by quietly reading a book sitting in a chair. (This is interesting, because that is also one of Marty's favorite pastimes). But I have always been able to talk to my parents, even about... ummm... You Know. Of course, although not exactly a ranch, the Ancestral Higgins Home almost always had animals of one sort or another, including sheep, goats, milk cows, etc. Us kids had a general idea what was involved at a young age, although of course there are differences... If you have never had the educational experience of seeing dogs "do it", they have a clever evolutionary adaptation that helps increase the probability of conception: The dogs penis swells up after ejaculation and cannot be withdrawn for quite some time. An inexperienced pair of dogs will be quite surprised when this happens, and will panic, barking and howling and running around the barn on all 8 legs. I do recall the time when it hit me in an intellectual way for the first time that one day I would be "doing it", although perhaps with a little more dignity than the dogs. That was when I asked my mom the "where do babies come from question". She started out on the "A mans body has a special tool that"... lecture, and I don't recall, but I may have interrupted her ("Gee, I know THAT mom"). But I do remember asking the question that was really occupying my mind: "DOES IT HURT?" (To my credit, I was having romantic thoughts at an early age and I was worrying about hurting the other party in this endeavor). Mom told me that "It doesn't hurt at all, well maybe the first time, but then it feels wonderful, like falling in love". That was exactly the answer I needed to hear and I relaxed about the subject.
With rapport like that at an early age, it annoys me now that I cannot seem to get the instructions straight about where to meet my mom for dinner. Too many times, I have waited at the restaurant for her to show up while she has waited for me to pick her up, or waited to meet her at work while she waited at the restaurant and gave up and went home. Afterwards we've always figured out which dangling modifier was the "here" or "there" that was miss communicated. So I should have known we would not get the instructions right about where to meet to pick me up for a kayak trip.
As I understood it, I was going to call her from the road before I got in the water, tell her how long it took me to drive there, and suggest a time that she should leave home to get to Black Point on time to meet the kayak. I worked until midnight the night before, had to drive 1.5 hours home, stayed up later packing my emergency kit, putting a map into a zip lock bag, and forgot to turn on the alarm clock. When I woke up two hours late, I tried to call mom, but she had assumed I was already in the water, and had left early without waiting for my call. It was too late to do the 10 mile paddle. I considered going on a short run on a different beach, under the assumption that mom was shopping and would get my message on her answering machine before she left. But if she was on her way there, she would wait for me, start to worry, panic after a few hours, and call the Coast Guard. So I decided to drive up to Black Point Beach and do a 4 mile loop there, which would only take an hour. If she showed up, I'd be just getting back and she would never have to worry. I stopped to get my mail on the way, I had to stop and get gas, CalTrans was working on the road, so I was even an hour later than I expected: 10:30am. Mom's car was in the parking lot, but she was not in it.
By this time, it was getting windy, and as I walked out to the beach, it started to pour down rain. I put on my neoprene diving booties to wade through the 4 inches of water running down the trail. Was she really waiting for me on the beach in this weather? On the drive up, it had occurred to me that she might be at home, unable to answer all my messages on the answering machine. If she had not been here, I was going to have to drive by her house and check up on her. Now I worried that I would not find her at the beach. There had been a very high tide at 7:00am this morning, and although it should be halfway back out by this time, I could see that there wasn't very much sand on the beach. Black point beach has a tower made out of telephone poles with stairs winding down the cliff to the beach. Finally, I came around to the lowest landing, and there she was, wearing a poncho and staring out at the waves. Waiting For Her Son To Return From The Sea. I gave her a big hug and accused her of loving me a lot to be out here waiting for me. Actually, I felt kind of guilty making her come all this way and braving all this weather for nothing. Although I didn't get to go kayaking, we got to go to lunch together as planned at the Sea Ranch Lodge.
The food was expensive for lunch, but we ordered dinner entrees. We were early, but the waitress let us sit at a table and sip tea and coffee until lunch time. Of course, we had our choice of window tables with a view of the ocean. When we ordered clam chowder with lunch, the waitress joked about how they had already run out of soup, and could we order something else? But we had a very nice time, and talked before, and after lunch for probably two hours. See, I can still communicate with my mom.