California! A week with Mom and Aimee in Carpinteria

Ah jeezz! We woke up at 9:30, had pizza for breakfast, drug the kayaks over to the water and went for a paddle, came back and had beers on the sunny patio - at 11:30. What a life! We've spent a couple days in downtown Santa Barbara shoppin' and walkin', a few evenings and mornings walking the beach, and dinners in. It's great, like a real vacation. I've been able to geek out on helicopters, kites, and netbooks, and life has never been better! I'm wearing shorts right now, sun trickling through the screen door and onto my bare toes and back, all the while listening to the newest tunes on Pandora and watching Aimee tinker with my Mom's sewing machine. Two nights ago the girls went to a Thursday evening pottery class, and I went to the hardware store to buy supplies for a leveling system for attaching a camera to a kite line. The stabilizer is called a Picavet (pick-uh-vey) rig and it uses a long length of line passed through low-friction points on a cross-shaped frame (and then back to two points on the kite line), giving it the ability to self-adjust to changes in kite line angle. So, the idea is that you can attach your camera to the bottom of the rig, launch your kite, and then with either remote control or an interval timer, take photos or videos for your viewing pleasure. Above is a picture of my version-1 rig, made of aluminum bar stock, heavy steel fasteners, and frictiony (that's a technical term) copper wire. I'd like to make v2.0 out of carbon fiber battens, nylon hardware, and fly-fishing rod tips. I'd also like to upgrade a section of the kite line to high-strength fishing monofiliment so that it isn't visable (as much) in the photos/videos. And since I need to git some heavy-duty monofiliment for the fishing kit I'm taking down to Baja with Christian, I'll be killing two birds with one shotgun. Or something like that. OH!

In other news, I bought a new camera (and computer....)....and some kites.... Ouch, says the bank account. But, money aside, I got a GoPro Hero HD, which is essentially a super-wide/fisheye-only mini camera (5MP, tiny sensor) that records 1080p video (and 720, etc) in addition to JPEG photos. It's really simple, comes in a waterproof case rated to 130-feet, and I bought a couple mounts for it so that I can retro-fit spearguns, poles, kites, helicopters, etc with the rig. I'm pretty antsy to get my hot little hands on it (UPS says Tuesday!). I also purchased a netbook, a Toshiba T215-S1140, which is essentially: 11.6" screen, eSATA connector, HDMI output, 8GB RAM capacity (and full use of all 8GB via Windows 7 64-bit), a 250GB Hard drive, and an AMD 1.7Ghz single-core processor. Oh, and an advertised battery life of 5.15hrs, which probably means two...which I'm OK with. And I got three new kites, a 2-3 square footer, a 14, and a box Delta that has a 7.5' span (although this kite will likely be retired for travel KAP, as it's sewn-in fiberglass poles are far to long to be carried-on, considering how light I like to travel. I'll be taking the kites, camera, and computer down to San Diego next week to go sailing with my friend Christian on his sailboat Altair for two weeks, with Cabo as our final destination. He'll be continuing on North into the Sea of Cortez from there, and he's been talking about South America and the Galapagos, which has got me pretty dang excited, needless to say! But that's the future, and who knows what will go down, so for now I'll just look forward to cruising down the coast, praying along the way that the hard-taco-boat Baja-Ha'ers don't run us over and pack-out the anchorages (because Altair's bowsprit will run 'em through, and we can't have that happening).

Anywho, we're heading to Six Flags Magic Mountain tomorrow, then flying home on Monday morning to spend a week in Seattle (although Aimee's staying in Seattle while we're sailing down the coast). While home I'm hoping to settle a identity theft issue, find a place to store my vehicles until January, streamline my gear for Baja, do some research/planning for Fiji/Solomons, do a bit of gun-smithing, work on my boat for a day, pick up an anti-malaria prescription, get some charts and info for the navigation portion of our trip down the coast, maybe have a cocktail or dozen, eat good food, and do some projects around the appartment. And yes, I'm pretty much moved-in with Aimee, we split rent, and my toothbrush resides next to her's - and we're still on speaking terms! : ) Naw, life is good together, and although the studio is small, we're making it work, even if we've only been home for a couple weeks out of the past few months...

Tis all for now: Peace yo!