Ready to go

I'm all packed -- I think -- and leaving in half an hour. (Yes, I packed the computer. I'm typing this on the other one.) We'll see how the Butterfly stands up to its first real outing. I discovered yesterday that it shares a flaw with Old Laptop; if the CD drive is overused it goes on strike and stops opening, probably due to overheating. Behemoth doesn't seem to have that problem.

I'm not sure how many more trips my big suitcase is good for. I bought it in 1999, and since then it's done seven transatlantic trips and probably twice as many domestic ones, for varying values of domestic. Half the zipper tags are missing, the stiffening metal is bent on one side, and the wire edging is showing through the plastic at all the corners.

I should have reasonable internet access in Monterey, but time and energy may be a problem. We'll see.

(Monterey! Ocean! I haven't seen the sea up close and personal since ... 1990?)

In Monterey

And the wireless works. It feels wonderfully moist here.

More later -- right now I have a reception to go to.

Waves!

It turned out there wasn't a reception after all, so after registering we went out for dinner. When we got back to the hotel I spent several minutes on the balcony on the ocean side, watching the sea. The tide was high, leaving only a narrow strip of beach, and the waves came in and in, tall as a row of galloping horses in the distance, then toppling and spreading out to a thin shifting curtain of lace over the sand. Little groups of sandpipers ran in the shallow parts until the waves caught them, and then rode the receding water out. The air was heavy with the salty, fishy smell of the sea.

It's been so long. Not quite as long as I thought; I did spend a week in Nice, France in 1996, and that involved at least one early morning stroll on a pebbly beach, but I don't think the Mediterranean has breakers like that. When I was a teenager we used to spend a day in Scarborough each summer, my father and my sister and I, and I loved to lean on the promenade railing and watch the waves come in.