The Everywhereist

A totally random note from Geraldine: This is the 500th post to appear on my blog. Holy cats. There are few things I’ve done 500 times, folks. I won’t exactly go into WHAT, but there are few things – let’s just leave it at that. Thank you to everyone who helped me get to this milestone – whether through guest posts, comments, words of encouragement, or just by occasionally reading the nonsense that I post day in and day out … You are all wonderful, and I want to hug you each 500 times. Though that would probably get weird after the third hug or so. 

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My last post was intended to be about a pleasant day at the beach, and instead it devolved into gratuitous photos of me and my husband making out.

Sorry about that. I promise, there will be absolutely NO NONSENSE LIKE THAT TODAY. All my pictures will be chaste and sexless, and there definitely won’t be adorable self-portraits of me and my husband.

Like this one, for example.

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GAH! What is wrong with me? Sorry. Seriously, that will be the last bit of ooey-gooey sweetness for the day. It’s getting to the point that my own marriage might cause me to become diabetic.

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I’ve often said that the greatest trick San Francisco ever pulled was convincing the world it was part of California.

The city by the bay isn’t terribly sunny or warm. A chilly wind barrels down its streets, and as you clutch your coat tightly to you IN THE MIDDLE OF AUGUST, you contemplate moving someplace warmer. Like Portland. The beaches near San Francisco aren’t much better: cold, rocky, and inhospitable.

In both cases, I blame the Pacific ocean. It is deep and dark and vast, and unforgivably cold. I’ve never swam in it – I refuse to do so until I have a full body wet-suit that makes me look skinny and has a special apparatus to keep my cupcake dry (that is not a euphemism).

So when Rand suggested we visited Muir Beach – roughly 20 miles and 40 minutes away from San Francisco, I was hesitant. I grew up near a real beach – on the Atlantic Ocean – where the water was warm and the sand would scorch your feet. Where you could run around in a bathing suit in the middle of December (wearing a bikini in the holiday season is not something I have attempted since childhood. Now, I suspect large parts of me would jiggle like a bowl full of jelly). But I was curious to see what the Pacific had to offer in way of beaches, and despite the weather, the Bay Area is beautiful. So on a grey morning, Rand and I headed out.

It was hazy, but not terribly bad. We could still see the top of the pillars of the Golden Gate.

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