May 15, 2009

Today is the second day my wife and I have had to live with the fact that I may not be here too much longer. I guess we made a silent agreement not to talk about it and just enjoy the day, because for the most part that is what we did. We stayed at Grover Beach last night and were awakened by the light of the sun coming through bathroom window. I saw an advertisement for a local restaurant that sounded fascinating to me and suggested that we go to breakfast there. This dinner was just off Highway 1 and after breakfast we looked at each other and decided to drive up One instead of 101 because it is such a picturesque drive and I wanted to take pictures and it’s a great picture-taking road.

Our trip was a ball and we constantly stopped to take pictures. The highlight of the trip was the stop to get pictures of the Elephant seals. The “seal beach” is close to Hearst Castle. It was cold and very hard to hold the camera steady. I used my longest focal length lens to take the pictures. They look really nice. I can’t wait to give them that Photo Shop treatment. Today is Friday and most people were working so the Highway was pretty empty and the drive was really pleasant. We took around 500 pictures during the drive and we still have more to go before we head home.

We ate a late lunch at a wonderful restaurant. It was perched right at the edge of a cliff over looking the Pacific Ocean. The food was good and we shared a plate of fish and chips. We really enjoyed the ambiance of that restaurant. Its funny how the news of ones demise makes everything around you just a little more special. I noticed every little detail of the scene before me and appreciated its beauty. We even had a discussion about the bird droppings that painted the cliffs

Once we were out of the Big Sir area our cell phones started working again and we got to thinking about weather or not we should call the rest of my siblings about the coming events in our life. Laurie insisted that my brother probably told the other siblings about the cancer because she felt he needed to vent himself. So I decided to call my youngest sister and talk to her about it. Sure enough, my brother told her of the trial I was about to face and it became important to me to comfort her. Truth is that I’m really not scared of death or do I think I’m going to die anytime soon so it was easy for my to comfort her. We ended the day by getting lost trying to find the Hotel that we had reservations and that was despite the fact that we had a GPS device. We did get to our Hotel and checked into a nice room and are planning to spend the next few days exploring this area.