Railroad Regatta Fun in Photos!

Despite the heat, the Regatta and Hand Car Races held in Railroad Square, Santa Rosa was a lot of fun and an exciting display of creativity.
Some photos to illustrate my point:


Entry after the race...


Waiting for the starting gun.
Bicycle and hand powered:


Cupcake cars are battery powered:

Daddys provide the power:

Thought For the Day

"I think it is very hard because [Democrats] don't have the message machine the Republicans do," said George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley linguistics professor who has advised some Democrats on how to sharpen their message. "The Democrats still believe in Enlightenment reason: If you just tell people the truth, they will come to the right conclusion."

Wine Country Life Style

Some recent activities:
Watching Serena Ryder at Lattitudes Bar and Grill, Rohnert Park, part of KRSH radio's outdoor concerts series. She was great, even without her backup band.
Pic shows a snack, very tasty coconut shrimp and Lagunitas IPA and Serena playing against a lakeside backdrop, on a very typical Sonoma county summer.



Bike riding in the Dry Creek Valley and Healdsburg on July 3rd, before all the crowds. New Trek bicycles are really comfortable and fun to ride. Makes wine tasting cheap since there's no room for bottles, altho we did go back to the Mazzocco winery in the Dodge truck to pick up couple bottles of Petite Verdot, which is an excellent wine. Photos were taken very near Alderbrook winery, tho we didn't visit it this time. They make delicious whites, very typical of the Dry Creek appellation.



Nite life was not neglected either. We stopped by the French Garden Restaurant here in Sebastopol on a Friday night for some good beer, tasty small plate appetizers and good music. This night it was Phil Lawrence and his band mates, plus guest fiddler/violinist David LaFlamme (of It's A Beautiful Day fame) sitting in. If you love Django Rinehart music, and that style of jazz, you will really enjoy these guys. Pic shows a rare moment, Phil, a mandolin player extraordinaire, playing a tenor banjo. He doesn't do that often so it was a rare treat.


Photo taken with my iPhone, not the best quality.

Gas Price Gouging Returns

The price of gas has gone up here in Sebastopol and environs 2-3 cents per gallon everyday of this week. We are now averaging $2.87 per gallon, while at the beginning of the week it was $2.71.
There have been no major news events that justify the traders and speculators raising the price of oil, in fact as far as I can see, the price of oil is the same today as it was Monday.

And of course the corporate media has too many shiny objects to dwell on at the moment to concentrate on the "why" of the price increases, so profiteering continues unabated.

Glad I have a new bicycle, a Trek Navigator, to use and which allows me to thumb my nose at the gas stations as I pass them by.

Book recommendation: "Incendiary" by Chris Cleave. Mother who lost husband and son in a terrorist attack in London writes a letter to Osama bin Laden detailing the affect on her life.
It's very humorous, as unlikely as that sounds, and well told original story.

And just because I haven't posted one in a while, here's another of those exciting "goats on a roof" photo:



These goats are found in Door County, Wisconsin.

Friday Wrap Up

New bicycles are fun to ride. Trek Navigator 3, Comfort line lives up to its claim: very comfortable to ride and gear shifts work splendidly. We rode to breakfast at the Parkside Cafe in Santa Rosa on Memorial Day, a round trip distance of about 20 miles.
Photo taken with my trusty old Coolpix 5700.





Visited Photographer buddy Kevin Berne's new studio in Oakland this week. He's gearing up for an open studio event the first two weekends in June, but took the time to give me a tour. We hope to do some lighting seminars there for wanna be video pros, or for folks who put a lot of video up on social sites and would like them to look more professional.
His site is kevinberne.com and has some great images on it. You can also get the dates for the Open Studio days.
Couple views of the studio, courtesy Kevin: