Boulders floating on mud flow

Berkeley, Sunday, August 30, 2026 2:54 am

Too much to write about. Although always there is the question if I should write here at all.

Some folks are rough, but that is life. One try to continue making progress. Live with what is there.

A few learnings from stories from memory.

I learned about 30 feet tall (or more) waves in Half Moon Bay. This is in a beach called Mavericks. I think folks call those waves themselves as Mavericks. Wave season might be around November.

Other name I recall, I might connect it to Khan. Man, what is on with my short term memory retention.

There are a few more things, I have learned. A saint Augustine church in Culvert City. A school might still ran there. It is in front of the former MGM studios.

I need to remember the Thomas Merton prayer.

In a few things, while I am somehow a bit out of it, good to find out why. A drink now and then is fine. The videos are really terrible. That is something to fight against, even if it was temporal. That shrinks the brain, and it is bad for Alzeheimer.

Got a nice and kind and huge dinner invitation. But fully recall three names. Two of them because registered in the phone. Oh four names. Must get better at capture those names, hopefully right away. I might have missed about four names. Oh, I see I recalled about 5 names, plus other 4. Still, gotta get better. Oh, I missed one more name. But then I recalled another. So, recalled about 10 names, but missed about 5. And two of the now, had to been repeated. Gonna do better, on the spot.

I read about a mud flow event, I am still reading it. It was a debris flow, where boulders were flowing from a creek in the San Gabriel Mountains. It was around February 10, 1978. The channelized creek, I might have not read or heard yet a name from it, overflowed into Pine Cone Road and into the houses. Several tragic stories, as a result of it. But John McPhee is an artist of telling / writing non-fiction stories in a way that makes sense, and easy to picture, even with some funny twist. But still a tradegy.

I am not sure, yet about debris basins. I would need to look into those.

I have eaten too much recently, and also, and this is the particular problem, the commuting bike is less, and without climbing hills. Talking about that, Pogacar broke his collarbone today, after hitting a probably not big rock on the shoulder of the road. That is terrible for the sport, but it is part of the sport as well. At the end one is traveling at high speeds, just in a bike. There is some protection, but not much. The thing of the danger, actually did not happened at a very high speed looks like, but sometimes traffic can be or more dangerous than a one crazy steep decedent where few or no more cyclist are in. But also, why to cycle in the shoulder of the road and not in the center. Definitely, there are some strategy played on where to position the leader, and teams looking for specific spots within a large peloton.

Got a two hour call. OK. Sometimes flies by. And it might be OK.

But there are some topics better discussed in person. Still, might be ok.

I see something else.

Weight has increased. Need to keep an eye on that and on the time in front of the computer.

Sort of mid-term elections are coming up in most of the states (?) of the USA and in Ecuador in November.

I was persuaded to try some of the desserts by an Slovakian person, saying that the ice cream was Slovakian. Desserts were great. The person also very nice. Glad memory worked out there. I got the Bratislava name correctly. And a few things about Slovakia, to then learn the person is actually an American Slovakia descent from might more than one generation. I do love Baklava though. And also, although, I skipped baklava today, it comes from a bit south and east of Slovakia, from the Ottoman Empire, so around Turkey (mainly) and from the Balkans.

Received food gifts. Wow!

Tried also irani sushi. Forgot a paper. But, I guess I might remember a few things from here.