You may want to see the usual four to six photographs and skip the rest... all taken on a trip around San Diego Bay this afternoon.  Margaret and I were invited on the trip by Jay Garcia and Lyn Wheatley, and I couldn't resist taking lots of pictures, and then I couldn't resist putting sixteen of them on the BLOG.

Time changes people and places. Well, I guess that's the wrong way to say it.  People and places change over time. It's the stuff that happens to them and around them that changes them.   Margaret and I live in a community built for retired people.  "Retired People" is another way of saying it was built for people who are at the end of their lives... Oh, there I go again, avoiding that word old. They have all changed... changed a lot.  I became aware today that the city that I call home has also changed. Thirty years ago the skyline of San Diego was less bold, less insistent, less "city."  Today the place where I live is definitely a city.  I've got pictures from that time thirty years ago... and all through the years I have added to my collection of photographs. I am shocked when I look at the photographs of the city that I took when I was fifty-one years old.  One of the reasons I am glad to be the photographer on these excursions is that I don't have pictures of my 81-year-old self in the bunch...  The world has changed. I'll try to figure out how the photographer has changed.  I can deal with that later...

For today:  I'll focus on the sea gull that followed our ship this afternoon... and the old sailing boat that was showing off on the bay by firing a canon... and the sailboats in that special place near the airport... and the sea lions and seals and the birds on that floating barge way out near where the San Diego Bay runs into the Pacific Ocean... and then turning back and heading down south by Seaport Village and the great aircraft carrier that is as retired as I am... and then running under bridge and past the Navy ships in slips where they are being refitted, repaired, and readied for more action.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  San Diego is a wonderful place to live.

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