Well, we are in a heatwave again. The day starts out innocently enough, we have some ephemeral cloud cover in the morning and we are in the 70s, but boy oh boy, by 4 p.m. we are near 100 degrees Fahrenheit. An "Excessive Heat Warning" has been posted for the rest of this week, and we will be near that temperature again, over and over. Not as bad as Mexicali, Mexico, which is getting closer to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, but still, it forces the air conditioning to work overtime. Yes, yes, I know, I should not be complaining, many people throughout the world have it worse, but it is a bad spell.
Today I was determined to return to La Casa Romántica in San Clemente, CA, and make a side trip to the pier. It is very much visible from that tourist attraction, it is right there, and I set out at about 9:40 a.m., forty minutes later than I wanted to set out, but I was running late. I had checked the traffic on the web and the delay on the 91 freeway seemed very serious early on, so I wanted to wait it out for some time. Better to wait at home in comfort rather to sit on the 91 freeway.
I made it in about an hour to the location. Of course, I had to take the toll road. The other part of today's journey involved taking my 8x10 camera, I very much wanted to try out the 77mm yellow filter I had ordered. I had decided I was no longer going to stress about using the Cokin filter and the makeshift printed holder for the Willtravel that was always popping out at odd angles and giving me weird effects on the negative, I was willing now to accept the vignetting of the filter if I could just screw something in.
I'll write about the Casa Romántica in a later entry, but for now, I just wanted to mention that I was done by about 12:30 p.m. I was also very, very tired, and was very sweaty. The beach was much cooler than the city called Crown, but still, all the work of lugging that camera everywhere really tired me out. Still, I was determined, I was going to go to the pier. Parking was difficult, but I parked at a meter rather than the lots and walked down there.
The pier is short, not as long as Oceanside's pier, and very bare. It is almost like Seal Beach, just a wood path (with barriers) out to the ocean, past the surfers. I was still glad to go out there, and I noticed that I must have been the only person wearing a mask out there. For "the gabachos" of San Clemente, Covid is over and it is not up for debate. It is over, no more masks, and I hope they are all vaccinated, but I doubt it.
This is, very much, a beach for very prosperous people. I saw almost no "people of color". And, swimsuits are back! They were gone in the sparsely attended beaches of last year, that is, with most people not wanted to venture out to public spaces, but now, they are back and they were a big distraction (of the pleasant kind) for me.
Here are a few cellphone photos. I also took Instax Wide photos, but I don't want to scan them yet. It was one roll of monochrome (that is, black and white) photos. I wish I had taken my D500, but no, I was determined to travel lighter after my outing at La Casa Romántica where I exposed eight (yes, eight!) sheets of film.
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