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Lake Nascimiento, 2008
These photos are from a trip that Keewi and I took with her sister Heewon and our friends Jaime and Susan down to Lake Nascimiento, a smallish artificial lake (behind a dam) a little north of San Luis Obispo. We camped for a night there (beautiful stargazing!), and did a little sailing and a lot of waterskiing and other motorboat activities. On the way down we stopped at the mission in San Juan Bautista, which I took lots of photos of since the missions are always interesting.
The "original" photos in this set are actually 1/16 of the original photo pixel count, so if you want to make a print, ask me for the real original.
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| Mission San Juan Bautista |
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The mission was sleepy and pretty. The missions always have an undercurrent of historical brutality and exploitation, though — the ostentatious and spacious quarters for the priests supported on the backs of the native peoples essentially enslaved there — which the lovely gardens did nothing to dispel. They were holding Spanish services when we were there, with a Latin mass scheduled for later that afternoon. The first male statue pictured is of Junipero Serra, while the second of San Juan Bautista (St. John the Baptist) himself. The closeup after that is of what was supposed to be a locust on the Baptist's statue, but is in fact a cicada (a common confusion); the whole "locusts and honey" thing with St. John the Baptist may actually refer to bread made from flour from the beans of the locust tree anyhow, apparently, so there are two levels of confusion surrounding this poor cicada. Still, it's a very nice cicada, so I photographed it. |
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| Sailing |
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Jaime and Susan have a tiny little boat that Keewi and Heewon took turns sailing in with Susan. It was getting dark by then, and I declined to go; I've been on their boat before, and I'm sure I'll go on it again, and I didn't really feel like capsizing in the twilight. (Some of you may doubt that I would have capsized the boat; I will be happy to sail with you sometime to dispel you of this doubt.) |
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| The good waterskiiers |
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Jaime and Susan are both great waterskiiers, and made it look very easy. |
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| The bad waterskiiers |
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It turned out not to be that easy. |
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| Wakeboarding |
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The first photos are actually of a nice atmospheric phenomenon we saw while Jaime was wakeboarding; it may or may not correctly be referred to as a sundog (I don't think it was 22° from the sun). In any case, it was pretty. Jaime is the only one shown wakeboarding because Jaime was the only one who was able to get out of the water on it! |
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| Tubing |
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I realized my latent potential when we got around to the tubing behind the boat; Jaime did his best to throw me all over the place, but I hung on. I was quite sore the next day, though! Keewi also had a great time with the tubing; her best technique involved hanging off the back of the tube into the water, but all you can see in those photos is the underside of the tube, so that technique is not pictured here. |
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