Back to Mighty Moss

As soon as I got home from Thailand, I had a few messages telling me to get over to Moss Landing ASAP.  So, after taking a few breathers at home, I was back to the airport and heading down to San Francisco.  I got a car, and made my way out to Marina where I stayed last time.  When I showed up at work, there was some confusion as to what I was doing there.  From what instructions I got earlier sounded like I needed to be there in person to help with the outage inspection, but my boss seemed to change his mind and want me to work on something that I could have done from home on my computer.  Yet, since I was there on site, I got dragged into doing the outage.  Therefore, I was being told to work 16+ hours per day, and only getting paid for 8.  *headdesk*


Thankfully I got things sorted out, and was able to complete what I went there to do.  Before leaving, I wanted to spend the weekend in Monterey Bay.  I went back to the same whale watching outfit that I visited last year.  This time the ocean was extremely turbid, with swells that breached over the bow of the ship.  There were a few kids up front that got soaked head to toe.  Haha.  Many of the passengers weren’t dealing with the choppy sea very well.  I saw about a half dozen people puking over the edge and towards the stern.  Eventually we got around to where there had been whale signs, and there was a pod of Puget Sound resident Orcas!  They had recently killed a grey whale calf, and bits of blubber were floating at the surface as birds munched on the scraps.  Several whales came up really close to the ship.  Once again, I was shocked at how few photos other people were taking.  I was a bit upset because during my shift from video to photo, the dial went into the timelapse preset, which shoots at a lower resolution… right as three close Orcas breached next to the boat right as the sun came out.  For the rest of the afternoon, the light remained flat, uninteresting, and dull.  I still was able to get some interesting shots when they came really close to the boat. On the way back to shore, we went through some more choppy water.  I  was entertained by photographing some of the birds that were flying really close to the boat.  It took me a moment to realize that a pelican was keeping close tabs with the ship, and would land on the water to scarf up bits of vomit whenever a passenger got sick.

Afterward, I made my way up to Santa Cruz for the night.  A guy at a hotel chain lied to me over the phone and kept on jacking up the rate when I showed up in person.  He was being a total ass, so I left to find lodging elsewhere.  Even though it was a weekend with some sort of festival going on, I was able to get a much better room for far cheaper after talking the people at the desk down a bit.  I dropped my stuff off, and went out to watch the sunset, then got something to eat.  The next morning I headed north back to San Francisco.  On the way, I hit up various beaches, watched some RC glider competition,  and took my time enjoying the sunny coast weather.  Returned the car, got on my plane, and got home.