Geoff Gilbert's Blog: Four Hundred, But Who's Counting?

Sunset on West Cliff Drive

by Geoff Gilbert

Good morning and greetings, Veteran's Day fans.  Well, I have arrived at another benchmark along the long and winding cyber road.  According to the folks at WordPress, where I purchase all my slacks, today's posting is my 400th.  Yes, the cryogenically frozen Ted Williams, the last man to hit over .400 in the major leagues, would be very proud.

Or in his words, "God gets you to the plate, but once you're there you're on your own."

So how did it all begin, this journey of over 400,000 words that has left me with a sense of peace, resentment and a thirst for more episodes of 'Homeland?'  I've fallen in love with this show and now draw my inspiration from Clare Danes, as bi-polar CIA agent Carrie Matheson.  In her words of the events of 9/11 " I missed something once before. I won't... I can't let that happen again."  That's the same way I feel about shooting sunrises.

Or as my wife said to me on the morning of our 25th wedding anniversary, " You're a disgrace to your nation, Sargeant Nicholas Brody. You're a traitor and a terrorist, and now it's time you pay for that."  Hey, I would have been happy with just a card.

I've always liked to write.  I believed I may have penned my first sonnet on the walls of my mother's womb.  It started out, "There was a boy from Nantucket."  I had discovered my inner voice.  However, after I exited my mother's tomb, my voice was then labeled as colicky, which led to writer's block as I suffered from postpartum depression.

I started my official writing career in junior high, when I had a poem published in the 7th/8th grade school magazine.  I was a shy child who was interested in nature, and I believe it it was reflected in my literary prose.  Here's the third and final stanza from a poem very appropriately titled 'Spring.'

"In the city the buses are clattering.  In the forest the animals are chattering.  The hustle and bustle is too much for me.  I like to watch spring show up quietly."  Now I know why my teachers referred to me as Robert Frost Jr.

I continued to write in high school and had a couple of humorous pieces published in our high school literary magazine.  Back then I had great ambitions, as I either wanted to be a investigative reporter, a marine biologist or a Playboy photographer.  But writing was in my blood.  And besides, it beat saying everything out loud.

After graduation from college, most of my writing over the next few decades was NBA basketball, top ten lists and checks.  My first official blog was posted back in June of 2007, and after that, there was no turning back.  I was on a mission, as I could finally do something creative with those voices playing in my head.  The problem was, lots of time they were speaking in Hebrew, and I had no idea what they were talking about.

I created Sunrise Santa Cruz as a place to showcase the beauty of our cold water paradise, with the emphasis on the skies above it.  But as I've learned over the years, being beautiful isn't enough, and that's why I added the text because what is better than laughter?  I mean besides living in a world where everything is chocolate.

I've tried to amuse and confuse your hearts and minds with jokes from the best late night writers on the planet.  Now throw in over 2,400 digital photo images and you've got over six years extracted from my mind's eye that I'll never get back.  I'm just looking to make you laugh and think.  After all, in the words of Will Rogers, "An onion can make people cry but there's never been a vegetable that can make people laugh."  Unless you consider a cucumber funny.

So for today's landmark photo lineup, we are returning to one of my favorite spots along West Cliff Drive, the cliffs above Stockton Avenue.  For fourteen wonderous years, I lived 100 yards from this location, and rarely did I miss a sunset or a game involving Michael Jordan.  This spot, like Ted's Bakery on the North Shore of Oahu, is sacred, as I've always felt so powerful standing there overlooking the Pacific, thinking about the chicken katsu lunch plate.

On this evening, I didn't need Phil Collins to tell me something was coming in the air that night.  When I hit the cliff, the sky was glowing in a wonderful and magical way, and it proceeded to get better and better. The sky kept changing to different shades of red, while the reflection turned the ocean into something looking like cherry punch.  These photos say it all.   October fantastic.

To check out the photos, click on http://www.SunriseSantaCruz.com/blog