Happy Cows Come From California

With views like this is it any wonder why?Last week, No.Cal had a roaring heat wave! Not quite as toasty as my many native Arizona friends experience on a regular basis, but enough to make our cramped air condition-less apartment feel like a funeral pyre. So when I got out of clinic on Friday (where they had cranked up the AC so high, I was having to cloak my patient in extra clinic gowns to keep her from shivering through her root canal), I was not about to sit in the living room and melt until the sun went down. I ran across the street to the Belli Deli and grabbed some sandwiches for a picnic dinner, and we headed West... As far West as there was to go in California. We enjoyed the drive to Drake's Beach in our Air Conditioned car, taking in the scenes along the way: Through the redwood forest... over the marsh lands... into the pastoral farmlands dotted with Holstein cows... and finally to the beach itself. Not only did we escape the heat during the 45 minute drive in the AC, but once we arrived, we entered a climate fully twenty degrees cooler than central San Rafael.
Once we arrived, it was hard to get Hayden to sit there and eat. He saw the waves beckoning and wanted to roll! (This is why his ribs show in most of the pictures I took of him in his Spiderman swim trunks! He is all Go! Go! Go! and food is sort of necessary now and again. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the one who instilled that philosophy in him.)

When he was finally released onto the shores, he started collecting shells: complete sets of bivalves like muscles and clams, which he found incredibly fascinating ...for about 3 seconds.

He promptly chucked his amazing finds aside and charged the water. He then spent the next half hour or so, yelling at the elements as the waves crashed around him... Things like, "IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT?!?" We then had to pluck the skinny, shivering (yet still spirited) Hayden from the waters and tend to his growing hypothermia. Here is one of the only pictures I was able to capture where all of Hayden's limbs are in focus. Almost all others have some part of him moving so quickly, there is just a blur... It's no wonder we nicknamed him Dash after the movie "The Incredibles" came out.
It was a fabulous escape from the heat. Nathan was spending the night at a friend's house, pickling in Jeremie's pool to cool off. He had a good time there, but when he found out about our excursion, raged that he "NEVER gets to have fun with the family." Really? And what kind of teenager are you, Nate? You're not supposed to actually like us!!!