Just before I heard the sad News on the car radio that Steve Irwin, the 'Crocodile Hunter' was killed by a stingray attack while filming off the Great Barrier Reef, I was wrestling with SHARKS on the pier in Ventura!

Okay, it's not like it was Shark-Week, maybe it was more like Shark-Weak, cause this one was only two feet long at best, but I bet it coulda taken a finger off!

I love going to Ventura!

I imagine myself retiring there after my ship comes in...

Driving around the city where Perry Mason was created, I couldn't help notice that there were a lot of retail spaces empty. I hope things are going okay in the city I love.

Nothing beats driving up into the hills over the city and the ocean and looking down at the lights at 4am in the morning. You can easily imagine ghosts walking the streets and haunting the beautiful old houses up in the winding narrow lanes.

It was so eerie looking down at the waves all black and hearing the thunderous roar as they slammed into each support beam of the pier below my feet. Stars were everywhere in the cloudless sky. It was cool enough that I wore a jacket.

Listening to the waves when it's too dark to see them somehow makes me sad.

I can easily believe that there is a beautifully gothic mermaid, or handcarved wooden figurehead come alive from some lost sunken ship who looks to the shore for her one true mysterious landlocked reincarnated love who doesn't know where she is, or that she even exists, and he is unable to swim to her because he never learned how...

...and he's afraid he will turn into sea foam.