I went on a bike ride on the Haul Road yesterday, because I knew that I would be idling around the house all day today waiting for the electrician. Well, not idling, actually, I am working, but the point is that I wanted to take awesome nature pictures to post today, since it’s sort of what I do on major holidays. Not that New Year’s is a major holiday for me at this point, it’s more like “hey ho, another year, another chance to screw up,” but maybe this will be the year I won’t screw up. Maybe this will be the year of awesome, when wonderful things happen. Also, I wanted to go on a bike ride because I haven’t gone out in a week or so, thanks to the invasion of the masses. All of whom I enjoyed seeing, but my great plan with Tristan of going for a bike ride or two while he was out here was apparently foiled.

At any rate, it was beautifully sunny yesterday, and quite toasty, at least from my perspective in a windbreaker on a bike, although the pedestrians might have felt differently about the whole affair. However, the surf was pounding; the National Weather Service says rain tomorrow, and I don’t doubt it with surf like that. So I took a bunch of pictures of the surf, although it was difficult to convey the sheer scale.

You have to remember that I was on top of a very tall cliff, and not close to the edge, but a fair ways from it. These cattails are right by the road, and that little outcropping was, uhm, far away from me. I am very bad with distances. So those waves were huge. I could see the spume and foam coming up over the edge of the cliff, which was quite impressive.

My Chinese mother calls cattails “hot dog plants” incidentally.

Here’s the same wave seconds later, cresting. See? Big.

Here’s a gratuitous foam shot without the cattails in the way, so you can really see the action. I really cannot fully communicate how incredible it was with pictures. As I mounted up and headed for the trestle, I thought about how excellent is is to be living at home again, and how thankful I was for being able to tootle along on a bike ride on a sunny day in a place that I love. I spent the leisurely ride back to the trestle gazing at the surf; I noted that most of the other people along the road did likewise.

From the trestle, I spotted these peace signs. It’s a little hard to tell, but there really were two. And the waves are still very large, although they happened to calm down right as I took this picture, probably to belie my claims of how huge they were. If it seriously gets storming, hopefully I can go to Jughandle and take some pictures of storm surge for you’all, then you can really see how we roll around here. Wet. And wild. That’s how.

I hope that all of you had a pleasant New Year’s, and that excellent things happen to you in the coming 12 months. I sense a great deal of excitement ahead (Iowa caucuses only three days away! Will there be an Edwards upset?) and I look forward to sharing it with you.