mattbell

Aug. 12th, 2010

Simran and Amanda's wedding was a perfect encapsulation of the union of their personalities -- it was small, informal, irrepressibly playful, full of puns and aikido moves, and engineered to flout numerous traditions but always with good reason. Flour girls replaced flower girls. Instead of being held in a cathedral, it was held under a bridge with structural supports that offered a cathedral-like appearance.

Wedding guests:

The afterparty, which lasted all day, featured a full reenactment of the wedding as a shotgun wedding, with an undershirt beach ball acting as stand-in for the unplanned pregnancy. This truly is the fabled Summer of Weddings, as I have attended four since June and have one more coming up later this month.

See all the wedding photos on flickr!

Yes, the rumors are true.

browascension 's parents run an alpaca farm. Investigating the veracity of this particular tidbit more or less set our route back down through Oregon -- two hours of primarily boring but occasionally exhilarating driving down I-5 followed by a hop over to the more interesting coastal route.

Ann and Mike are not career alpaca ranchers -- they became interested in alpacas only three years ago, and have engaged in raising a herd as a focus and pursuit during semi-retirement. They have learned what it takes to run a farm and raise and breed alpacas. They have delved into the intricacies of the many genes that code for coat color.

Like other camelids, alpacas have extremely expressive faces. They're a joy to watch. I'm sure their anthropomorphic appearance is helped by the fact that they are sheared everywhere on their body except for the tops of their heads, giving them the appearance of various haircuts. The alpacas all have names, and the names have backstories -- they're named after things as diverse as characters from Irish mythology, heroes of Ayn Rand novels, and brands of premium chocolate.

The alpaca wool is extremely soft and lacks the itchiness of sheep' wool. Ann and Mike have experimented with making numerous types of yarn and garments out of the wool. Here the wool lies in storage on the barn:

In case anyone needs further proof that I met Paul's mom, check out her socks:

Learn more at their site, Aragon Alpacas

See more lovely alpacas on Flickr!

Lots of little towns along the coast competed for our attention. Most people who run roadside attractions don't understand that it takes time for people to decide whether or not to stop the car for something. Not that many people will turn around and go back, even for something cool-looking. If there are lots of people in the car, the decide-to-stop time will be a couple of orders of magnitude longer than the visual reaction time, as there is discussion time, deliberation time, and decision time. It pays to put a series of signs along the road, starting at least a mile in advance, to alert potential customers of your attraction.

The town of Port Orford figured out something clever -- they painted a giant "OCEAN VIEW" sign on the road, an irresistible call to passing motorists that will divert their cars off the highway and bring them to a dead stop.

It sort of worked in the sense that we spent an hour walking around their beach, but we failed to spend any money there. Instead we reappropriated their flowers, crabs, and seaweed for our own nefarious purposes.

I became briefly trapped in a Matthew Barney film. Everything was overly absurd, pretentious, and high contrast. All it took to get me there was putting this piece of dried plant matter on my head.

-----

We later discovered a visually fascinating but unmarked area that turned out to be a state park called Sisters Rock.

More pictures on Flickr for Sisters Rock and Port Orford

There are plenty of redwoods in various areas around San Francisco. However, they don't reach the incredible size that the redwoods do up in the Redwood National Park. Up there, the conditions are right for redwoods to dominate the ecosystem and grow to incredible heights. Wandering among the giants conjured up feelings of being tiny creatures in a world full of beings too large to notice us. It's the sort of forest that leads to the creation of rich fairytales like Miyazake's Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke.

Perspective on a fallen tree:

Redwoods have numerous ways of reproducing -- their genetic material can restart a complete tree from a root or piece of burl. It's an interesting evolutionary trick to manage numerous methods of asexual reproduction in a way that prevents disorganized and runaway growth.

This tree, on the other hand, is ready to reproduce sexually. Or maybe I'm just anthropomorphizing. Why do I keep finding cock-trees?

On a completely different note, there were some incredibly cheesy roadside attractions mixed in with the redwood trees. Here's a bright idea -- combine a gas station and a casino! Wheeee!