First ride on my own bike after 8 days away started with a 5 mi coast ride north to Carlsbad Village with no plan beyond that in mind.
On the way, puzzled over the unusually squat thunderheads coming in with the unstable air trailing the remnant of Hurricane Trudy passing through SoCal the day before. Their pancake-shaped tops seemed too low and too broad for a typical anvil cloud.
To this old Trekkie, the one at center looked like the starship Enterprise.
On a whim, the next segment hugged the north shore of Agua Hedionda Lagoon. This shot looks across the lagoon to Carlsbad State Beach and beyond.
Passed lots of posh view homes overlooking the lagoon en route.
And among them, this large, totally out-of-place contraption on a lot surely zoned residential. Some kind of fancy foundation work for another mansion?
Poking around the unfamiliar neighborhoods along Highland Drive came next. Highland follows the crest of Carlsbad's first inland ridge from Agua Hedionda to Buena Vista Lagoon, the next lagoon north.
The odd mix of posh and modest long ocean view homes side by side along Highland suggested gentrification in progress. Lots of that going on in San Diego County beach towns.
From there, it was back down to the Coast Highway and home. Stopped at this bluff at the south end of Carlsbad State Beach to see how much sand it had left, and the sad answer was little to none.
At 78, had to wonder if I'll ever see anything approaching normal sand levels on Carlsbad beaches again? Hard to see expensive and potentially short-lived replenishments as the solution when so much coastal infrastructure also has to be repaired now.
In normal times, sand sloshes back and forth between our beaches and their offshore bars on timescales of days to weeks. All we can hope for now is that some of the sand moved offshore by recent storms will eventually find its way back.
But with many months of El Nino-driven high tides and big wave events ahead, who knows how long that would take and how much sand is already beyond return?