Drawing the Line - 16

On January 26 after two full days of total solitude and silence, or at least no human voices, I left the monastery for my midweek trip to Carmel and Monterery. The purpose of the trip was to reach an area where my antique cell phone could get a signal allowing me to check in with the family. It is a bit strange to be totally cut off in this age of continuous contact with the whole world. I know that I'm a bit old fashion, but I worry about a world where people can't walk to their car alone without digging out their cell phone and making a call to someone they haven't seen for an hour. And I won't even mention seeing every other car on the road being driven by someone with a phone jammed to their ear. It is a very different world than Robinson Crusoe's (yes, I know he is a fictional character) as far as a person's ability to be alone for awhile. He could probably have gone a couple of days without a cell phone standing on his head, or coconut.

Still, I have to admit, after a couple of days even I wanted to talk to someone and it might as well be my family. The coverage for my phone actually kicks in just a little north of Bixby Bridge, but I had business in Carmel and I had a strong hankering for fast food after two days of monk food. It would turn out to take most of the day to make the round trip.

On the way down I rolled out this segment of the Line Around The World Project. It was fairly early in the day, I think about 8:30 in the morning so I might have tried to roll it out around Bixby Bridge. Instead I decided to continue the Line from where the last segment ended. That was about 5.5 miles north of Lucia.

Here is the start of roll 51. I think that there is actually a few feet of overlap with the previous segment.

Here is the view from end of roll 51.

I was aware of a breeze bouncing off the hill to the right and out towards the ocean. I had expected no wind in the early morning, but it wasn't turning out that way.

Here is the view from the end of roll 52.

Thank goodness for the guardrail. Here is the view from the end of roll 53.

Here is the view to the south from the end of roll 53.

There wasn't much traffic here in the early morning, but the morning is when the garbage trucks roll. Even here at the edge of the country. Here is the view from the end of roll 54. You can see the truck coming.



Finally here is the view south from the end of roll 54.

As I starting to retrieve the Line, the wind seemed to pick up strength. If the guardrail had not been there the Line would have gone out to sea and I'm not ready to make the crossing of the Pacific. I did manage to recover the whole segment, but I was lucky. This part almost got away from me.

Later after my business in Carmel and after eating a Subway sandwich in Monterey, I sat in my car near the Pacific Grove Lighthouse. There I listened to the waves and rolled up my Line.

What a view!

That is it for this segment. There is more to come next Tuesday.

Jonathan