surf and seagulls redux

Sitting on a bench at Capitola Beach. Had been stormy yesterday, lots of rain.Today its breezy with the sun out through high clouds. Kids playing on the beach, newbie surfers playing in the waves. When I left Rochester on Thursday it was snowing a bit.

Time to work towards living most of the time out here, I am a California girl at heart.I don't know how, but what my new place will look like is starting to take shape. Been manifesting prety well, lately.

The European trip, to work woth our resellers and distys, was a great success. And hard travel. To London on the 10th, met with people in the UK until Thurs afternnon, then Friday the 17th flew to Belfast (!hic!) Sat 18th to Paris, planned to depart Sun afternoon by train but got caught in a taxi strike. Missed the train to Lyon. Biggest travel disaster in the company of an exec. I prefer to never repeat that experience. Monday train to Lyon, met with the disty.

Then flew to Munich that night for the final 3 days of the trip. Tuesday I worked the trade fair with our German disty, and met with friends for dinner.

I had called Joyce to get directions on how to meet her. "Get to Ostbahnhof and take the 54 to Lorettoplatz, get off a Tucherpark." Did thatand it slowly dawned on me that this wasn't right. Looked on the route map and - should have been on the 54 other direction. OK, I got off and retraced, got to the meeting spot about 30 mins later than planned. And had been on the same bus as Mary Lynne and didn't even see her. We started walking to the main street, and were soon in my former neighborhood. The weather was unseasonably warm, so I pursuaded them to walk a bit farther and headed down to the grocery market in the basement of Karstadt, where I snagged their last bottle of my favorite liquor - Honeywine from Andechs monastary. Then across the subway station to the pharmacist, then back above ground. Joyce suggested a place for dinner and we walked towards it, but decided it wasn't what we wanted. Turned around to head back into the subway and there, coming towards us on his bike, was THE one person I had wanted to run into in Munich - Mike, my beloved personal trainer. Amazement had both our jaws dropping. We chatted for a few minutes and he had to go off to work.

When I think about what it took to bring me to the right place at the right time to see Mike I am almost speechless - so astounded and delighted. It was one of the high points of my trip.