Sunday, June 22, 2014

California Lacrosse



Henry and I drove up to the Santa Barbara area on Friday morning for a big southern California lacrosse tournament. Did I tell you that Henry turned his passion for living from a baseball oriented one to a lacrosse oriented one? We arrived a few hours early and decided to poke around Summerland, a town just up the road from the polo grounds where this massive tournament was held. We parked our car on a little, winding road called Eucalyptus Lane and walked toward the ocean.



I bet some of you don't know that the entire coast of California is considered public and that beach access is public, too. That means you can walk past these crazy big private estates and gazillion dollar beach shacks but still put your toes in the Pacific. When I saw this path and this view and took the following photos, my thought was How and why would anyone live anywhere else than southern California? Remember that it's golden sunny, the air is about seventy degrees and there is no humidity. There's a soft breeze, too. Since I didn't arrange any of this, it's not like I'm bragging, but really -- why, why would anyone not live here?







I know there are lots of reasons not to live in southern California, but I was hard put to figure out a single one except if living in southern California also required a two day, seven-game lacrosse tournament (three games on Friday evening and four on Saturday, the first with a check-in time of 6:15 am). Then again, when you play in  a lacrosse tournament in Carpinteria, you play on a polo field with bougainvillea ringing the green grass, beautiful horses grazing next to the fields and smoky mountains reaching up through a fine early monring mist into the bluest sky that turns pink and golden when the sun goes down.













I guess that's enough rhapsodizing about the weather and the landscape and complaining about being a teenaged boy sports mom. Henry's team didn't do very well, losing to some of the best lacrosse teams from California, Arizona and Nevada, but I know he had a load of fun and slept nearly the whole way back to Los Angeles.

The next tournament is in Morgan Hill, up near San Jose, in July.

Help me, Rhonda.

12 comments:

  1. Ah, love. How gorgeous! Such beauty. I am sweating and thinking of such perfect temperatures, such low humidity, the bougainvillea.

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  2. Gorgeous, gorgeous photos. I don't know anything about lacrosse, but =, then again, I don't know anything about cricket or rugby and I live in Britain. Go figure! :-)

    Greetings from London.

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  3. Beautiful photos! If you have to be at a tournament at 6:15 am, might as well be in Summerland. Writing this from an ice rink in El Segundo (not such a bad place to be on a warm summer day).

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  4. You are a good and loving mother! I feel much the same about the endless soccer games and tournaments in my world. And oh, how I would love to live in Southern California! Except for the earthquakes...those I could very well do without.

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  5. I love Henry's resilience, baseball to lacrosse. No doubt he's been watching you his whole life. Gosh he is a beautifully made young man.

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  6. My son played lax in high school and it took me some time, but I really got into it his last two years of playing. He is 27 now, but I still miss seeing him play. Give it awhile you may get hooked.

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  7. Beautiful day, beautiful son, beautiful mom. This reminds me of years of soccer tournaments. Basketball is inside so it's different. My youngest is soccer all the way. One more year of playing. Bittersweet. And, oh, California. Yeah. I keep asking myself why anyone would live anywhere but the California coast. I moved from Ohio to Hermosa Beach. I was pulled out here to the desert by my ex's job. I've spent the last three years trying to figure out how to get back to the beach. Lovely photos.

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  8. Do you know the way to San Jose?

    (Sorry, I had to say it.)

    Believe me, I understand rhapsodizing about Southern California. I fall in love with it every time I visit. In fact I almost moved there in the early '80s and I often wonder how different my life might have been if I had. We might be neighbors! :)

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  9. I used to coach lacrosse. I'll bet $110.00 you didn't know that about me.

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  10. Have you heard the song? The Only Place by Best Coast?

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  11. These photos make me miss my birth home! Wish housing wasn't so outrageous in California or we would be there in a heartbeat.

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