Sometimes there’s a very special sort of magic that happens when things don’t turn out as expected. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to embrace this as a necessary part of life, rather than doing everything in my power to force things back on track. Sometimes, no amount of salt thrown over the shoulder or “get thee behind me, Satan/Murphy’s Law” will make things turn out the way you originally planned. The trick is to turn it to your advantage. The old saw is “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!” BORING. Screw the lemons. I like oranges. Let’s make tiramisu soaked with Grand Marnier!

I mention this because the Red Bats had a bit of an unexpected adventure a few weeks ago. There was some business that needed to be taken care of up in Sacramento, which is about a 3 hour drive from lovely Santa Cruz. We had the day all planned – a bracing breakfast followed by a nice drive set to a soundtrack of bluegrass and This American Life podcasts. It went perfectly. Right up until the point where we encountered the Toll Booth. I put that in caps to indicate a certain ominousness. Foreboding, if you will. Imagine dark clouds gathering above the booth, lightning flickering over the craggy visage of the Mad Toll Collector inhabiting the booth like a troll, collecting fees from the endless line of goats passing over his bridge.

Needless to say, we didn’t have four bucks on us to pay the toll, so we pulled off the road and entered the lovely town of Martinez, hoping to find an ATM. We did not find one. We drove around a bit. We checked the GPS in my car. We drove around a bit more.

Finally, having captured no leprechauns, finding no ATMS, and having failed to stumble upon a Reverse PanHandler (he gives you money if you let him yell at you), we decided to call it a day and see what Martinez had to offer. Quite a lot, as it turns out! We wandered around town, found a train station, a marina, several interesting shops, and an excellent Thai restaurant with a waiter who thought we were in a band because we “look artistic”.

We passed the new camera phone back and forth throughout our journey, each of us taking 5 shots at a time. Here’s a bit of what we saw:

When we first began our wanderings in Martinez that day, Rebecca remarked that this town, though she couldn’t say why, felt like the sort of place a person might happen upon and decide to stay in for the rest of their lives. “It just has that vibe,” she said.

To our surprise, we found a monument of sorts to someone who’d done just that in a rather spectacular fashion. Built in 1900, the Forester was the last intact schooner on the west coast. It was 250 feet long, 32 feet wide, and weighed 680 tons. In the salty halcyon days of its youth, it set a world record for sailing from San Francisco to Australia in a mere 75 days. But in 1935, the owner of the Forester found Martinez, decided to spend the rest of his life there, and beached his ship on the mudflats. It sat there until 1975, when it burned to the waterline. Here it is, presented in Authentic Red Bat SepiaTone(TM):

Martinez seems to have it all – beautiful vistas, the calming chaos of the ocean and a feeling of welcome for souls like us. (There are also oil refineries, but we’re looking on the bright side, remember?)

I’ve got a pretty swell camera at my disposal, but sometimes cellphone pics are just the thing. For example, when my arms are tired and my nice camera seems so heavy. Or when I’m in a crowded bar and there isn’t room to maneuver a big lens. I could get a smaller camera, a point-and-shoot that would fit into my pocket. But the truth is, I love the way cellphone pics look. They have a way of simplifying the scene that I find quite refreshing. They also add an extra element of surprise: I never know what they will look like on my computer screen.

Below is a gallery of 50 cellphone pics from the past month or so, ending with a dinner the Red Bats attended to celebrate the commencement of the Year of the Ox. Click on the right side of the photo to move forward, and on the left side to move back.

And in these times of economic restraint, don’t forget to love the camera on your phone, if you’ve got one. If you don’t have a camera phone, love the cheapest digital camera you can find. Because making do with fewer pixels is just so chic right now.

CLICK RIGHT SIDE OF PHOTO BELOW TO SEE MORE!

My good friend Tim was supposed to move to Paris last spring. Instead, he ended up in Israel, falling in love with Erin. Now they’re engaged, and planning a very informal wedding in the mountains. Isn’t life a funny old thing?

Tim and Erin spent some time in Santa Cruz recently, and while they were here, I took some engagement pictures of them at the beach. My sister Joye was there to direct and wield colorful translucent scarves. And yes, Tim and Erin were wearing their birthday suits for part of the shoot. Let it be known: if you want nude engagement photos, we are totally willing to help you out with that. We know the perfect beach for it, too.

Here are a few I really liked.

The Red Bats did an engagement shoot several weeks ago with Kimma and Keith at Seabright Beach in Santa Cruz. Since I’m a total cheeseball, I get very excited about engagement shoots, and this one was especially sweet and loving. Kimma and Keith have been together for eight years. Before the shoot, they told us about some of the hard times they’ve faced together, and how they’ve become closer than ever because they are so committed to making the relationship work. They’ve got chemistry AND compatibility. It was inspiring just to be around them.

We tried to capture some of their love story in photos, which turned out to be quite easy with these two. Every gesture shows how devoted they are to each other, and how much they simply enjoy one another’s company.

We’ll be photographing their wedding next August, and that day will be filled with friends and family, so I’m happy that we got to capture a more private side of their relationship before then. And also happy to have gotten them to ourselves for a few hours, because these two are really, really fun.

Thanks, Kimma and Keith! We hope your engagement year is blissful. You deserve it.