Her night to shine

Not that I'm bragging, but check out her stats from last night's 5-0 victory in the semifinals of Mad River Girls ASA 10 & Under tourney:

On the mound: 3 IP - 0 runs - 7 K's - 0 BB including a 3 strikeout bottom of the 6th to shut the door and send us on to the championships. At the plate: 2-fer-3 with a 2B, RBI and a run scored. Add in a nifty running catch at second and it was quite a night.

Kinda like wrapping up both Ellsbury and Papelbon and stuffing them into a 4'6" blonde ponytail.

'Twas her night to shine after weeks of patiently watching her freshman big sister's 25-0 championship season with the St Bernards Crusaders.

Not that she did it herself, of course. She and her teamates saved the most perfect of their 16 games this season for last night, an elimination game that would either end their season or propel them forward to the championships. Timely hitting, smart base running, strong defense, and stellar pitching from my kid and another great li'l thrower all came together on one magical night. That the victory came against the team that embarrassed us a week ago makes it all the more exciting.

It's so easy to be proud of two beautiful kids who seem to excel - in sports, school, and life - in ways that I never have. One has outgrown her dad's coaching skills and taken her game to a new level at a new position under new leadership. (Though I still offer my advice, she knows better than to listen.) The other, still trapped under coach/dad's tutelage, is emerging from the shadow of her big sister as an athletic force in her own petite right.

Can Dad match their glories when Arcata's D-league wood bat season begins next week? Not sure that I can, or that I even care to try. I'm satisfied bein' a proud dad for now.

Time to think.

After weeks of running from one end of the day to the other, I'm finding a few moments like yesterday afternoon to slow down and take a little time to think. A gray day, warm with the slightest of ocean breezes beckons me to the beach. As if that's not enough, I'm further spurred outdoors by the snide rantings of our resident crank who's determined to jerk every chain in the building. I escape to the calm of the Pacific, necessarily, and finally.

It's a quiet ocean today, barely a sound from the small, regularly rolling waves. A western grebe greets me at water's edge, his long slender neck held erect as he glides over the placid waters.

An elderly man in chest-high waders leans into the small surf. His handmade tripod fish net dips into the waves, searching, as the Yurok have done here for centuries. Our fisherman today is accompanied by his wife, three or four harbor seals, a couple of cormorants, and a gaggle of gulls. Apparently he's found a good spot. That, or the critters are as hopeful as he is.

He's retired, I come to learn, and lives in Blue Lake. He and the Missus wander up here a few times every year around this time. They're not fishing for anyone but themselves, just enough to stock the freezer. As he steps from the waves up to the dry sand, he holds up the bottom of the net which contains maybe a dozen silvery smelt and says to her, "Got my dinner. What're you havin'?"

The seals roll in the shallow surf briefly stranding themselves on the wet sand before wobbling themselves back into the waves. Seems they're having more success in hunting up some lunch than our fisherman.

Cormorants are common today, and pelicans are plentiful. It's quiet. There's activity, but not much of it. A perfectly lazy afternoon. Finally, time to think.

This kind of time has been rare this past month or more. At work, seven new summer rangers have joined us, all of 'em new, and in need of training, guidance, help, research and resources, and as you might expect from the government, tons of bureaucratic papers and hoops to overcome.

The girls' softball seasons are in full swing. I don't help my own downtime by coaching both of their teams, VP'ing the league, writing and managing the league schedules and tournaments, and creating and maintaining the league website.

But our seasons have been wonderful. Our 10 & Under girls are 6-4-2 going into the end of season tournament (a loss in the tourney last night has us needing to win the next one to keep playing). They're goofy and frenetic and learning so much so quickly. Our 16 & Under team is 11-0 thanks to stellar pitching, strong hitting (including a legit over-the-heads-of-everybody home run by my very own kid last week!), and experienced defense. We're the odds-on favorite to win it all, finally, this year.

We'll have an 8th grade graduate - a valedictorian, no less - this weekend, bringing family to town, a host of school trips, 8th grade dinners, awards ceremonies, and all the attendant events and emotions. Can it really be that my tow-headed baby girl who just yesterday paddled off to her first day of kindergarten in a blue and white catholic plaid jumper is off to high school?

Redwood Creek is in the final stages of becoming Redwood Lagoon for another summer. The sand bar thickens at the creek's mouth, a wall that the dwindling force of tumbling valley streams can longer overwhelm.

Parallel to the surf lies a 200-foot long, 15-foot wide pond where the creek just a month ago took a sharp right-angle turn to the south. That pond is now closed but for a small opening, just barely leapable by a bulging mid-lifer with just enough spring left in his step.

30 Caspian terns stand at the edge of a larger flock of western and mew gulls at the mouth of the creek. They're not happy with my approach and embark en masse. These orange-billed terns are much more graceful in flight than the frantic flapping of the gulls. Their bright white wings, tipped in black and thinly curved cut the air, soaring and curling above me, barking at me to keep moving.

The creek is now a slow meander to the sea, maybe 20 feet across at its mouth but still eight to ten feet deep. The ocean continues to push in while the creek presses out, but without the violence of the winter clash. As summer approaches, the creek slows. Another week or maybe two, and the summer lagoon will become still 'til the rains return.

I've never been a fisherman. It's not a requisite element in the cultural heritage of a suburban east coast kid. It doesn't look like a bad way to spend a quiet afternoon on the beach. For now though, even the efforts of this old fisherman, quietly, purposefully, easily dipping his net up and down in the surf looks like too much work. I'm enjoying the moment just sitting here, watching him and the rafting pelicans wait for the fish to come in.

So little time

Seems I have two wildly busy seasons anymore, with a whole lot of generic, though generally manageable, busy-ness the rest of the time. May is one of those periods: coaching two girls softball teams with games every night of the week, while coordinating the scheduling for the whole league, and at work I'm hiring and training our new summer rangers and shepherding in another busy summer season.

That other crazed season is right now. Though visitation is down at the park - October 15th usually marks the day that our numbers fall off the table - and winter's rain started in earnest late last week, our staffing is also down with the departure of the last summer ranger. Our winter ranger's hiring has been stalled due to bureaucratic foot shooting which, as of October the first, requires all new hires to clear a background check before they step behind the desk, a process that could take up to a month After all, we wouldn't want al quaeda operatives staffing our quiet visitor centers in the dead of winter. (Actually that wouldn't bother me as long as they don't call in sick on weekends and can properly count out the cash register at the end of the day.) For me, it's means more time hanging out at the VC than in my office (not always a bad thing) and trying to sensitively juggle the lonely desk time of the other permanent rangers here.

October is a two sport season for me as well. I'm in the last month of the soccer season with my under-10 traveling team, and just beginning practices for the middle school basketball team. Now, instead of sneaking out of work twice a week for soccer, I'm stealing away at 2:30 or 3:00 every day for one or the other team, whilst trying to keep up a respectable presence at work so I don't piss off the bosses or my coworkin' friends.

Speaking of soccer, our girls beat the league powerhouse yesterday 4-3. Yes, the team that went 0-9 last year with a goal differential around 7, the very same team that had gone 1-6-2 so far this season, knocked off a team that hasn't lost a game in two years. We found ourselves down 1-0 barely a minute into the game as our cross-bay rivals stormed our goal before our kids even realized they'd kicked off. It was 2-0 maybe 3 minutes later when our fullback tipped the ball into her own goal in an shotblocking attempt. And then suddenly it was 3-0 off a penalty kick forced by our other fullback raising a hand to block a shot in the goal box.

But the valiant Thunder eight charged back scoring on a penalty shot of their own just before the half. Beautiful passing and timely runs knotted the score at 3 a few minutes into the second half. Then, with 10 minutes remaining, a mid-field kick, intended as a pass but which became a shot, rolled painfully slowly under and past their falling keeper, its forward momentum sapped mere inches across the goal line for the game winner. The last 10 minutes were a flurry of runs and charges and shots as our opponents pulled out everything to avert their loss. Several great saves by our own keeper and a few direct kicks off the chests and faces of our own girls closed out the game...a most satisfying victory for these beautiful little 9 year old girls (not to mention their long-suffering coaches and parents). I should mention they were almost as thrilled by the homemade caramel apples post-game as they were by the win.

Ah, but back to the time crunch. On top of girls' sports and work, the baseball playoffs keep my ass firmly settled in the family room chair when I'm not on a field or in the VC. The Rockies have forgotten how to lose. And the Red Sox figured out a clever way to lose game 2 of their series. There are more games coming with at least another 3 games in AL, and perhaps only 1 in the NL. Then there's the World Series. And me and the Mrs still have to watch the last two episodes of the first season of 24!

I haven't been to the mouth of my creek in maybe three weeks. The rain, the trip to Arizona, work, meetings, annual stats, performance reviews, basketball, soccer, life, kids, dentists, have all conspired against me. Winter is here. We had two-and-a-half inches of rain last Wednesday so by Friday the mouth of the creek had burst open to the sea. More rain last night with a forecast of continuous wet through the end of this week. Perhaps this afternoon I can sneak out between showers to check things out. Perhaps, instead of writing this pointless screed I could've been walking out there by now.