I’ve never seen the Pacific off the northern California coast so worthy of its name as it was this weekend. We rented a small cottage a few miles north of Fort Bragg. The place had been chosen for the ad on the web–“Fifty feet from the ocean’s roar.” We should have demanded a refund.

The ocean’s roar was a kitten’s meow. The sea was a lake. Birds skimmed the water smoothly, just a few inches above. On Sunday morning, we watched divers just offshore. It would have been an easy shore dive–there was essentially no surf to fight through and the visibility was probably a record. It appeared more like the leeward side of a Caribbean island than the California north coast.

I’ve visited the Mendocino Headlands many times over the past couple decades. It is almost always windy, chilly (often bone-chillingly so) even in the summer time, and one of the features of them is the spectacular crashing of the waves on the rocks below, unleashing megawatts of power, in complex rhythms that have their sources far across the ocean.

Driving back down to the Bay Area, we were astonished on Sunday to stand on the bluffs and look down at a gull calmly paddling in a cove like a duck in a pond. We could easily see the bottom, usually obscured by foam and detritus stirred up by the churning surf. It was warm, and there was no breeze. The smells of decaying kelp and other vegetation drifted up to us, and it wasn’t the usual pleasant sea smell.

There are two kinds of people who wouldn’t be similarly astonished–long-time residents who have seen it all, and first time visitors, like the couple we saw as we walked back to the car, who had no comprehension of how unusual the conditions were. Only those who, like us, are semi-regular visitors with experience only of the standard conditions, could appreciate them as unique.

In the Caribbean, such ocean conditions would often presage a hurricane. All weekend we wondered what storm perhaps lay ahead, either literally or metaphorically.

I was in the kitchen, opening a bottle of Merlot purchased the day before at an Anderson Valley winery, when the ruckus started.

Growls erupted out on the deck of our vacation rental, and scuffling, like a dogfight from hades. But it didn’t sound quite like a dog; the growls had a more feral quality to them, deep and primitive.

I ran outside to try to save the steak that I’d left sitting on a table next to the grill, which I was sure was the instigator of the commotion. I didn’t take the time to grab any kind of weapon–I guess I just assumed that my presence would disturb whatever it was. I fully expected to see the ten-dollar rib steak gone when I opened the door.

I saw no sign of what had happened. The steak was still there, apparently undisturbed. I walked out toward the grill, and heard more noises under the deck, and more growling.

Now I recognized the sound. It was the same one that we’d heard occasionally outside our bedroom window in Redondo Beach in the past, in the depths of the night, drowning out the gentle burbling of the artificial stream that runs past it. In the morning I’d go out and find the rocks in it disturbed, strewn around. One night Patricia stuck a flashlight out the window, and saw the masked face, like a nocturnal bandit, which of course was exactly what it was, both then, and now in the yard of the little cottage on the ocean in Westport, California.

Sure enough, I saw it stick its head around the corner of the house. It was a ‘coon. After a while, it disappeared, presumably back to whence it came, perhaps up in the hills across the road. I put the steak on the grill with its mate (“it” referring to the steak, not the ‘coon), and left it, confident that raccoons are smart enough not to mess with a hot charcoal grill.

The actual train of events, and the participants, remains a mystery.

What were the growls about? Were there two of them, fighting over the treat? If so, why not wait until they had the prize in hand (or in jaw)? Were they partners in crime who had a falling out before actually acquiring the booty? Or did we have a secret watchdog, both solicitous of our nutritional and fiscal wellbeing, and indifferent to fresh beef? How, in any case, did the steak (and our dinner) survive?

Further theories are welcomed in comments.

We’re off to Fort Bragg for the weekend. No posting until Monday.

Go check out Astropolitics. It looks like it’s only available in print, at least so far, but those who are seriously into space policy may want to subscribe. I have to say that I recognize very few names on the editorial review board.

That’s the title of this week’s Fox News column, which is an expansion on this post from a couple weeks ago.

Here’s some good news on the cryonics front.

The Arizona Republic says that their cryonic storage facilities passed state and local inspections recently, and that Larry Johnson’s charges are clearly bogus.

According to Alcor News, Alcor served Mr. Johnson with a lawsuit on August 23rd. It says that in addition to the civil suit, other charges may be pending against him.

A few months ago, I did an interview with pioneer space entrepreneur Gary Hudson. Recently, Clark Lindsey did another one. It’s a good read, and a good update from mine.

So I was listening to the radio in the car a few minutes ago, and I heard Governor Gray “Gumby” Davis say that “Republicans would rather shoot their mothers than raise taxes.”

For those who don’t regularly check out The Space Review (you really should), Jeff Foust has a good overview of the financing prospects for private RLVs. Summary: he’s not sanguine about the near-term prospects for getting orbital systems, but thinks that profitable suborbital ones could provide a path to them. I agree, though I’m not quite as pessimistic about orbital transports as he is. We’ll see if Elon Musk can prove him wrong by evolving from a partially reusable system to a fully reusable one.

As we approach the second anniversary, does anyone else have the sense that many Democrats (particularly the ones swooning over Dr. Dean) are more angry at George Bush than they are at the people who destroyed the World Trade Center?