Introducing Peninsula Pen

Blogging isn't exactly new around here, though I'm not sure where the "writing for a web publication" stops and the "blogging" starts. I suppose frequent short comments on life, love, and the pursuit, or even on a particular topic is a web log, whilst (Good word, huh? I learned that writing for a Brit editor, of course.) longer, perhaps less frequent articles of news or commentary qualifies for the tag "reporter," or "columnist."

Is my friend Murphy a columnist, or a blogger? We called his site a blog pretty much from the start, so a blog it is, I suppose. Over at Last Turn Clubhouse, we host a three regular writers and a gaggle of photographers, so that's probably not a blog, and they're likely not bloggers.

Anyway, those endeavors aren't why this exists at all. We're starting this "Personal Blog" because daughter Courtney and her husband Dave did it (here), and it seemed like a good idea. Instead of remembering to e-mail folks (we don't plan to abandon e-mail of course) we'll try to keep up this running commentary...a kind of perpetual newsletter. So what happens to the Christmas letter folded into the card? Hmmmm. Well, we'll deal with that when we have to - that isn't now.

We picked "Peninsula Pen" because it fell into Tom's head - after "Valley Views," which felt, well, kind of pedestrian. In Salinas, California, we're really in the valley, of course, not on the Monterey Peninsula. It all feels the same, of course, since we're about as far from the wharf in Monterey as I used to commute from Burnsville to St. Paul. And Salinas is not "inland" or "valley" for climate. Because it's in the mouth of the valley, just nine miles from the bay, and a scant fifty feet above sea level, it's got that cool central coast climate. Even having lived here before - over on Ft. Ord - I really didn't know that.

This August weekend is a quiet one, though I'll be busy enough keeping up with the American Le Mans Series practice, qualifying, and race at Mosport Park northeast of Toronto, Canada. Courtney and Dave were there with us in 2005. I'm doing less of my coverage from on site since I left dailysportscar.com last year. The new site, LTC, has an editorial objective more like a news magazine than a daily paper. News - and news releases - it will leave to others. Last Turn Clubhouse is a place to go for features and commentary, rather than for daily news.

We're a week past the annual Car Week, the myriad of events that have grown up around the Pebble Beach Concours and Monterey Historic Races. Now there is the Pacific Grove Rally, the Quail, the Concorso Italiano, the Khaki Ferrari get-together, the Carmel Classics (new this year), multiple auctions and memorabilia shows, and other events that don't come immediately to mind. I'm guessing that there were over 2,000 cars being shown, raced, rallied, or sold over the week. Add to that the Ferrari's, Morgans, MGs, and Austin Healey's just roaming the roads, and for once, at least, the unending parade of pickups and sport utility vehicles was mercifully diluted.

It's the usual morning here at 0830. Fifty-seven degrees and cloudy, the latter being the "marine layer" that comes in nearly every night from the bay, then recedes mid-morning, leaving a sunny sky. We'll get to a high of low-seventy-something (they're predicting 73). Sometimes we get a bit of a sprinkle overnight; not enough to hear, but the plants are wetter than might be accounted for by dew in the early morning. We're in the dry season, now, of course, meaning there hasn't been anything other than that mysterious overnight wetting since, oh, about March.

For a quick update, Ashley is a Captain ( US Army, Field Artillery) at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina, busy training troops. Courtney (Captain, US Army, Air Defense Artillery) has returned for her second year at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, graduate school before taking up a faculty appointment at West Point next year. Husband Dave (Captain, US Army Air Defense Artillery) is commanding a battery of Patriot Missiles on Okinawa (Courtney spent her summer there, of course). Heather just started law school at William Mitchell in St. Paul, having uprooted herself from a good paralegal job in Chicago for this "now or never" (her words) endeavor.

This is already beyond blog, I'm afraid, so I'll leave it at that.

Later.

Tom