Leaving LaLa Land

In the middle of the night we were woken up by the sound of helicopters overhead, loud and immediate. Not unusual in LA, and I kept my eyes closed to make them go away. I thought I heard voices close by, but I guess I closed my ears as well. This morning when we were packing up the car there was a police cruiser and yellow crime tape across the street by the driveway. Hmmm. I was too intimidated to ask the officer anything, but I wanted to. Later on our host told us the full story: a car chase, guns fired, car overtaken right in front of the house, guys run, throw the gun away as they go. Criminals apprehended. And here’s the part where Im really glad I never opened my eyes: they were searching up and down our host’s property for the gun. Police all over the place. It would have been a heck of a blip, but it was enough just to hear about it after the fact. A quintessential LA story to make our stay memorable…

This was a travel day, in mostly overcast weather. I took so many dramatic images of the sky with my IPad through the car windows, and they are all terribly out of focus and not very interesting. It’s better to talk about the scenery: vineyards as far as the eye can see, uprooted orchards ground to mulch for reasons unknown, fields of solar panels, oil rigs, desert hills and scrubby vegetation. Traffic was easy, thank goodness.

And this red dragonfly was waiting at home in the garden. We have lots of damsels, but rarely a dragon. I love the expression on its face: that enormous silly grin and and round comic nose, like a big red happy face, or a clown about to laugh.