Where does a story begin?  I’ll begin with today, Friday, January 20, 2012:

Friday, January 20, 2012

I sailed into Avalon two days ago, and tonight I have a gig at the Lobster Trap!  I swung by with my ukulele and played Bottom Up and covered Wagon Wheel acoustic from the stage for the sparse lunch crowd.  I’ll be playing for a meal, beer, and tips.  I’ll bring my zoom and make some live recordings.  I’m excited to mix it up and jam with the locals and tourists on a Friday night.  What a great way to get to know the town!

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

I have much to write about my first week in Avalon, but no time yet.  A short story is coming, full of personalities and synchronicities.  What a town!  If I don’t find a working outboard by the morning I’ll have to leave Avalon until I get one…long story.  If I do have to sail away in the morning I will be on an outboard-getting mission and will return shortly to resume my getting into this island, of which I’ve only scratched the surface.

Thursday, January 26th, 2012, 1:30am

Well, the outboard thing hasn’t worked out yet, and it’s Thursday now, so I have to leave city limits within the next 7 hours…full story coming soon.  I’ll be sailing to Long Beach before 9am, where I’ll catch up on writing and finish the Bottom Up music video I started with my friends in Santa Barbara.  Even though I’m in the armpit of synchronicity and synergy here and look forward to coming back as soon as I can find a very cheap yet reliable outboard, I’m excited about the sail.  While the sail here with Alison last week was my longest where I was the only one on board who knew how to sail, this will be my longest sail all by myself.  Only around 26 miles across the sea…I look forward to being out there in the middle of the water alone all day.

National Weather Service calls for light winds from directly where I want to go, but we’ll see what happens.  They’re also predicting Santa Ana conditions on Friday night and Saturday so I’ll keep that in mind when I pick my spot to anchor.  For those unfamiliar with local weather, the Santa Anas are occasional seasonal violent northeast winds.

Thursday, May 10th, 2012, 4:36 pm at Muddy Waters Coffeehouse in Santa Barbara

Dear Diary,

It’s been a while.  I know I promised you a short story on the syncronicitous events of my first week in Avalon.  I wrote ten pages in a notebook during the week after that last entry while anchored off Island White in Long beach, but never finished…ten pages and I was still on my second day in town.

When I sailed back to town the story got continuously more involved and intricate until I was deeply involved with a new community while the short story in that notebook was still stuck back in my second day in town. Due to the interconnected nature of everything, life in general seems to be more of a novel than a collection of short stories, but when I make the timespace to get back into that notebook and finish the short story of my first few months living in Avalon I will be sure to post it in you. For now, perhaps I will endeavor to post up a bit more often so we can keep in touch.  Maybe one day we’ll spend more time around each other and not always have to play catchup.  But for now, I must be off.  Hard to live and write at the same time.

Occasionally yours, Tim