Good morning and greetings, summer vacation fans. About ten years ago, my personal physician suggested that I should get more exercise. Now up until until my mid- forties, I had been playing full court basketball five a days and week and playing half court on Saturday, as it was my people’s Sabbath. I was in fairly good shape and was considering a career as a personal fitness trainer and hand model.

But then reality came calling, and it was a bitter pill to swallow. Work. I remember walking during this time and spotting a youngster dribbling a basketball, as he headed over to the park to play hoops. My heart sank like an open jumper, as the realization set in that I was no longer footloose and fancy free and that my life had changed.

But I was determined to make the best of it. It was not an easy task. Looking back on it today, those five days of work were longest days of my life.

So I discussed with my physician the exercise options that were open to me. Swimming was out, as I may have drowned in a past lifetime. I could go bike riding, but I never really built up a sweat riding my beach cruiser along West Cliff. And riding a stationary bike is just not that scenic, although it saves a lot of wear and tear on the tires.

Bowling, badminton and cliff diving just weren’t vigorous enough, so it came down to running. I had run track in high school, but those were the short sprints. I was never really excited about running long distances as my shoulders hurt from this activity. It was probably because I’m highly sensitive to the feelings of everyone around me and that I had the body fat of a young veal.

So I decided to start running around my neighborhood to work up a sweat, so that my heart knew I was still alive. I started strong, as I used to be able to run a good mile and a half before the heart palpitations set in.

And then something nutty happened. Instead of getting stronger so I could leap tall bushes in a single bounce, I found the more I ran, the weaker I got. This was not a case of what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. I had to face a harsh reality. My Olympic dream was over.

But out of this darkness came shining light, as my failings led me to my weekday strolls along West Cliff Drive. I still needed to get some exercise, and what better place to take in the sights while kick starting my heart and soul.

So the weather last week was not unusual here on the central coast. It’s nothing like what I experienced in the summertime back east, when it was hazy, hot, and most consistently, humid. I’m not saying it was like that all the time, as there were pleasant summer days, but the unbearable humidity dominated the headlines. It was hot when I awoke and the air conditioners would still be humming when I drifted off to sleep.

This is in contrast to last Wednesday morning, when I woke up to a light mist or what the locals calls rain. I remember putting the heat on in my car as I headed down to the cliff thinking, I can’t believe they refer to this as summer weather. Still, there was a certain charm to walking through the dreary fog and precipitation, as the pelicans, cormorants and gulls weren’t giving it a second thought.

Then came Thursday, and the sun was peeking through the clouds as I exited my westside abode. When I got to the parking lot at Natural Bridges, there were the faint signs of a fading rainbow alongside the remaining arch. I took this as a good sign. The ground was wet but the air was warm. We’re talking short sleeve weather, a rarity on summer mornings. I’m always somewhat shocked to see the sun or my under eye circles in the early part of the coastal day.

I was more than pleasantly surprised at this rapid turn of events, but I shouldn’t have been, as I had been down this road before. As I strolled along with my faithful golden companion, the sun was gleaming across the water, and a gorgeous cloud bank painted the eastern sky above Lighthouse Point.

As I headed south, a seal popped its head out of the water at Stockton Avenue, while further out, a great egret was hanging out in the kelp beds. The air was a glorious temperature, and despite the fact that I had woken up at 4:40 am and couldn’t get back to sleep no matter how many sheep I counted, life was good at that moment.

However, by the time I returned home, the clouds had come in and and erased all this morning majesty. I got lucky on this day, so I guess timing is still everything. Just a great day to take a walk on the mild side in this cold water paradise.

For today’s photo conclave, I am featuring moments from three sunrises for the price of one. The first and third were taken from the end of my street along the upper westside. The skies above Monterey Bay conveniently lit up on these two January mornings, which made the silhouette of the tree of life that much more vivacious.

The middle rise was shot during the same month from the cliffs above Cowell’s Beach, looking across to the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf. For you folks keeping a scorecard at home, last January was a fabulous month for sunrises. Just goes to show that they do make sunrises like they used to.

On to the late night humor. “U.S. embassies are closed all around the Middle East this week due to a terrorist threat. What happened was the U.S. intercepted a conference call of 20 al-Qaida operatives. Twenty on one conference call! Who is their carrier? I go under a bridge and my cellphone drops the call, but they can get 20 people in one call from a cave? I guess you all heard about this terrorist threat the president warned us about. One of the reasons al-Qaida is upset with the United States is because we are giving aid to Yemen. We didn’t have a choice. When life hands you Yemen, you give them Yemen aid. This story just gets crazier: Two more women have come forward to accuse San Diego Mayor Bob Filner of sexual misconduct. That brings the total to 13 — or as Filner calls it, a groper’s dozen.” -Jay Leno

“As our studio audience knows, the security today for President Obama was incredible. In fact, first lady Michelle Obama already had the Secret Service sweep the president’s dressing room for chips, pizza, ice cream. This weekend President Obama celebrated his 52nd birthday. For his birthday, Michelle Obama jumped out of a cake and told him he’s not allowed to have any. Happy birthday to President Obama! He will be 52 years old on Sunday. If you’d like to get the president a gift, you can’t go wrong with Edward Snowden. He would love that. You can see that the President is getting a little grayer. In fact, they are starting to call him “The Silver Fox.” That’s because most of the silver in his hair was caused by Fox.” – Jay Leno

“Alex Rodriguez was suspended from baseball for using performance-enhancing drugs, but then he appealed, so technically he can still play. Last night he played his first game since the suspension and hit a bloop single. And then he said, “Imagine how far that would have gone if I was still on steroids!” Baseball suspended 13 players for alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs, most notably baseball’s highest paid player, Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees. A-Rod is suspended for 211 games. That is an odd number, but .211 is what they calculated his batting average would have been without the drug.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Fifty years ago today was “the great train robbery.” Robbers got away with $63 million in cash from a postal train in Britain. My father worked for the post office at that time. He was supposed to be working on the night that it was robbed, but he had the flu. He called in sick. Coincidence? All I know is right after the great train robbery, we ate well around my house. Yes, that is the night we got a brand new potato. I like heist movies. “Oceans 11” was a good one. Then there was “Oceans 12″ where they robbed the people who went to see the movie.” – Craig Ferguson

“The Boston Globe newspaper has been sold for $70 million, even though 20 years ago it went for $1.1 billion. I couldn’t believe that story when I saw it for free on the Internet. LeBron James of the Miami Heat had to report for jury duty today. Of course there will be 11 other jurors to help decide the case, but you know he’ll wind up doing it all by himself. The NFL is about to get its first full-time female referee. Good for them. It will be a little different though. When a player asks her what he did wrong, she’ll say “Oh, you know what you did.” – Jimmy Fallon

So let’s it for August. I’m taking some time off and heading to the Garden Isle in South Pacific to study the mating habits of the chocolate covered macadamia nut. I shall return on September 2nd.

We’ll catch you showing the world the Australians can produce great TV crime dramas. Aloha, mahalo and later, “Underbelly” fans.

Good morning and greetings, rock and roll fans. Music is my mistress, as many days I walk around with a certain song playing over and over in my head, drowning out the voices that I normally hear and cherish. And cherish is a word I use to describe all the feelings that I have for you cyber readers inside.

Speaking of cherish, not to be confused with cherries, which are bursting with flavor and sweetness this time of the year, it was the first song played when my wife and I hit the dance floor at our wedding. It was either going to be that or the Guess Who’s’ American Woman,’ but “American woman, stay away from me,” really didn’t set the tone for what is an ongoing, twenty-four year journey of love, trust and Tivo, and definitely not in that order.

My wife and I have become inseparable, like two snow peas in a pod. She makes sure I’m balanced and rotated, like a good set of Michelin tires. I’m not sure she feels the same way, as the other day she quoted feminist Gloria Steinem, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” She then followed with this doozy from the former undercover Playboy Bunny, “The surest way to be alone is to get married.” I broke down and I cried. Hallmark couldn’t have said it any better.

After dropping off our daughter at school in the morning, we walk together on beautiful West Cliff Drive. It’s a magnificent way to start the day. She tells me about her hopes, dreams and aspirations, while my mind wonders about what I’ll be making for dinner that night. But through my nodding and inane comments she knows that I’m listening, a trait that is not easy for me, as my mind races faster than the earth rotates around Oprah. As she once told David Letterman, “When I look into the future, it’s so bright it burns my eyes.” And that’s why I wear sunglasses, because I’m finally getting the feeling that at this belated date, my future is ahead of me.

But stop the presses. Five minutes after I wrote the line about my brightening future, I had to remove my shades, as I received a phone call from a long time compatriot that put a damper on my previous statement. I found it somewhat ironic that less than 300 seconds after I had written the most optimistic sentence in my blogging career, I was suddenly no longer in that moment of joy and excitement. I was in a place that I had visited way too often in my life, where I didn’t need to make an appointment as it seemed they were expecting me. The future just ain’t what it used to be.

The situation brought to mind a scene from Woody Allen’s “Play I Again, Sam,” where he’s in a museum, attempting to pick up a woman who’s looking at a painting. Woody: That’s quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn’t it? Woman: Yes, it is. Woody: What does it say to you? Woman: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation, forming a useless, bleak straitjacket in a black, absurd cosmos. Woody: What are you doing Saturday night? Woman: Committing suicide. Woody: What about Friday night?

Life is so strange, but with all the good and bad, it’s really just how you perceive it between your two ears. It seems like every day I’m getting older. Pablo Picasso said it takes a long time to grow young. I don’t want to say I’m getting old, but the most exercise I get is looking for my glasses. I’ve already lived the lives of five golden retrievers. And yet I still want to chase that tennis ball.

However, for a young man in his 60’s, I’m great shape. Despite waking up to go to the bathroom 13,000 times a night, I’m always fresh and raring to go in the morning. I know I don’t get enough sleep, and perhaps that’s why I spend a good part of the day opening my mouth involuntarily while taking a long, deep breath of air. I believe the medical term is called yawning and is a result of stress, tiredness and extreme virility. Throw in the fact that I snore like a banchee and next to Lou Gehrig, my wife might be the luckiest man alive.

The most important thing for me is keeping my mind active and making sure my DVR is plugged in. That’s why week after week I pound away at this key board, like Mozart with a jump shot, trying to put together some words and sentences together that don’t violate the Volstead Act. And who knows what the future holds? I could be sitting on a gold mine. So stay tuned.

For today’s photo appetizer, I’m finishing what I started two weeks, ago, when I featured a gorgeous late January sunrise shot at Steamers Lane. The mid afternoon cloud action over the bay was incredible. Today’s photos are the second half of the daily double, which was the fabulous sunset I shot that same night.

I started out my photographic adventure at Stockton Avenue along West Cliff Drive, and then like Lewis and Clark without the services of Sacagawea, made my way up to Natural Bridges for the grand finale. Just a beautiful night from the winter of 2013 on Monterey Bay. Days like this is why God invented the sky.

No late night humor this week so I’m going with a few jokes. A guy is sitting at home when he hears a knock at the door. He opens the door and sees a snail on the porch. He picks up the snail and throws it as far as he can. Three years later, there’s a knock on the door. He opens it and sees the same snail. The snail says “What the hell was that all about?”

A guy enters a bar carrying an alligator. Says to the patrons, “Here’s a deal. I’ll open this alligator’s mouth and place my genitals inside. The gator will close his mouth for one minute, then open it, and I’ll remove my unit unscathed. If it works, everyone buys me drinks.” The crowd agrees. The guy drops his pants and puts his privates in the gator’s mouth. Gator closes mouth. After a minute, the guy grabs a beer bottle and bangs the gator on the top of its head. The gator opens wide, and he removes his genitals unscathed. Everyone buys him drinks. Then he says: “I’ll pay anyone $100 who’s willing to give it a try.” After a while, a hand goes up in the back of the bar. It’s a woman. “I’ll give it a try,” she says, “but you have to promise not to hit me on the head with the beer bottle.”

A newlywed couple moves into their new house. One day the husband comes home from work and his wife says, “Honey, you know, in the upstairs bathroom one of the pipes is leaking, could you fix it?” The husband says, “What do I look like, Mr. Plumber?” A few days go by, and he comes home from work and his wife says, “Honey, the car won’t start. I think it needs a new battery. Could you change it for me?” He says: “What do I look like, Mr. Goodwrench?” Another few days go by, and it’s raining pretty hard. The wife finds a leak in the roof. She says, “Honey, there’s a leak on the roof! Can you please fix it?” He says, “What do I look like, Bob Vila?” The next day the husband comes home, and the roof is fixed. So is the plumbing. So is the car. He asks his wife what happened. “Oh, I had a handyman come in and fix them,” she says. “Great! How much is that going to cost me?” he snarls. Wife says: “Nothing. He said he’d do it for free if I either baked him a cake or slept with him.” “Uh, well, what kind of cake did you make?” asks the husband. “What do I look like,” she says, “Betty Crocker?”

So that’s our first blast for June. We’ll catch you stepping up in the playoffs and showing NBA fans why you’re the best young center in the eastern conference. Aloha, mahalo and later, Roy Hibbert fans.