Feeling Adventuresome? Go Fly a Kite.

Karl, a "worker bee" on the Long Beach Boeing C-17 Globemaster III engineering team, keeps a kite in his car, "just in case I come across a breezy hilltop on my lunch hour," he says with a smile.

A long-time Long Beach area resident, he remembers working as a kid at his grandparents' Ray's Shooting Gallery on the old Long Beach Pike.

He told me he is a Vegan and spoke highly of the health and ecological benefits of the dietary regimen. Then we got into Buddhism, for some reason. I suggested he read a little Robert Aitken, the Zen master who died earlier this month and who "... made Zen Buddhism workable for Westerners."

Karl spoke enthusiastically about his passion for bicycling. He suggested I take a look at the work of his friend, photographer and cyclist Russ Roca, who is documenting his grand cycling tour of the States in a blog called The Path Less Pedaled.

And there is another friend, Adrian, who is due to arrive shortly in Costa Rica after cycling through Mexico and much of Central America. It's notable that Adrian is touring using a "fixed-gear" bicycle, meaning there is no freewheel to provide the opportunity to coast; no need for brakes, a simple machine, synchronizing legs and wheels. "What's the purpose of that?," I asked. A moment's hesitation, a quick smile, then: "I suppose it's the challenge," he said.

Meanwhile, there's Karl, taking a break from work to fly his kite on Signal Hill... thinking about pedaling. Another sweet, Pleasant Encounter on Signal Hill.

(For more Pleasant Encounters on Signal Hill, scroll down or click on slideshow in sidebar to the right.)

-- RCH

The Poetry of Artist Annie Stromquist

Artist, author and teacher Annie Stromquist, from the Long Beach neighborhood of Bixby Knolls, takes vigorous walks almost daily on the Hill. You see her zest for life on the trail and in her art.

Maria and I had set out for a rare early-morning walk on the Hill to help our niece and nephew--Marcia and Lee-- shake out some of the jet lag cobwebs lingering after their return flight from a vacation in France. Maria and Lee made first contact with Annie up on the Panorama Promenade; later the five of us had this Pleasant Encounter on the Hillside trail.

At age 35, Annie left her job as associate dean of Occidental College to pursue her life-long interest in the arts. After getting a third master's degree--this time in Fine Arts at Cal State Long Beach--she took up the life of an artist.

Now, a print maker, Annie creates mixed media works on paper which she calls "'monoprints', made by pressing a variety of found objects covered with ink into wet paper." What propels her forward, she writes, "is a fascination with process, and how I might push the medium I'm using in new, interesting ways."

She even wrote a book about print making: Simple Screen Printing: Basic Techniques and Creative Projects.

Her work is abstract--neither symbolic nor representational. Much like a Zen master preferring gesture over words to point directly to a thing's essence, Annie lets the materials, and her intimate connection to them, speak for themselves. She writes, "When an eloquent form emerges from a process that is, in equal measures, controlled and fortuitous, it conveys the essence of the revelatory of which art is uniquely expressive."

That's a pretty eloquent use of words, too! No purist, she told us on the trail that she's found that writing her blog, One Artist's Life, is (surprisingly?) helpful to her art.

Take a little time to click on the above links, and tell me, Would you agree that Annie Stromquist is both poet of the visual and the verbal?

(For the full Pleasant Encounters on Signal Hill project, scroll down or see slideshow on sidebar to the right.)

--RCH

Four Words of Encouragement

"Good goin'," said I. "You too," said she.

Most Pleasant Encounters on Signal Hill are fleeting: no opportunity to take a photo, no chance for a brief caption. Usually it's a friendly smile, a warm greeting, a word or two of encouragement. Today, Liz and I shared these four words of encouragement, and then met up again at the Hilltop for this photo.

I was powering up one of the steeper streets on the Hill when she passed me on her new baby blue road bike, complete with fingernails to match. This brief exchange, a flashing smile, and then it was back to work.

Liz, of nearby Lakewood, has been seriously riding since last October, and is happy to announce she has lost 57 pounds. But, to be able to keep up with her fellow cycling club members, she needs to improve her hill-climbing. So for now it's one day a week on Signal Hill. Tomorrow she's got an even longer hill ride on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Four words of encouragement and a final promise: "We'll be seeing you on the Hill and online."

(Scroll down or click on the slideshow to the right for the entire Pleasant Encounters on Signal Hill project.)

-- RCH