Bad Weather Forces Sonya To Abandon Her Attempted Six Thousand Kilometer Row Across The Pacific...

Sonya Baumstein from Florida had to send out a distress call on June 13 and was rescued just a week after leaving a marina in Chosi, Japan,  attempting to become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific.
She was trying to cross the 6,000k to San Francisco by September.
This lady is no stranger to adventure.
She trained for three years to row her little 23ft Icha all that way.
Prior to that, she'd kayaked from Washington State to Alaska and standup paddle-boarded across the 85k wide Bering Strait.
It was always a big ask Sonya and hopefully you'll succeed next time.
If you can dream it, you can do it...

Sonya Plans To Row Her Tiny Boat Six Thousand Miles Across the Pacific From Choshi, Japan To San Francisco...

Sonya Baumstein could have flown as most people do from Choshi, Japan to San Francisco, but no, she's the sort of twenty eight year old who likes a challenge and wasn't in a hurry. Which is fortunate because rowing the
six thousand nautical miles voyage in her specially designed little twenty three foot craft, described here, is going to take
more than a few days.
If you can dream it, you can do it...

Art Himsl's 1937 Chris Craft Zeppelin Roadliner Motorhome Is One Of A Kind...

Named 'The Zeppelin Roadliner' by the famed customiser Art Himsl, this unusual vehicle is one he bought in the 1960's.
With its aluminium framing which was originally covered with a 'Grade A' linen aircraft fabric skin, it started out life as a prototype house car built by a mechanic at a Chris Craft boat dealership in San Francisco and was registered in 1942 as a Plymouth house car.
Today the immaculately presented Zeppelin boasts a 350cubic inch V8 Chevy engine, push button automatic transmission, air-ride suspension, a refrigerator, microwave oven and front and rear air bags.
But do have a look here. Art Deco on wheels...

Quirky Micro House Designer And Artist Jay Nelson Builds A Gorgeous 200 Square Foot Rustic House In Hawaii...

Quirky and fun designer and artist Jay Nelson is well known for his amazing creative and functional micro homes on wheels, up trees
and on the water.
Much of his work has been featured in Lloyd Kahn's Tiny Houses Book and The Shelter Blog, Tiny House Talk and other specialist on-line publications as well as here at TFT.
The thirty four year old Jay who lives in San Francisco has just completed this gorgeous wooden two hundred square foot house at Haena on Hawaii's Kauai Island.
This tiny rustic house is BIG and beautiful...

San Francisco Provides Free Hot Showers For Their Homeless...

Welcome to the land of broken dreams said the San Francisco cabbie in an offhand remark to his fare, pointing to the many homeless they were passing on the streets.
At first, fifty one year old Doniece Sandoval didn't take too much notice, she was used to seeing the many of San Francisco's three and a half thousand homeless on her city's streets. They were as commonplace as parking meters.
What wasn't commonplace was washing facilities for these folk. There was only seven.
Then as she was walking she heard a woman's plaintiff voice say what sounded like
'I'll never be clean'.
Suddenly this successful marketing and public relations entrepreneur had an idea
that changed her life.
She realised how terribly hard it would be for a street person to wash the grime of life from their bodies and retain some dignity by being clean.
And the idea of Lava Mae was born.
Lava Mae is Spanish, it means 'Wash Me'.
Doniece quit her job, raised $75,000 and set about converting some of the city's old Muni buses into mobile bathrooms. Each one would have two complete bathrooms with shower, toilet basin and changing room. The buses would be able to hook into the city's water supply by using fire hydrants at pre-determined locations.
This remarkable woman had a dream and
now it's a reality.
Free Showers For The Great Unwashed.
No red tape, no applications, no screenings,
no questionaires.
Just free hot showers.
Wouldn't it be great if other cities
cleaned up their acts...

How A Group Of Brave Divers Saved This Trapped Humpback Whale From Dying...

You may already know this incredible story.
It happened back in 2013.
A fisherman spotted this female humpback just east of the Farallon Islands, about twenty seven miles west of San Francisco and radioed for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so badly off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her, a very dangerous proposition.
One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer.
They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her.
When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, nudged them, and pushed gently, thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.
The diver who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was following him the whole time, and he will never be the same again.
Who would be...

The American Dream Gets Washed Away...

Californian artist Chad Wright's Master Plan,
his sandcastle suburb, superbly symbolises The American Dream.
And how easily shattered our dreams can be.
He built a suburb of sandcastle houses on San Francisco's China Beach. It's meant to mimic the look of a typical post-war tidy suburb with its mass produced identical houses, neatly positioned next to each other, just like the little boxes in the 1962 song recorded by Malvina Reynolds, Little Boxes.
But in this very symbolic art installation,
all the little boxes are swallowed up and destroyed by the encroaching tide.
And when the tide recedes,
there's nothing left but dreams destroyed.
What does it all mean we may well wonder.
The global financial collapse, the real estate bubble bursting, the end of a dream, the impermanence of our lives, our world?
You choose.
For this wonderfully clever and meaningful project, Chad created a plastic mold that's filled with sand, you know, in the same way we made our own sandcastles. And dreamed...