Zuma Beach is the beach in Malibu with the softest sand and it’s almost always packed. Like nowhere-to-lay-your-towel packed. Plus, big waves. To get to it from the house I grew up in you take a 20 minute drive on a twisting canyon highway with steep drop-offs and memorials to people who’ve gone over the edge. Last Thursday was hot and clear and Zuma Beach was empty.

Like, miraculously, unexplainably, post-apocalypse empty.

The Getty wasn’t empty at all, but here’s a pretty serene shot of part of a wall of the Getty, some lawn, and the view onto Los Angeles.

Of course, this is what most of the city looks like. Don’t know why the camera in my cell phone went on “make this one look awful” mode—green sky!—but it probably has to do with that Christian bookstore right in the center of the shot. I realize you can’t really see it, nor can you see that that arrow to the left of “Christian Bookstore,” pointing up toward the sky, is shaped out of letters spelling “One Way.” It’s the One Way Christian Bookstore on Santa Monica Blvd. Which, business-name-wise, isn’t as great as the crematory Hollywood Forever, but it’s close. (I never got a chance to sit at a traffic light out in front of Hollywood Forever.)

LAX.

One distinguishing characteristic of LAX is this nefarious soda machine on the third floor of the parking garage across from the Alaska Airlines terminal. Personal story: I wanted some water. It would not take my dollar bills. Finally it took one of my bills. I hit the button for a Dasani water. The machine grumbled and thought about it and grumbled and thought about it and finally a drink tumbled down, but not all the way down; it was lodged up inside. So I reached my hand up into the—I dunno, the inside hole, the cervix—and pulled out… uh, a Sprite. And (go ahead, laugh) I thought: Too many calories. So I decided I’d pay another dollar and get a Coke Zero—cuz, since when do soda machines have Coke Zero? Pressed the button, it thought about it, it grumbled, and out came… a Sprite. I thought of the terrifying soda machine in Seattle that Schmader wrote about years ago. I took one Sprite and drank it, and left the other one standing on the ground, unopened, next to the caution cone.

But enough about California. Here is the coastline of Seattle, as seen from the window of an approaching plane. It’s cold to be back.