My newest project, The Wonder Years: Portraits of Athletes Who Never Slow Down, is now out in bookstores.

The book, which I co-authored with photographer Rick Rickman, is a collection of portraits and stories from an extraordinary cast of senior athletes and former Olympians. You can meet some of them in this cool photo gallery posted at USA Today.

“Perhaps no one knows the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat better than athletes in their later years who are still at their game,” writes Carol Kaufmann at AARP Bulletin. “The aches and pains may be greater but so is the victory at the finish line. In their new book, The Wonder Years, photographer Rick Rickman and writer Donna Wares capture the spirit of the athletes, who are living proof that getting older doesn’t mean slowing down.”

Published this summer by Chronicle Books, The Wonder Years includes 100 amazing color portraits by Rick, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, and a foreword by figure skating legend Peggy Fleming.

For the past two decades, Rick has traveled the country photographing aging adventurers and amateur athletes who defy the conventional wisdom about what it means to grow old in our society. They are part of a growing senior underground of 350,000 men and women competing at the local and state level to get into the National Senior Games. The games arrived on the West Coast for the first time Aug. 1 to 15, on the Stanford University campus. It’s world’s largest gathering of athletes over 50.

The photo accompanying this post comes from Kepler’s, a terrific independent bookstore in nearby Menlo Park. As you can see, Kepler’s has a special August display of books geared toward the 10,000 athletes now participating the Senior Games.

My partner Rick, of course, is in the middle of the action at Stanford. He shooting the games again this year with a group of his talented photography students from Brook Institute in Ventura. You can check out some of their work here.

On Thursday Aug. 6, Rick will be discussing and signing The Wonder Years from noon to 1 p.m. on the Euflexxa Entertainment Stage on the Stanford campus. The event is in the NSG village.

On August 27, I’ll be joining Rick for a special Wonder Years evening in Orange County. We’ll be discussing and signing The Wonder Years at opening night of the Aquadettes’ annual Aqua Follies in Laguna Woods. The amazing Aquadettes are featured the book and will be joining us to autograph copies of The Wonder Years after the show. [Many thanks to Borders in Mission Viejo for supplying books for this special event.]

On Sept. 24, Rick and I will be discussing The Wonder Years at 7 p.m. at the Barnes and Noble Marina Pacifica in Long Beach.

Popular culture sometimes suggests there is little to look forward to in our later years, but popular culture is wrong. The men and women featured in this book — and the thousands of athletes participating in this summer’s National Games — have a different message, one of grace and style, a path to the wonder years.

They are showing the rest of us the way.

P.S. Keep up with the latest news about The Wonder Years at twitter.com/wonderyearsbook.

While working on a new book about California’s Central Coast, I recently visited Cachuma Lake in Santa Barbara’s Santa Ynez Valley and stayed in a lakefront yurt. It’s an idyllic spot tucked along Highway 154, one of the prettiest drives in California.

Here’s a link to the story I wrote for Sunday’s LA Times Travel Section, which also ran this photo gallery and handy info guide, too.

This summer I’ll be spending more time in Central California and also am looking forward to the release of my newest book, The Wonder Years: Portraits of Athletes Who Never Slow Down, which is being published by Chronicle Books.

The book is a collection of stories and stunning photographs by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Rick Rickman (my co-author), who has been the official photographer for the National Senior Games for many years. The Senior Games arrive on the West Coast for this first time Aug. 1-15 and will be held on the Stanford University campus. You can read an excerpt from The Wonder Years here.

SealBeachDaily.com is giving away a copy of Great Escapes: Southern California this week, just in time for your spring staycation.

Just picked up Great Destinations: Palm Springs and Desert Resorts by Christopher P. Baker. Nicely written. Baker clearly knows his turf.

Chronicle Books twitters about this lovely photo gallery: The most interesting bookstores of the world. From San Francisco to Paris to Calcutta, these bookstores are ideal destinations for book lovers.

Library Journal showcases the nation’s “star” libraries, including sixteen here in California.

The Los Angeles Music Center invites Angelenos to share their life stories and oral histories this month. The theme: “Journeys Toward Justice.”

The beauty of fresh and local: Gotta love Kate Cohen’s delightful slide show from one of SoCal’s newest farmers markets.

LA Times staffer Christopher Reynolds, one of my favorite travel writers, set out on New Year’s Day to cruise the entire zig-zagging length of California’s coast, from the southern end of San Diego County to Crescent City at the Oregon border, in ten days. He decided to cling to the coast and sleep only in lodgings along the water.

Chris shares a compelling mile-by-mile account and ultimately finds his 1,136-mile trek a “sweet trip,” despite some rocky patches. His travelogue is an ode to off-season travel: bare beaches, thinner traffic, empty lodgings and the characters he met along the way. He writes:

To consume the California coast in a single gulp, never mind the off-season, never mind the off-year — is more than a meal. It’s a revelation, a rediscovery, a marathon. Or maybe I should just rely on the words of Mike, the 40-year-old Coloradan I found on Day 4 north of Santa Barbara, sitting on a driftwood log in his boxers, still soaked from a spontaneous leap into the Pacific.

“This is as good as it gets,” he said. “For two minutes, you don’t feel old and fat anymore.”

You’ll want to read the entire piece here.

Southern California is home of the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam, and this weekend Little Saigon throws its biggest party of the year. The Tet Festival is a three-day celebration that attracts thousands of revelers and marks the arrival of the Year of the Water Buffalo.

The 27th annual festival features live music, traditional Vietnamese cuisine and a cultural village in the heart of Orange County. There’s also a Tet parade, and families will find kid-pleasing extras such as rides and a petting zoo. This year’s theme is “Spring of Hope.”

“Of course, it all happens in Little Saigon,” says Councilman Andy Quach. “But it’s not only for Vietnamese people. We’d like to invite everyone to our celebration.”

The festival is at Garden Grove Park, at 9301 Westminster Blvd., between Brookhurst and Magnolia streets. Tickets are $5. The hours are 2 to 10 p.m Friday; 10 a,m. to 10 p.m.; and Sunday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. More information.

The Long Beach Museum of Art, which has an ongoing California landscapes exhibit, offers free admission on Fridays. So does the nearby Museum of Latin American Art, which is free on Sundays, too.

Starting Friday, the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach hosts “Holiday Late Nights.” From Dec. 26 to Jan. 2, admission drops to $10 after 5 p.m., and the aquarium is open until 9 p.m.

The annual migration of Pacific gray whales from Alaska to Mexico officially begins Friday, too. Working with the aquarium, Harbor Breeze Cruises includes naturalists on excursions that take you up close to whales, dolphins and other sea life. Press Telegram.

Updated: What are you doing New Year’s Eve?

I did an interview this week with LAist Editor Zach Behrens, who asked about SoCal getaways for the holiday weekend and my new project, the Seal Beach Daily website.

On long weekends I like to escape up the coast or plan a kickback retreat to the desert. But this tumultuous season of fires, storms and economic meltdowns feels like a good time to stick closer to home. So I suggested a handful of day trips. Among them: the California landscape exhibit at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Orange County’s timeless Crystal Cove. Southern California’s other Wine Country. Bargain hunting in LA’s Fashion District.

Browse the entire LAist interview here.

More buzz: Check out Shelby Grad’s nice take today on the LAist interview at the LAT’s LA Now blog. Michelle Vranizan Rafter also writes about Seal Beach Daily at the excellent Word Count website.

**Photo of the Seal Beach Pier by Kate Cohen/Seal Beach Daily

Santa Barbara travel writer Pico Iyer shares an essay in Time magazine about his chance encounter with Barak Obama in Hawaii.

“It was three days before the New Year in late 2006, and I was eating a burger with the traveler and writer Paul Theroux on Oahu’s North Shore. Beside us in the rickety little shack was a quintessentially Hawaiian group of Chinese Americans, African Americans, semi–Southeast Asians and kids who could have been any or all of the above, waiting for the dad in the group to bring over their avocado burgers from the counter. It took Paul and me a few seconds to realize that the dad in question — who looked like a skinny teenager — was, in fact, the freshman Senator from Illinois, who was expected to enter the presidential race in the next week or two…”

At Sunset Magazine’s travel blog, editor Amy Wolf wonders: What burger shack was it that happened to be serving Pico Iyer, Paul Theroux, and Barack Obama at the very same time? And how good were the burgers?

Juliana Shallcross, an editor at HotelChatter.com, posts an iPhone hotel review from Malibu’s Billionaire’s Beach:

When we found out that The Malibu Beach Inn was running the world’s first iPhone guest management system, Hotel Evolution, naturally we had to go and try it out.

Despite the hotel’s website telling us that rooms were a steep $385 a night (on a Tuesday in a recession), we actually found a rate of $258 within the site. We clicked on one of their promotions which was offering a room and dinner for select days only. Our day happened to be a select day.

So a few hours later we were checking into the Malibu Beach Inn on PCH…

Keep reading here.

David Geffen opened his refurbished Malibu Beach Inn last fall, promising the “true Malibu experience” and allowing only registered guests to dine in his hotel restaurant. Since then, room rates aren’t the only thing that have dropped: I received a recent promo email announcing that the Malibu Beach Inn welcomes reservations for Thanksgiving dinner. A follow up call revealed that the hotel restaurant is now open to visitors the rest of the year, too, — with or without a room reservation.

*Updated: The New York Times does a round up on hotels offering the latest tech tools: “Hotels are under such pressure to keep up with their gadget-obsessed guests that they are working with technology companies to regain their edge.” Read more here.

I just added a link over in the navigation bar (right) to my Google Travel Reader page. It’s a daily collection of hand-picked travel stories about California and other newsy items for travelers.

Today’s offerings, for example, include a link to National Geographic’s Intelligent Traveler blog,
which features a monthly playlist of tunes to take along on the road. The current destinations is East Africa. You also find suggested soundtracks for trips to Hawaii, Paris, Italy, New Orleans, Miami, and, of course, Southern California. Browse the playlists here. And check out the other travel stories in today’s Reader here.

Elsewhere: WorldHum compiles a list of 13 Great Travel Horror Movies.

Eco adventures: Virginia Hayes, curator of the Living Collection at Santa Barbara’s wondrous Lotusland botanical gardens, has just released a new book, The Gourmet Garden.

LA Noir weekends: Take in a slice of LA’s seamy history on the “Real Black Dahlia” tour this Saturday or the “The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain’s Southern California Nightmare” on Nov. 8. Esotouric.

Another downtown day trip: J. Michael Walker’s All the Saints of the City of the Angels exhibit opens this weekend at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in LA. “After exhibiting “All the Saints” at the Autry Museum for seven months, I am delighted and honored to be able to present this project in the intriguing (and challenging) environment of Downtown Los Angeles’ austere new cathedral,” the author and painter says.