Homestead Trail

Our conference gives us afternoons off, so I went North to The Homestead Trail along the Androscoggin riverlands with Jon, a postdoc who was in Grenoble at the CEA when I was there and his friend from Harvard. As soon as we got there a strong wind kicked up and we got a face full of dust. The sky was starting to get dark, and within a few minutes the rain started coming down, and thankfully the bugs went away as the lightening and rain really started coming down. In spite of the swampy path, and somewhat underwhelming ruined foundations of houses, the rain hitting the water was spectacular. Unfortunately I only had a digital with me, but here are some of the shots:



We got sidetracked on some ATV trails and ended up slogging through muddy ruts to get back to the road

Then all of a sudden the rain stopped, the sun came out and it looked almost as if the storm had never happened! Shortly afterwards the bugs came out again and orbited our heads in little swarms.

Trip from hell

yesterday I traveled from SFO to portland, ME in a record 16 hours travel time. My first flight on United to Dulles was delayed without explanation, as was my second connecting flight. Shortly after cramming myself into the tiny seats on the United Express plane, I noticed that it was hot. Really, Really hot. To allay our concerns, the pilot got on the PA system and told us that yes, he knew that it was hot, but he knew exactly what the problem was; the auxiliary power unit was dead, which powers the AC as well as the starter for the turbines. This, he added, was what all that extra machinery was that they were attaching to the engines -- they were starting them with external starters. After some very worried looks between the passengers we took off, and a short while later were on approach to portland, ME. Surprisingly, just as we were ten feet off the ground the pilot aborted the landing, hit the power hard and shot back up into the air. Again, no explanation as usual, and we slowly banked into a turn and landed on a completely different landing strip. It was now 12:45 AM, and I was glad to finally be in Maine and more importantly on solid ground. This relief soon turned into fear again as I watched the taxi driver swerve to avoid traffic cones on the turnpike, and just generally sway all over the road. Thankfully it was a divided highway because he spent a good 30% of his time not in a lane. He seemed to have a preference for the middle of the road, but wasn't averse to the occasional swerve onto the shoulder as he hunched forward to read a sign. More amusingly still, there was no AC and his windows didn't work, so he had to open his door and get halfway out of the to pay at the toll booths. The swerving and driving in the center of the road took a more serious turn after we left the divided highway and got onto two way country roads. By now it was almost 2 AM, so I was too tired to be scared of dying. Happily, after getting my key from security I got into bed at 2:30 and was awoken three hours later by one of my suitemates slamming the door as he went outside to smoke. The suite has a door, and he has a door, and he went out around 5 times, which equals a whole lot of slammin', and almost no sleepin'. I am a wreck today.

Janice of Wyoming

Earlier today, as we were driving over the Golden Gate Bridge, we saw a huge mast rising above the trees near the the St. Francis Yacht Club. We walked down to the water and checked it out

It turned out to be a massive sailboat with the unlikely name of "Janice of Wyoming". I found a PDF about it here. Googling only reveals that it was sold "to an american owner". That red hull to the left isn' a rowboat! Janice of Wyoming is 130 feet long with 6720 square feet of sail (624 m^2). It also has two 40 kW generators and a 600 brake HP motor!

fog

Today, from Crissy Field.

I think that blob near the south tower is a kiteboarder

Men of the world, beware

Like most good blue state denizens, I read the New York Times every day on their web site. When I've gone through the headline and international news, I sometimes check on the "most emailed" list to see if there's anything interesting that has escaped my early morning slow wittedness. For what seems like a very long time, there has been one title that has ranked in the top ten, which is rare on this list. Usually the list seems to turnover completely every few days or so.



The title in question is "Modern Love: What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage", which sounds about as interesting as watching the daytime emmy awards or "how Stella got her groove back". So for weeks I've been ignoring it, thinking to myself -- "Booooooring". Today, after weeks of seeing it on the list, I finally caved in and read it. Or rather, I skimmed it with an escalating sense of alarm as I read a description of how, by treating your husband like a hyena, cougar, or yes, a baboon, you can train him to "become easier to love". The worst part about it is that it made a lot of sense, and I could see myself behaving like her husband Scott... getting freaked out and angry about losing my keys for the five hundredth time. And then a few realisations hit me in rapid progression. First, although the techniques (reward good behavior, encourage behaviors incompatible with bad behaviors, do not respond to bad behavior) work equally well on the crazier fairer sex, this manual of mind control is hidden in plain sight. I mean, unless you were not extremely bored, no husband would read an article with that title. Second realisation: Chloe reads the new york times every day too, which means... So I called her immediately.

me:Hi!
Chloe:hhhmph, yes?
me:So I was reading the new york times today... there was this article that I'd been ignoring for like a month.. something about treating your husband like a baboon? Do you know what I'm talking about?
Chloe:(muffled laughter), pause
Chloe:ummm yes, I've seen it.
me:So, you wouldn't happen to be using those techniques on me would you?
Chloe:(twenty seconds of muffled laughter)
Chloe:maybe!

so it turns out that I've been a baboon in training ever since that article came out, as I'm sure has happened to a lot of other men out there. After another laughing fit, she generously gave her permission for me to try the baboon training techniques on her, if it would make me feel any better.

nightime visitors and kiteboarding

On Friday night I was awakened by the disquieting sounds of claws or nails scratching against the window next to our heads. It would start for a few seconds, then there would be kind of a shuffling sound, like fur against glass, and would then stop. A few minutes later it would all start again. I was actually too sleepy and scared to look at what was causing all the noise, so I just left it alone and went back to sleep. Last night, however I heard the sounds again, but this time actually decided to wake up (it turns out that Chloe did the exact same thing! We both could have gone back to sleep but decided -- individually -- that it was worth losing a little sleep to find out what was going on). It turned out to be a bat either trying to alight on the window or eat bugs near the window. Either way, it reminded me of when a bat got into our apartment in France

During the cleanup and locking down of the cabin, I came across a GIGANTIC spider which we had to get rid of:


and then went into Dutch Flat for breakfast. When I was a kid, Dutch Flat residents (I'm not sure if they, themselves were "Oddfellows) used to serve large excellent and inexpensive breakfasts at the loacal Oddfellows hall. The only thing I remember is that there were a lot of old people there, and the bacon was really, really good. Unfortunately though, the oddfellows breakfast turned out not to be on, so we went to the Dutch Flat hotel instead


and then drove back to Berkeley, driving over the beautiful new bridge across the Carquinez straits. One span of the old bridge is being disassembled from both sides, so it is hanging rather precariously over the water. I tried to get a picture, but it didn't come out very clearly:


after watching the world cup, and the totally bizarre headbutting incident, followed by the Frances's subsequent predictable loss on penalty kicks, we went kiteboarding for a few hours at Alameda. The wind was good, and chloe had more success re launching her kite this time. I was really happy to see that my parents had come out to watch us and see what kiteboarding is all about, and we watched the other boarders together while we waited for Chloe.

Next stop was a rib restaurant on High street, where we all inhaled dinner. Finally it was time to go back to SF, and by this time the sunday traffic had dissipated. As we were carrying everything back into the apartment, I had the sudden realisation that maybe carrying two 18 inch machetes in one hand and a big lumpy black plastic trash bag (it was filled with our dirty laundry) might look a little ... strange. I didn't hear so much as a peep out of our neighbors all night though!

climbing and clearing the land

Today was kind of a bust as far as climbing is concerned. We tried out donner and rainbow, two areas near I80, but it was too hot to climb at Donner, and we got shut down on climbs that would normally be our warm-ups. Have I mentioned how much I miss French limestone? While bushwacking our way back from Rainbow we happened upon some strange non native looking plants which had been set up with an irrigation system.

After a depressing half day getting shut down on slabs, we headed back to Dutch Flat. I wanted to show Chloe "the Diggins", which is a dark green spring fed pool located in a heavily hydraulic mined area just north of the main street in Dutch Flat. When we were kids we used to swim there all the time, and it was a popular local destination in the summertime. Someone had made a raft out of railroad ties, so the first thing that we always did when we got there was to start swimming around to find it. As the years went on, it seemed to become more and more waterlogged until there really wasn't very much of it left above the waterline. This time, I was disappointed to see that someone had completely fenced off not only the diggins, but most of the hydraulic mined area to the left and right of the road! We drove past it to have a look at the dutch flat fore and afterbay. These are two dammed artificial lakes connected by a big pipe and turbines for hydroelectric power. There were signs warning you not to swim in them because of rapidly changing water levels, as well as "underwater traps". I assume that the latter is just a hyperbolic way of saying that there could be trees etc underwater, and not that they have set actual man traps.

From there, we returned to Alta, and got down to choppin' We cleared even more land than last time (before and after):


and after a long sweaty day, we both jumped into the freezing cold snowmelt fed river. It wasn't quite as cold as the glacial snowmelt rivers in the Alps, but our toes still went numb.

We had Trader Joe's macaroni and cheese with tuna from a can and river chilled beer on the deck to the sounds of the river and the slightly sweet smoke of mosquito coils. As an aside, my family was introduced to mosquito coils by my dad's japanese friends in the 80's, and a study has shown that these coils (containing octachlorodipropyl ether, which is banned in the US) might cause cancer! Ahhh, nothing like a cold beer and carcinogenic smoke after a hard days work!

no kiting, going to Alta

We had planned on going kiteboarding at Alameda today, but the wind was completely dead. It’s obvious, but interesting to see how your perception of everyday things can change. Before kiteboarding, I never really noticed how strong the wind was blowing, except when it got in the way. For better or worse, I find myself looking at the trees a lot these days: are the leaves moving? Are the BRANCHES moving? Which way are they moving?! Anyway, we ended up driving to my parents house in Berkeley instead, had an expertly prepared Udon by chef Kenji, and then drove up to the cabin. We waited until 7:30 pm to leave, so we beat all the traffic and were there by 9:30 or 10.

presidio cemetary

Chloe and I discovered a trail on the Bay area ridge trail which leads right to the top of the cemetary in the presidio. Theres a great view, but watch out for all the poison oak on the trail!

July 4 weekend

Holiday weekends can be a lot of pressure. With two extra days off, I usually want to make sure I make the most of them which means planning way ahead and lots of very adult "preparation". Having already planned our next xmas in advance, we gave ourselves a break and played it by ear this weekend. On Friday we had a crazy kiteboarding session at Alameda; there was actually too much wind for my 12 meter kite, and I was having to really work hard to avoid moving uncomfortably fast. Even so, it was exciting as usual, and I even got a chance to try out Chloes GK Sonic 8, which I could make work with a little fancy (well, as fancy as I am able to perform) kitework.

We slept in on Saturday, which turned out to be a mistake because there were huge traffic jams half of the way up to Alta. I think it took us almost four hours to get there. Since we still have the wonderful summer daylight until eight PM or so, I took the opportunity to try to clear out some of the overgrown forest. It was hard work, and I ended up with something like thirteen huge red throbbing mosquito bites just on my back.

The next day we headed out to Big Chief, where it looked like a tour bus of climbers had arrived. Thankfully American climbers are much weaker than their French counterparts, and we are honorary French Climbers. What this means is that we can move on to the mostly unoccupied medium difficulty climbs while people queue up for the easy ones. After a criminally underbolted warmup 5.9, we moved on to Eat the Worm, which I did on sight, and then on to Pow Wow, an excellent overhanging 11a. Finally we played around on Totally Chawsome, which I did second try. A Japanese dude there from Nagano and his friend from Tahoe were checking out the moves on "All guns blazing", and let me try out the opening moves.

After driving back to Alta, I shifted into high gear and chopped down many more trees (including a wild cherry, accidentally! aaaaagh!).

before, during, after:


me in action


and one of the three piles of cuttings

kiteboarding

Yesterday I had easily my best day of kiteboarding yet. A day later, I still get a warm fuzzy feeling remembering the feeling of skimming across the waves off Crown beach in Alameda, carving turns and finally feeling some of the subtleties of flying the kite. I think it was my fifth or sixth time out on the water, and everything just clicked; as soon as I body dragged out away from the beach, I was up on my board, heading out into the San Francisco Bay. A few minutes later, seeing not too many kiteboarders around, I swooped the kite back down and headed back to the beach. I lost track of how many laps I rode until the wind turned into a gentle breeze, and I noticed people giving up and heading for the beach. I doggedly kept the kite up, and as the wind died, I had the opportunity to try to generate my own "apparent wind" by flying the kite in figure eights as fast as possible, and eventually relented and headed back to the beach. Earlier, in a fit of optimism, I decided not to connect my board leash and ended up getting really far downwind of my board. Luckily Wes, my instructor from my water lesson happened to be out there and he grabbed and returned my board. Despite all my effort to stay upwind, I ended up a mile or so down the beach, and did the now familiar long walk back up to the shack.

Chloe also had a good day: she inflated, rigged and tested out her new GK Sonic in the water.

Big Chief

This morning we drove up to Big Chief, near Truckee. The drive up was uneventful, except for a 45 minute traffic jam thanks to some Caltrans morons who had shut the road down to one lane at Yuba Gap inexplicably. We had stopped at Ikedas earlier, and I was truly amazed at how much it had changed. It used to be a funky little fruit stand with a disgusting fly filled bathroom around back. They used to sell cheap dried fruits, nuts and their own pressed spicy tofu. These days it appears that Mr. Ikeda or his children have gotten a little full of themselves, and charge $8 for a bag of peanuts!

When we got to Truckee, we discovered that the guidebook that we had bought was utterly useless. I should mention that climbing guidebooks are typically obtuse and maddening things. The reasons for this are complicated. On one hand, guide book authors are frequently the ones who have invested their own time and money into developing a crag for climbing, so it makes sense to support them. However, guidebooks are also frequently absurdly expensive. More damning still is the fact that many (most?) climbing guides are produced with 2nd grade literacy, kindergarten layout skills and a stern focus on inaccuracy. It's almost as if the authors want your money, but don't want you to make it to the crags! Anyway, enough of that. Suffice to say that we wasted a long time searching for roads which do not exist, but we eventually made it. By the time we were at the crag, it was in the mid 90's and we almost died warming up on a "10" (according to the guide). After getting thoroughly cooked, we retreated to the south cave sector, where I flubbed the opening moves of the very fun "Realm of the Overhang" and then did "Flying High Again" on sight. Thunderclouds were rolling in during the last climb, so we walked back to the car and got swarmed by mosquitoes.

The rain started falling in sheets of huge drops just as we got back onto I80 and was deluging the freeway all the way to Alta. Along the way I discovered something very interesting: The leftmost lane (fast lane) is much, much, much smoother and quieter than the right lane! Why is that? My guess is that the road destroying semi trucks spend more time in the right lanes and basically thrash and crack them. When we got to Alta, we hacked our way down to the cabin that my parents and I had built. I was 11 or 12 when we built it, and it was a pretty significant undertaking despite its diminutive size. It took a summer of hauling sheetrock, timber, bolts, nails, rocks, cement bags, insulation, tar paper, shingles and a thousand other little bits to build. We didn't have any power tools, electricity or plumbing, either! Anyway, we haven't spent much time up there recently, and it has become the favored target of the local redneck mouth breathers. Unfortunately, they had broken in again and pried off both locking hasps to the door. Thankfully they had spared the windows this time. Chloe and I re-installed new hasps and locks as we were swarmed again by mosquitoes, and we hit the road, sweaty, dirty and dehydrated.

just another day of living in the Presidio

Cherry Picking!

We spent the morning picking cherries in Brentwood, near the sacramento delta today:






and then had lunch at Vic's

Container house

I saw an article in the SFgate today about shipping container based prefab houses, which I quickly forwarded around to my parents and Chloe. As usual, the custom designed ones are fantastic, but who can afford something like that? Maybe an investment banker, but certainly not two biochemistry Ph.Ds :) No, the prefab designs were the most interesting and one in particular really stood out: the Quik House. The floor plans are fantastic, and they really do look like a nice place to live. I found some other articles which indicate that a dozen of these things have already been ordered. Image stolen from the Quik House web site.

World Cup

I was never a soccer player. I had friends that were passionate about it in high school, but I could never really understand it. Part of it was that, having a Japanese father who never watched any sports on TV, I didn't understand the language of any spectator sports, much less an obscure third world one :). No, I was equally lost at a superbowl party as I was at a world series party, although I was somewhat more at home at the latter after years of Japanese-American little league. The soccer cluelessness stemmed from an early attempt at team sports in which my friend Keith-Mako and I were enlisted in a youth soccer league. Presaging a life of conformity, I was obsessed with shirts with numbers on them (my "number shirt phase" is the term my parents use) and was pretty excited about having a number shirt from an actual team that I actually played on! The reality of the soccer team was somewhat different however. It was endless boring drills in which the coach doted on his son, a Q-tip shaped headed big toothed giant to the exclusion of all the rest of us. With the exception of the occasional disdainful look at one of us, as we ran rubber legged past the soccer ball, there wasn't much "coaching" going on. Keith and I would fabricate various ploys to get pulled out of games, like pointing squint eyed at a microdot of blood that we were frantically squeezing out of our fingers after a fall ("collapse" might be a better word). "But I'm injured!". The one thing that kept me going was the promise of the number shirt. My number shirt. Unfortunately, our number shirt delivery was somewhat delayed, and Keith and I jealously looked at our friend Justin Holcher's new jersey which he proudly wore to school several times a week. To cries of "Luckyyyyyyyy!" we coveted the fabric with little holes for breathability, the gold v-neck collar, and the shimmery blue fabric. The coup de grace was that it was reversible for when you were the home or way team. When reversed it became gold with a blue collar. It was a perfect number shirt. This was going to be awesome, and we (maybe just I; I can't speak for Keith) would endure any amount of bodily injury for them. Our own jerseys arrived later in the season amid great fanfare. The coach brought a big cardboard box to the pitch, trailed by all of us jumping and shouting. After handing the number "1" jersey to his son, the rest of us dove in and pulled ours out. The excitement quickly dissipated. These were gold and ... Black? There were no perforations for high performance. Neither were they reversible in any meaningful way. And with the dream of the perfect number shirt of my very own shattered, so ended any enthusiasm I might have for soccer and the world cup.

Sick as a dog

I went kiteboarding on Wednesday, and somehow didn't see the signs warning that there were high levels of bacteria in the water from a sewage spill. On Thursday my chest started feeling tight, and by the evening I had a fever and headache. My this morning I was a complete wreck; I could barely move, my throat was killing me, I had a throbbing headache and a fever that just would not relent. I'm definitely going to spend the extra time researching water bacteria levels before jumping in next time. However, as far as I know, no one is testing viral levels (probably more technically difficult to do), which are also something to worry about.

Bay Area Traffic

This weekend, I finished some modifications to the Traffic analyzer I wrote. It now uses LWP and some ugly code to associate individual traffic time points with various weather parameters. Some examples are shown below for the commute between South San Francisco and Albany.

Temperature

pressure

humidity

kiteboarding

Today chloe and I had our jet ski assisted water lessons in the bay; we both had a great time and managed to get up on the board in both directions and even managed to get upwind a bit! Next wednesday we'll try to get in some more water time after work. Woohoo!

Last Day

Today we dragged our aching bodies out of bed, had a waffle breakfast in the hotel, and drove out to the Utah Hills. The access road was pretty horrendous and we didnt want to risk getting the rental car stuck, so we walked up the road to the Soul Asylum crag. The road is very rutted, particularly on the steeper sections, so we were both VERY happy to have left the car behind! About three bolts up the first climb, I heard a strange "swishing" sound behind me, and thought nothing of it, so I continued climbing. When it got louder, I realized that I was getting dive-bombed by an extremely irate bird of some kind. I didn't really have time to figure out what kind it was as I quickly retreated off the climb, but subsequent googleornithology suggests that it was a Sharp Shinned Hawk. The hasty retreat was of course motivated by a sense of respect for the raptors habitat, rather than the threat of getting my eyes clawed out. After this inauspicious start, we climbed the awesome Petrified,

the one next to it, another 10a further down the wall, and I did a disturbingly named but very fun climb called "White soul power" on site, which made my month.


The climb started on a bee filled ledge (they were sucking the moisture out of small trickles in the limestone), and in the course of setting up a toprope Chloe managed to kick a bag full of various items down on top of me. Happily, she gave me a few milliseconds notice and I didn't get clouted by it our the spinning bits of scree that it kicked loose. After this, we headed back down to the car, "showered" with baby wipes, and drive back to Las Vegas. Once in Vegas, we spent a good hour trying to find the Thai restaurant which we went to on our last Red Rocks trip, but failed. It turned out to be a block away from where we stopped looking (Sahara and Rainbow I think). After returning the car, we headed to the airport and eventually boarded our delayed flight (thank god for Chicago O'hare; Without it, airlines would lose 90% of their late flight excuses!) back to SF. We got back in around 12:30 AM or so, hastily rinsed off and immediately fell asleep.

Zion

After a morning climbing three easy routes at the Chuckawalla wall, we headed out to Zion again. This time we avoided the main canyon and drove up across the Kolob plateau and hiked along wilcat trail out to Northgate peaks trail (380 kb Park map here).

We walked back to the trailhead and drove to Lava Point lookout, then down to the West Rim Trailhead, and along the West Rim Trail for a few miles, where we saw a lot of desert horned lizards. On the way back, the light was perfect for some pictures of Cave Valley and Blue Springs Reservoir. We definitely want to go back to hike further next time!



Some medium format scans of Blue Springs Resevoir, and along the road to Kolob Plateau, respectively:

The Cathedral

Today we drove west out of St. George to Welcome Springs and the Cathedral crag, which was spectacular. The hike up takes you past a desert oasis of cottonwoods and streams and through a valley flanked by blue and orange limestone faces. After getting a little lost, we arrived at the Cathdral:



Warmed up on "Pagan Rituals", did the excellent "Worshipping the Limestone Gods", and then walked over to the Wailing Wall. At the wailing wall, I barely onsighted Rising Expectations (not me, but the correct climb):

And then got shut down on one of the 12a's to the right of it. We finished up on "Casting Asperations", walked back to the Cathedral and I unfortunately got pretty shut down on "speaking in tongues". We watched a guy (I think his name was Todd) almost send an incredibly hard looking line in the middle of the cave ("The Incredible Huck?"). There were about 8 people at the crag when we were there, and the atmosphere was great; everyone was willing to give us information about climbs that weren't in the guidebook.

St. George

Today we checked into the excellent Best Western St. George; indoor/outdoor swimming pool, jacuzzi, pool tables, video arcade and perhaps most importantly: a really excellent breakfast. After reorganizing our bags a bit, we set out for the local crag. The Chuckawalla wall is a big chunk of well bolted red sandstone about 5 minutes north of town


whic is really a blast. We worked our way left from the moderates on the right, took a burn on what I think was Armageddon and then onto "As the Crow Flies", which I grunted through on site. I then went back ro armageddon for the redpoint. We really enjoyed all of the climbs on this wall, but paced ourselves and left early to go buy the Todd Goss guidebook. From the climbing store, we continued on to Zion Canyon, but saw the crowds of people and cars and left.

vegas!!

We took an 8:00 PM flight to Las Vegas, rented the car from Payless rent a car (and got completely bait and switched on insurance, upgrade etc; we'll never go there again) and checked into the Hilton. Tomorrow we'll get an early start and head out to St. George, UT, 120 miles north on I15.

kiteboarding

After a few weeks of practicing with a Naish Xeon trainer kite, I had my land lesson today. Basically I learned how to activate the kites safeties, as well as get a feeling for sheeting the kite in and out.

it has begun

Today we saw some guys kiteboarding under the Golden Gate. It looked fantastic, and I finally am getting motivated to take lessons