Berne

Stephanie picked us up in Syracuse today, and we headed to Chloes grandfathers house in Berne after lunch in Syracuse. The house sits on a large plot of land and after getting a few warning barks from his dog, Tyke II, we headed down

to a pond that he had built not very long after buying the property. The pond's temperature has been rising steadily unfortunately and as a result most of the Trout that he had stocked the pond with are now dead. I did see a few of them jump out of the water towards the middle of the lake though.



On the way down I found out that he had been on the team at general dynamics which designed the F16, which I thought was pretty cool. He also was on the F111 team. From the pond, we bushwhacked down to the stream


which had tons of perfect paving stones. I wish we had stones like that in the little bear creek!

After another session of bushwhacking in which i miraculously did not contract poison ivy,

we climbed the final hill back to the house


And talked for a while before heading to Syracuse to meet up with Christa and have dinner.

Jons Graduation

Jon (big jon) Chloe and I went for a walk at Green Lake

and then Wegmans (I think) for lunch before getting geared up to go to Jons (little) graduation.

Some of the talks were good, but I found it a little funny how some of the speakers seemed to be under the impression that graduating from high school magically turns you into an "adult": boy are they in for a surprise! I was also a little amused by the abundance of grammatical errors in the Principals talk. Doctor, heal thyself! Ten minutes into the graduation I peeked over the girls shoulder in front of us to see her texting "Ugh, Nottingham graduation" to someone. There was a spirited rendition of The Chicken. My favorite part was watching a crooked smile spread across the drummers ( A graduating Senior) face as she laid down a thumpin' beat. All in all it seemed pretty well put together, and it was fun to see all of the excited families in the audience go crazy when their kids walked across the stage.

After waiting for the congratulations to end, we headed to Alto Cinqo, a nearby mexican restaurant

Wegmans

After a late start, we headed to Wegmans with Jon for a late breakfast/early lunch. Chloe had told me about Wegmans before, and the delicious cookies and food that they have, but I was a little skeptical; it's a grocery store after all! However, after a few meals there and having wandered around the store, I'm definitely a convert: they have good food and excellent produce. The only strange thing was the lighting, which seemed to be on 50% power.

After a spirited game of Wii bowling and tennis, Jon, Amy, Chloe and I headed to the Syracuse baseball stadium to watch the Sky Chiefs play the Braves. I had never been to a minor league game before and really loved it; it was so much better than any Major League game I've ever been to. The size of the stadium and the higher error rate are a big improvement over huge megastadiums and perfect hitting and pitching.

Things were looking pretty good for the chiefs until the Braves hit a grand slam followed immediately by a home run. I wasn't too bothered however, since I was given an ample supply of peanuts and hotdogs.

Off to New York!

We took a red-eye to ORD and then to Syracuse today. I was so tired that I actually managed to sleep for once.

Sterling lake, boulders

Chloe and I headed up to Cisco Grove to try to get to Fordyce lake again. We had tried this on a previous trip, but kept running into closed private roads. This time however, we eventually found a road (rattlesnake road) off of Cisco Grove which led to Sterling lake and Fordyce lake. It's rutted in a few places but is a pleasant drive past a creek and boulder strewn landscape. There is even a decent looking camp site along the way. I had selected this area both because it was one of the places which looked like it might house some nice boulders but also because there were several lakes which looked similar to Salmon lake -- one of our favorites. We parked near the boy scout camp on the west side of the lake and started walking north on one of the trails

Sterling lake itself looks like a great place to bring a canoe

and we immediately stumbled on a beautiful boulder with a narrowing diagonal crack.

I threw myself at it quite a few times but was unable to crack the fingery sequence. After giving up, we headed to the small lakes northeast of Sterling, through meadows and snow banks


And found a huge log which reaches out into the lake



We headed west and found a few chossy boulders with very difficult topouts and then down to another lake just west and down the hill.


After a bracing swim, I was wading out of the water when Chloe let out a shriek; a three foot snake had fallen out of the bush she was holding on in order to get down to the water! Unfortunately, it fell onto the one rock which made my egress from the lake possible

This was an extremely unwelcome development since I am terrified of snakes, and the water was pretty cold. Chloe eventually shooed it away and I was able to get out of the water without having to fight the snake to the death.

It was getting late, and we still hadn't gotten to the area which had looked the most boulder rich by aerial photographs. Just getting to this lake had been a bit of a slog, so we decided to start heading back to the car. As it turned out, within five minutes of walking we found an excellent grouping of boulders with everything from knobby slabs

to proud aretes

to scared-just-looking-at-them highballs

Amazingly, despite being located on a hillside, two of the last three looked like they had nice flat landings!

We also found this absolute gem
with an immaculate rounded flake and a thin start



with a leg shaking topout. I didn't relish the idea of falling on that pine tree, and we only had the little pad with us!

From here, it was a painful and exhausting bushwhack up the hill

to get to the trail back to the car. I saved GPS waypoints so hopefully I can figure out a better approach next time.

After more fun offroading in the subie


we had dinner at a pizza place in Truckee and then drove back to Berkeley

kiting 3rd

I got an after work session in at third ave today. Somehow my leash broke and although I'm getting better at body dragging I still couldn't make it back to my board. Someone grabbed my board though, so it looks like I'm building up a lot of unpaid board returning karmic debt

Caution

I found a Caution promotional video which has a lot of Wadell footage.

If you dont have an S600, youre going to die

I came across an almost offensively bad advertisement in the back of the May 14 New Yorker:
copyright 2007 Mercedes Benz, USA.

Ummm... "The truck stopped in front of her without warning?" Well gosh, that must have been so scary! That would mean that all of that fancy equipment that the "S" class has: Big brakes (It brakes from 60 mph to a standstill in 113 feet), ABS, even radar guided cruise control couldn't stop her from rear ending and totaling her car. That truck must have had some amazing brakes! I think maybe the correct translation should be "Paula Varsalona was tailgating a truck, rear ended it and almost killed herself". Is it a credit to the Benz that she walked away? Of course, but I think the lesson here is "you shouldn't drive like an idiot", rather than "S-class Benzes save lives".

Respect to MB for all of the safety features they have innovated over the years which have trickled down to the rest of us dirty masses. No respect whatsoever for insinuating that all of that high tech gadgetry and a $140,000 car is more effective than the most basic key to staying alive on the highway: NOT TAILGATING.

As a final note, I think their choice of magazine is especially strange; why not a golf magazine? Why not a real estate magazine? Why not a private jet magazine or a yachting magazine? My guess is that the average New Yorker reader would find this advertisement as preposterous as I do.

Klinghoffers

We managed to find the Klinghoffers at Castle Rock State Park this time and discovered that we had been about 200 feet away from them at one point last time. It was a good time, and I sent the very balancey and fun "Achielle Larro" (sic), "Oswald Cheese Direct", some warm ups and the fantastic Klinghoffer Traverse.

The parents came over for an excellent meal of grilled lime-coconut shrimp, red snapper, fava beans, sweet corn and rice.

Santa Cruz

Chloe was invited to a retreat for her new employer in Santa Cruz at the Chaminade resort and I was invited too, as a hanger-on-spouse! I drove down last night and got a little lost downtown, but eventually made it to the hotel. This morning Chloe had a team building activity to go to, so I headed down to the water and watched a bunch of people learning how to surf at Cowells beach, which was kind of fun, and then down the road to the point break at Lighthouse State Beach, where there was a pro surfing contest. The purse was $2000 for first, and despite the relatively calm sea, a few guys caught some decent waves

Surf, Spiderman! Surf like crazy! Your hood fell off!



I dropped by the farmers marker and bought some excellent strawberries and a pound of Fava beans from a local organic farm and then headed back up to the spa to meet Chloe.

After lunch, Chloe and I drove down to paradise point and checked out a hidden gem of a surf spot:

(Shhhhh locals only dude! Don't tell anyone!) And the outrageous house prices and then walked along the beach up to the 26th street beach
.

From there, we drove up the coast to Big Basin, and more specifically Waddell, because I wanted to check out this somewhat famous wave kitesurfing break. It looked fantastic and its another thing to aspire to. I really wish I had a few extra thousand dollars and some time off to take lessons in the delta to get good enough to ride the coast and Crissy, but something tells me it won't happen this year!



Dropping a kite looks like a Very Bad Thing however, as we saw a few guys get their kites wrapped up in lines and then get the washing machine treatment.

Since we had massages scheduled for 5:00, we drove back after thirty minutes or so. The massage was excellent, and I discovered that I have a series of pretty painful knots in my back under both shoulder blades.

Ultrasounds!

Chloe had her big ultrasound today; everything looks great and "it" is a "she"!! The technician was really nice but had a hard time keeping up with the baby, who was jumping off of Chloe's cervix and squirming around like crazy.

Kiting alameda

I tried out my new Mystic Warrior harness today for the first time. At 1 pm, the wind was ramping up like yesterday, so I was worried about getting overwhelmed again, but it calmed down a bit and I got some nice riding in. There were a lot of gusts and holes again, but it was still fun. It took me the whole sesson to get used to the waist harness (vs. seat harness) and I was having a little trouble staying upwind. I also decided to skip the board leash and ended up getting blown downwind for a bit boardless. Thankfully, one of the locals grabbed the board and brought it back in! I really need to practice body dragging; maybe I'll bring a tennis ball out with me next time.

shoe

My commute (~6:30 AM or so) runs parallel to the BART tracks near the Oakland Colisseum, which means that I drive into the sun for a while. This morning, I was following a Camry along San Leandro Blvd. and the early light was illuminating something small under their car. It was dangling and swaying, and it was with a little bit of shock that I realized that it was a toddlers shoe! I'm sure there's a perfectly un-horrible explanation for why a size 2 shoe was stuck to the bottom of their car by a shoelace, but it was a little disturbing nonetheless.

skunked!

I never though I would say this, but I got skunked by too much wind at alameda today. People were out on pretty small kites, and the few hearties who went out on 12's were hanging on for dear life.

tsukiji

There is an interesting, if poorly written article on Tsukiji in Vanity Fair here.

Awesome!

This was parked in our lot today

A stretch Westy with RV hookups and a bitchin paint job!

Kenji Trap!

I rigged a flying plastic rat trap to keep Kenji on his toes

Kiting

I kited alameda today after getting skunked twice last week and seriously jonesing for some wind. It was a decent session, and Alameda is such a low key and zero stress place that it just makes for a more relaxing ride. Case in point: a guy on a red Waroo dumped his kite pretty far out and had to self rescue... something like that would be way scarier and more serious in the channel at 3rd.

I think people were burned out from the long weekend, because there really weren't very many people out. There were, however a lot of guys with brand new kites, harnesses, vests and helmets, so it looks like this years crop of newbies has arrived! I have a lot of empathy for them: untangling lines, taking forty minutes to set up during which time fifteen people have launched, getting stuck launching said kites, rechecking everything five times. ahhh. With my new kite with one-pump and lines that have only really been tangled once, thats mostly an annoying memory to me now!

In any case, it was a fun session with some nice boosts off of waves. I'm getting comfortable enough with the new kite that I'll start trying to do some kite initiated jumps again soon.

It looks like there were also some break ins in the lot yesterday, which really sucks. I saw some fresh glass on the ground on my way out and was wondering if that was what happened. When I initially parked, I noticed that there was a crazy looking old lady in a station wagon next to me. She was staring out of her junk piled car cramming an aluminum foil covered sandwich into her mouth. I wasn't happy about it at the time, but she probably scared the thieves away from my car!

Split Rock

We bouldered Split Rock today. Those things are TALL




we ran into two guys from SF... one of them had been to Kalymnos, so we talked about that for a while in the shade, and then moved on to the shadow boulder. I'm not sure it it was the fatigue setting in, but the ratings on the shadow boulder seemed about 2 grades off across the board. Despite the sandbagging, there are some really fun and unusual problems on it.

Odd Fellows

Back in the day, and I'm talking WAY back in the day here, my friend Keith's parents had a house in the small gold rush era boom town of Dutch Flat. It looks like a little new england town tucked away ... in the sierra foothills! We ended up spending a lot of time in Dutch Flat and eventually Alta when my parents bought the little chunk of land that Chloe and I got to most weekends now. There were all kinds of things to do in Dutch Flat: walk to the swimming hole (now surrounded by a chain link fence), head up to Salmon lake, walk down to the American river and on and on. Culturally, there were really two main events, and these were: the July 4th parade.

(From the left: Me, Leighton, Keith, Trevor)
and the Oddfellows breakfast. The latter was a prix fixe breakfast of coffee, eggs, bacon and pancakes and was an excellent deal at the time. I never saw it advertised in the years since, so I just assumed that it wasn't being done anymore. This was more than twenty years ago, and the people running it didn't exactly seem sprightly at the time.

It was therefore very very exciting to hear from Gail that they were still doing the breakfast, and one was being offered today! Despite having a cooler full of eggs and bacon, there was no question of our going. We got there around eight fifteen, and it was like time had stood still for twenty years. It was *exactly* the same scene



And still a great deal at $4 for eggs, bacon or sausage and pancakes. The strongest memory that I have of the oddfellows breakfast was that the bacon tasted really good. It still tastes very good, and the secret ingredient appears to be to deep fry the bacon after its cooked. Not on the "heart-smart"spectrum of foods, but pretty tasty.



My friend Paul from Williams drove all the was up from SF to check out Alta and met us at the Oddfellows. He had his amazingly well behaved dog, Mason with him and after showing him around the property a little, we all walked down to the Bear river via the PG&E trail. It was a beautiful day and Paul and I reminisced about college exploits which would probably land us in jail these days. After lunch back at the cabin, Paul, Gail and Kenji all left and I got back to work on the roof and finished one side:


The other side is going to be trickier: it's a lot dirtier, and there's a chimney with flashing to deal with.

Bouldering

we headed up to donner summit today for some more bouldering at the Grouse slabs. It was a beautiful day and I did a few problems that had shut me down previously. We met two L.A. climbers, one of whom was a pro climbing photographer and was about to go to Ireland to take climbing pictures from a helicopter! I may be in the wrong business.

34

I worked on putting on new roof shingles today



And we drove back to Berkeley, stopping for strawberries near Dixon and Chinese food with my parents