Gold Wall

After our experience earlier in the week at "the other crag", we headed to the Gold Wall on Bryan's advice. This time we didn't have the baby, so there were fewer logistical things to deal with. We got to the crag around 10 or so, and there were two other sets of people climbing there (one of whom had beta for all the routes). We warmed up on one of the 10's to the right, then accidentally got on the 11c to the right of deliverance and got smacked down. I did stacked deck and check engine on sight (both super fun) and we hopped on deliverance+extension just as the sun started cooking the wall. The extension was crumbly, but fun. All in all it was another great day on Table Mountain, and we are both so excited for the fall. Since chloe gets every other friday off, our plan is to do a minimum of one friday a month here or at the other crag this fall and winter. I guess I had better start saving those vacation days!!

New seats for Zoe

After noticing that ZZN was looking cramped in her infant seat, we did a little research on convertible seats and went with the Britax Marathon in Cowmooflage. Zoe seems to like it, and the installation is very easy. I wish it had a sun shade though.

Table mountain

I've been hearing about a local sport crag named for the nearby Jail since I started climbing. It's on private land, so climbers have tried to be good "wardens" and not publish topos or directions online. A guy I know from the gym generously gave me directions there, so we headed out with Zoe and a another friend from the gym (Bryan) today.





We didn't get very many routes in, and in a Lynn Hill moment I didnt finish my knot (which was thankfully caught by someone else), but I gotta say that I love this place. Since we moved back from Grenoble, its been a little hard not having the abundance of nearby sport crags that we did in France. While not Ceuse by any means, this crag is really a blast. Lots of beta intensive moves, big blocky features, jugs everywhere, fixed draws and a cool vibe are hopefully going to make this a frequent destination for us this winter (It gets too hot in the summer). I feel like a piece of our lives has been given back to us!

Heres ZZN, at the end of the day and still happy


As for routes: We warmed up on the first four bolts of a route to the right of "Soap on a rope", did the two warm up 11ds (The eagles were no longer nesting) and then I did some of the moves on Soap, with a lot of beta from the locals. Its a fabulous route, but I need some serious improvements in my endurance before I try to link.

Alta

We headed up for the first time in a looooong time to Alta. The last time Christa and Tom were up here, we bagged on an Alta trip, but we were determined to make it this time. I took Friday off, and we headed out fairly early from Oakland. We stopped at Awful Annie's on the way up for some cholesterol and to feed ZZN. We were happy to find the cabin unmolested by the local mouth breathers, but in need of a little sweeping. The tub drain had been left closed by the last users (ahem!), and had filled up with mucky water and a lot of spider corpses.

Happily though, the hot water heater had not exploded from all the freeze thaw cycles and we were all (well, not Zoe) able to take baths. We had ample fuel from a large oak that had fallen over since our last visit:


For her part, Zoe was very well behaved and happily napped on the crash pad during the day


I got to work bucking parts of the fallen tree and milling a few chunks for cutting boards:



And then showed Tom around the property, while the ladies headed into town for refreshments



It rained throughout the night, unfortunately, so we decided to get an early start the next day, stopping again at awful annies on the way down the hill. Zoe had taken this opportunity to produce one of her patented "Pant soaker" diaper escaping poops ("Hey, why is her onesie wet?")

Christa and Tom here!

Christa and Tom are out for a break from living on the set of the Wire and some Zoe time.

dinner with Zoe

We headed up to a party that some family friends were having in the Berkeley Hills today. Zoe was fairly well behaved, except for a few moments of baby anger:

Tomatoes

I finally got around to planting tomatoes. I have four different heirloom varieties from Berkeley Hort, as well as one from a guy from our climbing gym.

market day

Another trip to the farmer's market. Find of the day: Fatted Calf Basque Sausages.

I also discovered that Zoe likes to fly:

fancy table

We bought a nice Cherry table from Traditions on 4th street

Las Trampas

A few weeks ago while walking in Redwood Regional Park, I saw what looked like cliff bands off in the distance to the East. I did some google maps surveillance and discovered that they were most likely in Las Trampas Regional Park. Today was the day we planned to check them out, and although we got a late start, I was excited to see if they were climb worthy, or useless rubble piles. Unfortunately, in my excitement, I didn't look at a topo map of the trail that I had planned on taking, and it turned out to be a bit of an uphill slog with Zoe. It was made worse by the fact that when we finally got to the ridge line the wind picked up. This wasn't a problem for mom and dad, but Zoe strongly objected to it, and I had to start jogging down the other side to get out of the wind. Here I am before the run, and already bushed

And here we are on the other side:


We got out of the wind under some BOULDERS (yaaaaay!) which turned out to be sandstone, but coated in lichen. Some of them look climbable though.
.
After feeding Zoe, we took stock of where we were. We still were not where google maps showed the cliff band, so we went down the other side and found this:

which looked a bit low angle and also covered with lichen, but potentially interesting. This particular rock wasn't even visible on Google Maps, actually.

It was at this point that things got a little unpleasant. The cliff band was supposed to be off to the North, but there was no discernible trail. Worse yet, we were running out of time: the park service locks the gate to the parking lot at 7 pm and it was now close to 6:00. We bushwhacked a little through the tall grass and wild sage, but quickly abandoned hope and began heading back up to the ridge via established trails. Once at the ridge trail, we took the Cuesta trail back down towards the lot. Both the wind and Zoe were now howling, and we had to hand carry her for most of the way back down to the car. I think the 7 pm gate locking might be a bit flexible, as there were still plenty of cars in the lot at 6:45 and people were casually grilling in the picnic area. Here is our approximate route, and here is a 1.6 Mb PDF map of the park. From the map, it looks like ~1300 ft of gain total, and nothing like even the approach to Ceuse, but MAN was it tiring!

It's a beautiful park, but next time we'll leave a lot more time for walking the trails.

another market trip

The blog has been a little uneventful lately: too much weekend programming sessions and not enough road trips to the desert I guess! Eventually I'm sure I will get tired of writing about our trips to the farmer's market, but it's still novel enough to me to merit the occasional (ok, frequent) posting.

It was Earth Day at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park, and we unfortunately discovered that this makes parking for the farmers market a little difficult. It does make for some amusing pictures though:

There's something a little troubling about the words "Spinal Exam" hanging from a tent. I guess it's better than a liver transplant.

I just love how this lady (maybe the artist?) feels like it's necessary to tell the four burly dudes where to go while they are struggling just trying to get the damn borg-cube off of the truck without field-amputating any of their limbs.

Not too much exciting stuff was acquired this time, except for the delicious Tan Oak honey, and the usual Himalayan lunch, which Zoe coveted



Next was a trip down to fourth street for a crepe pan from Sur la Table, a dining room table from Traditions, and an ice cream from Sketch: All we needed was a trip to Weatherford BMW and we would have had the Perfect Yuppie Day. By this time, little ZZN was worn out, and it was time to go home

Farmers market, LHOS

We went to the Farmer's market again today and met up with one of the grandmothers

followed by the usual overspending on fruits and veggies

I bought a pretzel from the German guy with the lederhosen (hey, if you're gonna buy a pretzel -- that's the guy you want to buy it from right?) and then we started heading back to the car. Chloe and I got separated by a funeral procession for a Fireman


who had died of cancer. I'm not usually very affected by the designated occasions when you are expected to display your joy or sorrow, but there was something unexpectedly profound about this that took me by surprise emotionally. After watching all of his fellow firemen and women and his family pass by, (much to my embarrassment) I found myself trying to hide my red eyes from random passersby.

Next, we headed back to Oakland to feed and change the baby, and then headed up to the Lawrence Hall of Science. The LHOS is a science museum with sweeping views of the bay area which also happens to be where I spent many blissful childhood days learning obscure computer languages like PILOT, natural history and basic electronics. I even went to their summer camp in the Santa Cruz mountains, where I got the worst case of poison oak of my life. We met Katie, Taras and Lucy in the courtyard

and checked out the Speed exhibit, followed by relaxing on the new (to me) back patio.


(photos by Taras)
where we were joined by Caleb: an old Swan Systems buddy.

Farmers Market

We took a family trip to the Berkeley Farmers Market, where I again spent way too much money on food. The highlights were sugary baby carrots, ultra sweet japanese sweet potatoes, beautiful Swiss chard, perfect yukon gold potatoes, wild boar sausages, strawberries, purple asparagus, delicious oranges, and eggs from carefree and unionized chickens. Oh yeah, and really good himalayan food for lunch!



Later on, we headed up to the little farm in Tilden to show little ZZN the animals

megalamp, the return

Using the lessons I learned from Megalamp I, I designed and built MaxiLume Turbo Type R this weekend. The design is pretty similar to the original instructables design, but with a few key differences.

1)Log pot (http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail?name=P3H8502-ND), Panasonic EVU-F2MFL3D53
2)Cree XR-E, Q5 bin from DealExtreme. These took *forever* to arrive. Next time, I will try ordering from Cutter in Oz.
3)Flashlight clicky switch from DealExtreme
4)Running LEDs at 1000mA instead of 500mA, since the spec says they can handle that kind of current
5)Only 3 LEDs used, wired in series, not series parallel
6)Buckpuck, pot and switch are all cleverly mounted on the headlamp harness.
7)Used fancy Arctic Silver thermal epoxy, and I actually bought a heat sink (which still ended up being a bit small)


The instructables design outputs an anemic ~200 lumens without the squishy 2.5X blue correction factor at 8 watts. MaxiLume Turbo Type R however outputs a testosterone laden ~660 lumens at 11 watts, (~500 lumens at 8 watts), so better than 2x the efficiency... and you can run it super hot if you want too!

I'm using the same 10 cell battery pack with Tenergy cells, so 12 Volts, 2600 mA. The three Crees drop the voltage 11.1 volts at 1000 mA, so 12 V is just about perfect for a buck driver. Using LED pro, I should get these ball park run times:

Current (mA)    Battery life (hours)     Lumens
1000                             2.3                    660 
800                               3.0                   540
600                               4.1                   450
400                               6.5                   330

lenses (l2 optics) at left, 1000mA buckpuck at the upper left, fancy epoxy lower left, old Petzl headlamp harness at right, heatsink (http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail?name=345-1062-ND wakefield 628-65AB) middle top.

mounted LEDs


more or less finished: wide angle sub lenses on


Let there be light! Now all I need is one of those "Let there be light" T-shirts with Maxwell's equations, and I could give up all hope of escaping nerddom


Heres a closup of the head piece.


And here we are in a dark room. I have found that one of each of the three sub lenses make a nice compromise of wideness and spot. Note that there is no trickery here. ISO 200, f 4.5, 1/30 second exposure.... BRIGHT!

kick butt brownies

I bought a hand cranked pasta maker a while ago at Sur La Table, and it came with a free subscription to Gourmet Magazine. My impression of Gourmet had previously been that it was kind of old school (I was expecting "Grandmas Beef Brisket" type recipes), but we've been pleasantly surprised by the content. Last week we also received a free issue of Cooks Illustrated, which had a GREAT brownie recipe. It's done serious damage to my new weight loss scheme, but what the hell.

I have to admit that I didn't like Cooks Illustrated at all at first, because I avoid Molecular Gastronomy like the plague. I get enough science at work, thank you very much. On reading it more closely, I really like it. It has good recipes and lots of practical information.