Punalu'u

We had a leisurely and delicious breakfast at Lava Java in Kona (where a sparrow shat on my shorts), and then set out south on the 11. It took a few hours to get to Punalu'u beach, and I was kind of disappointed when we arrived. It's pretty heavily built up and even has a concession stand on the beach: quite different from our beloved "secret beach". We fought the crowds to set up baby shop on the black sand for a while. Zoe didn't seem to enjoy it very much, but she gamely played, and washed down her crackers down with a few mouthfuls of sand


We bought a coconut which had been split by a local guy. He uses a gigantic machete which had been cobbled together from part of a mill blade. There was to be no haggling about the price on this item.

From Punalu'u, we drove (yes, lots of driving! It is the BIG island, after all) to South Point -- the southernmost part of the United States. We were scoping out the trail head to the Green Sand beach, but ended up at the cliffs with canoe hoists (NE of the actual South point). The water was very calm, and it looked like jumping into the water would be really fun. Actually, it looks like deep water soloing would be a total blast there. There's a shelf of rock under a lot of the cliff band, so choosing a spot would be critical. I shot a few medium format frames from one of the cliffs, and watched a kid jump from the cliffs as I was setting up.

It really is a beautiful place with a lot of history. I would love to spend a few days out there at some point. Chloe is the one with the Basque fisherpersons blood, so I'll let her catch the fish while I deep water solo -- sound good, CZ?!

Along the way home, we stopped at a fruit stand that sold soursop!

It turned out to be unripe, but it was very cool to see this sold at a roadside stand, reports of atypical Parkinson's disease from annona notwithstanding (I find those reports unconvincing, in any case).

Kona, Hilo

We started the day with a visit to the Aloha Angel Cafe, which has delicious french toast with coconut and macadamia nuts. As mentioned earlier, Zoe's newest hobby is to go running through and out of the restaurant, so we usually get to know the surroundings of the restaurant pretty well. Aloha Angel has two very cool things about it: a bush with hundreds of beautiful Gold Dust Day Geckos, and a gigantic mango tree. Here's one of the little geckos:

From breakfast, we drove South on route 11 and stopped near Captain Cook at the Greenwell Farms, where Zoe made friends with a cat



The tour is well worth the time, and includes a detailed and excellent description of the history of the farm, the coffee making process, and a tour of the various fruit trees that they grow.



After a brief stop to buy plumeria leis for chloe and gail, we drove south along the belt highway.
We continued on to Hilo, where we checked out the Farmers' market, and bought Papaya, Apple Bananas, macadamia nuts, papaya jam and some salad greens.

We also stopped at the Two Ladies mochi shop:

which makes the best mochi that I have had anywhere.

mochi

Big Island

After our abortive Oahu trip a few weeks ago, we made it to the plane with plenty of time. Zoe was actually a pretty good traveler, and after a short layover on Oahu, we landed at Kona. Car rental and finding the condo were easy, and after a short rest, we had an early dinner at Teshima, which was excellent. Kenji's sashimi plate, while lacking variety, was fabulous. I'm not a big fan of maguro usually, but this was better than most hamachi I have tasted. Also, my tempura was so good that I didn't have even a trace of fried food guilt. Zoe really enjoyed the locally produced tofu with ginger and onions.


Back at the condo, I noticed that the landscapers had used Natal Plums as ground cover. To my embarrassment, in my many years at the Salk, I walked by tons of those things without ever tasting them. This time, I selected a ripe looking fruit and bit into it, despite the fact that it was exuding a disturbing white latex of some kind. The verdict? Kind of tasty, but not fantastic.

ahh

my first ride longer than six or so miles on the new bike

zoe passport

went to apply for Zoe's passport

it's a boy!!!

Taras, Katie and Lucy!

Taras, Katie and Lucy came over for some grilling today. It was ultra cute to see the little ones interact. I think Zoe is still not 100% ready to play with other kids, based on her clingyness, but she seems to be getting better. I showed off my new flip mini HD to taras: I predict that he will soon have one of his own.

The quest for tires

After a refreshing night's sleep, we all headed to breakfast in Dutch Flat, only to find that neither the Oddfellows nor the Hotel were serving breakfast! Catastrophe! We drove to Colfax instead and went to Mom's Kitchen, which was good, but not Oddfellows-deep-fried-bacon good. None of the tire places were open either, which was nice. We called around and discovered that the closest tire place was Roseville/Rockin, which is pretty far, but better than limping all the way back to the bay area. After discovering that Costco and the evil Wal*Mart did not have our tires in stock, we eventually ended up at Sears after fifteen minutes of circling the city sized Westfield Galleria mall. We had lunch at Il Fornaio, and then wandered around the mall for hours waiting for our car to be ready. When we finally got the call to pick up the car, I asked what had caused the flat, and it turned out to be a pretty large rock, which had somehow made it INTO the tire. I was too tired to quiz the tire guys on how it got in there

Alta, Salmon Lake, Exploded tire

We drove to Alta today after our customary stop at Awful Annie's for waffles etc. Zoe was in a fairly good mood, but has developed a new and slightly annoying habit of insisting that she walk up and down the restaurant when she should be eating. She is impossible to resist, though.

I did some chainsawing in Alta to clear paths down to the river and bucked logs until Terry arrived, and then we all piled into the Subie. We hadn't been to Salmon lake in ages, so it seemed like a good moderate hike to do after last weekend's snowfest. Unfortunately, the first part of the hike to Salmon Lake was also covered in snow,

and the trail as a whole was a lot longer than I remembered for some reason. We all enjoyed the lake for a while (no desire whatsoever to jump in though!) and watched a family try to catch small catfish at the North end of the lake. After slipping and sliding back to the car, we discovered that the left rear Subie tire was COMPLETELY flat. The car was parked on a muddy slope, which made changing the wheel a little dicey: the jack sunk pretty far into the mud. Happily, the wheel came off without a problem and I had the spare on in fifteen minutes or so. Next came the teeth gritting six miles of dirt road back to pavement. Ergh. We decided that it was late enough that tire replacement was going to have to wait until tomorrow. In the mean time... beer and blue cheese burgers. ZZN was a little backed up, which had been making her understandably irritable all day, and it was aggravated by her being tired. Happily, the dam reached a breaking point right before before bedtime, and chloe and I settled down to a relaxing night into the brand new tent with Zoe. By "relaxing", I of course mean a hellish night of crying, loud snorting noises and random kicks to the head. Zoe managed to rotate perpendicular to chloe and I and repeatedly kicked off of my face in order to head butt chloe. I lost count of how many times this happened, but suffice it to say that we will not be repeating the baby camping experience any time soon. I guess we will have to be happy with day trips. Here zoe is, looking tired after an exhausting night of parent abuse:

See how she feigns innocence with her thumb in her mouth!

new bike!!!

A hand built lugged steel frame with Campy Chorus components (bought used).

(image by Phil S., the bike's previous owner)

alea iacta est. ESPP suspended!

Chloe pregnant!!!!!!

chloe pregnant!

ugh

Yesterday we discovered that the workers had accidentally unplugged our deep freezer in the course of their work two weeks ago. And by "we", I mean that I found Chloe whimpering and pointing to the freezer and then to the obviously unplugged cord. Knowing that Chloe would practice a strategy of avoidance, I tackled the cleanup operation today.

Rather than go into the details of the olfactory assault that awaited my opening of the freezer door, let me just tell you what was in there: steaks, seafood, chicken stock and a few other things. The thing about steaks packed in paper is that they tend to leak when they thaw. Imagine what a standing pool of blood smells like after two weeks at room temperature. It was a nasty business, and hopefully the neighbors didn't get too freaked out. I had elbow length gloves on and was soon spattered with a mixture of Formula 401 and blood. Also, shuttling black garbage bags from the basement out to the trash might have looked a little suspicious. All I can say is that I take payment in Cooks Illustrated recipe brownies if, for example, someone wanted to thank me!

feijoa

One of our Feijoas is flowering!

Hopefully they will get fertilized and set fruit!

Freeley Lake

We drove up to the Carr Lake trailhead today, but discovered that it was completely snowed in! Not willing to give up, we parked the car a few hundred feet down from the trailhead and set off on foot, but soon got into the deep stuff. Even though we weren't sinking that much, it was tough going, and we gave up at the East end of Freeley Lake (mostly because we couldn't tell where the trail went). A few pics:




On the way back, I noticed a peculiar bluish-grey dust near the edge of some snow


and bent down to discover that it wasn't so much dust as a seething lawn of disgusting bugs:


We drove to Alta, where I was happy to see that the apple was doing well and had even sprouted new clusters of leaves. No sign of life in the grafts though. Zoe was too tired to even leave the car,

so Chloe stayed with her while I brought another 25 gallons of water up to the tree.

ugh

we were supposed to go to hawaii today, but missed the flight -- going to the mountains instead. :(

alta

We drove up to Alta from Sacto for the day and met Paul + family for a barbecue: blue cheese burgers, corn and sausages. We *finally* planted the fuji apple tree that had been sitting around in my parents front yard getting root bound for the past three months. Hopefully it will survive! I hand toted ~25 gallons of water from the river up to the apple tree's new home, so here's hoping it's not grafted onto super thirsty rootstock. I also set up a few grafts which are very very unlikely to work. I had been saving scion wood from the CFRG exchange back in January. Normally, I think you're only supposed to keep them around for a few months, so there is a good possibility that they are dead! The "rootstock" (i.e. what I was grafting onto) was a wild cherry tree, which was also quite a long way away from being dormant, so it will be interesting to see if any grafts take. I'm told grafting plums are pretty stupid-proof, but I wonder if they can be THIS stupid proof? Grafts completed:


Santa Rosa
Satsuma
Golden Nectar
Elephant heart (x2)
Inca
Beauty

rock and roll!

Mom's Opening

Mom had her gallery opening at the Sakata Garo gallery in Sacramento today. I have to admit that I've never had a very high opinion of Sacto, but that changed completely during this trip. The gallery is in a section of town lines but numerous and beautiful huge trees. It's super bike friendly, and there was even a huge street party this evening -- very cool.

Before the opening, we took Zoe to the pool in her new swimsuit, which was pretty adorable:







The opening went very well, and Paul and Nikki brought Emmett and Joshua up from their new home base in Davis. Zoe looked very cute in her new French dress:







I think I could easily live in Sacramento if I could do commute by bike. It has a nice vibe, and a small town feel to it, and as an added bonus, its closer to the mountains!

Chloe

four months pregnant

grafts

Most of my grafts (guerilla and otherwise) have worked, and it is amazing to see how fast they can grow. Here are some photos of the plum tree in my back yard:



And one to our pear tree

Zoe vs. Ladybug

LNL HUTZ

While we were walking to Boulevard on Saturday, I saw (and parked behind) this car:

Which was heartwarming, because I never imagined that there was an intersection between the Simpsons aficionado set and the people-who-appreciate-and-can-afford-Maserati-Cambiocorsas set.

I googled the plate of course, and it turns out that the original license plate support device for that plate was a Toyota MR2! Quite a jump, I'd say.

woot!

Chloe's birthday dinner @boulevard

Layovers

had a layover in Munich airport. Not much to see or do, and only pay wifi via T-mobile (probably the worst mobile carrier in the developed world). There were APCs waiting outside the terminal!

FONDUE!

This morning I woke up ridiculously early as usual (jet lag is KILLING me this time) and hung out in the jardin de ville, working on my iphone app. I also had a video chat with my friend Paul in Davis, which was fun. After getting my fill of free wifi, I headed to Enrique and Leslie's place, but managed to end up in the wrong building. Lolo had given me the building access code the previous evening, which I punched into the keypad. I heard the buzz of the door lock clicking open and walked into a dark corridor. I wasn't sure if I had copied the number down correctly last night, so I was relieved to be spared the embarrassment of yelling up at the window to try to get Enrique's attention. As I walked through the hall, I noticed that the building was in a pretty appalling state. Huge curls of paint were peeling off of the walls, and -- horror of horrors -- the nameplates on doors were written on paper! Shocking! Anyway, I didn't see the name that lolo had given me on any of the doors, and I was beginning to think that something was very wrong indeed. As I left the building, I noticed a plaque commemorating the fact that Stendhal had lived there. I'm sure he would be disappointed. Anyway, it turned out that Enrique +family were in the next building over which curiously had an identical door code. Their building and apartment were a lot nicer. After a tour of the apartment, I showed them the local amenities: market at places aux herbes (special care taken to point out the pouletmobile), Arthaud, K-store, Dalbe, Talemelerie (sp? I never get that one right), and finally, Les Alpages. In my absence, the cheese man has apparently won some kind of major fromagier honor, and so has his lieutenant (take a look at their website and video). They also have a sous vide machine, so I ordered almost a kilogram of comte de montagne and some tomme crayeuse as well. The Lt even recognized me, which was heartwarming. I love that place.

We made one last stop at the children's clothing store, where I couldn't resist buying another outfit for ZZN and then had lunch along the tramway.

After lunch, we headed back to Enrique and Leslie's place and had some cheese and wine, and then it was time for me to head over to the EMBL. I did make a stop at Etam to get Chloe a few things and then I hopped on the 34 bus.

After a little kerfuffle at the guard gate because I had lost my badge (edit: it turned up in my back pocket a week later), I hung out in the newly refurbished EMBL library. A view of the Chartreuse is a pretty sweet environment to be working on an iphone app! A bit later I met up with Franck, headed to St. Egreve to pick up his son Artur, and then on to his house at the foot of the Neron. I've mentioned it before, but Franck is extremely fortunate to live in a beautiful stone house which shares a large grass field with several other people. It's an amazing piece of wilderness ten minutes from the synchrotron. This time he showed me a few of the trails that lead up to a spring and I got to try out his VX125.

Even before I arrived, Franck had promised me a fondue, but he didn't tell me that it was going to be a very special one made of amazing cheese from the Laiterie Bayard. I did my best, but was not able to help Franck finish the fondue. I think I did ok for a ricain, though. As usual, there was an incredible bottle of wine involved. I had previously not been a big fan of white wines, but this one has changed my mind forever. It was a burgundy (I think it was a "St. Aubin"), and not only was it delicious, but it was a perfect complement to the fondue. Dessert was an entire cake made of ice cream from the green arch ice cream place near the jardin de ville. All the flavors were good, but the cassis in particular was out of this world. Thanks, Franck!!