Venetian

Today, we mobilized everyone to go to Bouchon at the Venetian. It took a lot of effort to wake Zoe, for some reason:

As far as getting people to the Venetian, this presented somewhat of a problem, as we were seven adults and two children (and no car). We decided that the monorail would be a good way to do it, but it turned out to be a bit of a bust: with all the walking, we could probably have just walked to the Venetian (in the rain, but we were used to it at this point). It's also expensive and slow. My recommendation: take a cab! Zoe enjoyed it, though:

We eventually made it to the Venetian, and went to Bouchon via the Grande Canal, of course.

Lunch (we got there too late for breakfast) was very good, but it is probably better for breakfast. Our main complaint was with the wait staff, who could not seem to get any orders straight. One of them even moved the stroller that Alex was in, waking him up in the process. Also, in this haven of Thomas Keller cuisine, I was surprised at the chips that they served. This being Bouchon, when they asked whether we wanted chips, chloe and I both said yes, imagining some kind of "fried in duck fat" extravagance. Unfortunately, the reality of Bouchon Chips turned out to be rather disappointing: a bus boy with a handful of Kettle Chips (and no idea who to give them to).
Zoe decided that Chloe would look better in a habit


Next: a parting of ways to go in various directions.



Kenji, Gail and I went back to the hotel so I could learn how to play craps after wandering around the Grande Canal with Stephanie


Kenji, Gail and I had dinner at Mon Ami Gabi, where my plan was to get something light, but I did not succeed. The food was excellent, as usual. Kenji's "day boat" scallops in particular were excellent. I've seen the "day boat" description several times now, and did not know what it meant. It turns out to refer to the method of cultivation.

Red Rocks

Despite the rain, I woke up early to try to get some morning light at Red Rocks. After my customary lurking in front of the cafe to check email, I headed to the parking lot. Along the way I was passed by three barefoot (Did they start the evening with shoes?) Korean women returning to the hotel in an appalling state of intoxication. Appalling, I say!

I arrived at the Red Rocks turnoff before dawn, so I killed time by wandering around the Red Rocks resort, taking pictures of the massive steel cage that will soon become a new place to lose money. The pictures did not turn out well, though. Next, I drove up the road to Red Rocks, but unfortunately a flash flood had turned the road into a river, complete with river cobbles. Normally I would have just driven through it (Rental car!) but it was fully blocked off by the road guys. One of them had been up guarding the road since the wee hours, but was nice and let me photograph the carnage


I got back in time for breakfast at the Bellagio



From there, we took in the massively underwhelming and overpriced art Gallery with Jon and Zoe.

Next, Jon and I somewhat foolishly decided to go to Fry's. This involved waiting a long time for the express bus, and then discovering that Las Vegas is really not very well set up for pedestrians -- particularly during heavy rain. The bus let us off at a small stretch of sidewalk, which we walked to the end of, and then found ourselves walking through what looked like railroad track ballast. We were unable to find another sidewalk (or corsswalk) for what seemed like a long time, but there was enough stopped-dead traffic that we were able to cross at some speed bumps without getting run over. Once we arrived at Fry's, I found a 2TB drive for about $100, which should be pretty useful in corralling all these 35 mb raw files from the Pentax. They did not have what we had come looking for, however (A present for Sue which I will not reveal). Once out of Fry's, we were in the rain (again), and quickly ran out of sidewalk (again). This time, there were no rocks, but a wide swampy field which we cut through. We eventually made it to a crosswalk, but it was inundated. Faced with the choice between running through traffic and walking up to our ankles in disgusting curb water, we chose the latter. Luckily, it was only for a few steps! Next, it was more mud walking until the sidewalk eventually started again and we found the shelter for the return bus. Unfortunately the term "shelter" is a little generous, and was little more than a place to lean against, and of almost no use against the rain that was now coming in sideways. The bus eventually did show up, but died within a few blocks. The driver advised us to get onto the bus behind us, since this one would not be going any further. We obliged, and were soon on our way again, but an unruly passenger got in an argument with the driver, which stopped the bus for a while. By the time Jon and I finally arrived back at the hotel, we had learned a valuable lesson: avoid public transportation in Las Vegas!


Later that night Chloe and I had a rare dinner away form the kids at Olives, which was excellent: probably the best prime rib I have ever had. Thanks, everyone, for watching the kids, and to Gail and Kenji for funding the outing!!

Laaas Vegas

Chloe, Christa , Stephanie and the kids and parents had breakfast together in the hotel



The parents and I decided to rent a car and drive out to the Valley of Fire, which was quite beautiful, even in the poor light. I was gently introducing myself to shooting raw and just generally shooting digital landscapes on the K-5. I had brought along my uncles ancient Japanese tripod which was not significantly better than shooting hand held with shake reduction on.

Despite the abundant beauty of France, I miss scenery like this sometimes. We started by looking at the ancient petroglyphs high on a red sandstone buttress (Atlatl Rock)

and then stopped at the extremely underwhelming natural arch. I didn't take a picture, but imagine a small scale model of what you can find in Arches. After taking a few pictures *without* the arch

we drove to the visitor center, and I took a few more photos


and then off to White Domes


and then on the dirt track to Silica Dome. We were in a rental car, and that (in my opinion) obliges you to treat your car like a rally car and get it sideways, but the parents were definitely not on board with that idea.

At this point, we were starting to get hungry, but did not have any food with us. Nor was there any kind of concession stand or even snack machine for miles. We continued along Lake Mead until we eventually found a place with snacks, and we dined on a sumptuous meal of beef jerky, chips and peanuts. The color of the lake is a spooky turquoise color

We continued on and saw some dramatic skies to the north, so I stopped and shot with different combinations of ISO and f stop. I am still trying to figure out good compromises between ISO, dynamic range and noise. I'm happy with this shot, though.

For dinner, we went to Wolfgang Pucks. We walked along the skyways and passed by the opulent shop displays that just seem normal when you are in Las Vegas. One shop had at least several million dollars worth of watches on display, like this three hundred thousand dollar Breguet double Tourbillion:








After some pizza and calamari, it was time to go back to the hotel. Unbeknownst to us, Zoe had surreptitiously removed her shoes during the dinner, and walked all the way back to our hotel along the strip with no shoes on





The socks that we tossed in the trash



mom on the strip:

Flight to Las Vegas

We flew to LAS fom OAK today. TSA was, for once, efficient. And I have to say that the Soutwest terminal at Oakland is pretty nice. As I mentioned, TSA is efficiently organized (even if most of what they do is "security theatre", to borrow a term), and they actually have an abundance of electrical outlets! How many times have you been in an airport where you find people with laptops huddled near columns because of the dearth of outlets? My answer to this would be: MANY. Next big thumbs up: free wifi. No ridiculuous day passes or memberships that are only good at one or two airports -- free. The final thumbs up: wall USB ports to recharge your phones/ipods etc! Excellent.

Once arrived in Las Vegas, we took the annoying shuttle to the strip, where we were staying in.... Paris Las Vegas! The elevators were piping in some familiar sounding music, and it took chloe and I a little while to figure out that it was one of the excellent Putumayo French CDs that we used to play for Zoe quite often.

We had dinner in the hotel, which was excellent, and met up with Stephanie. Jon and Christa would arrive later in the evening.

Oakland Museum, Kirala

After a lethargic morning





The parents and I took Zoe to the Oakland Museum, where they had a special Pixar exhibit. Since Zoe's favorite movie right now is "Finding Nemo", it was a must see. She didn't have much patience for the hand drawn pictures of characters from various movies. However, they had created a beautiful Zoetrope of characters from Toy Story, which was amazing. The large (2 meter?) platter would start spinning up slowly, and then the strobe would turn on, and all of a sudden there were jumping, lassoing and galloping Pixar characters everywhere!

We had a quick snack in the museum cafeteria, where Zoe marveled at the giant koi in the moat

and then we all went upstairs to see some of the permanent collection

There were paintings by a lot of my parents friends there, including Kenji's old friend Charles Farr. A very youthful Charles:

Seeing the self portrait brought back many memories of my dad taking me to Charles' place on Potrero Hill. Charles had a large studio that extended into his yard, and although I was very young, was aware of how quickly he seemed to age. So many good friends of Kenji and Gail were a part of my childhood, that I came to take their presence for granted. It was a shock when they started dying, and I realised that they would not always be there. I think Charles was the first of these. On that cheery note, we looked at a lovely display of the famous association of photographers known as Group f64. They happened to have on display one of my favorite photographic portraits of all time (of Charis Wilson by Ed Weston). As well as some view cameras, and a Zeiss SLR from 1910!



They also had an excellent Diebenkorn section

From the museum, we went home for a quick break before heading to Kirala for Robata and sushi

Codornices

After a jet lag driven early morning wake up, Zoe and I drove up to Codornices park this morning for some swing and jungle gym time. It was a little cold and damp, but she descended several slides, went on two swing sets, and climbed the play structures.

We walked through the tunnel that I used to run and yell through as a child (We did a little stomping of our own, of course), and into the Rose Garden. Although there were not many roses in bloom at this time of year, Zoe seemed to enjoy it, but was more focused on picking the tiny leaves of shrubs and collecting them into piles than looking at roses. When I inquired why she would do such a thing, she replied that it was for the cats and dogs to eat (in French). From there, we drove up to the Botanic Gardens in Tilden. Here, Zoe gathered some fallen sycamore leaves for various family members

before insisting on being carried on "Daddy shoulders", which I can never resist.

Later on, we picked the sole passion fruit from the vine that I planted next to the parental house


In other news, a few months ago our Macbook Air broke -- a hinge cracked in half, separating the display from the CPU, and severing a wire. Of course, like most IT departments, work refused to buy any kind of Mac, and instead offered a piece of garbage Dell. Having used both Dells and Macs extensively, I can say that the higher end Dells make fine Linux workstations, but as far as a productivity tool for science, the Dells (running windows, at least) are a poor substitute. Anyway, I gave up on the idea of actual support from our IT department, and just on a whim brought the Macbook into the Apple store in Emeryville. Despite the computer being way out of warranty, they happily accepted the computer and repaired it at no cost. I also got to fondle some iPads, which I initially thought were useless, but now covet. Yes!