We all but finished Francks super bottle of wine tonight, discussed camera stuff and came up with a cool design for the megal bike light Mk. III. I think the configuration of lights and driver board is quite logical. The bigger questions are how expensive the part will be to manufacture and whether it can adequately dissipate the heat from twelve (!) LEDs. I finally have settled on Cree MC-Es -- smaller footprint, more optics, no enforced parallel circuitry.
My friend Franck was kind enough to invite me to dinner on my first night in town, which was really a nice way to ease into my stay in grenoble! He opened a superb bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin to accompany a perfect hearty dinner of charcuterie, salad, potatoes and cheese. It seemed quite close to Raclette, but maybe it wasn't an Official Raclette?
Anyway, jetlag is hitting me hard this time. I also forgot about the fact that you loose a day coming in this direction.
On my commute home, I take 101N on the causeway through Brisbane. They've been building new condos on the Southern face of the Bayview park (That hill that rises just west of Candlestick). In today's economy, I would imagine that they are having trouble selling these condos, which seems to be confirmed by the fact that there is now a big billboard saying something like "If you lived here, you would be home already", or something to that effect. I had to laugh while passing it yesterday though, as the reek from the garbage dump a few hundred feet upwind of the new condos permeated my car. The sad part is that the wind blows the same direction pretty much every day from the spring until the fall. That's why its a favorite windsurfing spot, in fact. If you factor in the eight lanes of freeway, and the carcasses of Seagulls (they flock to the dump and get hit by cars on 101), you have to wonder what they were thinking when they built houses there.
We just had a sump pump installed next to our downstairs bedroom. We might be able to move our junk back in soon! I think we'll paint the room before we do that, as long as we've lugged all of our stuff upstairs. EXCITING!
Since my accident, I've had several stress dreams related to car accidents. In one, I had crashed chloe's GTI (which we sold ages ago), and I was desperately trying to re-attach the bumper, wheels and other parts of the demolished chassis. LAst night I was driving some kind of classic car -- an old Merc, I think -- and was worried about not having ABS or traction control. Shortly after thinking about that, the car went into a skid and plowed into a building. Nice! I'm no psychotherapist, but I have a hunch that these dreams just might be related to my car crash in January.
Now that I've given up any hope of climbing outside in our day to day life, the climbing gym has become our new home. We usually go to the oakland gym, but occasionally end up in Berkeley, which has gotten ridiculously crowded recently. Last night we totally lucked out and happened to be there when the teenage mutant climbing team was working out. It was sweet: every inch of the lead cave decked out in ropes and kids climbing 5.13. While I was cursing our decision to climb on a Tuesday night, I came to the realization that 1)zoe (hopefully) will be one of those kids at some point, so I should just calm down about having to elbow our way through them to get on the moderates and 2)competitive climbing in the US is amazingly under-resourced compared to europe. Even poor european countries have full time coaches, dedicated training facilities and state money to climb. France, for example, which has historically produced many international competitive climbing stars, has a very impressive facility in Aix-en-Provence. A lot of the kids from the gym are internationally competitive, but you have to wonder how much better they would do with the euro resources!
We went on a family trip to the new California Academy of Sciences, which was fabulous. Unfortunately, the rain forest sphere was closed, but we made up for it by spending a lot of time in the Water Planet. We did the following routine for almost every display:
1)Carry Zoe towards exhibit
2)Zoe starts trembling with excitement and demands to be let down
3)Zoe stands in front of glass and pounds on the glass/plastic with fists
4)Zoe points at fish and makes "oooh!" noises
5)Repeat 3 and 4 for five to ten minutes
6)Pick Zoe up
7)Zoe begins screaming and arching her back, stretching her arms back towards the fish
8)Zoe begins crying and peoples heads turn
9)Zoe sees the next exhibit
10)Go back to 1)
We also checked out the rooftop garden, where I overheard a docent say that they had evacuated the viewing platform earlier in the day(swarm of bees). From the CAS, we walked to the botanical garden, and then had a big Japanese dinner in Japantown. I'll upload pictures in a few days.
After I pick Zoe up from day care we usually go for a walk to the park or around the garden. Before the walk, however, Zoe gets a snack, and because she is sixteen months old, she usually ends up smearing whatever she is eating all over my hair and clothes. Because of this, Chloe and I have taken the simple precaution of always changing into non work clothes as soon as we start handling our little walking hazmat. Today I did just that, grabbing a pair of shorts (woohoo California!) out of the dryer and walking out the door, led by Zoe. She's not walking on her own yet, but she enjoys walking while holding our hands. I was trying to steer her towards the garden, but she seemed to be fixated on walking down the street, so I followed along. Several cars passed by with people smiling broadly at the two of us. I just assumed that they were smiling at Zoe's cuteness at the time. When I got home though, I discovered another possible explanation: it turned out that a pair of red panties had attached themselves to the velcro closure of one of my back pockets and I had been walking around with them stuck to my ass the whole time.
I pressure washed all of the brick walkways at my parents and our house today. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me, but pressure washers generate a LOT of mud and dirt splashback. I looked like this by the end of the day:
Zoe has been an enthusiastic accomplice in my recent quest for unusual fruit. I think that she is probably pretty unique in having already tasted Feijoa, White Sapote, Red Strwaberry Guava, Babaco, Cape Gooseberry, Passionfruit in her first fifteen months! Despite their sourness, her favorite seems to be passionfruit, with Cape Gooseberry a close second.
I just planted a bare root Seckel Pear. Here's hoping it survives and maybe even sets fruit!
I grafted Elephant Heart, Golden Nectar, Santa Rosa and Satsuma to this tree
View Larger Map
I redeemed my Birthday gift from Chloe today, at long last. We drove down to the hangar that houses Skydive Monterey Bay(in our new Prius!), but upon arrival were informed that there would be another few hours of waiting. The catch is that they want you to wait AT the hangar, where there is pretty much nothing to do except watch people pack parachutes and gripe with other people about the lack of organization. Instead of waiting, we hopped over to a nearby deli to grab a sandwich, and soon enough I was getting the quick five minute training on what was about to happen. Chloe had ordered videography as part of my package, and to the video guy's credit, he was doing his best to get me visibly psyched up for my impending doom. I was actually very excited, but tend not to be effusive in a way that might make for good TV, but I did my best. I think they were looking for more whooping and shaka's than I was able to earnestly deliver. At any rate, we were soon on board the twin engined turboprop and packed in like sardines on two long benches that ran the length of the cabin.
The plane was quite fast and had us up to 15,000 feet very quickly, at which point (or shortly before), my instructor cinched all the straps that connected me to him. I found the experience of being strapped to another dude to be vaguely humiliating, by the way. Any self consciousness about the indignity of it all or at being a human backpack was soon replaced by the very cold air rushing by and the fantastic views.
The videographer was spinning around us for most of the way down, and I gamely gave the thumbs up sign to humor him. At one point, I was given the parachute controls and turned us gently to the left, and right before being instructed to pull down hard on one of the straps. This put us into an dramatic and fun-at-first spin, and it felt like we were almost horizontal for most of it. Soon enough, however, I was starting to feel a little queasy from the spinning and was happy to come in for a landing
All in all it was pretty fun. The instructor and videographers were excellent, but as many other people have commented on Yelp: the front office is seriously disorganized.
From Marina, we drove to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and paid (ok, we let grandpa handle it) the extortionate admission fee and wandered around with Zoe. At fifteen months old, Zoe is really noticing things around her, and she *loved* the aquarium -- pointing her finger at various fish and staring transfixed at the schools of fish. Her favorite seemed to be the open ocean tank, with the tuna and sardines
Quite a few of the plum varieties that I obtained from the CRFG scion exchange a few weekends ago are Luther Burbank varieties. I was intrigued by his legacy of so many plum varieties, so I started browsing through 1849-1926 / Luther Burbank: his methods and discoveries and their practical application Volume V (1914). It is fairly lyrical fare for a description of hybridization within the prunus genus and it made for interesting, if specialized reading. Imagine my surprise then, when out of nowhere I came upon this rather shocking passage:
When I find our almost perfect prune lapsing back in the next generation to a condition that robs it of all value as a prune, I am reminded of the story of a young Indian who was taken from his tribe and given every advantage that the Government could furnish him.
Years were spent in teaching him the studies of the modern curriculum, mathematics, history, literature, language, and even a smattering of art.
At twenty-one he had a better education than many of our presidents, and his future was considered very promising by those who had to do with his training.
Ten years later this educated Indian was one of the most worthless of his tribe.
He had simply "gone back to the blanket stage of existence." The pull of past heredities was too strong upon him. The transitory influence of a few years of education could not efface the racial instincts that had been implanted through thousands of generations of breeding of a more primitive sort.
And so it is with prunes.
Link here.
A little digging reveals that he was a Eugenicist, and the above passage seems positively benign next to some of his other statements (which can be found in the above article). I find all of this disturbing and disappointing, considering how esteemed and revered he is in California. It is even more troubling, I think, that so many schools and parks are named after him. Is this appropriate for someone who wrote in his "The Training of the Human Plant"
"When all the necessary
crossing has been done, then comes the
work of elimination, the work of refin-
ing, until we shall get an ultimate prod-
uct that should be the finest race ever
known."
