The Pebbles Vote

The Condor Classic

2008-10-25T22:38:00.000-07:00

I meant to post this a while ago, but seem to have hit the "save" instead of "publish" button. So, belated ride report.

On October 11, Andrew and I did our first century. It started at the ridiculous hour of "before sunrise" in Hollister, so we drove down the night before and stayed at a hotel. This was complicated by (a) the need to find an open REI so we could buy arm-warmers; (b) extra-horrible traffic on the 101; and (c) the GPS having no idea where the hotel was and leading us on a wild-goose chase straight out of a horror movie. You know, the kind where the teenagers are hacked to death in the wilderness of the central valley. Anyway, we eventually made it to the hotel, which smelled exactly like my parents' basement, and I proceeded to get no sleep. (Those are not correlated.)

Six hours later, we woke up and discovered that it is cold in Hollister before dawn. On go the arm warmers and mittens, and we gather at the start line. My stomach was too cold to eat anything, so I sort of ate some gorp and a coke, but I couldn't even eat a chocolate croissant. The first few miles were downhill, where we made great time and I discovered each and every gap between the layers of my clothing. (For example: jersey sleeves end a half inch before the arm warmers start. Ears completely uncovered. Legs - forget about it.) Five miles in, we settled into the first climb, and I realized it was a very bad idea to not eat; so now bits of me are frozen, my stomach has started hurting, and I'm very hungry. Andrew feeds me some Gu and a pint of water and we kept climbing. Ten minutes later, the Gu kicks in and I'm all good. We climb faster than most, reaching the first food station at mile 15 in good time and passing lots of people who waste breath complaining about the steepness. I ate some peanuts. Andrew ate some of everything. The next ten miles are flattish, and the next food station has crackers and fruit, which I eat. So far so good: I am now neither freezing, nauseas, nor hungry. Some more climb, then long descent into the pinnacles, which was awesome. Peanut butter and bananas there at mile 40 or so. We're at least three hours in, which means our time isn't as good as I thought. Lost some time to Andrew's flat #1, then we start back.

But, what goes down must go up, and the next ten miles back from the pinnacles are the opposite of the "nice long descent" of the last paragraph, with a fairly stiff headwind. It's a good thing I'm not cold or hungry anymore, or I'd be giving up. We're plugging away at it, not seeing anyone for another ten miles, when Andrew gets flat #2. We carefully check the tire again, swap in a new tube, and watch the headwind blow tumbleweeds across the road. SAG wagon guy asks if we're OK, and a couple dozen riders pass us. We continue. Now hungry again, I'm extra-motivated to get to somewhere where there is food that is not classified as "energy bars". The wind remains against us through the next food station (mile 60) where it looks like the bulk of the pack has come and gone. Sandwiches and more fruit, then onwards.

There was an extra loop somewhere around mile 70 which gave us the chance to ride with the wind instead of against it, which I appreciated. At mile 75, out of nowhere, a hill loomed. Well, loomed is not the right word. Imagine an element of surprise. More like an iceberg, which I suppose does not 'loom'. Anyway. This hill cannot possibly be steeper or longer than the last mile to my house, but with 75 miles down already, that's pretty significant. I stood up and pedaled until I saw red. The reward for reaching the top is... more wind. And a nice view of some cows, who are unimpressed by our feat. I can't even keep my heart rate up anymore; it's sitting firmly at 160. Going faster than 12 mph is out of the question. It's ten-ish miles to the next food station, now with a side-wind (mile 90), where there are fresh strawberries. We've now been on the bikes for about eight hours, but several people show up behind us, so we are definitely not last. We're even on track to finish by 3 p.m., which is sort of the official end time.

Then Andrew says, "My knee feels funny". (Note: He did not say "... for the last five miles" or "... by 'funny' I mean 'hurts a lot'", either of which would have been more accurate. Out of that last station it's supposed to be an easy ten miles back on the shoulder of a still-being-constructed freeway, which is not so awesome given the traffic and that somehow we are still working against the wind. At mile 92, he says, "uh, I can't move my knee anymore", so we stop. He has already tried (a) taking it easy; (b) pedaling with only the other leg; and (c) ignoring it (*). He's sure that if he can rest for a minute that he could keep going, but this seems like a Bad Idea, so I flag down the sag wagon and get us a ride back to town.

Then there's a nice big barbeque, followed by a relaxing evening. Yummy.

So, we almost made it. It sure felt like we put in enough effort to go 100 miles. Our average speed was pretty crummy, but I don't think I've biked in wind that strong ever for sustained periods. The event organization was fantastic, though, and I'd do it again. At no point was I worried about getting lost.

(*) Everyone has suggestions about what's up with the knee. Um, except for the actual doctors at Kaiser, who seem to think that rest and steroids fix everything. Current prevailing theory is that it's an IT-band issue, and that he should try stretching a lot and make sure the bike fits correctly.

An Adventure South on Highway 1 (Parts I and II)

2008-10-10T17:24:00.000-07:00

In preparation for the century we're biking tomorrow, I've been doing longer and longer weekend rides, and trying not find new territory. This pair of rides emerged from the hypothesis that it would be totally calm and flat to ride down Highway 1 from San Francisco.

Part 1

to the end o
(Here's my MotionBased GPS data, for those of you that like to skip ahead.)

We started from SF, went down Skyline (Hwy 35), and cut over to Highway 1 on Sharp Park Road. (Which, by the way, has a bike lane for the first hundred yards - then you're in the lane with traffic and need to keep pace with it to stay safe; fortunately the speed limit's about 30 and it's downhill.) That dropped us into Pacifica, where we followed the beach for a bit and watched the despondent surfers waiting for waves. Then we got to "http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=37.58635,-122.507987&spn=0.014487,0.043945&z=15">here, just south of Pacifica, where the road narrows to not-quite-one-lane-in-each-direction with negative shoulder (gravel leaks on the road, as opposed to there being excess pavement on the other side of the white line). It's twisty and the traffic is fast and it's pretty significantly uphill. I must have driven this road dozens of times, but somehow did not remember this four mile stretch. After an eternity we made it to the top, with a nice view of the ocean. The way down the other side is more complicated: instead of going 6 mph and keeping to the "mountain-side" edge of the road, you're going 25 mph on the "cliff-side" edge of the road. Cars that would have been able to pass you going up are now stuck behind you going down, with predictable displays of unhappiness. (It's a freaking construction zone - it's not safe for them to be going faster either.)

Anyway, we got to the bottom in one piece and decided we were definitely not biking back up that stretch of highway. The remaining descent into Half Moon Bay is very pleasant, with a wide shoulder and expansive ocean views. From Half Moon Bay, tere's only one other choice for getting back to SF: go up and over Hwy 92, then back on Skyline. So, after a sandwich, we headed up the 92. I remember this being ridiculously steep from the last time (5 years ago?) I tried it, so I stayed in a comfortable cadence in a lower gear the whole way, expecting it to get steeper. But I think it's a pretty even 7% grade for the whole way. Drafted off a motorcycle group on the way down. Back up Skyline was pretty uneventful, until we got lost and cranky in Daly City (a maze of twisty passages, all alike).

Total ride: 60+ miles, 6800 vertical feet.

Part 2

Having learned my lesson, and still wanting to see what was further south, the next weekend I drove the car to Half Moon Bay and rode the bike south starting there. (This was a solo ride, as my better half was sleeping off the previous night's festivities.)

South from Half Moon Bay, Hwy 1 is almost-imperceptibly uphill for a while, then is a series of rolling hills into Pescadero. I assume this would be beautiful country on a nicer day, but the sky and ocean were both slate-gray and the temperature was hovering around 50F. The surf looked like crap but there were still some diehard folks out there. I didn't see many other cyclists.

Pescadero appears to have no actual, um, restaurants or anything, so I nibbled at the gas station and watched tourists complain about the price of gas. Then I took Stage Road north towards San Gregorio, which has some hills taller than "rolling" but with a similar effect of "climb 300 feet, descend 300 feet, repeat, repeat". There's a general store in San Gregorio with a bike rack out front and a sign that asks cyclists to take off their shoes before entering. I was going to lock up my bike before going in, but the motorcyclists having a heated debate out front assured me that the last thing anybody would steal around here is a bike. I went in and got a coke. Sure enough, nobody stole my bike, although when I came back a dog was... never mind.

Stage Road meets back up with Hwy 1 a few miles later, and it's all downhill back into Half Moon Bay. At this point I suddenly felt the need to make creme brulee that evening, so I bought a blowtorch from the Target and drove home. 30 miles, 2000-ish vertical feet. (MotionBased data)

Epic Ride

2008-09-14T17:16:00.000-07:00

I spent most of last week with a cold, and the weather had for the most part been overcast, windy, and otherwise depressing, so I didn't ride much during the week. On Thursday I may have overdone the weight on the deadlifts, leaving me with sore/stiff hamstrings afterwards. Still, on Saturday morning the weather looked fantastic (cold and sunny) so, sniffles and hamstrings be damned, I was going out for a ride.

After a quick check to see if this would be a group ride (nope, everyone's hung over, sleeping, and/or working), Andrew and I set off to do Paradise Loop. I put on my longer bike shorts, the ones that cover my knees, and thought, that's funny, these are pretty loose around the middle - but chalked this up to recent weight loss. I filled up my bike pouch with a tube, house key, sunscreen, and a CO2 cartridge, and we set off.

A few miles in, Andrew looks over and says, hey, are you wearing my shorts? I'd assumed that there was no way I could mistake his castelletti men's large shorts for my castelleti women's large shorts, but that would certainly explain the extra room around the middle. But once he pointed this out, I couldn't stop thinking about the important difference between boy shorts and girl shorts: the specific arrangement of padding sewn into them. Once I started thinking about it, I noticed some... chafing. Which I will not go into the details of. Anyway, I now have a much more highly developed sense of what constitutes Good Padding.

The weather warmed up after we went over the Golden Gate Bridge and dropped into Sausalito. We were keeping a pace much slower than usual due to the combination of sore hamstrings and sniffles, but were still going fast enough to weave among the bike tourists that clog the area. When we got to the hill to Corte Madera, I had a sudden burst of energy and did that climb at 9mph, a chunk better than the 7mph I did the last time. When we got to the top, both of us realized we had forgotten to downshift, and had done the hill in a middle gear instead of an easy one. So that was cool.

Another 10 miles of rolling hills later, the road suddenly started to feel bumpy. I thought I was imagining it at first, but when I felt my rear wheel shift around a little bit I realized the tire was going flat. Boo. It wasn't all the way flat though, just at about half pressure. A quick check of the time suggested that we didn't really have enough time for me to change the tube and still make the next Tiburon ferry, so I figured I'd gamble: spend the CO2 cartridge on inflating the tube and hope it held until we got back to the ferry. This worked swimmingly for another six miles, when the tube lost pressure again. I figured with one cartridge left I'd better spend it on a tube with no hole in it, so I pulled everything out of the pouch, replaced the tube, spent Andrew's CO2 cartridge filling it, then put the bad tube, spent cartridge, and sunscreen back in the pouch, put the tire back on, and we went on our way.

The astute reader will notice that something is missing from that sequence of actions. We rode on for another few minutes before the nagging thought surfaced: had I put the house key back the pouch? I dug through the pouch and discovered that (a) I had one more CO2 cartridge than I thought I did, and (b) no house key. We retraced our steps and went back to the place where I'd changed the tire, but at this time of year the roadside is covered in tiny gold leaves that look *exactly* like my house key, and after fifteen minutes of searching did not find it. So now we're way too late to get the Tiburon ferry and I've lost my key.

This meant we either had to ride all the way back to SF, or catch the ferry in Sausalito. Normally we'd just ride all the way back, but there's a pretty significant hill on the approach to the bridge, and I was already pretty tired. So: Sausalito ferry it is. This would require a 15mph pace for the next 45 minutes, which is easy enough under normal circumstances but felt herculean this time. I ate my last clif bar, hoping it would stir up some energy, and resolved to not think about my hamstrings at all. My respiratory system sensed the urgency of the moment and decided to step up its production of mucus, and of course a stiff crosswind popped up out of nowhere. That was the longest 10 miles I've ridden in a long time, with a constant stream of mucus coming out of my nose, a heat-related headache setting in, and the pain in my hamstrings spreading out to cover more leg muscles. Not sure how we made it there on time, but we pulled up just as the ferry boarded.

The extra CO2 cartridge I mentioned earlier now becomes relevant to the plot, as Andrew got a flat right after getting off the ferry. We popped in a spare tube for him and spent the last cartridge. The rest of the ride home was uneventful, thankfully, as we were completely out of spare parts.

An efficient 100 mile week

2008-08-17T14:01:00.001-07:00

I rode 115 miles this week, mostly in three batches instead of evenly distributed across the whole week. 50 miles for the full tiburon loop, no ferry, and two 25 mile rides in the hills near Palo Alto. The one new ride for me was up Page Mill, where I should have planned in more time - I made it a few miles up into the hills before realizing that I had to turn around *right then* to catch the last bus back to SF. As it starts to get dark earlier this should be less of a problem as I will be less tempted to start a ride at 5, and will start riding at noon instead or something.

The third ride was just the portola valley loop on Friday afternoon, something I know I can do in 2.5 hours. I did the loop clockwise instead of counterclockwise and made significantly better time than before. I was able to comfortably get up to 33 mph on a downhill without freaking out, which was nice. At one point a Yukon pulls up alongside me, paces me for a while, then the passenger window rolls down and the guy asks for directions to the palo alto country club. :) he'd missed it at the last turn so I gave him directions. Otherwise three batches of riders passed me but I re-passed one on the uphill part of Sand Hill Road.

I had hoped to ride in marin today but my legs are still tired. I guess I'm supposed to pay attention to that. Maybe tomorrow

Was my last blog post really 1250 miles ago?

2008-08-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

I guess it's been a while since I last posted. :) Between work and exercise, I havenn't have a lot of time for anything else. The weight-loss plan over the past few months has been basically "eat less beer/donuts/other-sugar and more vegetables, and ride my bike as much as possible", which is working pretty well, in the sense that I'm at least trading fat for muscle even if the scale isn't moving much.

My second-ever(*) long bike ride was in mid-May, for Bike to Work day: San Francisco to Mountain View. At that point my bike odometer had about 550 miles on it (got the bike in October, so that's ~70 miles per month or so, almost all commuting to the transit stop). To make a long story short, that was an incredibly tough 33 miles, where I didn't eat enough, didn't drink enough, got dehydrated, and my muscles were very unhappy with me 3 hours later when I got to the office; and this was my first real ride on the new clipless pedals, which it turned out had springs that were too tight, so my right knee was acting up all day afterwards.

(*) The first long ride, in the hills of Marin a month earlier, resulted in a crash at 35 mph in which I ended up in a ditch.

But it was really satisfying to have ridden that far, so I started doing more of it, mostly just with Andrew as it was clear I wasn't really fast enough to ride with other groups. We've explored lots of San Francisco, Marin County, and San Bruno. One of my favorite routes in Marin is Paradise Loop, which is about 40 miles with a little bit of hills. The bike odometer is now at 1250, which works out to about 60 miles per week since Bike To Work Day.

As I spent more time on the bike, what I realized is that I like riding up steep things better than riding back down them, and prefer both to riding in urban traffic with stoplights. Fortunately SF has no shortage of hills - the one I live on has blocks of >15% grade - so it was easy to just take the "short way" to wherever I was going instead of the longer, flatter way. So, a detour up Twin Peaks on the way from Noe Valley to Golden Gate Park, which is maybe a mile or so of 5% grade, with a great view at the top. And if you go out to Marin and ride around the headlands, the climb from the Golden Gate Bridge to Hawk Hill seems like a little less than 2 miles at 6% grade, with nice views the whole way up.

I've recently started exploring the area around Mountain View on my bike as well. Last Friday I rode up Old La Honda. Which is really why I'm blogging now, to brag about that. :) It's 3.3 miles averaging 7.2% grade (see Lucas's measurements, and it took me 43 minutes to get to the top, after which I needed a good long sit before riding back down. (I also learned a valuable lesson: Do not eat a clif bar immediately before starting the climb, or you will spend fifteen minutes in the middle of the ride wanting to throw up.) This is not a particularly fast time - several groups of color-coordinated bicyclists passed me, and according to the Western Wheelers classification my time is "group B", or one step above novice - but I want to emphasize that I am excited about having made it all the way to the top without throwing up at all.

Now that I have a little GPS gadget thingy I will try to blog more often with the routes I'm doing, assuming I can figure out how to upload its data.

2007-09-02T22:46:00.000-07:00

This is Ella, who has recently discovered that petting is fun.

The sixth anniversary is... penguins?

2007-08-12T20:29:00.000-07:00

So I'm at a 2/4 limit table at the Luxor, still a little steamed (and sleepy) from an early-morning tournament loss (who plays poker at 9 a.m.? Apparently I'm not the only one - hence the sleepy), when a giant penguin sneaks up behind me and goes "bap bap bap" (here you should imagine the penguin beak pecking at my shoulder). This is not a hallucination - Andrew has gotten me a life-size stuffed toy emperor penguin. Context: "life size" == "larger than the carry-on sizing bin for an airline" or "tall enough to see over a poker table". The penguin brought me good luck, though, and overall the poker play was profitable for both of us this time in Vegas. (We solved the "bigger than a carry-on" problem by sitting it on my lap in the plane, where it made an excellent pillow; it did take some explaining to get it through the security checkpoint.)

So now I have to think of something equally cool to get Andrew as an anniversary present. Suggestions from the peanut gallery are welcome, but it sounds like he wants another camera.

This was a fun trip to Vegas. We played poker in the Luxor, the Excalibur, and the Bellagio. We intended to play at the Rio and Mandalay, but they were only running no-limit at the time, so no go. Context switching from limit to no-limit is something I don't do quickly. All poker rooms we played in were nonsmoking (a welcome change from last time I was in town for gambling purposes) and had several tables running at once. All were near the casinos' sports books, so I watched an unusual amount of ESPN too. The Bellagio's poker room is very nice, but I'm not a big fan of the clientele it attracts - imagine the stereotypical young aggressive hoodie-wearing player who won't shut up about how stupid he thinks you are. Even if you're taking his money. That's just not fun. All the other card rooms seemed to have a nice mix of tourists, locals, and other assorted people who do not Take Seriously a game of low-limit poker.

We ate at Michael Mina's, which was seriously awesome. I didn't know beforehand that he was also the chef at Aqua, but the similarities are apparent. The tasting menu had this lobster pot pie thing, and tuna tartare, and the yummiest cod ever, and kobe-style beef with foie gras and lots of different sauces, and then loads of chocolate-themed desserts.. each dish seemed small, but I didn't need to eat for the whole next day because it was just that filling. I have also been instructed to try to replicate the chocolate chip cookies, which were quite something.

We saw Penn&Teller and the Beatles-themed Cirque du Soleil, which were both pretty cool. It's sort of hard to describe either one, though.

the kind of summer that involves gorillas hawaii two weddings idaho harry potter vegas

2007-08-06T21:40:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a busy few months. I was gonna post, and then I was busy, and then I forgot, and then my friends started launching all of these new features, so I figured I have to post. So. Features! Woot! Add a poll to your blog.

In June I ran 7K in a gorilla suit for charity. OK, not exactly running the whole way, on account of the gorilla suit being freaking hot, but at least running some. There were a few hundred of us in Golden Gate Park, which was pretty cool. This convinced me that I was quite out of shape, so I've been running more since. I figured I was getting somewhere, and then I read in the paper about Haile Gebrselassie, who ran the New York half marathon in less than an hour (which is, like, 13 miles an hour, for a whole hour?) and I'm, like, happy when I sprint at 7 mph... I take solace in the idea that Mr. Gebrselassie probably can't code his way out of a paper bag.

Also in June we went to Bryan and Anishya's wedding in Hawaii. I'd never been to Hawaii, so it was really fun to go and do all the touristy things, including hanging out on Mount Haleakala. Hmm.. I see that this deck has no photos of the 35-pound tuna that Andrew caught. Well, there was a giant tuna, which he assures me put up a fight to confound three grown men. (Except, of course, for him.) We ate sashimi for quite some time afterwards.

After last year's "no boats" resolution, we decided to spend the fourth of July at a higher vantage point, so we rode up Twin Peaks to watch the fireworks. (This is the part where I am obligated to tell you that Andrew's bike weighs three times as much as mine, and thus it was a manly amount of work for him.) It was a little fogged in but the fireworks in Marin County went over the fog line so it was a pretty cool show.

Autumn and Steven also got married in July, in a very nice ceremony with tons of people we sort of knew from school. (I counted five generations of CS1 head TAs in attendance, including me.) I knew it was the right group when I walked up and heard a vibrant discussion of whether the chairs arranged on the deck had the right symmetry, with several measuring tapes proved out to pull it.

This year also marked my 10-year high school reunion, so we went back to Idaho for the celebration. It was pretty fun, all things considered. We went hiking in the Tetons with my parents and Amy, which was cool (photos to come). My mom held up pretty well despite the challenging route up the gravelly bits of the mountain. Times have sure changed in the years I've been gone: I discovered that Idaho Falls now has two of my three essential pillars of civilization: high speed internet and sushi(The third pillar is same-day delivery of the New York Times.) The sushi was quite enjoyable and well-presented. And before you think, "how am I going to get my non-sushi-eating relatives to go to the sushi restaurant?", know that this restaurant is also a bar and grill, with actual fully-cooked fishies. I got to see lots of old friends, and say "look! I have a cool job, live in a fun city and have no children!". Andrew politely made [the same tidbit of] conversation throughout the evening and was quite a gentleman. Oh, plus, the Simpsons movie was pretty awesome. Not as awesome as the final Harry Potter book, which I read while he went out hiking with the guys the weekend before we went to Idaho (one of whom (no names) brought his copy of the Harry Potter book with them hiking (err.. I should say my copy - due to impatience with the US Postal Service, I stuck around to wait for his late copy so he could go to the bookstore before the hike to purchase the copy as I had planned to do.)).

This we're going to Vegas to celebrate our six-year anniversary. Six years of anything is a long time, compared to my life span. I think that's the longest I've done anything. (The job is coming up on six years in a month or so.) Some of my high school friends have been married for more than 10 years now, so I guess it's not that long. Well, you find a good thing and stick to it.

In theory there should be lots of summer photos up on the flickr page, but Andrew has taken a teaching job at a charter school (starting... now... ok, 7 a.m. tomorrow) so there is less time to postprocess and post the photos. But they will be up eventually.

koninginnedag, hippie music festivals, and gorillas

2007-05-30T20:53:00.000-07:00

The last month or so has been pretty busy. We took a spontaneous five-day trip to Amsterdam for Queensday, carrying only one full luggage case of photographic equipment with us. Which was good, because Amsterdam is crowded around Queensday. You can tell the tourists from the locals, because the tourists are wearing gigantic orange hats [insert picture of Andrew in hat here] and attempting to look Dutch, while the locals are wearing blue jeans and chilling in their boats going up and down the canals. The World Press Photo competition's exhibit was in town, which was awesome. No trip to Amsterdam is complete without a visit to the Rijksmuseum to sit in front of the Night Watch for a while, but sadly, a horde of loud French-speaking tourists with a tour guide prevented peaceful contemplation.

The flight back involved Orbitz "accidentally" cancelling half our flight reservations (orbitz sucks!), so we ended up in Charles deGaulle airport for five hours while waiting for the next flight back to the states (CDG sucks!), where I made the best of the situation by working on a design doc on my laptop (productivity! yay!), but at least we were upgraded to business class for the international leg of the flight (reclining seats and champagne! yay!), after which we spent three hours in Atlanta (sucking much less than CDG), and after getting through the security checkpoint my laptop would no longer boot (productivity lost! x-rays suck!), and finally arriving home nearly 24 hours after leaving Amsterdam. So. No more Orbitz for me.

In mid-May we went to Lightning in a Bottle, a hippie music festival near Santa Barbara. We carried the full package of photographic gear this time: light rigs, extra cameras, light meters, loads of film, the cute reflector gadgets, and cables that I swear do not go with this camera but are on hand Just In Case; all of it requiring that it carefully be repackaged each time the setup has to move another hundred yards to get better "flow". I've always thought of camping as something you do with just the gear that fits on your back, but apparently that's not the custom in California. :) "Camping" involved an air mattress. With an electric gadget to inflate it. And pillows. Actually, it's kinda nice to have pillows. The music was pretty sweet too, lots of electronic stuff. Here's the pictures.

Last weekend I drove the gorilla crew around San Francisco to take promotional photos for the fun run coming up on June 10. (Photo gear filled the car trunk, but required no actual carrying on my part.) This will be my first fun run, and while we will be wearing gorilla suits, at least it looks like it will be a cold morning in SF. It's not too late to register, if you're into that sort of thing. Anyway, last weekend, the gorilla organizers and associated hangers-on dressed up in gorilla suits and drove go-cars around the touristy part of SF, periodically unloading to take photos, shoot video, and hand out flyers, (photos of the gorillas in action) and I got to hone my skills at veering in and out of city traffic on a holiday weekend, with various people hanging out the car windows with videocameras. This escape from Alcatraz moment is my favorite.

The cat is now hinting loudly that he wants attention.

that whole don imus thing

2007-04-17T21:46:00.000-07:00

So why is it that South Park is funny, but Don Imus isn't? I'm as willing as the next guy to laugh at jokes made about groups I identify with (which is to say, not if I'm cranky or it's not funny), so what's different here? My first reaction to the news report I read about his remark was "wow, that's a dumb thing to say in front of a hot mic, but whatever" but after I heard an audio clip of it, my perspective changed. Cause you know how sometimes when someone's telling a joke, there's an edge in their voice to show they're not really kidding? That's what the clip sounded like: a guy who thought that the women of the Rutgers team maybe didn't deserve the success they'd had that season, a guy savoring his own alliterative cleverness in causally dismissing their accomplishments. If he'd said something similar about a group of white male NBA players, it might have been funny. Or at least less ... serious.

I guess I'm willing to laugh at a offensive joke that's about my group as long as I think the room is laughing with me, not at me. Because if they're laughing at me, then it's pretty stupid of me to play along - it'll entrench the underlying stereotype. Which is why South Park is funny: the writers don't take anything seriously, and the offensiveness is equal-opportunity. If everybody's a target, nobody's a target, in some sense.

the benefits of being marginally in shape

2007-04-09T21:31:00.000-07:00

I can't decide which was the coolest thing to happen since I last posted. This:

or figuring out how to link tight turns on a snowboard. (Which there are totally some pictures of somewhere, but not yet online.)

I spent five days skiing in a snowstorm in early February, which was awesome and not at all crowded. Especially on the days it was raining below 7000 feet, in which I discovered that my gear is not nearly as waterproof as its tags claim. A few sunny weeks later we were up at Sierra with Agi and Kelle, who snowboard, so I figured I'd rent a board and hopefully not fall on my butt too much. A definite upside to six months of yoga and belly dancing is increased core strength and balance, and returning to snowboarding was easier than I thought it would be. By the end of the day I was linking turns all the way down the hill, traversing without serious difficulty, and on the just-the-right-steepness parts actually doing the thing where you don't actually turn, but just sort of lean back and forth to bleed off speed. That must have a name.

Fast forward a few weeks weeks (past lots of cold weather, sorta meeting Hillary Clinton, finally getting a new bike, and belatedly getting gloves to wear while riding said bike in said cold weather), and we went to Cancun for Andrew's spring break. In my first 24 hours in Cancun, two different organizations tried to sell me timeshares and I fell into a gaping pothole and twisted my ankle; some cheap beer later, Andrew also tripped on a pothole. Fortunately, the week went uphill from there, as we visited seven archaeological sites in eight days. (And on Day Nine we rested - see above picture - because Andrew finally got tired of pretending his newly-sprained ankle didn't hurt.) Anyway, the whole week had super nice weather, lots of tacos, and I picked up at least a few dozen spanish words. The piles of rubble began to blur together at some point, but my favorite was Ek-Balam, where they actually let you climb up on the ruins. (Not so at Chichen Itza, which was packed full of tourists for the equinox.) The least impressive piles of rubble were the ones on the island of Cozumel. The guidebook is totally right: spend your time in Cozumel in the water with a snorkel mask on. If you must venture inland 12 miles to the ruins, rent a car instead of the crappiest bicycles you have ever seen, because it will be hot in the middle of the day and there will be completely unpaved chunks of "road" to clog up the "gear" on the "bicycle".

vacation photos

hoping for snow

2007-01-16T21:30:00.000-08:00

The view of Tahoe from the top of Kirkwood was fantastic, despite the 30 mph winds blowing the last remaining particles of snow off the mountain and into my face. I had plenty of time to enjoy the view while trying to decide how to ski down that sheet of ice without falling on my butt.

Ice and -20 degree weather notwithstanding, it was a great three-day weekend. Extreme cold has a way of keeping other people off the mountain, so once you get bundled up in enough layers, there aren't any lift lines to get in the way. It hasn't snowed in a few weeks anywhere around here (although tonight it is raining in SF so I'm optimistic that it's snowing in Tahoe) so the snow wasn't great, but still skiiable (except for the aforementioned sheet of ice at the top). The wind tended to blow the snow into drifts among the trees, so the off-trail snow conditions were actually pretty good - well worth exploring the less-beaten path. We stayed at the resort instead of a motel in South Lake Tahoe, so no driving in the mornings (yay!) and having a room with a kitchen means you can cook your own food (double yay! salads and sandwiches instead of burgers and sausage). The masseuse at the resort will even do in-room massage!

If it is actually snowing now, next weekend should be even better.

[Special shout-out to my little sister who's just turned 21 - happy birthday, Amy!]

saying goodbye

2006-12-16T21:56:00.000-08:00

Recently I've had to say goodbye to two entities I cared for very much.

The first, everybody knows about already. We are in the process of turning off Google Answers, my first Google project. The project itself is one of my proudest achievements: bringing together lots of really interesting people to generate high quality content about a broad range of topics. The reasons behind the closure are (as always) complicated, and confidential, but even though I haven't been actively working on it in a while, I had hoped something better would come of it. But sometimes you just can't make the right thing happen, even when it's your baby. So now we close the year-end books, put up a readonly copy of the site, finalize some AdSense details, and watch the last questions expire, until the dashboard finally says '... 0 unanswered questions.'

The second is Clyde. Clyde was our eight-year-old ferret, who had been diagnosed with insulinoma about a year ago. Eight is really old for a ferret, and this diagnosis would normally mean only a month or two to live, but he hung in there for a long time. He was active and in good spirits up until a day or so before his passing, and was still capable of getting into all kinds of mischief. He'd gotten very cuddly near the end and was happy to be held and fed treats. I know you're not supposed to have favorites, but he was my favorite of the ferrets. It wasn't unexpected, but it was still hard to say goodbye.

clyde

2006-12-03T18:57:00.000-08:00

the giving of thanks (otherwise known as five days away from the computer)

2006-11-27T21:24:00.000-08:00

It was still dark when I woke up the first time on Wednesday. It was the first vacation day I'd taken in months, coming on the heels of one of those two-day weeks that somehow feels like a full week all wrapped up in 48 hours (which is lame because my new project is awesome and it's a crisis on an old project taking all my time), so I awoke out of a fitful sleep of the recurring dream where I haven't finished all my freshman math credits and it's only a week until graduation and then there's a giant snake and then there's a pager going off in the distance... which is a sucky dream not because of the giant snake but because the only thing worse than being woken up by a real pager and not being able to go back to sleep is being woken up by a dream pager and not being able to go back to sleep. And then I remembered that this was the start of my vacation, and for the first time in a long time I went back to sleep in the darkness.

Wednesday officially began five hours later, with a trip to Napa. It's been a while since we'd last been, possibly since the infamous trip with Ishy. Agi and Ted and Andrew and I hit up a bunch of the wineries we always go to, and made a good-faith but ultimately fruitless attempt to find new wineries. (Bad car GPS. Bad.) It was a beautiful day and many photographs of sky were taken. I also rediscovered the white port at Praeger Port Works, which I distinctly remember not liking six months ago. It's very tasty now. After picking up shipments at some wine clubs whose memberships I keep sort of meaning to cancel, we ended up at one of those nice little hotels in Calistoga, playing poker with the pennies from the car, with several open bottles of wine (while watching poker on TV). Then it started raining so we went in the hot tub. That's when I dropped my phone in a puddle and it sort of fried itself. So if you tried to call me recently and it sounded like my phone answered itself while still in my pocket, that's because it's a cheap piece of crap and can't stand a good hot tubbing.

Thursday yielded spontaneous plans to have an old-fashioned Thanksgiving at home with family. Fortunately the grocery store was open in the afternoon, so I cooked the sort of Thanksgiving dinner one does with three hours' notice: honey-baked ham (no fuss, just glaze and chuck it in the oven), twice-baked potatoes (similar, but with a pot of boiling water), lots of veggies (slightly more attention during the what's-that-burning-on-the-stove phase), macaroni (microwaveable), and pies. Mandy made the pies, which were delicious.

Friday was a bright sunny day, so we went hiking in the San Bruno mountains, where it is foggy. Whoever wrote the hiking guidebook is a total wuss, though. "Moderate+ exertion" does not describe this meandering path with bunnies and wildflowers up the mountain. I mean, they get trucks up the mountain with radio gear. It's not that steep. Then we had some yummy fish at the new restaurant on Church at 29th (it used to be a greek place, and was something else before that; its current name escapes me) and ate a whole pint of ice cream and played bridge.

Saturday rained, which meant I needed new shoes. I love my Vans but after about 6-9 months I wear holes in the soles, which is OK up until the next time it rains, when I end up in the dark windy rain with no umbrella waiting for a bus. It's been an unseasonably dry November in SF so I'd been walking around in shoes with holes for several weeks without giving it a second thought. Downtown was packed with shoppers (disappointed by the lack of Wii, no doubt), and after acquiring new Vans (this time in camo green) we trekked over to Portola to see Fast Food Nation. I think I've seen more movies in the last week than in the entire several months before that. Happy Feet was by far the best of the bunch (but you know I can't say no to a tap-dancing penguin musical), and Casino Royale was actually pretty good (authentic poker and all), but Fast Food Nation was just sorta disappointing. I liked the book, but the movie was full of exposition. Lots of exposition. Not so much plot or characters doing interesting things or even showing the grossness of industrial meat packing. Lots of talking. Had to shake that one off by going to a bar in the Castro on the way home.

Sunday rained again, so we went to the museum and then played bridge. The De Young has this awesome exhibit by Ruth Asawa, a sculptor. Her stuff reminds me of this one toy I used to have as a kid, whose name I don't remember, but it was a bunch of concentric circle-like gears, and you could put them together and trace out the inner shape and make really intricate patterns on the paper. Her creations were like that, but with wire, in three dimensions, and several feet tall. They all have a characteristic of really intricate detail work, repeated over and over again to make a completely different shape, and the notes on the wall go on about how this is a "form within a form" or whatever, but all I could think was damn, how do you make a giant strand of wire look so nifty? Anyway, this exhibit is not to be missed.

And then it was Monday again, and I woke up while it was still dark.

how yuppie is that?

2006-10-29T13:21:00.000-08:00

Found a nice wine bar in the mission yesterday. We were prowling around town looking for costumed people to photograph (Andrew says: "But it's for homework!") and stopped in for dinner. Parea Wine Bar and Cafe (at Valencia/19th) has yummy organic Mediterranean food and an interesting list of mostly European wines. So we're sitting in this wine bar, eating organic food and drinking french wine out of an enormous glass, and practicing bridge while conducting separate telephone conversations with other people. Sigh.. I think that's yuppie even by SF standards. To make up for it we went to the Zeitgeist afterwards and drank lots of beer. :)

Did I mention that Agi has gotten us into bridge? I played regularly in college for a while but not since then. Andrew's new to it, though, so that was an excuse to buy a book about bidding. He's really taking to it well and it's tons of fun. We're starting to get into the more complicated aspects of bidding, with occasional hilarious results. Turns out we know lots of couples now so we have started trying to get more of them to play, as a counterpart to the regular Thursday poker games.

loud music

2006-10-24T11:12:00.000-07:00

Last week we ended up at The Independent twice. Once on Tuesday to see Poets and Pornstars (Gen's friend's band), and once on Friday to see Lyrics Born and Cut Chemist. I think my hearing is definitely taking a beating after exposure to the SF music scene. The Tuesday show was fun, but there weren't very many people there. The lead singer has the most adorable British accent, though.

The Friday show was awesome. I'd never seen Cut Chemist in person before, and was vaguely surprised that he turned out to be a scruffy white dude. He had two turntables set up, one for records and one hooked into a digital feed of music. He'd be scratching one part of the track while someone else worked the video screens and someone else played some other layers of the music. There were cameras set up so you could watch him working the turntables, although the frame rate on the cameras wasn't actually fast enough to keep up with him... At the end, he brought out a handicam, taped some people from the audience saying their names and stuff, and then wired it up to the digital turntable thingy and worked in both the audio and video to the next song. It's hard to describe how completely awesome this is, both on the appreciation-of-technical-difficulty level and the sounds-really-cool level. The place was packed and there was a great vibe.

the point of no return

2006-09-10T21:49:00.000-07:00

I was assigned to go pick up meat from the store today for the barbecue. (No specific instructions about how many people were coming or what kind of meat, just "get meat".) So I figured I'd get out some on my bike first, and get to the store the long way around - by going down our hill to the east, looping north around the big hill, then approaching the hill from the west where it is a more gradual climb (the store is at the top, whereas our house is steeply down from it a few blocks). I've done a few different routes this way, but wanted to try something new today. I remembered Zach saying that he usually took 17th st to go east from Haight towards our neighborhood, so I thought I'd try that. (Wiser heads would remember that Zach thinks the hill on our street is "quite bikeable" if a little tough...) At the bottom - 17th and Valencia - the hill looked pretty tough, but I figured I was already sort of stuck in a neighborhood where most of the options "out" are "up". (Which is also not true. There's a bike path at Church/Market that hooks up with Fell.) Anyway, after about a third of the way up you can't see the top anymore because of the sharp grades and level intersections, so at each block I'd think I was almost done, then realize really not. Two thirds of the way up I thought I'd throw up. But at that point you really can't turn back. I made it all the way to the top without having to walk any of it. (The internet tells me that by 17th/Roosevelt it's a 17% grade) By the time I coasted into Haight Ashbury I'd earned an ice cream at the Ben&Jerry's.

The rest of the 10 mile loop I did is pretty nice, though - through Golden Gate Park to the Sunset, then back up Taraval (a reasonably gradual steady climb) where it meets up with Portola, and at Portola/Diamond Heights it's downhill to my house. The west half of the route was completely fogged in today, although the east half of the city was blue skies.

2006-08-20T00:09:00.000-07:00

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Summer Recap

2006-08-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

Zion National Park

Hiking in 108 degree weather, repelling down a canyon, smashing my hand and losing half a fingernail and finally finding the car at 1:30 in the morning can only mean one thing: another Kuliga Epic. Thanks Mike.

Vegas

Winning 3rd at Binions afternoon tournament, buying our way past the line at studio 54, riding around in an SUV limo giving rides to random people, Christophe flogging club security.

Lexi's Birthday Penguins

I couldn't have hoped for this day to go any better. Penguins have a whole lot of personality. The baby penguins were very curious and demanded your attention. Happy Birthday Lexi.

Hiking the Bay

Coastal trail in Point Reyes: 12 miles, Barnabes Peak: 5 miles, Berry Falls in Big Basin: 11 miles, Mount Burdell: 5 miles, East Peak of Tamalpais: 6 miles, Steep Ravine to Stinson beach: 4 miles and of course Twin Peaks many times over.

Billy and Mandy

In one week Billy found a job, they found an apartment, we helped moved them in and Billy started work. It was an incredible accomplishment. Welcome to the neighborhood.

New Blogger Beta

2006-08-16T21:38:00.000-07:00

Check out the new Blogger Beta, stuffed full of tasty new features (sidebar widgets, graphical template editing, labels, and lots more). This is what I've been working on for the last year or so, and I'm proud of the job the team has done. The new infrastructure should be a lot more stable and extensible. Eventually you'll be able to migrate any existing blogs you have into the new system - we're trying to do this a little slowly to make sure stuff works.

2006-08-10T21:56:00.000-07:00

Dusk on the mission /

2006-08-08T20:45:00.000-07:00

Dusk on the mission
a bicycle rattles by
says overthrow bush

Penguins!

2006-08-06T17:18:00.000-07:00

For my birthday, Andrew adopted me a penguin at the San Francisco Zoo. We got to go meet the penguins a few weeks ago. They even let us hang out with the little baby penguins. The baby penguins are shedding their fluffy fur and growing their adult feathers so lots of them look like they have little mohawks. The keepers separate the baby penguins from the adult ones so they can socialize the babies and show them that a person is the alpha penguin. (The penguin in this picture spent a lot of time standing on my shoes.)

The zoo has about fifty Magellan pengins. The penguins usually pair-bond (although some females will consort with more than one gentleman due to the gender imbalance). Each pair of penguins will live in one burrow. Here, you can see some penguins going through everyone else's burrows looking for neat stuff. The keeper said that there are even some pairs of gay penguins.

The penguins all have distinct personalities, so it's pretty easy to tell them apart. (As a cheat sheet, they have color-coded tags on their wings - females are tagged on the right, males on the left, with a variety of colors.) This penguin is named for Napoleon Dynamite, because he often would have a look on his face like "I can do whatever I want". This is especially obvious with the baby penguins learning to swim. Some of them take to it right away but others need to be thrown in the water a whole bunch before they learn.

(flickr photos)

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco?

2006-07-13T21:34:00.000-07:00

The fog rolls in
on little cat feet
and sits there, as though waiting for a mouse

OK, so it not actually cold outside in the absolute sense of things, but it is not exactly warm enough to walk to the bus in a tank top, either. (Not that it's warm enough in my office to wear a tank top anyway.) But the Los Angeleans insist that this is by far colder than any summer has a right to be.

The fog came in a few weeks ago and just stayed. When I was in the car this morning the fog was thick until after Daly City, when it cleared up right away. This evening it was sunny all the way back, with just hints of fog at the tops of the mountains visible from the 280, until Daly City again, when it became like driving through Tahoe just as it's getting ready to snow. There's not much of a view from the house now, although the street lights and car headlights trace nice patterns in the sky.

What's in a name?

2006-07-08T22:35:00.000-07:00

If a computer gets a new shell, does it need a new name?
Clearly it's important that the computer have a name.
And it just wouldn't be right to have two computers with the same name.
(They become terribly confused. I once accidentally christened a second computer "whitestar"
and it promptly developed defective RAM.)
The computer in question is my oldest laptop.
Not the first, but now the oldest.
Its name is (was?) My Laptop,
because this uniquely identified it as the only portable computer in our apartment.
My Laptop has been to three countries (and three offices) on two continents
over the course of four years
and has seen all generations of RedHat since 6.
Something rattled inside the case if you left in on too long,
and the battery didn't really charge much anymore
and grease on my fingers had gradually worn away the letters on the keyboard
(so I think you could probably tell my password from just looking at it).
It had cat fur stuck on the outside because CM spilled a coke
and then sat on the computer (because even though this is sunny California
my cat likes the warmth of a computer fan).
So when the fan stopped working last week, and My Laptop wouldn't boot,
I took it for dead.
I took it into the office to recycle it, but they had a spare T23 shell on hand
(all the parts except the hard drive)
so they took the hard drive out of the dead, rattling case
and put it inside a shiny new body.
It's just like nothing ever happened to it
(except it's sprouted more memory and a builtin wireless card).
But is it really the same computer?
Does My Laptop need a new name?
It probably should get a new password.

I won 3rd at Binion's Afternoon Tournament

2006-06-23T19:01:00.000-07:00

A full house 3's full of 9's and a lucky outdraw where my Ace-8 drew out against a pair of 8's gave me the stamina to last until the final 4 where I busted out with Kings vs. Ace-8 vs. King-8. The King-8 had way fewer chips than I so I got 3rd and he got 4th. Not bad for a days work and a 110 investment.

2006-06-22T14:20:00.000-07:00

The Teacher Has Now Become The Student

2006-06-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

After 5 years of teaching, I'm leaving to become an art student. Part of me is disappointed that I'm abandoning a career that let's me give back to society and part of me is disappointed that it took me so long to leave a field that didn't recognize any of my contributions.

I'll miss my students most of all. Whether they were the very bright and focused who would ask me the tough questions that truly tested my knowledge of my subjects or they were the irresponsible and immature ones that needed me to support and discipline them so that they could reach the high standards of our Academy, they all made me feel that I was making a difference.

The frustrations that I'm happy to leave behind are all related to the adults I had to deal with as I tried to change the system for the better. The list of top offenders include:

1. Administrators who could not hold to procedures and always left problems unsolved until they had grown to catastrophic proportions.

2. Administrators who wouldn't share their knowledge or contacts with me when I was supposed to be learning how to take over their position when they leave.

3. Administrators who forgot that I had digitized their workflow the year before and require everyone to submit their work in writing again.

4. Administrators who put me in charge only to then veto my decisions and sow confusion and frustration amongst the teachers I was helping. Not to mention making me look like an ass in the process.

5. A union that stood in the way of several sensible reforms. My personal favorite of these was their refusal to require on-line grades without a renegotiation with the district.

6. Parents who we never saw no matter how many times we tried to call them in to talk about the problems their students were having in class.

7. State Administrators who refuse to let our Academy change its focus to biotech, a growing industry with entry level positions for students who complete an 18 week course after high school.

8. The teachers who were flat out terrible. They're a very small percentage, but the damage they do to their students and the reputation of our profession is irreparable. Most of them will never leave the profession either as they are tenured and their incompetence keeps them from even considering entering a profession where their performance actually matters.

9. Adults at all levels of the system who let personal conflict drive their decisions rather than the welfare of their students.

The list could go on and on.

Now that I have left teaching, I will be entering the Academy of Art's MA Photography program in the fall. It does feel good to be able to focus my energy into my creative outlets. I've nearly completed the dark room in my garage. I just need the plumber to finish and then to arrange for some ventilation ducts to a fan over the sink. Though I learned on film cameras, I never got into development. It was always easier to just send it out and get it developed, but now I'm more interested in greater creative control rather than convenience.

My classes start on September 7th, which gives me the opportunity to finally go to burning man. I'm going with a group of 25, made up of techers I know and some Googlers too. Our camp is Daliwood and will feature art inspired by Salvador Dali. Gen is putting together a version of the aphrodisiac dinner jacket (covered in blacklight reactive shotglasses) for me to wear. We're not going too crazy on our own art installations as we want to be able to spend a good deal of our time enjoying the playa. We're camping within the larger Asylum camp, so we'll be right in the thick of it in the downtown section. It will be loud at night, but that should be fine if my plan to switch over to sleeping days works out.

I hope to get some good photos on the playa, but I am also aware that photographers and videographers have become very intrusive at burning man. It's almost a sin against the purpose of burning man to come to observe rather than participate. So I'll take a page out of Jodi Cobb's book and build a sense of closeness before taking any photos. I'll also try to put the camera away now and then to just have fun on my own.

Brush fire stopped traffic on the 5

2006-06-16T16:23:00.000-07:00

Escape from LA

2006-06-16T14:47:00.000-07:00

This is what traffic is like at 2pm at the farthest outskirts of LA. It's 106 outside and the AC can hardly keep up. This is why nobody ever asks me why I left.

Conspicuous Consumption

2006-05-24T21:49:00.000-07:00

Josh asked me along to Math and Physics Day at Great America this past Friday. This gave me the chance to finally buy one of those ridiculous pictures that they take at the end of the loop on a rollercoaster. The photo was ridiculously overpriced for its terrible quality but the fact is they got a monopoly on cameras fixed at a position to catch my response to going through the upside down loop. There are many things money can't buy, but you don't count silly souvenirs like this among them. If you peruse the picture closely you might notice that I'm the only one in the front row who is holding their arms out. What's this world coming to?

We Came. We Blogged. We Conquered.

2006-05-16T21:34:00.000-07:00

The spoils of victory for our dominance in the Chieftan's Trivia Night. Ironically, we won enough to cover the drinks we had during the competition. The real credit for the victory goes to Gen. Most of the question, we all knew the answers to, but whenever most of us were stumped, Gen came through. Together we made a great team, each filling in the gaps of the others knowledge.

We're Blogging this Right Now

2006-05-16T20:57:00.000-07:00

...was our team name for the Trivia Competition. True to our namesake, we shared news of the event with an uninterested internet public through minute by minute web updates. I feel like a Gargoyle out of Snowcrash.

Lake Tahoe at Sunset

2006-05-16T15:43:00.000-07:00

I hate the idea of a private beach. It's fine if you own the house right next to the beach and the beach is your private yard, but when the only stretch of beach near south shore is gated off from use by some condo coop, it can really ruin your day. I shouldn't have to walk a half an hour to get a view of the sunset that doesn't involve iron bars. Especially when none of the people who own the private beach are out using it. Luckily, the luxury homes that were under construction next to the private beach did not yet have their fences up, so I got an unobstructed view of a great sunset.

Spring Breaking in Lake Tahoe

2006-05-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

I had to go to Tahoe this week to pick up my skis, which had been left there since I broke my ankle. As the previous post explained, my trip got unexpectedly extended when the GPS sent me into unincorporated El Dorado County on a wild goose chase. The car suggested a forest service road that would take me over to the 88. About 30 minutes down this road, the blue line that represented my path disappeared and the GPS reminded me to "Follow all local traffic laws". I found a path on the map that would get me to the 88, but about 20 minutes down that path, I came across the washed out bridge and had to turn back. This kept me from getting to kirkwood before they closed so I had to spend the night in Tahoe. I grabbed a sandwich for dinner and snuck on to a private beached on by some hotels near the shore. The view of the sunset there was great and I had a lot of fun trying out all the manual settings on my camera. The next day I got my skis and tried to hike Grass Pond, but the road there was...wait for it...washed out. Damn! I drove back towards San Francisco and came across a nice hill so I walked up it as far as I could before the growth got to thick to continue. Though there were many unexpected obstacles to my trip, I was happy with the outcome.

The Pebbles Vote

The Condor Classic

An Adventure South on Highway 1 (Parts I and II)

Part 1

Part 2

Epic Ride

An efficient 100 mile week

Was my last blog post really 1250 miles ago?

The sixth anniversary is... penguins?

the kind of summer that involves gorillas hawaii two weddings idaho harry potter vegas

koninginnedag, hippie music festivals, and gorillas

that whole don imus thing

the benefits of being marginally in shape

hoping for snow

saying goodbye

clyde

the giving of thanks (otherwise known as five days away from the computer)

how yuppie is that?

loud music

the point of no return

Summer Recap

New Blogger Beta

Dusk on the mission /

Penguins!

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco?

What's in a name?

I won 3rd at Binion's Afternoon Tournament

The Teacher Has Now Become The Student

Brush fire stopped traffic on the 5

Escape from LA

Conspicuous Consumption

We Came. We Blogged. We Conquered.

We're Blogging this Right Now

Lake Tahoe at Sunset

Spring Breaking in Lake Tahoe

Tomales Point Hike

GPS is not omniscient

San Francisco Botanical Gardens

Ocean Beach

Goose Stepping Cows?

Butterfly Exhibit

Napa with Lexi

Conservatory of Flowers

Hawk Hill Photos

SF Protest for A Day Without an Immigrant

Spring Break Napa Trip

Amy's Spring Break Visit

Ravens on Twin Peaks

St. Stupids Day and Oyster Fest Photos

Cute Pet Pics

Alternative Press Expo and Golden Gate Bridge Biking Pics

Mount Tam Stinson Beach Pics

Somebody used my picture in his article

Stanford Protest Blocks Bush from Visiting Hoover Institute

Wine Tasting

Scrabble Poetry

High up in Dolores Park

Culinary Adventures

Whiskies of the World expo

Urban Iditarod 2006 Pics

first time back up twin peaks since braking my ankle

Billy and Mandy at Billy's New Job

Billy and one of the choppers he works on

Billy and the Big Chopper

And Now back to Airwolf

Rob and Margaret's Wedding

Bunny!

Martin Gaitan

February in California

Kitty steals Andrew's chair

Agi is My Good Luck Charm

Point-Counterpoint

Ski Photos

Transportation Options

You might just have ADD

The Continuing Adventures of Super Gimp

A nice little rant about educational data systems...

Screwed

A Photo Tribute to the Argus Lounge

New Year's Photos