George hosted a great brunch of congee / porridge. Yutong made two of the three types and they were all delicious. I tried them all, and all the varied toppings. I especially liked the ma po tofu, but that was no surprise. We grabbed some of the voluminous leftovers and had tasty congee for several days afterwards.
We then headed to Rong’s and met her and Riley for tea and scones. The conversation was great and we had a nice walk by the bay. Steph made some delicious tea sandwiches as well.
Steph and I went to a paint nite event with Michelle and Michael. We were doing a couples painting with each person painting half of an owl. Steph and I went way off script and used a reference image. I like how ours turned out. Michelle and Michael also did really well, and did an amazing job of getting the symmetry almost perfect.
I hung out with Adam most of Sunday and we played Mage Knight and Caverna one on one. I won the Mage Knight by a bit and he destroyed me in Caverna. The show was visually stunning, but the content was bland. We needed to look at the captions to know who was supposed to be who, and the only interesting character was Judas. I still enjoyed the experience and would go to see a musical with that crowd again.
George invited me to join him on a Lick Observatory event through Google. I hadn’t been there before and was excited when we got there to learn that they are working on two of the most interesting problems in astronomy; exoplanets and supernovas. The exoplanet work they are doing is amazing, as they are focusing on the spectral shift method. They survey large amounts of the sky looking at stars and galaxies for long time series. We got to look through two of the telescopes. One looked at a binary star while another looked at a globular cluster. I appreciate George taking me on such an interesting adventure.
George hosted a karaoke party at his place and we had dinner at Obed before heading over. Adam, Tina, Amit, and I ended up playing Terraforming Mars. I sang a few songs as well: Enter Sandman and Dust in the Wind. The game went a little long and I won by a small margin.
Adam and I met in SF at my office and then headed to dinner at Delarosa. It was tasty food, but nothing special. We headed back and got things sorted so Adam could take the kayaks to his hotel room near the pier. I slept in the office on the futon, and it was a pretty good night’s sleep. I didn’t realize it at the time, but when things fell over at 10:30pm it was a small earthquake.
The next morning we got up dark and early. I walked my gear over to Adam’s hotel and we headed down to pier 1 1/2, where we had left off the previous trip. We each had small issues with our Oru’s. I had folded mine poorly the previous time and bent the front bulkhead. Luckily it wasn’t a terribly important part as long as we kept to moderately calm waters.
We got in and had a bit of a run in with a tug pushing a barge that wanted to get into a dock we were near. We got out of the way fast once a security boat came over and told us that’s what it wanted. We were just trying to stay still and be predictable. We left the SF coast shortly after that and made our way to Alcatraz.
It was neat to see Alcatraz from the water, and the whole way out we were at the 0 tidal flow time. This made for some very smooth water. Things started to pick up a bit more as we paddled from Alcatraz to Angel Island. The current was clearly starting to flow into the bay, and as we rounded the last point on Angel Island some strong eddies caught us and we had to fight them to get to the shore.
Once on shore we scouted out our campsite, which was slightly up a cliff from the beach. It was nicely sized and up the hill from there were the remnants of the Civil War base. We dropped our stuff off at camp in the raccoon proof bins, then headed to the ferry port. We grabbed a quick lunch at the cafe, and found out there would be a tour of the island happening in less than an hour. We waited around for that and hopped on when it started. The tour was interesting as we drove past the four military bases on the island: Civil War, WWI & WWII, Cold War, and Southeast Asia conflicts. There was also the Chinese internment camp for the Chinese Exclusion Act. Most things were close because it was a Tuesday so we didn’t get to go into any of the museums.
After getting back to the ferry area we hiked to the peak. We saw a ton of deer, vultures, and views of the bay. After the hike we ended back up at camp. I communicated with work for a bit and Adam read. I then walked around the Civil War base, and it strangely serene being there alone. I watched the sunset and enjoyed the peace of the place.
Adam had gotten cold before I got back so he got in his tent and was hanging out in there. I set up my sleeping bag on top of a table to keep it from getting dusty. I slept under the stars that night and saw some amazing shooting stars and counted satellites.
We slept in a bit the next morning and headed out at the low tide point to avoid tidal flows. As we rounded the point to head north we saw some of the rare bay porpoises. I wasn’t able to get a picture as they came up and dove quickly. We paddled up the western side of the bay from there. Adam’s hip was hurting from being stationary and not having stretched before getting in the kayak, but he pushed onward until we passed San Quentin and the Richmond bridge. We pulled out at the Gun and Rod club dock and got a ride back to the city so I could follow up with all the work things that had happened.
Debby, Andrew, George, Steph, and myself escaped the Forsaken Temple at the new Omescape location in Sunnyvale. It was a very well done room. I was annoyed that the Go board they used in one puzzle had nothing to do with the actual game of Go.
We got what I’ll call third place as the first and second places are probably the same group double entered.
We tried to go to the Indian Street Cafe, but it seemed they had been evicted. Instead we went to Merit and had a tasty dinner there.
I feel like I’ve finally figured out the master strategy for Tzolk’in. Adam and I were playing a two player round of it at George’s on Wednesday and I got a score of 150. That is the highest I’ve gotten by far, but I did break 100 doing the same strategy before. The plan is to get as many workers as quickly as possible, and then figure out how to feed them. The investment in workers is definitely worth it. Adam had a bad game and only got a score of 53.
Steph and I joined my parents on a trip to Glacier National Park. We only really had one item planned out beforehand, a rafting float, but we still got to see plenty of the gorgeous landscape in and around the park. We took a ski lift up to the summit of Big Mountain outside the park. There was a trail leading from the summit to the bottom of the ski lift, so my mom, Steph, and I hiked down while my dad enjoyed the top. We ate a few of the huckleberries that were growing along the side of the trail, and they were pretty tasty.
It's an Exciting World 