It's an Exciting World

Pinnacles Hike

Adam planned a hike for us to go to Pinnacles National Park, and it was an interesting time. We headed to Tina’s in the morning to carpool the two hours there together. We got in a little early and I grabbed a few apricots from the tree that overhangs Tina’s driveway. They were delicious. We drove to the park which had a surprising amount of traffic heading south on 101. Once we got to the side roads there wasn’t any more traffic; although there was a little construction.

We got to the park and took a few minutes to get situated before starting on the hike. The first part was steeply uphill, and directly into the pinnacles for which the park is named. They were gorgeous formations with lots of bright red/orange and green/yellow lichens. We got up to the high pass and I was already running through several liters of water, despite it only being about two miles of hiking. We stopped by a reservoir on the way down so I could filter some just in case. Then we got into the first cave system. It was a short bit, but the caves were nice and cool compared to the 90’s and sun that we had up to that point in the hike. We scrambled around the caves, eventually finding the exit and continuing down to the eastern parking lots for a lunch at the picnic tables there.

Adam pulled out a salami and ate it, while the rest of us had nuts and trail mix. A few miles later Adam was regretting the salami, as it was strongly messing with his hydration and thus temperature regulation. The hike was mostly flat on the second half of the day, with a longer caves section that was prettier in my opinion just south of the western parking lots. We emerged a little worse for wear and tired. Tina was amazing enough to drive the entire way back home, and we all crashed pretty hard that evening.

July 1, 2018 0

Plant Nite (mid afternoon)

Steph and I went to a plant nite together in Mountain View. The passes were one of the Christmas gifts she got me, but it has been hard to find a time that worked for us and had availability. We enjoyed the event and it gave us ideas for wedding planning.

June 24, 2018 0

Karaoke at George’s

Steph and I joined a bunch of people at George’s for karaoke on Friday. We had a pretty weak set of songs this time, as we didn’t know them that well. I enjoyed the conversations, and the singing. This time we didn’t pull out any board games, nor did anyone suggest it. I suppose that means the singing and conversations were more entertaining than usual.

June 24, 2018 0

Big Basin Camping

Lindsay organized a camping trip to Big Basin. This year it was just the three of us for Friday night and then Steph joined us on Saturday. We didn’t do much hiking, but we did get a good bit of MTG in; 25 games in total. We had a lot of fun playing some spades as well. The highlight of the evening was the campfire and cooking. I combined both on Friday night with a steak cooked directly over the flame. It was pretty good, despite being dropped into the fire as I tried to pull it off the grill. We made smores both nights and they were tasty. We found a rogue flaming hot Cheeto, making us thing that Debby was there in spirit. The mosquitos were pretty bad, especially Friday evening. While playing magic I was bitten through my shirt at least 30 times. I had a few small constellations on my back in red dots.

June 17, 2018 0

Michael Visiting

Michael stayed with me for a few days before he got his summer housing at Stanford. The first night he got in we talked a bit, but book club was coming over so he hid away while that was going on. It wasn’t the best discussion because The Professor and the Madman didn’t have any deep topics that were particularly interesting. We had also talked a lot about the control of language when discussing 1984 the month prior.

Wednesday we had dinner at Tapt and then went to George’s for board games. We played Sol which is a good game, despite not being explained well. The game ended sooner than I expected, so I was way behind in points. Michael did a points first strategy that won him the game handily.

Thursday we did a ton of cooking, and Michael helped chop a lot of it. We cooked egg muffins, shakshuka, garlic ginger chicken, and sliced a lot of fruit.

Friday we worked in the morning and then headed out for the afternoon. We took a long walk along the bay and walked the kitties. After that we went to the cidery for a few hours. We went our own ways for dinner. I went to House of Genji with Lindsay and Kevin. It was really tasty and we had some great conversations.

Saturday Michael and I went to Panda Dumpling for lunch and then we walked the kitties again. Then he tried to move into his summer place, but it needed some deep cleaning, so he came back and stayed the night with me again.

I enjoyed having Michael and look forward to having him around this summer.

June 11, 2018 0

Shoreline Lake Picnic

Tina organized a group to go to Shoreline lake for a nice picnic with some kayaking. Adam brought his kayak and was probably the person who spent the most time on the lake. I got some time in his kayak and then we both went out together and I used one from the boat rental. I had a good time and ate tons of great food.

While there Adam, Tim, and I played some Troyes. Afterwards we went back to Adam’s place and played more Troyes. I lost pretty soundly both times. I had a great engine in both games, but one use of one card for more than 10 points in both games caused a big swing that won it for the person doing it.

June 11, 2018 0

Wings of Glory

Irene organized an outing to Moffet field and we got to see the Wings of Glory exhibit, a WWII airplane collection. The planes were neat to see and they had been kept in working order. We went through the two bombers and got to see one of the smaller planes take off. We then went back to my place and played a good bit of Beat Saber. I was able to beat the last of Brian’s high scores, this one on expert. I made some Shakshuka and we had dinner before they headed out.

May 25, 2018 0

Kayaking in Elkhorn Slough

Adam organized a kayak outing to Elkhorn Slough which has a lot of harbor seals and otters. It was the time of year that some young ones are about as well, so we got to see juvenile otters and harbor seals. The wind was pretty strong that day, and I couldn’t get close enough to the animals to get good pictures, but it was a great time.

May 21, 2018 0

Irene’s brother Philip was nice enough to let me show up and work a little on his tiny house. He’s been building it since 2016, and it is pretty far along. I had never met him before, so it was a big risk on his part. I got into Albuquerque Tuesday night at 1am, so I grabbed a hotel instead of trying to drive. I got my rental car in the morning, but they changed it on me. The other car wasn’t ready, and I got a black Dodge Charger instead. It was an ok car, but solid black wasn’t good in the desert sun.

I drove down to meet Philip, and he gave me a tour of the grounds. He is building it on the property of a friend of his, Ronnie, and his family. There was a ton of stuff around, mostly for spare parts.

We then got to work. I started off with a support bar on one wall of the tiny house. It came together decently well. I then did some metal work for the same support area for the loft. That evening we went to New Mexico Tech to use the showers at the gym. It was a nice campus, albeit small. I ended up staying at the Econo Lodge, as I wasn’t up for staying in the gymnastics gym on Ronnie’s property. I didn’t feel right using the gym without confirming it was ok with the woman who ran it (who I had never been introduced to).

Philip was nice enough to take me bouldering at the nearby ‘The Box’ canyon. It was a nice place, but I am way out of shape for that kind of bouldering. It was still a good time. At the end of the night we got the strange lights in the sky experience. A redish light would take a specific path that brightened and dimmed. The speed and path of the light was constant, but it came at somewhat random intervals. Turns out it was just cars driving along a nearby hill.

I stayed with one of Philips former coworkers, Kevin, the next few nights. Kevin’s brother, Joel, was visiting from San Jose. They were both a lot of fun to talk to. Philip took the four of us out to dinner at the fanciest restaurant in Socorro. They took us to San Lorenzo Canyon, a slot canyon nearby. We got there very late so the pictures didn’t turn out, but in person it was gorgeous. We watched the starts for a while, and I counted at least a dozen satellites. I’m pretty sure we got a perfect alignment with one of the satellites for it to reflect the sun back at us, as it had a bright flash and was opposite where the sun had just set. We also saw two shooting stars.

Philip then assigned me to install some trellises on the back of the tiny house, as well as cover up a few of the last holes in the siding. We got some jasmine, and started training them to go up the poles.

After that we finished by installing the second layer of insulation. I decided to head out to the Very Large Array, which was quite large, but in the middle of nowhere.