Archive for June, 2005

Tonite, I discovered how to make the perfect burger..

Rub into lean ground beef the following (the leaner the better):
Salt
Pepper
Worchestershireshire sauce
1 egg (relax, you won’t taste it, it just makes the meat stick together)

Cook on hottest possible grill setting for about 7-10 minutes.
Top with whatever (plum tomatoes, red lettuce and cilantro are good picks). Ketchup and Mustard, clearly, are required.
Eureka!
In related news, Karen’s new job has a kitchen with a full staff, and she gets free breakfast and lunch. WTF. Is this the kind of treatment you get with a master’s degree? I think I need to get me one of those.

One thing they never taught me when I was learning to be a programmer was “When writing code, what do you do if you see some guy outside in your parking lot riding on a unicycle?”

We arrived in Vegas very early (2 am) wednesday morning, got a few hours of sleep and made our way across the desert to the Hoover Dam.

This enormous structure provides most of the power and water to Las Vegas and much of Southern California. It is just freakin huge. The place is crawling with security and tourists, and the walls are adorned with little plaques that have fun little hoover dam facts. Every stat that I could see was handily converted into some sort of football field based number (for example, water volume at the dam is measured in acre-feet, which is the amount of water is takes to fill the area of one football field with one foot of water, approx). Because as an American, clearly if my units are not in terms of football fields or space shuttles they just make no sense to me. Still trying to convert coulombs and dynes into football fields with little success.

The dam from the Lake Mead side. The lake is apparently suffering from a number of years of drought, and is down like 7/30ths of the length of a football field. We left the dam early, not anticipating the relentless desert sun. A quick drive back to vegas and we were at the pool (a pleasant 387.25 football field-sized drive).

Me, sampling some of the local fare. I have this problem where I need to touch the spines on cactuses. This one was particularly nasty and sharp. It also tasted really bitter.

next up: Hoover Dam.

One of the big trip highlights was the Sequoia Grove at Yosemite. Sequoia are ridiculously enormous trees that just don’t make a whole lot of sense.

This monster was like 20-25 feet thick, and goes hundreds of feet up into the sky. Some fun Sequoia facts:
- Sequoia can live to be 3000 years old
- Although they are very large, they have a very shallow root system, only going down about 6 feet
- Their bark feels like animal fir! I got a chance to feel the bark of a dead sequoia, and it’s really weird.. all furry.. doesn’t make any sense.
- After they die, they can take over 1000 years to decay.

The largest, most powerful thing in the forest. I think there is also a Sequoia in the picture.

I also came up with a fun Sequoia driving game: Try to think of other words that contain 4 consecutive vowels. I came up with pee-eater.

(click on images for better image detail)
We left San Francisco on Sunday, and headed down rte 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) to Monterey.

A shot of the pacific ocean from a stop. If you ever get a chance to do this drive, you should. It’s the prettiest drive ever. On the drive we noticed the Aids Life Cycle, a 7 day 600 mile bike ride benefit from SF to LA, along rte 1. I’ve never seen so many bikers in my life. It was crazy.

Karen, overlooking the bay.
This bay is really cool. You can see wild sea otters fishing in the ocean, and doing that thing where they put rocks on their chest, float on their backs and crack open shellfish. We don’t have living things on our shoreline at home, so this was quite a treat.

A Sea Otter wrapping itself in a nice bandolier of kelp (look closely). I guess they do this to rest. It’s really funny.

Karen and I at Monterey Aquarium. This is the coolest aquarium ever! It blows Mystic aquarium out of the water. They have an enormous jellyfish exhibit, and tons of other cool stuff.

One of the exhibits.

From Monterey, we drove through central California and made our way to Yosemite Park. The drive was super-treacherous. Lots of dead man’s turns, mountain roads with no guard rails sporting 1000 foot drops. Total madness.

Bridalveil falls. Lots of rainfall this year caused lots of extra waterfalls to pop up, so there were waterfalls all over the place.

A view from Yosemite Valley looking North. Yosemite Valley is a pretty flat area of land surrounded by insanely high mountain peeks (10000 ft+). Also full of wildlife. I have video of a family of dear grazing by one of the rivers.

Half-Dome, taken from Glacier Point. Glacier point is a remote lookout where you can see some of the most spectacular views ever (~6000 feet?). It only opens in summer because snowfall blocks the road the rest of the year.

Karen overlooking a random waterfall (about 2500 feet above sea level).

Next up? The Sequoia groove, and Hoover Dam!

Today we took the ferry over to Alcatraz. Some of the best views ever!

Alcatraz from the approach. Scary looking.

Cell block ‘A’, the old military prison cell block. Looks like something out of the 1700’s.

Karen and I in one of the cells. Not too happy with the toilet.

A view from inside B block, overlooking Oakland.
The Alcatraz tour is one of the best I’ve ever been on. I highly recommend doing it if you get a chance. Watch out for the birds though. The entire island is covered with nasty birds, and of course, their poop.

Shopping in the Haight. I haighted this part of the trip. Haight/Ashbury was not what I expected. I expected parks, culture, history, etc… It’s actually just a bunch of lame shops. Yawn.

Dinner with Merline and Greg at 1550 Hyde (a wine bar in nob hill).
Today we leave for Monterey, stopping at a vineyard on the way.

Thursday we began our 11 day journey from San Franciso to Vegas. Nothing but great weather so far!

A cross section of one of the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge (obligatory tourist photo)

The Golden Gate, taken from Golden Gate park.

Karen presents the crazy plaque that they feel compelled to put on every bridge.

San Franciso, from the top of Twin Peaks (this was the best view ever, this picture doesn’t do it justice)

The Painted Ladies. Featured in just about every movie imaginable. White Oak uses a similar picture from this vantage point as part of their marketing. Apparently they cost about 3 million a pop. Damn. San Franciso in general is just completely unlivable. Housing prices are a joke.


Me and Karen, with Alcatraz in the background, from Pier 39.

This is the coolest thing ever. Apparently a BILLION sea lions have taken over part of the Marina! We spent a good hour watching them and their antics. They are totally awesome, and REALLY loud.

My raft.. MY RAFT!!!

The Sea Lions would sit on top of these man-made pontoon rafts (I’m not sure what you call them). On some of the rafts there were more than 30 sea lions, and the rafts would be almost completely underwater from the weight.

“I swear to God, Nathan, if you take one more picture of me with Alcatraz in the background, it’s OVER!”

Today we take the boat to Alcatraz, and tommorow we’re off to the Monterey Aquarium, Yosemite, and Wine Country.