Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today was our first full day at Lake Tahoe, and we started off with our obligatory first hike, which is the trail up to Cascade Falls. We have done this every year, and Lucinda likes it a lot. The last part of the trail is over rocks, so she gets to have some fun climbing on them. I’ve taken a picture of her at the beginning of the rocky part of the trail each year, so we can see her growing.

2003:

2004:

2005:

2006:

This year was also the first time that Lucinda did the whole hike without having to be carried.

When we got to the top, we explored the waterfalls for a bit. I played some more with my new camera. Here’s my latest Canon commercial:

All the pictures from the day are in our photo album.

After we got back from the hike, we all went to the pool for a bit. Then we tried to have dinner at Caesar’s Broiler Room, but we found out that the name of both the restaurant and the hotel had changed. It was now “Ciera” at the Montbleu. But the menu was about the same. I ordered the rack of lamb, but sadly, it came very undercooked. I sent it back and they charred it while cooking it. So in the end, it was barely cooked enough, and black on the outside. For dessert, we ordered the chocolate souffles, but they were barely chocolate. The sauce was all right, but overall, the dinner was disappointing. Particularly after spending $143 on it. So we probably won’t be going back there again.

The first day of our vacation consisted of the nine-hour drive from Los Angeles to Lake Tahoe. We left our house at 9:00 in the morning and headed up I-5 through the Central Valley. At Sacramento, we turned east on Highway 50 to go up and over the Sierras to get to South Lake Tahoe and our house there. It was a pleasant enough trip. Lucinda played games on her Game Boy while we drove up the freeway. We passed oil wells in Kern County, and endless farms north of there. Between Stockton and Sacramento, we were passed by a convoy of sheriffs from Butte County. They were all K-9 units, and one had a license plate frame that said, “You Run, You Done”, which seemed like an appropriate enough motto for a police dog.

The trip over the Sierras started out on a freeway, but the road dwindled down to two lanes at the top. Then we came down into Tahoe. When we got the to the house, we unloaded and then headed out for dinner. After dinner, Lucinda watched “The Cheetah Girls 2″ on the Disney Channel. The cable TV at the Lake Tahoe house is a big treat for her. And that was the extent of our day.

This morning when I got to work there were a lot of news trucks parked on the street by my office. Usually this happens after earthquakes, but I knew nothing big had happened last night. But then I found out they were all there to visit Planetary Science because the news had come down that Pluto had been de-listed as a planet.

But the bright side of this is: Back in 1997, when my friend and I attempted to see all the planets in one night, we actually succeeded. We just didn’t know it at the time.

I’d forgotten that Vikki was leaving for Canada to do the Ironman there, so I brought my bike to work anyway, and I went riding at lunchtime. I did the now-classic Lida Loop. It was a very pleasant ride as always. But I didn’t take any pictures, and there wasn’t anything in particular to report. So that was that.

18 miles at lunch, 26 for the day.

There was some filming on campus at Caltech yesterday. They were doing a couple of scenes for “Numb3rs“, but when I saw this truck, the first thing I thought was, “Isn’t this CSI spinoff thing is getting out of hand?”

Remember the last big Internet boom? That was the time when ‘dot-com’ meant ‘instant millions’, rather than ‘miserable failure’. And it was the time of the classic Web Economy Bullshit Generator.

I’ve got a collection of 400 screenshots of dead dot-coms, just in case you want to reminisce about Webvan or Kozmo or any of the others.

And now the web is back, so there’s a new Bullshit Generator:

The Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator

So let’s all harness citizen-media blogospheres. Yow!

I got another one of my old Cold War Civil Defense booklets scanned. This one is about exercises that you and your family can do at home to prepare for nuclear holocaust.

This is the latest addition to our Cold War memorabilia. And it is another from the stash I acquired earlier this summer.

Today’s ride was a very pleasant ride to nowhere in particular.

We started out from Victory Park and headed east. We rode through Sierra Madre and Arcadia to Duarte. Then we took the San Gabriel River bike path up to the mouth of the canyon before turning south again and riding down through Azusa.

Next, we turned east again and rode out to Covina, and then south a bit before heading back west. We took Badillo St all the way back through Baldwin Park to get to Peck Road. Then we turned north and took Myrtle Ave into Monrovia.

When we got to Old Town Monrovia, we stopped for a snack at The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf there.

The last part of the ride was straight back through Arcadia and Sierra Madre. When we got back to the park, I had 42 miles, so Ben and I rode down to Caltech. We stopped for a drink at my office, and then headed back.

It was a very pleasant ride, even if we didn’t go anywhere in particular.

50 miles.

Of course, the real fun began when I got home. I noticed that my back tire was going flat. So I took it off and found that I’d run over a tiny thorn. I looked in my patch kit, and all I had was one of those long oval patches. So I cut it in half to make two patches. I patched the tube and put the tire back on. Then, while I was pumping up the tire, the valve broke off. In over 30 years using presta valves, this is the first time I’ve had a valve break off. But the really irritating thing about it was that I’d just used my next-to-last patch fixing that tube. So I got my spare tube and put that in. But while I was levering the tire onto the rim, I suddenly heard that little exhale sound from inside, and I knew I’d just pinched the tube. Crap. I pulled out that section of tube, and there was a little rip in it. Good thing I’d cut that last patch in half. I patched the hole with the second half of my last patch, and then I carefully finished putting the tire on. It’s holding air, but I think a trip to the bike shop is on my schedule for tomorrow.
cycling

I just noticed today that someone is using the email generated by my pet project to feed a blog:

thequakequack.blogspot.com

Now this person is just taking the default mail profile. This is for earthquakes M5.5 and larger worldwide, and M4.5 and larger within the United States. The system allows for users to set up custom mail rules. Maybe I should figure out how to post here by email. Then I can set up a rule to have it display all earthquakes in the Los Angeles area.

No, we didn’t see a bear on today’s ride. But a bear figured in it anyway.

I met Vikki at lunchtime and we headed out to do the Lida Loop again. There was some filming going on up the street from our office today. The crew sign said “ANONYMOUS”, which wasn’t much of a clue. But they had about the nicest portable bathroom I’ve ever seen.

We did the usual route through Old Town to the Rose Bowl, and then up and over the hill. We came down and back into Pasadena, passing JPL. It was near there that we started talking about the relative danger of different careers, and Vikki mentioned that geology is one of the most dangerous ‘white collar’ careers. I’d heard this before, and the danger is usually attributed to geologists having to spend time doing field work in remote areas.

This led to Vikki telling a very long story about a field trip she took years ago that involved helicopters, forest fires, pointed sticks, and a large bear. I can’t even begin to do the story justice here, but it was alternately inspiring and hilariously funny. So this is a reason to come along on the Foothill Cycle Sunday Morning Ride. If you come on the ride and Vikki is there, be sure to have her tell the story about the bear.

When we crossed Lake Ave and the bear story reached the part involving the pointy sticks, Vikki’s chain came off. It wedged itself between the chainring and frame. It was pretty firmly stuck, and it took us several minutes of pulling and twisting to get it unwedged. After it was all over, we realized that this would have been a picture-worthy moment, but by then it was too late.

After the chain incident, we headed back down the hill to the office, and the bear story was wrapped up. When we got back to campus, they were still filming, and there was also a news crew there. It’s unusual for news crews to show up there when there hasn’t been an earthquake. We never did find out what they were doing there.

It was a fun ride, bear and all.

18 miles at lunch, 27 for the day.
cycling