Science Conference

Going to a large city is a frightful and disconcerting experience. I went to a science conference in Pasadena last weekend, and while it sounds good to plan such a thing, in reality it wasn’t so much fun.

To begin with it was a hard thing to get started. In fact I had a hard time getting off the ground, as the 2:00 PM departure plane didn’t leave the airport until 5:30 PM. The late departure of course led to missing the connection in San Francisco which led to the Customer Service Desk informing me that they had me booked on a 8:30 AM flight. I protested and told them I had an 8:30 AM class (BS) that I couldn’t miss at which time they found an available seat on a 9:30 PM flight to Burbank.

When I got to Burbank I took a shuttle to the Pasadena Vagabond Hotel. I was a little leery about where it was since when we pulled in I noticed it was somewhat of a shady neighborhood. Few street lights and too many liquor stores. It must have been in a very unhealthy part of town as there were quite a few collectives there too. I’m not sure what ‘collective’ has to do with selling marijuana but there are quite a few things in this world that I’m still fuzzy about. The things that really made me nervous were the people limping, running, and hobbling along just outside the hotel. There was also a woman (I think) standing by the only partially working light pole. She looked like a dropout from a pole-dancing class trying to flag down passing cars. There was even a guy with a bloodied shirt sitting on the sidewalk in front of the hotel watching her while laughing manically. Yes, the people around the neighborhood looked like the bar scene from Star Wars.

About that time I was just about ready to ask the shuttle driver how much he would charge if I just slept in the back of his shuttle for the night. It was already 11:00 PM and I was pretty sure I could negotiate a pretty fair price with him and get a good night’s sleep. The thing that made me think otherwise was the sound of the squealing tires and racing engines, but I thought the sound of muffled voices and screams may not lead to a restful night’s sleep. I didn’t give him a tip especially when he said to me without turning the engine off, “You can make it to the door can’t you?” It seemed like he knew something that he didn’t want to tell me. In fact all the while he was racing the engine appearing to want to get out of there as quick as possible. Before I even got to the front door of the lobby a guy with foul smelling breath and a leaky band-aid on his forehead that looked like he was one gene short of being an idiot walked up behind me and said, “Hey buddy, got any spare change?” It’s kind of like when a woman addresses me as “Honey.” I didn’t even know the guy and he’s calling me, buddy. Not too savory of a neighborhood. I wanted to tell him to crawl up his ass and disappear, but I thought he might get mad and wipe some blood on me or something, so I didn‘t. I was beginning to think that I was the grand puba of idiots.

Pasadena is supposed to be the City of Roses and it’s the one thing I didn’t see there.

Dry Lake. Ecological Succession in action.

I peed my pants

There have been reports of halibut caught off South Beach in Crescent City. This is a relatively new fishery even though the halibut have probably been coming close to shore to spawn for years.
Of course I had to give it a try since it’s so close and the rigging is pretty simple. Basically, it’s just dragging an anchovy on the bottom using a double-hook rig.
I put the kayak in the water, paddled out, and rigged up. After trolling for about 15 minutes with the pole yip bouncing while I paddled. All of a sudden the tip bent down and I thought I was hung up, but then it starting moving. I grabbed the pole out of the rod holder and hung on. After about 5 minutes I started raising the fish off the bottom and brought it up about 5 feet below the kayak. It was then I saw what it was. My first halibut. I kept a tension on it for another 5 minutes before bringing it to the top. Very gingerly I slipped the gaff under its gills and hoisted it in the kayak. It was then that I peed my pants. (Not really, I just made that part up.) The halibut was 31 inches and about 13 pounds.

I was impressed!!!

Something I heard at Starbucks while redeeming my birthday card drink coupon:

"Could I get a Triple macchiato, venti, 112*, with low fat low cal ice cream and a scoch of shaved ice, blue flavoring on the top, shaken not stirred, with whip cream carmel flavored and a 1/4 fresh cherry on the side? Oh and can you add a drizzle of cold chocolate syrup ? I'm on a diet, you know!

Agh forget that, just give me a coffee....small.

(And then did it without taking a breath too.)

By the way, do you have any Ranch Dressing?"

Personally, I couldn't remember that much, much less know that's what I wanted.

Loon Lake June 28, 2011

Chilkoot Trail 2005 Father's Day Good Memories

Death Valley

Tuesday, Death Valley
After a virtually sleepless night punctuated by a full moon that felt like a spot light staring at us we arose at the crack of dawn groggy and bleary-eyed. The wind, as per normal in Death Valley, blew all night long. Not only could we hear it, but we could see the effects of it. Since the night was so bright, we could see the sides of the tent collapsing on us, and when a strong gust came up the only thing holding the tent up was the outlines of our noses formed with the nylon of the tent. I’m not saying we didn’t any sleep, I’m just saying that what with the kangaroo rats running around checking out what we had left for dinner, we weren’t the only living beings awake.
Oh, yeh, I can’t forget about the kids inside their RVs screaming out at 2:00 AM something to the effect of, “Mama, I really don’t need to go to the bathroom. I don’t want those kangaroo rats to jump on me! I like to sleep in my wet pajamas. Honest!”

We got up for the third time for good at 7:30, packed up the car and drove over to the General Store to get a General Store cup of coffee (right color, evidently some caffeine since I didn’t drive off the road). We drove through a place near the Furnace Creek Campground that was pretty neat as it was a car tour through an area that had a lot of the local geology (borax mine, tailings, effects of flash flooding) represented in a small area. The evening before we had driven about 15 miles south of Furnace Creek, which is about 180’ below sea level to a place that is even lower, ‘Devil’s Golf Course.’ Actually, he wasn’t there and I’m kind of glad, but it did appear to be a pretty challenging and difficult golf course to shoot par on. We never did see any greens. I went to look for golf balls, but couldn’t find any. I think we may have missed tee time.

Next, we drove to a place called ‘Natural Bridge.’ After about a 20 minute walk up a dry stream bed to a place where the stream bed has eroded the canyon walls and undercut a channel leaving a natural bridge.
Right after that was the Artist’s Drive which is just a short drive along the west-facing side of Death Valley that showcases, in a very dramatic way, the different minerals that make up the mountains. The sides of the mountains are multi-colored hues of greens to yellows to blacks in a very small area that appear to bleed varied colors of rocks.
Wednesday
Today we went to Mosaic Canyon. I went there last year and at the end of the canyon, on a small outcropping, I left a rock signed with my name and the date. I went there last year on April 11, 2010 since it was my last weekend to be in Loma Linda. Today, I left another rock with our names on it and the date April 18, 2011. Perhaps one day in the not too distant future we can take the grandkids there and we can ‘happen’ to discover the stones.
Now it’s 3:00 in the afternoon and we drove to the north end of the park at a campground called Mesquite Springs. I’m not sure why they called it this as we haven’t seen any springs. It’s not too hot, but pleasant, windy, but not too windy. Cloudy, but not too cloudy. We’re sitting here doing what we had planned to do; sit here and do nothing. We feel very successful.

A great read. Clink on the link

A great read.

Much more enjoyable?

In a time before time (meaning when I was much younger), I didn’t go to Sunday School but Sabbath School. It was basically the same message but had a Saturday (Sabbath) spin on it, and not a Sunday spin on it. Evidently in the Bible the fourth commandment that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai on the stone tablets that God inscribed with….????….????....that God inscribed, says that a person should keep the 7th day holy, as in reserved for God and God-like activities. My calendar had Saturday as the 7th day of the week, so it was pretty hard to argue, even for a know-it-all 10 year old.

I remember sitting there and listening to the teacher say something about “Don’t fall in with the wrong crowd, they’ll surely get you into trouble.” Even then I thought that was a great message until I realized that the teacher was talking about me to the rest of the kids there.

I was looking around the room and seeing who I thought were the bad-ass boys. Herm, Robert, and Bill were the first ones to come to mind as they were the ones that were consistently not listening to anything the teacher had to say. Meanwhile, myself, I hung on every word as I didn’t want to be forever damned to damnation. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, as the teacher was somewhat vague about exactly where it was, but I did pick up on the fact that it was really really hot and it lasted for a really really long time. Even then as a youth I thought it may not bode well for me as I had trouble concentrating on anything for a really long time.

Considering the fact that these guys seemed to always having a lot of fun, maybe I was one of the bad-crowd and God was bestowing his blessings on these guys. After all, whenever I tried to get away with something that was remotely questionable such as taking an extra scoop of ice cream at the Saturday Night Movie Nights I was busted immediately. Meanwhile these guys would almost founder themselves on cartons of ice cream and not even be noticed. That is when I started to question the justice system and made me think, maybe I should have born one of the ‘bad crowd’ instead of just someone who had a hard time concentrating on anything for a really really long time. Most of what they did led to fun and frivolity. Most of what I did led to embarrassment,  catastrophe, and shame. I had to admit whatever they were doing looked like a lot more fun than what I was doing.

Come Back Town USA

There have been a number of letters to the editor and acknowledgments about how effective the disaster plan was when it was implemented in Crescent City before, during, and after the tsunami that was generated by the earthquake in Japan.

That being said, the tsunami had a very small effect in comparison to the devastation in Japan caused by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami followed by the damage to the nuclear reactors.

I think it could be said that because of the all too common occurrence of tsunamis in Crescent City the city should never have grown here, much like building of New Orleans below the level of the Mississippi River, but because of its location it was almost necessary. I noticed while looking at the videos that have been posted, it appeared that many of the towns most devastated in Japan were behind sea walls that were built to protect the towns from just what occurred, and those cities too were built below the level of the ocean. Japan, being the most tsunami ready country on earth, thought they had prepared well but when the big one hit even their preparation wasn’t sufficient. It’s true, the earth always wins in the end.

As with many seaside towns along the coast, Crescent City has been and is very dependent on the commercial fishing industry. It is an economy in decline much like the logging industry, where the demands are increasing while the resources are dwindling. Unfortunately, like our lumber needs where we get more and more from areas out of the country where the environmental concerns are not followed, so it is with the fish that we buy where the stocks, resources, and future of the fisheries are not considered. I think certain areas of the world are somewhat like a modern day gold rush where the future of resource is not given due consideration.

In the recent past the U.S. government has bought out boats from fishermen and retired their licenses so as to not allow over-fishing and take those boats out of the fishery. This way the existing boats could have a better possibility to make a living while still harvesting a resource.

The local harbor is a real draw from a historical point of view as well as a real working harbor. The Crescent City harbor has had a history of  the highest poundage of crab being landed of any harbor on the West Coast. But this is the first year that I haven’t had a least one of my students whose parents weren’t fishermen though.

As far as community involvement, this afternoon there is going to be a community cleanup of the harbor and beaches that Andrew and I are going to be taking part in. After the 1964 Tsunami there was a radio personality in town by the name of Bill Stamps that coined the phrase, “Come Back Town USA.” I think we’ll be hearing more of that phrase in the weeks and months to come.

The new svelte me!

Sandi and a friend of ours went together a bought a new treadmill. Of course it has an incline adjustment, a calorie counter, a speed adjustment, and basically a lot of things that are probably very impressive. When you turn the machine on it’s even more impressive. It even has a beer holder

I used it tonight for the first time. I put on my walking shorts (since I didn’t plan to run, otherwise I would have put on my running shorts) and went out to get fit. I looked at the machine and marveled at everything it could do. Since Sandi set it up in front of the TV in the little house (we had to take out the bed) there weren’t too many excuses left for not using it. It even had a jack where you can listen to music on an MP3 player or iPod.

I stared at it  for about five minutes deciding what I wanted to do and closed my eyes imaging my svelte body when I was done working out. I punched every button on the front and nothing worked. Just to be on the safe side I turned the TV off and on to no avail.

Finally, after about six minutes I had to go in the house and ask Sandi how to turn it on. I jumped on it and walked for 20 minutes. I figured that should be enough of a workout the first time out. I wouldn’t want to lose too much weight too quickly.

I have to say for the first time it was a very successful workout. I worked up a sweat, my endorphins were elevated, and my heart rate was working at the performance level.

I think I’m going to like this workout thing. I may even plug it in tomorrow.

I understand that there's a tunnel back east somewhere that advertising is being sold on and in. On one end of the tunnel is a message board that says something to the effect "Believe in God and you will be saved." On the other end of the tunnel is a message that says "There is no God." I would guess that a person that uses this route to commute to work would wondering what they really believe.
Perhaps that most important message would be the one in the middle of the tunnel. It states, "Jesus Christ! Look where you're going!"