Sometimes you just don't know how much hair you have...

... until you see it in a sink

Missing Cats...

I've noticed an increase in two things recently,

1. The howls of coyotes at night, particularly when police sirens go off, or after the sounds of something dying- which leads us to number 2...

2. Missing cat posters with tear-off phone numbers so that we can call the people and let them know that we saw their cat the other day walking home from campus, but because I didn't have a large box on me in which to place your cat, it is once again missing.

I really have an urge to put this poster up in response to the growing number of missing cat posters:

Sequoia NP

Nicole and I drove up to Sequoia National Park for Memorial Day. We were all set to do our first backcountry camping, in bear country no less. We had all we thought we needed, a bear box, good boots, legit tent, backpacking stove, water filter... you name it. Just didn't expect it to be winter in the park.

We left a little later than hoped, and arrived just in time to claim our backcountry permit.... we had to hurry out to the trail head to start our hike so we could find a campsite by nightfall. The hike was along a really cool trail: High Sierra Trail. It runs all the way across the park (East-West) to Mt. Whitney on the Eastern edge of the park.

Near the Western trail head of the High Sierra Trail

The weather was a bit chilly, and a persistent, albeit light, rain was falling during the whole hike. The views off to the South should have been spectacular, but unfortunately all we saw was water vapor.

The "view" from Eagle Point

We somehow missed all of the designated back country campsites along the trail.... and ended up about 4 miles in, just looking for some flat ground to put a tent. We eventually found a relatively flat spot a few hundred feet below the trail. It was right next to a log, which we found out the next day is a prime source of food (grubs) for bears.....

Campsite the first night

We survived the first night intact, but pretty chilled. The next morning we woke up, had breakfast, and decided that with our lack of goretex (except for our boots) we'd better head back to the car and not get hypothermia. We found a car camping spot for the next night, and did some easy hikes that afternoon. We checked out the largest tree in the world (by volume) The General Sherman Tree. It was not the first Sequoia we had seen, but you walk along the path, and when it first comes into sight, it's on a whole other level than other Sequoias. The top is actually dead, so it actually has just been growing OUT, so it's a HUGE tree at the base.

General Sherman Tree. Hard to see the perspective here, but the other trees around are pretty big on their own...

We had a relaxing, dry warm night that night, as we could dry everything out in the car. The next morning, however, we woke up to a bit of a surprise: snow AND blue skys!

Was only an inch or two at our elevation, but... it's almost June!!

We did as much hiking as we could... the first one to a waterfall, and the second one a steady climbing trail that eventually lead to a meadow, but we turned around at a heavy creek crossing about 4 miles in.

Scenery along the Falls hike... if the visibility were better you'd see an entire huge mountain here...

Hiking through some light snow...

Topokah Falls from a distance

Looking back down into the valley from Topokah Falls. The U shape to the valley is indicative of it being formed from glaciers, whereas a V shape would suggest it was formed by water flowing

Topokah Falls
Thankfully the snow was hard enough to walk easily on top of. In spots it was at least 3-4 feet deep! Snowshoes in December anyone??

Despite the poor weather, and us being unprepared for how wet it was, it was a great visit. We definitely need to get back out there, to hike Mt. Whitney, finish exploring Sequoia, and check out Kings Canyon, which is adjoining to the North.

Cross Ride

Went out for a cross ride yesterday for the first time in.... a long while. I had never actually hit up any type of off road riding in the fall... just did the cross clinic at Fairview Park, and raced on the weekends. No surprise that anything technical was to my disadvantage... as I slid out in numerous corners, and generally rode cross like a roadie.

I'll still be riding cross like a roadie this season I'm sure, but if I keep heading out to the single-track out here then I'll be a lot better off come the fall. Plus it was a lot of fun.... but I've definitely learned the lesson that whenever the trail crosses over more than two or three iso-altitude lines (what are those called?) on a topo map, then... it's steep as hell! Did not plan on climbing for the first mile in my smallest gear, just hoping not to fall over.

Once I got up on top of a ride though, I could look out into the Laguna and Crystal Cove "Wilderness". Though if I turned around I'd see the 73 and a bunch of houses. Ehh, it's all good. Mainly rode fire-roads and just checked things out, but did hit up some loose dirt single track, which was fun, and I even bit it once... so even this tame ride was enough to buck off this roadie.

New Apartment...

Just got a kitchen table and some chairs, so the apartment is beginning to look like some place to live again. Also got a few cheap pots to separate the various aloe plants that we got for free when purchasing some cacti near Joshua Tree. Turns out what looked like a few aloe plants were actually all connected in the root structure, but I just pulled them apart.... we'll see if that works. It's got miracle grow potting soil, so if the advertising on the bag is true, I'll have aloe plants that are twice as tall!

Also got a microwave, which smells horribly like Chinese Food. Not takeout chinese food, but like pure cooking oil mixed with MSG mixed with orange glaze, smothered over deep fried fatty chicken, and then cooked in a microwave for three hours. It currently smells like 409, but I'm not even sure if that will do it. It's a pretty nice microwave though... and for a while if I want orange flavored tofu, all I need to do is stick some fresh tofu in there, and voila!

Nicole and I are going to Sequoia NP for Memorial Day, so get ready for massive numbers of pictures.

Might be a little chilly....

Nicole and I are heading out to our next National Park trip in about two weeks time- hitting up some back country camping in Sequoia National Park. Even late May is considered "early season" up there, and maybe this is why:


Might be a little hard to see (if this were google earth it would be crystal clear for sure) but that blue and white wedge in there basically encompasses Sequoia and Kings NP. The blue is around 30F, while the white is closer to 20. Holy balls. Now that is current as of 9AM... so presumably it might even be a bit cooler overnight.... hmmmmmm

Add that to Steven Colbert's number one threat, BEARS, and this three day trip has the possibility of being quite epic.

Hard Drives blow my mind...

I recently got an external harddrive that I have hooked up to my Airport Router, so thereby either of my computers can put stuff on it. I have an iTunes library on the drive which I have used to free up space by moving all the TV shows off of my laptop.

Tonight I happened to be listening to iTunes via this library, and copying over a new video from my laptop to the harddrive, and I thought to myself... how does it do both of these things at once? I think of hard drives as really really really sophisticated vinyl record readers and writers. So if it has one head, how does it do both of these things?? Clearly they can, as you never think about it when its the harddrive IN your computer. HOWEVER right when I was thinking of this, the "write" job to the drive failed. I fooled around for a few minutes, and found that the only way it would write the video files over without errors was if there was nothing else being done with the drive....found this sort of odd. I didn't expect my rudimentary picture of a vinyl record hard drive to really explain much in the real world....

So what's the deal? How do harddrives read/write from one part of the disc, while also read/write from another part of the disc? Maybe mine can't do this very well, but it's much more likely to do with the fact that its going over wireless, then through my router, and then finally into the drive.....

Up on SoCalCycling...

This poll was up on SoCalCycling.com:

Will the high price of gas effect how much racing you can do?
Seriously California?? Yes, gas prices are high, but why would you sacrifice going to races before considering to carpool? I feel like if this poll is taken on the East Coast, the car pool option would have much better representation.

Some other stats I've heard in the last few days, I think on NPR: aggressive driving can lead to a 30% knock in efficiency. Think of how much $$ you spend per mile driving, because really this is more fundamental than $$ per gallon. You can get 30% further if you just don't drive like a jackass, accelerate like you're in a NASCAR race, or average over 70 on the freeway.

Also read in a magazine article that the vehicle in the US that has the lowest cradle to grave energy requirements is the Scion xB. Just imagine if they used a wind tunnel to design it next time!! The cradle to grave analysis takes into account all the design work, material sourcing, manufacturing, use, and disposal/recycling. The Toyata Prius isn't far behind considering you have to sacrifice three and a half lambs and cut down three acres of trees to make the battery.

Mel-ben

I usually get pretty carried away with things at times. When I was looking for grad schools I had a monstrously large excel spreadsheet with all sorts of crap in it, most importantly the average daily temperature, which obviously dominated my decision making process to come to Irvine.

I've recently become really interested in the area of sustainable, or green building. I first heard about this back at PSU I think, and it seemed like a fringe hippy-ish thing that was being done up in Vermont. Enter: energy crisis, and companies wanting to go "green", and sustainable building is quickly becoming mainstream. To be fair, knowing what I know now, it would have become mainstream anyway, because it makes so much sense. If you'd like to nod and smile politely for 20 minutes, ask me about it.

Anyway, the carried away part is that I've gone back to my aspirations of getting a Fulbright, this time to study green construction in where else? Melben. That is Melbourne, Australia. Turns out there is a university there, RMIT, that has the perfect program. How sick would it be to go live in Australia and get experience in some sweet nitch between engineering and the environment. Applications are due in the fall, and if I were to do this program, I'd probably be starting there February 2010.

Royale with cheese

It's the little differences,

example: here in California no one takes off their sunglasses when they talk to you. That might not seem weird, but I've found that sometimes it can be. Maybe it's just natural, but whenever I'm talking to people I usually take my glasses off so you can make eye contact. This point was first brought up to me by Munas one day when we were on the side of the road educating a police officer about the laws of the road. We took our glasses off to talk to him, and I think he was more receptive, in part, because we saw him eye to eye.

Anyway, back to California- everyone has dark sunglasses, and you usually can't see people's eyes, so it's a little weird sometimes I think. I bet there is some cognitive difference that is present and depends upon eye contact for communication. I'm almost certain, however, that I don't care that much, and am far too lazy to even google the subject.

they put mayonnaise all over the shit.

What else... more racing.

Did Barrio Logan on Saturday, and CBR Dominguez "I've raced this course 8 times this year" Hills.

Barrio Logan was an EXPERIENCE. Man, I haven't seen that many crashes in a race for a LONG time. The first few were in straightaways. I swerved and jumped my way over guys who donated their skin to the pavement. Sucks. Was not near enough to the front when two guys, Scott from SDBC, and Albert from T-mobile, ended up rolling away. Definitely would have jumped to go with that, but the trouble is I tried to bridge far too late... and ended up just torching myself before the finish. Oh well.

Next day was the CBR race, where Ernie is still leading the series. He couldn't make it, however, so our strategy going in was to get Ted, our next best placed rider, the victory, and limit the points that Max, from SC Velo, got... who was sitting 2nd.

Well we only had about 30 riders at most, because San Luis Rey was going on the same day. So my thoughts of sitting in and leading Ted out full throttle were probably not going to happen. They were certain not to happen once Ted decided to shred people to death about 3 laps in. Originally it was Ted and a Banning's Rider, so myself and some Bannings guys were slowing what was left of the field down. I basically just sat on Max's wheel the whole race. After only a few laps Ted had dropped the Bannings guy, and was drilling it out there all by himself. I was already thinking of where I would counter once Ted's Andrea-like move came back.... but it didn't, ever. I sat in the wheels of the chasers, who were for the most part not all that organized, and not fully committed to anything. Most people didn't realize I was just marking Max, and some dude started swearing at me to pull- needless to say I did not, just made sure to gap him off the back a few times. I basically sat 4th wheel for half the race while three guys just rotated in front of me. Wonderful!

At one point I had actually let Max slip behind me, and I was still sitting 4th wheel... so I figured, what the hell, I'll let these three go, and that is 3 more spots that Max can't get into... so I just sat up, and so did everyone behind me. So 3 guys went up the road, and I can imagine that with only 3, they worked better, because they stayed away too. One dude actually caught Ted, but Ted still beat him down in the sprint. Going into the final lap, I should have just continued to sit on Max's wheel, but a little lull in the pace invited me to attack with what I thought should be significantly fresher legs than everyone else... but I guess not. I almost got to the last corner, but was rushed by four guys, and then a few more... I think I ended up 15th- bummer. But Ted got the victory, and Max only got 5th, so even though he'll definitely take over the lead, it's still manageable.

Rare Political Sidenote

So I hadn't really made up my mind about who I'd vote for come November, other than the fact that it would not be a white male. That is until the last few days have produced some daylight between the two donkey candidates. I found this excerpt from the NYT (full article) particularly telling:

For all the similarities between the two Democrats, there is also a core thematic difference between them. Mrs. Clinton tends to favor narrowly focused programs, like the gas-tax holiday, that speak to specific voter concerns. By suspending the tax and replacing it with a new tax on oil companies, Mrs. Clinton told a rally in Hendersonville, N.C., on Friday, she was standing with “hard-pressed Americans who are trying to pay their gas bills.”

Mr. Obama, on the other hand, leans toward broader programs meant to help nearly all middle- and low-income families. At a steel factory in Northwest Indiana on Friday, Mr. Obama called the tax holiday a “gimmick” and said he instead favored a cut in the payroll tax, which finances Social Security, of up to $1,000 for middle-class households “to offset the costs not only of gas, but also of food.”

After reading this section I think I've made my choice. Seems that Hill-Rod is full of political tricks, while Barack is actually looking to improve conditions for a large number of people. This even coming from a newspaper that endorsed Clinton- check here for proof of that from the most reputable of news sources.

Anyway, keep filling up those SUV gas tanks America- the gas tax will probably happen, because politicians are ridiculous. Just remember that when the tax comes back, and it pushes gas back over the $7 per gallon mark, Obama didn't want it.