Weblog

Over the past month, I haven't had much luck with the weather, despite my best efforts to dodge some of the winter cold. In December, I had two and a half weeks of vacation to burn, and I decided I didn't want to spend all of it at home. So, I took off to Southern Florida for six days. I had never been south of Orlando, and it seemed like a good time to go. The weather looked as if it would cooperate, up until the day before I was to leave. The predicted temperatures had been dropping for a while, but quickly it went from sunny to cloudy to thunderstorms. It was raining enough that when my plane got to Fort Lauderdale, we were put in a hold pattern for fifteen minutes to wait for a particularly heavy bit of the storm to pass over the airport. I then had to drive all the way to Homestead in the rain, in Miami traffic. By the next day, it had gone from a storm to a downpour. Miami ended up with fourteen inches of rain that day. I went to the Everglades Park anyway, though I didn't get out of the car much, and I went back to the hotel fairly early. Thankfully, by the next day, the rain had subsided, so I went to Shark Valley on the north side of the park. The wildlife was spectacular, with plenty of birds and alligators. I hit up some other spots on the north side as well, including Fakahatchee and Big Cypress. The next morning, I got up to see some of the south side of the park, including a nice sunrise over Pa-hay-okee.

After a morning in the park, I made my way down to Key West. Unfortunately, it seemed that my bad luck with weather was not over. Though it was sunny when I left the park, it became increasingly cloudy and cold as I made my way south, and I was worried that I might be in for more rain. Thankfully, the weather started to turn around after Islamorada, and I was able to spend some time on a trail in Long Key State Park. The trail went through some beautiful hammocks, with impressive mangroves and other greenery. From there, I went to Duck Key, which looked enticing from the road, so I drove around the neighborhood. I stopped on Big Pine Key next, which also had some nice trails in the northwest corner. Finally, I drove the rest of the way to Key West. By the time I checked in, it had begun to rain. The next day was better; it was dry, but still cloudy. I went downtown to see the sights. I went to Fort Zachary Taylor to see the fort and stay for sunset, but I left early when it was apparent that the clouds were too thick. The next day, I walked to Smathers Beach and spent some time basking, then went back to the hotel to read. Finally, I made my way back to Fort Zachary Taylor, and I finally got my sunset. The following morning, I made the four hour trip back to the airport. I fully expected the flight to be cancelled, as Denver was in a rather severe snowstorm. To my pleasant surprise, my flight left on time, though landing in Denver made me somewhat uneasy. There was plenty of snow flying by the plane, and I couldn't see the ground until we were about a hundred feet from it. To make matters worse, I had to take a taxi home, but I did finally make it. It was good to be back.

Unfortunately, that was not the end of my bad luck with weather. This past weekend, I went to Hawaii with some people from work. The morning we left, the prediction was for 80 degrees, sun, and zero percent chance of rain. While the prediction held for the first day, the second was overcast in Honolulu, and the third it was quite cloudy, and it even rained briefly. Thankfully, it was not bad enough to ruin anything. We went to Waikiki Beach the first day, Chinatown, Pearl Harbor, a Japanese temple, Diamond Head, and a luau the second. The third day we went to Kailua and Lanikai beaches, and spent the rest of the time on the North Shore before making our way back to Honolulu for dinner and the airport.

This past Thursday, I made my way home after spending nearly three weeks in California. It was the first outing for my new camera purchase; I recently splurged and bought a Canon 7D. The camera is, simply stated, incredible. It is considerably larger than my previous camera, the XTi, which has its plusses and minuses. It is superior in just about every other way. The new autofocus system is taking some getting used to, but it does seem quite powerful. Perhaps most impressive, though, is the low-light performance. With my old camera, anything above ISO 800 was virtually unusable, but now I find myself using ISO 3200 in some situations, and the results are satisfactory. The noise patterns even seem more film-like to me, so they are less distracting, and sometimes even desirable. Overall, I'm quite happy with the new camera, and I've even posted my first set of pictures taken with it, with the details of the events surrounding them detailed here.

I spent the first weekend in November in and around San Francisco, with some friends from work. We went up Friday evening, eventually making our way to a Latin fusion restaurant, Charanga. The food was fairly good, and they didn't mind terribly that most of us were quite late to our reservation. The waitress also knew a bit about photography, so I showed her my new camera, with which she seemed thoroughly impressed. We dropped Eric, Marianne and Nicole off, and then Chi, Pammy, Steve and I made our way to Twin Peaks, and then to Steve's place. The following morning, I enjoyed my first ever Dim Sum with Steve, Chi, Pammy, Eric and Marianne at Yank Sing in downtown. From there, we split up; the others went on to do some of the touristy things in the city, and I went to pick up Nicole and her friend from New York to go to Muir Woods. When we got there, parking proved to be difficult; we had to walk quite a ways back from our car to get into the park. After we got in, we started on the loop trail, but eventually we diverged, taking a trail up out of the forest. We originally thought this trail would loop back, but it kept climbing, and we eventually found ourselves on a paved street. The street turned out to be one we had taken into Muir Woods, so we followed it a while, eventually stumbling on a new pair of trails. Unfortunately, we chose the wrong one, and had to backtrack after hitting a dead end. So, we finally made it onto the right trail, only to find it blocked off a short way in. Nicole and I decided to continue despite the blocked path, but her friend decided he had enough, and went back to the road. We eventually met up at the visitor center, where I saw my first Tesla Roadster. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my camera out in time, so I didn't get a picture before it sped away. From there, the three of us made our way to Mount Tamalpais, just in time for sunset. We were rewarded with a beautiful view of the bay, the city, the headlands, and the ocean. We then made our way back to the city. After dropping the two of them off, Chi, Pammy, Steve, Eric, Marianne and I went to The Stinking Rose for dinner. The following morning, I picked up Nicole again, and we went to Land's End. After the short hike, we had lunch at a local Korean restaurant, and then made our way down to San Jose. We took the scenic route, starting on the coast highway, and then turning off of I-280 to get to Skyline Boulevard. Though the views of the bay and ocean were not as impressive as I had hoped, the forests we passed through were breathtaking; the drive was one of the best I have had since visiting the redwoods in northern California.

The next weekend I spent in Los Angeles, with my aunt and uncle, who live in Huntington Beach. After flying into Orange County, I was greeted with the infamous 405 traffic, though luckily for only seven miles. In all, it took me just short of an hour to go the 25 miles to their house. We had grilled chicken for dinner, but my uncle graced me with some of his wine collection as well. There are few chardonnays that I like (making it the only varietal I generally avoid), but he is able to find some that I actually enjoy. After trying out a few different wines, we moved on to a dessert wine. He was happy that I partook, as he says he cannot get anybody else to drink it with him. Shortly afterward, we made our way to bed, as the plan was to get up early to go tailgating before making our way to the USC-Stanford football game. The next morning, we made our way to Pasadena to pick up my cousin Christine. At seven in the morning on a Saturday, we hit traffic. Luckily, we weren't too late, and we left my cousin's on time. We picked up some tasty breakfast burritos on the way, and eventually made our way to campus. Coming from Nebraska, the debauchery I witnessed on the USC campus was definitely something novel. Everybody was drinking out in the open, and campus security came by every now and then to make sure nobody was dead. We all had lots of fun, to say the least. We met up with some of my cousin's friends, and partied for a few hours. Eventually, though, we did make our way to the stadium, to see USC get utterly creamed. During the halftime show, the Stanford band and announcer railed on USC for a good ten minutes, in a manner so incredibly distasteful that, although there were some scattered boos, most everybody just sat in stunned silence. We didn't even stay for the whole game; we left with seven minutes left to beat the traffic. During that time, Stanford scored two more touchdowns. Afterward, we went to Smitty's in Pasadena, at my cousin's recommendation. We then dropped her off and made our way back to Huntington Beach for the night. We spent the following day mostly relaxing, watching football. I didn't even get to see the Broncos lose, though, as it wasn't broadcast there. We had a late lunch at a taco place in downtown Huntington Beach, and eventually we said our goodbyes and I made my way to the airport.

Finally, after two weekends away, I was able to spend this past weekend at home, as well as all of this week. It feels good to be home again.

Yesterday I decided to make a quick trip up to the mountains in an attempt to get some photos of the aspen trees in their fall colors. I had been thinking about doing this for the past month or so, as one of the guys at work was wanting to come out to Colorado to see it. I figured we had plenty of time, but I didn't think about the leaves changing earlier at the higher elevations. I looked into it Friday night, and the US Forest Service's site made it look like it was already too late. I decided I would try anyway; it's not a terribly long drive up Boulder Canyon, and I don't remember the last time I was up there anyway.

The Forest Service web site was, for the most part, spot on. Most of the aspen along the beautiful Peak to Peak highway were already well past their prime, many of them with no leaves at all. However, the highway is mostly downhill between Nederland at the south end and its terminus at Highway 7 to the north, and I did manage to find one particularly stunning grove, making the whole trip worthwhile. I also found another cluster of trees on Highway 7, though there were other threes besides the aspen in this grove. Regardless, the pictures still turned out well, and I already have them posted.