All Good Things

My time in California, as a guest of the Stanford Institute of Theoretical Physics, is drawing to a close. Well, ok---I wasn't really a guest of the SITP, my boss was. I was more or less just along for the ride. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful few months.

I remember when my boss told me he was going to be spending six months on Sabbatical at Stanford. My first thought was this, exactly: "When I applied to Stanford, they couldn't reject my application fast enough. Now they have to take me."

This is me and the very famous Savas Dimopoulos. He is so famous that he has his own Wikipedia page. We shared a Greek salad once---he ate the peppers and cucumbers.

I spent six months doing physics, and exploring California, and enjoying myself immensely. I live in a 10 by 10 room, next to the train tracks, I share a bathroom with a Chinese girl, and my rent is $850 a month---but I wouldn't change any of this.

But as they say, all good things must end. I have enjoyed the benefits of being at a first class research institution, of interacting with first class people, and asking them stupid questions. I've made new friends, and hopefully I've made favorable impressions on them. I can say that, without a doubt, they've made favorable impressions on me. I will always remember Stanford for being a sunny place, partly because of the climate, but mostly because of the people.

I'm gonna miss you guys. A lot.

California Dreaming

So, since I've been in California, I've put nearly 300 miles on my bike:
The original goal was for 1000 miles by the end of March, and I am on pace to make it happen, except I'll be gone for a couple of weeks during Christmas, and for Bryanne's graduation and Miguel's wedding.

It's a nice bike, complete with disk breaks and 27 gears. (Some of the gears are degenerate, though, and I only use about six or seven different gear combinations, in practice.) It also has 29" wheels, which is a departure from the typical 26" wheels on a mountain bike. After test riding several bikes, I found that this size was a better option for me.

I've also dropped about 15 pounds since October, and about 30 since June.
I started lifting weights at OSU in June or so, and my legs and arms are getting bigger, and my calves are super toned. I joined a gym here in Menlo Park (I can't technically use the gym at Stanford), and got two free sessions with a personal trainer, Ulysses. On my own, I've done pretty good though. My squats have increased from around 100 pounds in October to 155 last week. My bench press started under 100 pounds and is now around 120 -130 (depending on how many reps I do). Ulysses (who uses words like "explosive" and "essentially" quite a bit) has designed a workout for me designed to increase power and build core muscles. I don't know how that will go, but I look forward to sitting in the steam room after I lift, at least.

I think that a lifestyle change like this is pretty doable---for me it took a realization that I would be in school for 30 years of my life, and that dying at 55 was really kind of a bad option. That, coupled with the fact that I more or less hate everything on TV (with the exception of Futurama reruns, South Park, football, and the Magic Bullet Infomercial) made it pretty easy. And, of course, I want to be "barrel chested".

There's tons of easy, healthy things to do, I've found. For example, I stopped drinking coffee and started drinking espresso and cappuccino. Coffee isn't bad for you at all---it's full of nutrients, and it makes you thirsty, so you drink more water. What IS bad is dumping half and half or cream into a cup of coffee. Also, for example, ZipLock makes these steam bags so that you can steam fresh vegetables in the microwave. So, for example, I can buy a whole roasted chicken from SafeWay (about $6) and a couple of pounds of vegetables. Then for dinner, I can cut a breast or a leg/thigh off of the chicken and steam up some vegetables. Total prep time is under five minutes (mostly because everything can't fit in the microwave at the same time), and the whole dinner has somewhere around 300-400 calories. For lunch I eat tomatoes instead of potato chips (you can buy these great little cherry tomatoes).

Of course, there's always the barrier that you have to get over first. And I still love fried fish, greasy Mexican food, and a thick steak as much as anyone. But I also enjoy feeling awake and healthy during the day, and not being out of breath when climbing up stairs.

Santa Cruz Mountain Expedition: Purisimia Creek Redwoods

I'll take a break from blogging about Moneterey Bay Aquarium to post some pictures of my hike this Sunday. The biggest thing that I learned from the whole experience is that you should break in your hiking boots before hiking, and that mountain lions aren't pussies:

This is the first (hopefully) in a series of installments about some hiking adventures in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I decided, somewhat on a whim but mostly in a rational and well thought-out manner, to go for a hike this afternoon in the mountains. Palo Alto is flanked by mountains---I see the Santa Cruz Mountains to the west every day as I drive to work, and I have been promising myself for six weeks that I'd get out and get my shoes dirty.

After doing a bit of research, I decided that I would go for a nice 3.6 mile hike in the Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve. The trail that I ended up taking was a 7.1 mile hike that took me along the North Ridge and down into Whittemore Gulch. After going west along the gulch, I hiked back up the side of Harkins Ridge, back to my truck. The route I took is here. I highlighted the entire route.

Redwoods.

The namesake of the park is the redwood tree, a conifer for which California is famous. We've all seen grainy, black and white pictures of the giant trees that must have awed the first generation of white Californians, but it is an entirely different matter to stand with your chest against one looking up, to appreciate the true breadth of these organisms.

Some of the trunks that I encountered were several tens of feet in diameter, at least, supporting massive limb systems which arched up, mostly out of view. The trees gave off a fragrant, cedary smell, which permeated the air entirely as I made my way down to the basin.

Do behold the King Sequoia! Behold! Behold! seems all I can say. Some time ago I left all for Sequoia and have been and am at his feet, fasting and praying for light, for is he not the greatest light in the woods, in the world? Where are such columns of sunshine, tangible, accessible, terrestrialized?

John Muir, 1870

Other Plants.

This isn't the prime time of the year for plant watching, even though it's more or less always springtime here. There were a few covering plants, along with a compliment of native grasses and mosses.


This next picture is a Coyote Bush, I think. I spiced it up a bit with Picasa, a picture editing app from google. I like how it turned out:

As I got to the bottom of the gulch, the air turned progressively cooler and more humid, and it soon became apparent that there was a creek at the bottom. Not only was there a marked increase in moisture, but there was much less ambient light (an artifact of the boreal canopy) and a gentle mumur as the creek made it's lazy way to the Pacific. This change in conditions meant that new species of plants thrived.

Whittemore Gulch.

My truck was parked at roughly 1800 feet above sea level, and the bottom of the gulch is around 600 feet above sea level. After making my way down the side of the North Ridge mostly in the sun, the shade and quietly babbling creek were a welcomed change.

Now I pause for a random picture of poop:

This is a banana slug, the namesake of University of California, Santa Cruz. The rumor is that you can lick them to get a "tingly sensation" on your tongue. "Tingly" seems like a stupid reason to lick a slug, to me. I would go for "mind altering", but "tingly" sounds a bit lame.

Mostly Up.

Once I got to the bottom (400 feet above sea level), I had a tough choice to make. I had overshot my turnaround point about 2 miles back, and was now standing at the trailhead for another trail along a parallel gulch. A ridge of mountains (Harkins Ridge) separates Whittemore Gulch from Purisima creek, so I could either climb back up the face of the North Ridge (which I had already seen), or take a different route up Harkins Ridge. Either way, the return trip was mostly up.

The road back up was definitely difficult in some places, and I had to take several breathers along the way. The route up Harkins Ridge was shorter, but that only meant that the elevation changed more quickly.


Vistas.

Of course, you may be wondering where all the mountain pictures are, in all of this. No matter how many little features your 10 megapixle camera has, or how many angles you take a picture from, it is simply impossible to capture the majesty of these scenes with $200 of plastic, glass and circuitry.

What you can't see in this picture is the Pacific, which was shining passively beyond the far mountains.
This is the best zoom that my camera can do: here you can see Half Moon Bay, and the town of Pacifica, I think.
In all, I would recommend spending a Sunday in the mountains to anyone who couldn't spend it on the beach fishing---even if your hiking boots aren't 100% broken in. Trust me---the blisters are worth it.

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains of the moon.

JRR Tolkein

Monterey Bay Aquarium IV: REAL fish

So, without further ado...

Everything until now has been mere foreplay, the amouse bouche before dinner, the open fifths from the string before the conductor gives the downbeat...

Bottom Fish.

Most of these fish I've never seen before, nor would I have seen, as they aren't your typical aquarium fare. This means that I don't know, nor do I remember, most of the fishes names. The one above is some type of goby or blenny, I think, and it was in the tank with the Dr. Seuss Sea Anemones.


A lot of the fish weren't very colorful---not the typical blues and yellows and reds that one would expect if going to a tropical reef exhibit.


The Aquarium also had a dedicated flounder exhibit, with several different species in several rather large tanks. These two guys, above and below, are the same species. The flounder has a remarkable ability to match the bottom, regardless of the color---of course, anyone who's been floundering can tell you that. I had never seen such drastic variations in color back to back, however.


There was a whole tank dedicated to garbage---specifically, the ability of nature to utilize whatever shelter is available. I'm not sure what the point to this was, other than to encourage people to throw empty bottles into the ocean:

These gobies got along quite nicely in their improvised homes. It is even interesting that the darker goby chose the darker bottle (below) and the lighter goby (I didn't get a good picture of him) chose the lighter colored bottle. I don't think that this is a coincidence.

This is a shovelnose guitarfish, which I have never seen in person before. They live along the west coast, but I think there are species which live in the Gulf of Mexico.

I'm not altogether sure what kind of ray this is, but it looks like a cownose ray, which we catch from time to time off of the beach in Galveston.

This was another impressive exhibit. What they've done is actually opened the egg case of a skate (a type of ray) without disturbing the embryo, and then closed it against a piece of glass. The result is an actual look inside the egg case:

This is a wolf eel, found in cold water reefs. You can see a stupid person's camera display at the bottom:

This is a lingcod, wihch is a bit difficult to see:

This is a bit better picture.


And this is what it looks like after it returns from the dead:


There were tons of exhibits with little fish living in little crevaces, which occasionally popped out to see what was going on:

This is some species of blenny, again.





Kelp Fish.

There were several tanks dedicated to the kelp forests which the Pacific Coast is famous for. The next few pictures come from the third largest display in the whole aquarium. There are several species of fish in this picture, but the one I liked was the white sturgeon, in the middle. These guys are famous for their eggs, which rich people call caviar.

This is a leopard shark, one of few sharks which can live without moving constantly. For some reason, most sharks lack a mechanism to efficiently force water over their gills, which means they have to keep moving to keep water flowing. The leopard sharks (aparently) have the ability to just lay around. In the Gulf, we have nurse sharks with the same ability.

The second largest display in the aquarium was dedicated to the kelp forests, as well. I can't begin to name all the species in the tank, but this is a California Sheepshead, much less conservatively colored than the sheepsheads which live in the Gulf.

I'm not sure what this bruiser is. It looks like some sort of grouper or seabass.

These are some perches and rockfishes. I have much better pictures of rockfish below

This is also a rockfish, although unrelated to the ones above. Actually, I think this is also called a cabazon, but I am probably mistaken.


Tropical Fish.

Of course, no aquarium would be complete without the canonical reef exhibits. These fish were quite impressive, though, even if I have seen them before.

This is one of my favorites, called a butterfly fish.

This is the moray eel picture I promised. His teeth are very impressive. They are stalkers---the way they hunt is to hide in a hole and dart out when something tasty swims by. The long teeth ensure that the tasty thing can't wiggle away.

This is another one of my favorite fish, called a yellow tang. I just like yellow, I guess.


Rock Fish.

These guys are apparently quite tasty, and were fished to near extinction. They are sometimes called snapper, but I think they are not related to the deep water fish that we know and love (to eat) in Texas. This is a canary rockfish.

I can't help but think how he'd taste sauteed in butter, with some crab meat piled on top...

Nearest I can tell, this is an olive rockfish. I wonder if you can taste the difference?

This is called a bocaccio, I think.

This is a china rockfish. I tried to get more pictures, but they all turned out blurry.

Blue Water.

Anchovies!


I think this was my favorite exhibit of them all, the pelagic species. I didn't get very many good pictures, mostly because the light was low, and I didn't have a camera which would allow adequate shutter speeds for the low light conditions. I did get a FEW pictures, though. This is an ocean sunfish, flanked by a bluefin tuna to the left.

I was able to get some video, though. In this video, you'll see some (500+ pounds) bluefin tuna (sometimes called "fatty" tuna or toro), a 300+ pound yellowfin tuna (commonly called ahi) , some Pacific Barracuda, a few mahi mahi (sometimes called dorado or dolphin), and maybe a few other fish.

Here's a quick track list:
0:00 Pacific Barracuda.
0:12 Big Bluefin Tuna.
0:17 Huge mahi mahi
0:25 More Bluefin
0:31 Big Yellowfin Tuna
0:47 Bluefin (top) albacore? bottom
1:02 More Bluefin
1:04 Big mahi mahi again
1:18 Two big bluefin
1:28 Great picture of mahi mahi
1:32 School of albacore



Finally, this is a short (2 second) video of the full tank, with emphasis on the great hammerhead shark, which I've never really seen in the wild before.



There's still a few more posts to make on Monterey Bay Aquarium---it was THAT awesome.