Ann vs. Jason

By Jason

If this post is a bit disjointed, it’s because the past week or so has been a bit busy and we’ve bounced around from one thing to another like a pinball, inside a pinball machine, inside another giant pinball machine.

Last weekend was to be our big trip to Yosemite. We were planning on camping out with some of my coworkers and then doing some mild hiking around the valley while most of them attempted to scale Half Dome. This was going to be Athena’s first camping trip, so Ann spent the week preparing and packing and I spent the week convincing Ann that it wasn’t a crazy idea and that Curry Village is actually quite nice.

This was all planned out when we learned that Todd would be in San Francisco the same weekend. We worked out a plan to drive up to Sonoma on Thursday to meet up with him, then leave for Yosemite Friday right after work.

Then some of the corporate communications people at work told me some news outlets might be interested in doing a story on all the scams using Google’s name and logo… and by the way, Good Morning America will be here on Friday :)

Then Yosemite caught fire.

So on Thursday, we did go up to Sonoma to see Todd and meet Liz. Todd was actually having a bad reaction to some sunburn so we didn’t go on on wine tours, but Athena was her normal charming self and we had a nice visit.

I had to go in to work early that morning for practice interviews and give the correspondent some background over the phone during lunch, but that was okay.

On Friday I did the interview – it was about a half hour of taping but in the end they only used a few seconds. You can see the clip and read the news story and read more about the experience on my blog.

Later that day we found out that wild fires near Yosemite had closed the road to the west entrance and filled the valley with smoke. We had to cancel the trip, but Reid pulled together a last-minute day trip to Angel Island, just north east of San Francisco in the bay.

We carried Athena around with the baby carrier and stowed about a thousand pounds of baby stuff in another backpack. It pays to be prepared, though – Ann had bought a new thermos for the camping trip and it kept us supplied with hot water for milk all day, no problem.

We split off from the main group to avoid the steep trail and walked over to the Angel Island Immigration Station, where many Asian American immigrants were detained. It was a nice walk, though uncharacteristically hot.

The walls of the building have poetry carved in Chinese:

Athena absolutely loved taking the ferry to and from the island. Judging from her reaction, it was the greatest thing she had ever experienced in her 9 months on this earth.

Our fellow hikers included Mike, Beah, Dan, Nelson, Merry, Charlene, Reid, Kolina, Naoko from the Tokyo office, and Andrew from Seoul.

Few people know this but Nelson and Mike are professional catalog models:

The ferry back from Angel Island is amazingly inconvenient. We had to go to Tiburon, then Fishermans Wharf, and then finally back to the Ferry Building where we started our trip.

And here’s one last photo, Athena has learned how to drive:

Ann and I are somewhat exhausted.

By Jason

I just realized we haven’t updated the blog in a few weeks. Work has been very busy. I’ll cover some of the things we’ve been up to lately, including visits to a number of local parks.

GoogleServe 2009

This past week we had our annual community service project at work, GoogleServe. This year my team signed up together to remove invasive plants from the dunes at Half Moon Bay. We were going after mustard and ice plant. I was surprised to find out that ice plants aren’t native to California – I took a bunch of pictures of them when we visited Santa Cruz. They are great at stabilizing dunes but choke out native plants that local wildlife depend on.

I didn’t take any pictures, but Reid did, and you can enjoy this quick video from my friend and fellow internet-blogger Wysz.

Apparently very few Googlers (or Californians, for that matter) have ever used a hoe before. I tried to explain: in the Midwest, we have these things called yards, and with yards you can often find gardens. Given real estate prices here (even in a down market), I guess we’ll have to find a volunteer organization or community garden or something to better introduce Athena to the outdoors.

GoogleServe, by the way, is an amazing program that more companies should consider copying. Kudos to Seth for his help organizing.

Castle Rock State Park

Last weekend we took Athena on a hike in Castle Rock State Park. We’ve been on walks before, but we’re starting to work our way up to what I would call an official hike.

Athena loves hiking so far but going up and down hills is probably the only activity that’s still hard for Ann. She’s been working out and is probably in better shape than me by now but the changes in grade make walking a challenge for her.

You can see the Castle Rock formation in the photos below. Given all the mountains and cliffs around California I was a little surprised at how small Castle Rock is – it reminded me of the rocks at in Chippewa Gorge at Brecksville Metropark. Fun for climbing.

I have more photos at Flickr.

Lake Chabot with Ahan and Julie

A few weekends ago we spent the weekend at Ahan and Julie’s place, including a nice walk at Chabot Regional Park in the East Bay.

It’s a long story why we spent the whole weekend with them – we haven’t written about it much, but Athena had cold symptoms for about 5 weeks straight, since just after our visit to Cleveland. We’ve had water leaking in the ceiling and mold problems at this apartment so we spent the weekend with them to see if it would make a difference. I headed back home for one of the days to do a thorough cleaning, even washing the walls of her room.

In any event, she’s fine now. Back to the pictures:

Athena loves the grass. We couldn’t keep her on the blanket for long before she rolled over into the grass to start pulling it up.

We’ll try to do another update soon, with picture and video of Athena in her current favorite toy, the Johnny Jump-Up.

By Jason

After our trip to San Francisco, we decided to go from cityscapes to open space.  One of the benefits of living in the Bay Area is being close to so many different environments, including vineyards and forests with giant redwood trees.

We took a hike around Portola Redwoods State Park.  The first challenge was crossing Pescadero Creek.  Because creeks can flood in the winter, they don’t leave the footbridges out all year, but we lucked out and found a fallen log to cross.

The trees are really amazing, and it’s hard to get a sense of scale from the photos.  They often have hollowed out spaces near the roots and some you can walk right through.

The last challenge was crossing back over the creek to get back to the ranger station and parking.  At this crossing we weren’t as lucky – no fallen bridges, so we had to cross barefoot.  The water was cold – ridiculously cold.

Then it was off toward Saratoga for some wine tasting.  This area isn’t as well-known as the Napa Valley but it’s worth the trip.  The winding roads and views are great.  Here you can see the suburbs of San Jose from the Savannah-Chanelle vineyard.

Ann had to work a 12-hour shift on my birthday, so we went on a little excursion on the 17th instead.  We drove up to the Monte Bello Open Space Preserve for a quick hike.  Then Ann took me out to dinner at Garden Fresh Vegetarian Restaurant.  They’ve got good food and are within walking distance of our place so I’m sure we’ll be back there in the future.

Things we learned:

• Baskin Robins makes ice cream cakes with the low-fat frozen yogurt, but that might not be enough for me to trick myself into thinking I can have any.
• Ann learned what a coyote howl sounds like.  I learned that Ann does not like coyotes.
• Foothill College has a really interesting campus.  It also has just a single, long, looping one-way road that you have to drive all the way around to get out.

Here are some pictures from the hike:

- Jason

Last week we took a quick trip up to San Bruno Mountain State Park near San Francisco. We really just wanted to get out of the house a bit, do a little walking, and see some sites.

This wasn’t really our first excursion. We drove out to Sacramento last Wednesday (our first full day in California) so Ann could get her nursing license for the state but were thwarted in our attempts to do any siteseeing. We tried driving up Mount Diablo but the cold, rainy weather and fog at the top of the mountain cut that trip short.

Although it was still pretty chilly, San Bruno Mountain was a great idea because it’s not too far away, it’s very accessible (you can drive right to the top), and it has great views of San Francisco in every direction. Below are a bunch of photos from the trip, you can click on each one to see a larger version at Flickr. You can also go directly to the whole photo set.

Here’s Ann with San Francisco in the distance:

Can you tell it was windy?

Ann’s waiting at the car while I walk up the last few yards to the summit. That’s South San Francisco and the bay in the background.

Here’s the view of the San Francisco skyline from the top of the mountain:

Ann was not enthusiastic about encountering a mountain lion:

The flora round the Bay Area is really interesting. Here on the mountain you see trees and confiers like you would expect at a higher altitude…

But the turn around and things are looking a bit more tropical:

Even in January there were flowers growing on the hillsides.

This was near a small camping area. I emailed the park service to see if we can get reservations to camp there some time. The next few pictures, with probably the best views, were just a short walk from the camp.

You can probably guess why I’d like to camp there. Even though it’s surrounded by the city and suburbs, watching a sunset and seeing the city lit up at night would be great.

-Jason