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

We’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but we’ve been pretty busy lately. Athena is now standing and can walk if she has something to hold on to, so we spend most of our time just trying to keep up with her.

Three weeks ago my Aunt Linda came to visit and see Athena.

One of Athena’s new favorite passtimes is swinging on the swingset. She’s still too little to fit i the toddler swing so we just holder her on our laps.

Here’s an earlier photo on the swings with me:

We drove down to Santa Cruz to see the beach. The boardwalk there is a historic amusement park, and though we didn’t really do any rides we had fun walking around. Athena is a big fan of noise, movement, and color so she had a great time, missing a couple naps. We paid for the missed naps later.

Here we are walking down toward the water – the water is always pretty cold in Northern California, so we didn’t plan on doing any swimming. Despite being covered in seaweed the beach was still pretty busy.

Playing on the beach blanket:

Ann took a rest on the blanket and Athena thought it would be fun to crawl on top of her:

The next day we met up with my cousin Kurt to wander around San Francisco. We had lunch at Piazza Pellegrini in the North Beach neighborhood, near Kurt’s place.

After walking down to Fisherman’s Wharf we took the duck tour around the city. We took a similar tour in Boston a while back – it’s a WWII-era amphibious vehicle that takes you through the streets and into the bay.

Aunt Linda even got to drive the boat:

Later she and Kurt helped get the rest of the tourists dancing:

We ended our day with a wine tasting session, and took some photos using my patented “happiest day of your life” method (it really works).

Aunt Linda also gave Ann and I some time to go out, just the two of us. We picked out the most romantic, adults-only evening we could think of: dinner at Dennys and a round of miniature golf.

By Jason

I wanted to share some video from my paternity leave.  A quick apology – this video looks really long, because it’s actually three videos stitched together.  The software for our camera does this by default and I just haven’t had time to monkey with it.

Last weekend Ann, Athena and I drove up to San Francisco to meet up with Tilek and Ralfi from Google Dublin.  I hadn’t seen Tilek since last year when we went to Yosemite.  We spent the day exploring the city.

Our first stop was The Mission, where we wandered around and grabbed some lunch.  It’s an interesting neighborhood, famous for Latin culture and food, colorful murals and interesting hipster shops.  We then drove up to Twin Peaks, one of the best places to see the city:

Our next stop was Haight-Ashbury, famous epicenter of the counter-culture movement in the 1960s.  Now it’s a rather expensive area with a bunch of hippy shops and tattoo parlors.   Athena really enjoyed this part of the trip – the crazy mix of colors was pretty amazing for her.  Tilek and Ralfi were pretty impressed walking down the street – each shop is trying to compete with the others in outrageousness.

Finally we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge and stopped at the vista point on the other side.

Athena had an odd reaction to her first experience with wind – she stuck out her tongue and tried to taste it.  This was actually her same reaction to rain, so at least she’s consistent.

I can’t help but a few more cute, but unrelated recent photos here at the end:

By Jason

I just go back from a weekend trip to Yosemite, but I haven’t uploaded the photos yet so that story will have to wait.  In the mean time, I wanted to report on two short trips – our trip across the bridge to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and a hike around the hills south of Mountain View.

The Marin Headlands just north of San Francisco have great views of the city and the bridge.  You can get an idea how high the mountains are from this picture:

Here’s a black sand beach in one of the coves along the Pacific coast here.  The sand was pretty coarse-grained, but the wind was still strong enough to whip it around.

You can see the city across the Golden Gate.

Here’s a view of the bridge from the vista point.

Ann smiles for the camera despite the strong wind.

This wall has bronze plaques that point to various cities and landmarks in the distance.

This photo is from higher up, on the other side of US 101.  We were originally thinking about waiting for the sunset but we got too hungry and the wind got too cold.  I have even more photos in the Flickr set, with more views of the bridge.

This next set of pictures is from a hike I took in the hills just south of Mountain View.  I was actually hiking the trail that leads to the top of Black Mountain – the one mentioned in the city’s name.  I saw this young buck when I came to a fork in the path – luckily he was on the trail down the valley, while I was headed up to the mountains.

Little lizards like this one scurried here and there across the path as I walked.  I managed to get some photos of this particular lizard by moving very slowly and making full use of my camera’s zoom.

At this point I’m pretty sure he’s posing for the camera.

Here’s a view from a high point on the ridge.  The big buildings in the distance are on Moffet Airfield and NASA Ames, including Hangar one, a huge dirigible hangar.  You can see a few small towers in downtown Mountain View in the midground.

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Here’s a photo of Black Mountain from the other side of the valley.

The landscape in the hills and mountains is really amazing, and the light is really good in the evening.

I have more photos in Flickr, including more photos of that camera hog lizard.  Next I’ll write about Yosemite.

By Jason

We are ridiculously behind in posting what’s going on in our lives in NorCal (this is what the kids call it).  We have been fairly busy, though, what with all the gestation going on.

Last month my parents came for a visit and we gave them our comprehensive tour of the Bay Area.  They flew in around noon and Ann brought them directly from the airport to Google for lunch.  I gave them the grand tour (which, despite all the practice, I have yet to master) and we ate at the No Name Cafe.  Within 10 minutes my Mom managed to get the all cooks singing Canta y no Llores.  It was one of those great moments that is both endearing and a little embarrassing.  Dad was impressed by all the different languages spoken and how people seemed so social and engaged in discussion.  It really isn’t like any other workplace.

The next stop on the tour for which I have pictures available was San Francisco – hopefully we’ll post an addendum later to fill in narrative gaps like this.  We parked near the financial district so that we could take the cable cars up California Street and then down to the Hyde Street Pier and Fisherman’s Wharf.   I think my dad could have ridden the cable cars up and down the hills all day.  Mom kept wondering whose idea it was to build a city up and down so many steep hills in the first place.  I think it was a conspiracy between cable car union and the post card industry.

To get an idea how steep the ride is, here’s Mom and Ann with Hyde Street in the background:

As always, you can click on the photos to see larger versions.  Next is a picture that should be pretty familiar to anyone who’s traveled with my Dad – reading all the informational signs:

Next we took a cruise around the bay, out to the Golden Gate and around Alcatraz Island.  Here’s a photo on the boat with the bridge in the background.

This picture is a little more newsworthy but also a bit sad.  Can you tell that the tug boat is pulling something?  That would be a dead whale, which had drifted under a pier and was stuck for a few days.  We just happened to be heading back as they towed it out to sea.  I wasn’t the only one taking pictures, it looked like the city’s entire fleet of news helicopters were circling above.

Next we wandered around Fisherman’s Wharf for a bit, taking a look at the Lefty’s leftorium, which is just like Ned Flander’s store in the Simpsons, and the other shops and galleries.  We walked down to the end of Pier 39, which you can see here:

Our next adventure was to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, which we also visited with Ryan and Jessi.  Next door is the Roaring Camp Railroad.  We couldn’t take the ride because this part of the year they do group events like weddings, but we got to watch as one of the old steam locomotives headed out.

Dad got to talk a bit with the engineer.  One thing you might notice in the picture is that the train doesn’t have the usual pistons and connecting rods on the sides of the driving wheels.  Think of the arm motions you would make if you were pretending to be a train in a game of charades.  Since these trains had to go up steep grades they actually had three big pistons up front with a central drive shaft down the middle.

Here we’re watching the train leaving the station.  Ann is eating old-fashioned horehound candy which does wonders for nausea.

The big attraction of the park is the giant redwood trees.  You can get an idea how big they are from the picture below.  We had a chance to crawl inside one tree that was completely hollow inside, maybe 15-20 feet up.

One thing I don’t have a picture of is a giant banana slug.  I have been hoping to encounter one every time we’ve taken a trip to the redwoods with no luck.  As we headed back down the trail we heard a bunch of commotion ahead of us.  On the ground was a (relatively) small, very stunned banana slug.  Apparently some kids had run ahead for their parents and found it on the tree.  They dared each other to kiss it, at which point on of the little girls freaked out and knocked the poor thing off.

Our next day was spent in sunny San Jose, where we visited the Winchester Mystery House.  There’s no real mystery, but it is a great story – Sarah Winchester, wife of the creator of the Winchester rifle, was left a widow with a ridiculous sum of money.  She worried that she would be haunted by the ghosts of all those killed by her husband’s rifles.  Supposedly a psychic told her she must never stop construction on her house (ghosts don’t like loud hammering), so she didn’t.  The end result is a sprawling complex with no central plan and lots of expensive details:

Here’s a picture from one of the upper floors but this doesn’t really give you a good idea of how big the place is.  It’s a lot of fun, though the tours are a bit pricey and our tour guide was less than knowledgeable.

It used to be on a big estate but now it’s right in the middle of San Jose, you can see office buildings behind us.

Mom liked the place because Mrs. Winchester had lots of mini-steps built in the staircases.  It was like the house was designed for her.

As always, there are more photos of the trip here.

Up next:  shirt trips to Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve.

By Jason

I promise I’ll write about my parents’ trip out to the Bay Area soon, but I thought I should finish up the last post before continuing. After our jaunt down to Santa Cruz, we spent a day touring sunny San Francisco.

Our first stop was Japantown. J-town has a very different vibe from Chinatown – for one thing, the heart of Japantown is a mall. It’s actually a rather cramped, older-style mall but it has some really great shops. Here’s Ryan in front of the Japanese Italian restaurant we ate at. Ryan and Jessi had fond memories of Japanese Italian food from their trip to Japan and I thought it was quite tasty.

Here Ann and Jessi sit in front of this cool model castle in the mall.

The Peace Pagoda is the most recognizable marker of Japantown. In was built after World War II by the Japanese-American community here. Unlike Chinatown, this area doesn’t seem to have a large incoming immigrant population anymore… it’s telling that right behind me as I took this picture there’s a Denny’s.

We walked around a bit looking for the cable car route down to Fisherman’s Wharf. We probably walked a bit too far – all the way up to Lafayette Park, in fact. It’s one of San Francisco’s many high points and a very popular city park. We also passed a building that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stayed at. When we did make it down to the coast, Jessi was attacked by these pirates.

Next we took a boat ride around the bay. It’s really worth doing if you come to visit here – the skyline of the city is really nice, and I can’t get enough of the Golden Gate Bridge.

We took the cable car back up to Chinatown for dinner. We had some really good food at the Utiopia Cafe, and the owner actually handed me a business card with “yelp.com” written on it. I don’t know if it was because I looked like a geeky sort of guy who might have a yelp account or if it was because we were some of the few non-Chinese in the restaurant and they are trying to branch out. Either way I have been too lazy to review them yet.

I’ll end with this photo of the sunset reflected on buildings just above Chinatown. You can see more photos on Flickr.