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Calaveras Big Trees

Nov 18th, 2010 1 Comment

As I men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous post, there have been lots of metaphor­i­cally big events in my life lately. I’ll get around to post­ing more about them even­tu­ally. But now, I’m going to focus on some lit­er­ally big things: giant sequoias.

Giant Sequoia

Giant Sequoia

A cou­ple of months ago, we went with friends Monika and Der­rick to Calav­eras Big Trees State Park. The park lies about eighty miles east-northeast of Stock­ton in the Sierra Nevadas. The area has served as a tourist attrac­tion for a sur­pris­ingly long time (although native peo­ples like the Miwok have, of course, known about the giant trees for a very long time). A white hunter named Augus­tus Dowd hap­pened upon what is now known as the Dis­cov­ery Tree in the spring of 1852, and peo­ple soon started look­ing for ways to make money from the behe­moths. Some early schemes involved tak­ing the trees to the peo­ple; the tree Dowd first saw was cut down and sec­tions of its trunk and bark were shipped to New York (by way of San Fran­cisco and Cape Horn) and put on dis­play. Another tree was left stand­ing but stripped com­pletely of its bark. But once the Mam­moth Grove Hotel was built nearby in 1861, the pub­lic began to travel to see the giants in their nat­ural state.

Roots of a Fallen Tree

Roots of a Fallen Tree

There are two types of huge trees in Cal­i­for­nia: the Coast Red­wood (Sequoia sem­per­virens), which is the sort found in Red­wood National Park and Muir Woods, and the giant sequoia (Sequoiaden­dron gigan­teum), which is found in the west­ern Sier­ras. Red­woods are the tallest liv­ing trees, with the cur­rent record holder at 379 feet tall. But giant sequoias are the largest, with diam­e­ters up to 32 feet or more. Red­woods live up to 1,800 years or so, but the old­est liv­ing giant sequoias are more than 3,000 years old. When these elders of the for­est first sprouted, the iron age was just get­ting under way in Eura­sia, King Tut was rel­a­tively fresh in his grave, and the Olmec cul­ture was flour­ish­ing in Mesoamerica.

Fallen Trunk

Fallen Trunk

“Big Trees” is a truly apt name for the park, and not just because it accu­rately describes the place’s draw. The name’s suc­cinct sim­plic­ity is a reflec­tion of the effect the giant sequoias have on the vis­i­tor. For the first few trees spot­ted, my mind was awash with florid lan­guage: colos­sal, gar­gan­tuan, Brob­d­ing­na­gian; majes­tic, regal, mag­nif­i­cent; ancient, ven­er­a­ble, pri­mor­dial. But, my mind seemed to regard these ini­tial sight­ings as flukes. The more trees I encoun­tered, the less I was able to com­pre­hend the com­bi­na­tion of sheer size and sheer num­bers — to accept that this wasn’t just a few genetic freaks, but an entire pop­u­la­tion of giants. Pretty soon, my inter­nal mono­logue was reduced to a troglodytic “Big. Trees.”

Pioneer Cabin Tree

Pio­neer Cabin Tree

The park con­tains two clus­ters of giant sequoias. The North Grove is the more often vis­ited group, and con­tains the trees that first drew tourists to the area. This sec­tion of the park is right off High­way 4 and has short, wide, and level trail that makes many trees very acces­si­ble. When we were there, it was packed — a park­ing lot full of cars and the almost con­stant pres­ence of oth­ers along the path. The North Grove con­tains a hun­dred or so large trees, many with names like the Pio­neer Cabin Tree, the Abra­ham Lin­coln tree, the Father of the For­est, and the Siamese Twins. But the main con­cen­tra­tion of trees — and the real draw of the park, as far as I’m con­cerned — lies an eight-mile drive away (three as the crow flies) in the South Grove.

A Quartet

A Quar­tet

The South Grove’s four-mile loop trail is pretty well devel­oped, but is a far cry from the wheelchair-accessible North Grove path. This, along with its dis­tance from the high­way, keeps the South Grove much less busy. We only met a few peo­ple on the trail, and mostly were alone with the birds, small wood­land mam­mals, and the trees. The South Grove has about a thou­sand large giant sequoias, and con­tains the park’s largest spec­i­mens. The expe­ri­ence of walk­ing amongst the trees isn’t quite one of hav­ing been shrunk to the size of an ant. In a way it is more jar­ring, because the arbo­real titans are inter­spersed with other species of “nor­mal” trees and, of course, smaller imma­ture sequoias.

Next to a Sequoia

Next to a Sequoia

We ended up spend­ing quite a bit of time at the South Grove. With­out the crush of crowds like at the North Grove, we were inclined to spend more time inves­ti­gat­ing and sim­ply con­tem­plat­ing indi­vid­ual trees. We sat for awhile at the Agas­siz Tree, which at almost 250 feet tall and 22 feet in diam­e­ter is the largest in the park. In addi­tion to the hikes at the two groves, we stopped for a nice pic­nic lunch on the banks of the Stanis­laus River. The trip as a whole was quite fun, and I look for­ward to see­ing big trees else­where — espe­cially the Coast Red­woods. I took quite a few pic­tures, mainly of the trees but also some of wildlife we hap­pened upon. Click any of the pho­tos above to see the whole gallery.

Folklife 2010

Jun 10th, 2010 Leave a comment
Zydeco Fiddler

Zydeco Fid­dler

Last week­end, I returned from Seat­tle, where I’d been work­ing at the North­west Folk­life Fes­ti­val. For the last eight years, I’ve worked as the festival’s Sig­nage Coor­di­na­tor (see posts from pre­vi­ous fes­ti­vals here). The weather this year was pretty crappy — unsea­son­ably cold and rainy, even for Seat­tle. But, I still man­aged to have a great time. Many of my cowork­ers have been at the fes­ti­val for many years as well, so I was happy to get to hang out with many of them again. As always, most of my work takes place before and after the fes­ti­val, and while the event is hap­pen­ing I have plenty of time to lis­ten to music and take pic­tures. I’ve posted my best shots here; click on the photo above to see the whole gallery.

Christmas Out West

Jan 4th, 2010 Leave a comment

Veron­ica and I just got back from a trip to visit my Mom out west. I flew to Nevada a few days before Christ­mas. My orig­i­nal flight was greatly delayed, but an adept United ticket agent rebooked me on a US Air flight that left Mil­wau­kee and arrived in Reno slightly ear­lier than my orig­i­nal itin­er­ary. Other than the air­line, the only other dif­fer­ences were that I flew through Phoenix rather than Den­ver, and the the sec­ond leg of my trip was in first class (merry Christ­mas to me!). On Christ­mas Eve day, we spent much of our time prep­ping food for a repeat of last year’s big din­ner party — between us we made three pies, a big salad, roasted veg­eta­bles, and a baked brie. The din­ner itself was quite a suc­cess; I think we had thir­teen peo­ple for the meal and a cou­ple more for dessert.

Tule Plants

Tule Plants

We didn’t cel­e­brate on Christ­mas Day itself, as Veron­ica wasn’t fly­ing into Reno until that evening. Instead, my mom and I drove out to the Still­wa­ter Wildlife Refuge east of Fal­lon, hop­ing to see some migrat­ing Tun­dra Swans. We only saw one other per­son at the refuge, and that was only briefly. Most of the time, the only evi­dence of civ­i­liza­tion we could see was the very road on which we were dri­ving. Unfor­tu­nately, there weren’t any swans to see, either. The refuge com­prises a net­work of lakes and wet­lands, but on the day we were there they were all frozen over. So, no open water to attract migrat­ing birds. We did see a few hawks, some Prairie Fal­cons, a cou­ple of Great Blue Herons, and one Bald Eagle, but all from a dis­tance. That evening, Veron­ica arrived fol­low­ing a rel­a­tively smooth trip.

Soaring Hawk at Washoe Lake

Soar­ing Hawk at Washoe Lake

We had our Christ­mas on Box­ing Day, emp­ty­ing our over­stuffed stock­ings, unwrap­ping presents, and eat­ing my mom’s deli­cious crème brûlée French toast. Then, we headed up to Reno (stop­ping at Washoe Lake along the way) for some shop­ping and a visit to the Nevada Museum of Art. The Museum isn’t huge, but it always seems to have very inter­est­ing exhibits. The fea­tured exhi­bi­tion this time was a col­lec­tion of more than 100 of Rembrandt’s prints. Although he’s known pri­mar­ily for his paint­ings, the Dutch­man was also a pro­lific print­maker. Since many of the works are small and have very fine details, the museum pro­vided mag­ni­fy­ing glasses to carry around the gallery with you. Not know­ing much about print­mak­ing, I appre­ci­ated that the cura­tors pro­vided good expla­na­tions of the processes, often show­ing mul­ti­ple ver­sions of the same print to show how changes in tech­nique can alter the final product.

Us on the Marin Headlands

Us on the Marin Headlands

The next day, we headed over the moun­tains to the Bay Area to stay with our friends David and Francesca. We had a pretty relax­ing visit — one day hang­ing out in Berke­ley, and one in San Fran­cisco. Among other things, we made a pil­grim­age to the orig­i­nal Peet’s, drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, shopped at the City Lights Book­store (where many of the beat poets hung out, and one of the best book­stores I’ve ever been to), and vis­ited the Legion of Honor Art Museum (more on that in another post). Our one sched­uled event while we were in Cal­i­for­nia was a great one — my mom took us to see Wicked. Veron­ica had seen it before, but the other two of us hadn’t. The pseudo-clockwork set was very cool, the show was funny, and the singers were amaz­ing. The lead roles were being played by the stand­bys, but they were great; except for the pro­gram, I wouldn’t have known they weren’t the regulars.

I didn’t take all that many pho­tos on the trip, but click the thumb­nails above to see my small­ish gallery. I’ll leave you with a pic­ture of Veron­ica behind bars at Bat­tery Spencer, over­look­ing the Golden Gate Bridge:

Veronica Behind Bars

Cave of the Mounds

Sep 30th, 2009 Leave a comment
Entering the Cave

Enter­ing the Cave

Over labor day week­end, my dad drove up to Wis­con­sin for a visit. Among other things, we hit the farm­ers’ mar­ket, went for a bike ride, and attempted to tour the Cap­i­tal Brew­ery (but, they were closed for a pri­vate event). But, one of the coolest things we did was a visit to the Cave of the Mounds in Blue Mounds, Wis­con­sin. The cave, which has no nat­ural open­ings of sig­nif­i­cant size, was dis­cov­ered in 1939 dur­ing a lime­stone quar­ry­ing oper­a­tion. Quar­ry­ing was halted, the cave was quickly devel­oped, and pub­lic tours began the fol­low­ing year. Though not a huge cave, the tour took about an hour. High­lights included a six-foot long cephalo­pod fos­sil in the cave’s ceil­ing and some inter­est­ing mul­ti­col­ored cave for­ma­tions.

Purple Asters with Bugs

Pur­ple Asters with Bugs

Cave of the Mounds also offers a cou­ple of short above-ground trails, which we walked after emerg­ing from the cav­ern. The trails offered myr­iad beau­ti­ful plant life, lots of insects and spi­ders, and not a few birds. I wasn’t able to get any decent bird pic­tures, but I did get a few good flower and bug pho­tos. Veron­ica gets the buf-spotting prize for the day; she found a katy­did blend­ing in with leaves, a cou­ple of siz­able grasshop­pers, and a bunch of daddy-long legs, all of which seemed quite con­tent to stay put long enough to be pho­tographed. Click here to see all of my above and below-ground pho­tos from Cave of the Mounds.

Also, here are some of my pre­vi­ous wild cav­ing pic­tures taken in Ten­nessee caves: Camp’s Gulf Cave, Indian Grave Point Cave, Cave of the Skulls, and Christ­mas Cave.

Devil’s Challenge

Sep 21st, 2009 1 Comment
Team 701 - Musicology Mayhem

Team 701: Musi­col­ogy Mayhem

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, Veron­ica, our friend Patrick, and I par­tic­i­pated in the Devil’s Chal­lenge Triathlon at Devil’s Lake State Park, about an hour north­west of Madi­son. We entered as a relay team — I swam (quar­ter mile), Patrick biked (15 miles), and Veron­ica ran (3 miles). We decided ear­lier this sum­mer that we wanted to attempt a relay triathlon, and had been more or less train­ing since then. We took a trip to Devil’s Lake last week­end to scout out the course and to do a dry run. Still, hav­ing never done this sort of thing before, we weren’t quite sure what to expect on the actual day of the race. We left Madi­son at a quar­ter to 6 yes­ter­day morn­ing so that we’d have plenty of time to park, pickup our reg­is­tra­tion packet, and warm up before the 8 a.m. start. We got there with plenty of time to spare, and set about men­tally and phys­i­cally prepar­ing ourselves.

A Later Swim Start

A Later Swim Start

At the race, indi­vid­ual triath­letes were orga­nized into start­ing waves, largely by age and sex divi­sions. A funny thing about relay teams like ours, though: we were put in the very first wave, which is oth­er­wise reserved for elite com­peti­tors. So, you have the fast, hard­core, expe­ri­enced peo­ple grouped with peo­ple who aren’t up to doing the whole triathlon them­selves. I sup­pose this makes a cer­tain amount of sense; relay­ers are free to expend all their energy on each leg of the race, whereas indi­vid­u­als have to pace themselves.

Swimmers Exiting the Water

Swim­mers Exit­ing the Water

So, I lined up on the beach with the elite ath­letes and the other relay swim­mers. Since we were the first ones to go, all the other ath­letes and many spec­ta­tors were behind us, cheer­ing and mak­ing noise. When the starter horn went off, we all ran out into the water towards the first buoy. Not hav­ing had the chance to observe any starts, I just fol­lowed the peo­ple in front of me. The lake was very shal­low (I could have walked the whole swim course), so the deci­sion of when to switch from run­ning to swim­ming was an impor­tant one. There was a big crush get­ting around the first buoy, then the pack started to thin out some­what. Through most of the swim, I had plenty of room to maneu­ver. After round­ing the sec­ond buoy, I swam shore­wards until the water became too shal­low to get a good stroke. Once on shore, I had to run up a short flight of stairs and sprint a fair dis­tance to where Patrick was wait­ing with his bike.

Patrick Rounding the Last Curve

Patrick Round­ing the Last Curve

I made pretty good time in the water, so much so that Patrick wasn’t quite ready when I arrived. While he threw on his hel­met, I trans­ferred the neo­prene tim­ing chip anklet from my leg to his and ducked out of the tran­si­tion area to find Veron­ica and my towel. After dry­ing off and chang­ing, I grabbed my cam­era, and started shoot­ing pic­tures of other com­peti­tors. When the first cyclist came roar­ing down the final hill into the park, I wished Veron­ica good luck and set off to catch Patrick. From the spot I picked, I couldn’t see very far up the last down­hill curve. But, a cou­ple of pro pho­tog­ra­phers were stand­ing far­ther up the hill, and I used them as an early warn­ing sys­tem; when they reached for their cam­eras, I knew a cyclist was approaching.

Veronica Running

Veron­ica Running

After Patrick came tear­ing by, I went to try to catch Veron­ica at the start of her run. I didn’t get any good pics then, but I man­aged to catch her later at the fin­ish. Once she’d run across the line, we all hung out for awhile wait­ing for the results to be posted. We ended up doing pretty well for our first time out: 9th out of 38 relay teams. We were 6th in our divi­sion (co-ed relays). I beat my tar­get time (8:00) by more than a minute, Veron­ica beat her tar­get by nearly three min­utes, and Patrick came very close to his tar­get (he would’ve beaten it if his front derailleur hadn’t mal­func­tioned mid-race, leav­ing him with only his big chain ring for climb­ing hills). Our final time was 1:26:43. You can see all the results here (they put us under Veronica’s name, rather than that of our team: Musi­col­ogy May­hem). All in all, it was a lot of fun, even if we did have to wake up at 5 a.m.

Click here to see all of my pho­tos from the race. Soon, we should get a link to the pic­tures taken by the pro pho­tog­ra­phers. If there are any good ones, I’ll link to them as well.

San Francisco

Aug 24th, 2009 Leave a comment
Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge

The week before last, I headed out west to visit my mom in Nevada. We spent one day at Lake Tahoe, swim­ming, sun­ning, and Shake­speare­ing. We saw Much Ado About Noth­ing, which was far bet­ter than last year’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream. The next day, we drove to Napa (by way of Fry’s Elec­tron­ics) to visit friends Mark and Dawn. We weren’t there long enough to actu­ally tour any winer­ies, but we did take a scenic drive through the vineyards.

Most of our time, though, was spent in the Bay Area. We again stayed with friends David and Francesca (and their daugh­ter Maria) in Oak­land. Our intent was to have a relax­ing visit, so we spent quite a bit of our time there just hang­ing out and doing some shop­ping in Berke­ley. I made a pil­grim­age to the orig­i­nal Peet’s on Vine, and picked up a good sup­ply of Moli­nari salame — one of my favorite foods in the world — at Gen­ova Del­i­catessen. I also made a trip to Forrest’s for a bas­soon pickup (more on that soon).

Sphinx Outside the de Young

Sphinx Out­side the de Young

My mom and I only went across the bay to San Fran­cisco on one day, but we squeezed in quite a bit. We started off at the de Young Museum to see the trav­el­ing King Tut exhibit. We got there early, and man­aged to see much of it before the crowds arrived. The exhibit included many arti­facts asso­ci­ated with Tutankhamun’s prob­a­ble ances­tors (his pre­cise lin­eage is uncer­tain), as well as those from the tomb of the boy king him­self. Unfor­tu­nately the most famous Tut arti­fact, his gold funeral mask, no longer trav­els out­side Egypt. But there was cer­tainly no short­age of other breath­tak­ingly beau­ti­ful objects to see.

Golden Gate Park Band

Golden Gate Park Band

We spent about an hour and a half work­ing our way through the exhibit, then spent some time else­where in Golden Gate Park. We took a stroll through the Japan­ese tea gar­den, although since we’d just stopped at the de Young’s cafe, we didn’t actu­ally have tea. Then, we walked over to the Tem­ple of Music, where the Golden Gate Park Band was set­ting up for an after­noon con­cert. That afternoon’s con­cert con­sisted of all Broad­way tunes, and we stuck around and lis­tened for a lit­tle while.

Kiteboarder Under the Bridge

Kite­boarder Under the Bridge

We’d brought a pic­nic lunch with us, and we drove out to the beach to eat it. It was over­cast and hazy, but still nice to sit on the sand and enjoy the sea breeze dur­ing our meal. After lunch, we headed over to the Golden Gate Bridge. We parked at bridge level and walked down a steep path to the water­front near Fort Point. The clouds were low enough to obscure the tops of the bridge’s tow­ers, which made for some dra­matic photo oppor­tu­ni­ties. Many sail­ing craft of all sorts were out on the bay that day, tak­ing advan­tage of the brisk wind. We spot­ted a group of kite board­ers zoom­ing across the water. A cou­ple of the more dar­ing ones were play­ing under the bridge and even beyond it in the open ocean.

As usual, click the pho­tos above for larger ver­sions, or check out the whole gallery here. The gallery con­tains a panorama of the city across the bay I stitched together from five or six sep­a­rate pic­tures. The ver­sion in the gallery isn’t very big, though. Here’s a much larger ver­sion.

Vilas Zoo

Jul 25th, 2009 Leave a comment
Tiger Through the Trees

Tiger Through the Trees

Last Sat­ur­day morn­ing, Veron­ica and I headed to Madison’s free Vilas Zoo. We met our friends Yi Hong and Steve there shortly after open­ing time, hop­ing to beat the crowds. Lit­tle did we know that the Green and Gold Train­ing Camp was going on that morn­ing, and hun­dreds of lit­tle Pack­ers fans and their par­ents had descended on the zoo. Luck­ily, the crowd mostly stayed occu­pied with things other than look­ing at the animals.

Iguana

Iguana

Although we’d been to the zoo a cou­ple of times before, we’d missed out on a few ani­mals and areas. This was the first time we saw the tiger in its enclo­sure; pre­vi­ously, there had just been signs up say­ing “Exhibit Closed.” We also ven­tured into the her­petar­ium, in which you can get pretty close to some of the snakes and rep­tiles (see left). A new Children’s Zoo with a play­ground and carousel opened a year or so ago, but we hadn’t real­ized that the area actu­ally houses more ani­mals — a red pan­das, a pair of meerkats, some white cock­a­toos and a huge African porcupine.

Click the pho­tos above for larger ver­sions, or check out the whole gallery here.

Happy 4th of July!

Jul 4th, 2009 1 Comment

In honor of Inde­pen­dence Day, here are some shots I took last night of the Elver Park Fire­works dis­play in Madison:

Fireworks Fireworks Fireworks
Fireworks Fireworks Fireworks
Fireworks Fireworks Fireworks
Fireworks Fireworks Fireworks
Fireworks Fireworks Fireworks

Click each pic for a larger version

Chicago Weekend, Part 2

Mar 26th, 2009 3 Comments

Start with Part 1, if you haven’t seen it already.

Chris and Veronica

Chris and Veronica

Fri­day evening was Veronica’s per­for­mance at the gui­tar fes­ti­val. She and Chris, the gui­tarist from UW, played first on the festival’s open­ing con­cert. I glanced through the pro­gram book­let, and I’m pretty sure that Veron­ica was the only non-guitarist per­form­ing all week­end. The two of them did an excel­lent job — they played two move­ments of Mauro Giu­liani’s Grand Duo Con­cer­tant. I’m look­ing for­ward to hear­ing the whole piece on Chris’s recital in a cou­ple of weeks.

Sue the T-Rex

Sue the T-Rex

On Sat­ur­day, we got up rel­a­tively early and checked out of the hotel. We were able to leave our bags there while we headed off to the Field Museum. Our main objec­tive at the Field was to see their tem­po­rary Real Pirates exhibit. We arrived fairly early, so we were able to breeze right in to both the museum and the pirate exhibit. The exhibit fol­lows the his­tory of the Why­dah, a slave ship turned pirate ship. So, it starts out detail­ing the ship’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Atlantic slave trade of the early 18th cen­tury, then picks up with the story of Sam Bel­lamy, the pirate cap­tain who cap­tured her in the Caribbean. The exhibit does a good job of explain­ing the var­i­ous sorts of lives at sea — those of a slave, a pirate, and a sailor in the King’s navy. The exhibit is pep­pered with arti­facts from the Why­dah — can­non, pis­tols, pieces of eight, etc. The ship sank off Cape Cod in a storm in 1717 and was found by a team led by Barry Clif­ford in 1984. Part­way through the exhibit, I was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed at the arti­fact to dio­rama ratio, but a whole sec­tion about the recov­ery of the ship and con­ser­va­tion of its arti­facts set that straight.

We vis­ited the Field a cou­ple of years ago, so many of the exhibits were fresh in our minds. We did go through the dinosaur hall again, though (I’ve always been a dinophile). We also spent some time in a cou­ple of small tem­po­rary exhibits, one fea­tur­ing ancient jew­elry from around the Mid­dle East, and another of pho­tographs of the mas­sive Hindu Kumbha Mela pil­grim­age. Sadly, we didn’t have the time or energy to see the other big tem­po­rary exhibit, The Aztec World.

A Colorful Wall Across the Street From Our Hotel

A Col­or­ful Wall Across the Street From Our Hotel

We made some great food choices through­out our visit, thanks in no small part to the Yelp.com iPhone appli­ca­tion. Yelp lets you search for busi­nesses near your cur­rent loca­tion and pro­vides user-supplied rat­ings and reviews for them. Aside from the deep-dish pizza we had the first night, we had a deli­cious break­fast at the Bongo Room, great very fresh sushi at Oysy, and delec­table Cuban sand­wiches at Cafecito. We even found an impres­sively stocked inde­pen­dent liquor store where we were able to buy a bot­tle of Goats Do Roam red and a bar of Ghi­rardelli dark choco­late, thus bypass­ing the allure of our hotel room mini-bar.

The only snag in our trip came at the end. When we attempted to pur­chase our return trip Metra tick­ets at Union Sta­tion, the agent informed us that on the week­end, trains don’t go as far as the sta­tion where we’d parked the car. Whoops. We got on the train any­way, fig­ur­ing we’d find a cab to take us the rest of the way. But, we remem­bered that our friends Les­ley (of Le Tri­an­gle d’Or) and Keith were in Elgin that week­end vis­it­ing Keith’s fam­ily. They agreed to pick us up and ferry us to the other sta­tion. Even bet­ter than that, they invited us to stay for a deli­cious din­ner with Keith’s par­ents and sis­ter. So, what appeared to be a snag turned out to be serendipitous!

As usual, click any of the pho­tos above to see the whole gallery.

Chicago Weekend, Part 1

Mar 23rd, 2009 2 Comments
Museum of Science and Industry

Museum of Sci­ence and Industry

Last week was our much-needed spring break. Veron­ica was slated to play at the Mid-America Gui­tar Ensem­ble Fes­ti­val (at Roo­sevelt Uni­ver­sity) with a gui­tarist from UW, so we used that as an excuse to spend a few days in Chicago. We landed a great hotel deal via Hotwire.com and stayed at the Chicago Hilton, which over­looks Grant Park and is walk­ing dis­tance from the Art Insti­tute of Chicago‎, the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquar­ium, and lots of other cool stuff. The only down­side of our ritzy down­town digs was that park­ing was $43 bucks a night. So, we parked in Elgin (at a rate of $1.50/night) and took the Metra com­muter rail into town.

We rolled into town on Thurs­day after­noon, hoofed it from Union Sta­tion to our hotel, and set­tled in. For din­ner, we hit Lou Malnati’s — a local pizza chain. I have to say that I’ve never been a fan of Chicago-style deep-dish, but this place changed my mind. Our main event for the evening was going to a tap­ing of the NPR news quiz show “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” We lis­ten to the show reli­giously, and had been talk­ing for awhile about see­ing it live. We showed up about twenty min­utes before the doors opened, and it was already packed. Luck­ily we’d already bought tick­ets, so we just joined the throng wait­ing to enter the auditorium.

The show itself was a blast! The pan­elists (for this show: Tom Bodett, Kyrie O’Connor, and Paul Provenza), host Peter Sagal, and score­keeper Carl Kas­sel came onstage to a dark­ened room, flash­ing lights, and the Chicago Bulls’ entrance music. Carl even ran out, wav­ing his arms and high-fiving the panel. The show itself took some­where between an hour and a half and two hours to record. Quite a bit gets cut before the show airs, but it was all funny. Per­haps the fun­ni­est moment was some­thing not writ­ten for laughs at all. The bulk of the show’s mate­r­ial was about the cur­rent eco­nomic cri­sis, with lots of talk about fail­ing banks and shady deals made by said banks. At the end of one of the show’s seg­ments, Peter started doing his lit­tle spiel about the show’s spon­sors — one of which is LendingTree.com. When he got to the line “When banks com­pete, you win,” every­one erupted in laugh­ter. He had to re-do that bit twice to get a laugh-free version.

U-505

U-505

We spent most of Fri­day at the Museum of Sci­ence and Indus­try, which occu­pies one of the only remain­ing build­ings from the 1893 World’s Columbian Expo­si­tion. The museum has lots of cool stuff, and strikes a pretty good bal­ance between activ­i­ties and exhibits for kids and things for adults. I spent a lot of time mar­veling at how they got var­i­ous things into the build­ing: the entire Pio­neer Zephyr stream­lined train, a Boe­ing 727, and a Ger­man sub­ma­rine U-505. I espe­cially enjoyed the Trans­porta­tion Gallery, the U-505, and the exhibit of Ships Through the Ages. The museum was packed with school groups, so we didn’t get to see every­thing we would have liked to. But, that means we should have plenty of things to see the next time we visit.

A Goose in a Tree!

A Goose in a Tree!

After exit­ing the museum, we walked all the way around it to see the rest of the build­ing and to look at it across the rem­nants of the lagoon from the World’s Fair. The build­ing itself is quite cool, with lots of columns, stat­ues, pre-distressed friezes, and domes. See the gallery for more exte­rior shots and close-ups of some of the archi­tec­tural detail. As I was tak­ing pic­tures across the lagoon, Veron­ica pointed up at a tree — there was a large goose sit­ting in it! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a goose in a tree before, and one of its com­pan­ions walk­ing around on the ground seemed con­fused by it as well.

I’ll con­tinue the story soon. Mean­while, click any of the pho­tos above to view the rest of the pho­tos from our weekend.

Zoo Run

Nov 3rd, 2008 Leave a comment
Swimming Bear

Swim­ming Bear

A lit­tle over a month ago, Veron­ica par­tic­i­pated in the Zoo Run, a char­ity 5K/10K run/walk ben­e­fit­ing Madison’s Henry Vilas Zoo. I tagged along to pro­vide moral sup­port and to hang out at the zoo while she ran. We arrived at the zoo fairly early, so we had some time to walk around and look at the ani­mals. Most of them were just wak­ing up them­selves, and weren’t very active. A notable excep­tion to this was one of the polar bears. He (I’m mak­ing an assump­tion based on size) was pass­ing time by swim­ming laps in a small pool within his enclo­sure. A small water­fall pours into the pool, and he seemed to like swim­ming under that on his back. Upon reach­ing the other end, he’d swim back under­wa­ter and repeat the process. Only once did we see him get out, and the only briefly. He shook off some water, walked around a bit, then did a belly slide back into the pool for some more laps. I’d like to think that the bear looked happy as he was glid­ing through the water, but I can’t imag­ine that such obses­sive behav­ior is a sign of good men­tal health.

Standing Flamingos

Stand­ing Flamingos

I watched the begin­ning of the race, then went back to wan­der the zoo. By this time, the ani­mals were becom­ing a lit­tle more active. I walked by the polar bears again, and the big one was still swim­ming. I also stopped by the giraffes, pen­guins, flamin­gos, and a few oth­ers. The lions were asleep in a secluded part of their enclo­sure, and none of the other big cats were on dis­play. I didn’t have a whole lot of time, so I didn’t ven­ture into the aviary, the rep­tile house, or any of the other enclosed exhibits.

Running Librarian

Run­ning Librarian

I thought that I’d timed my mean­der­ings so that I’d arrive at the fin­ish line a few min­utes before Veron­ica (the race route formed a loop, so I had far less dis­tance to travel than did she). But, she beat her goal time by so much that I missed her! I man­aged to snap a few pic­tures close to the start of the race, but unfor­tu­nately none at the end. After the race, we went home for some from-scratch blue­berry pan­cakes, which she’d cer­tainly earned (and which I cer­tainly hadn’t). Click any of the pic­tures above to see the whole gallery.

Coffin Trailer

Sep 29th, 2008 Leave a comment

Spot­ted on cam­pus this Saturday:

Click for more photos

I sus­pect that this was related to Geek.Kon, which was going on all week­end in the UW Human­i­ties Build­ing (which we musi­cians share with his­to­ri­ans, artists, and schol­ars of the Abra­hamic reli­gions), but I’m not sure of that. Appar­ently this isn’t a unique idea; I found a cou­ple of other exam­ples here and here. I kind of wish I’d been around to see the biker’s arrival or depar­ture, to see what (or who?) rides in the coffin.

Dog on Bike

Sep 24th, 2008 Leave a comment
John and Pansy

John and Pansy

At the end of last semes­ter, I was talk­ing to my boss (and friend) John about the pic­tures I took of a woman with four dogs on her bike. He remarked that he also has a bas­ket on his bike for his dog, a minia­ture dachs­hund named Pansy. He’d told this to a num­ber of peo­ple, who’ve nat­u­rally all wanted to see pic­tures of Pansy in her bas­ket. But, he’d never had any pic­tures to show them. So, I offered to take some pic­tures once I got my new cam­era. After a few attempts foiled by bad weather or sched­ul­ing con­flicts, we finally got together a few weeks ago to do a photo shoot. John and Fran­nie had Veron­ica and me over for din­ner (a deli­cious home­made gaz­pa­cho with crusty bread and raw milk but­ter), and we walked over to a nearby bike path to shoot. I ended up tak­ing over a hun­dred pic­tures, but I’ve cut it down to the nine best. Click the photo above to see the gallery.

Washoe Lake

Aug 26th, 2008 2 Comments
Duck
A Duck Skims Across the Lake

About a week ago, Veron­ica and I returned from vis­it­ing my mom in Car­son City, Nevada. We were there for about a week, and did a whole bunch of fun stuff, like swim­ming in and boat­ing on Lake Tahoe, see­ing a bizarre pro­duc­tion of A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, vis­it­ing the Nevada Art Museum, get­ting a guided tour of an area with lots of pet­ro­glyphs, and attend­ing the Car­son City Jazz Fes­ti­val. I took a bunch of pic­tures, and will be post­ing them in chunks over the next week or so.

Praying Mantis
Pray­ing Mantis

The first set of pic­tures is from Washoe Lake, which lies just north of Car­son City. Much of the shore of the lake is part of a state park, which includes a cou­ple of wildlife obser­va­tion plat­forms. Walk­ing around the south­ern shore of the lake, we saw quail, ducks, but­ter­flies, and a lone great blue heron. I almost stepped on a large pray­ing man­tis, who I was cer­tainly not expect­ing to find on the gravel path on which we were walk­ing. (S)he was a very coop­er­a­tive model, let­ting me take lots of pic­tures, and at times even seem­ingly mug­ging for the camera.

Red-tailed Hawk
Red-Tailed Hawk

At Lit­tle Washoe Lake, just north of its larger name­sake, we spot­ted a clus­ter of pel­i­cans float­ing, with one soar­ing over­head. Unfor­tu­nately, they were too far away for any decent pho­tos. While dri­ving between the lakes, how­ever, we came upon a red-tailed hawk perch­ing on a bale of hay. I man­aged to snap a cou­ple of pic­tures from the car before he flew off to join a friend atop a nearby tele­phone pole.

Click any of the above pho­tos to see the whole gallery.

Wandering in Seattle

Jun 25th, 2008 Leave a comment
Salmon Sandwich
Incred­i­ble Salmon Sandwich

The Thurs­day after the Folk­life Fes­ti­val, I had a free day to roam around Seat­tle. As is my wont, I cel­e­brated my first day of free­dom from walk­ing around the fes­ti­val grounds all day by… walk­ing around the city all day. I started out the day by meet­ing Jerin for morn­ing coffee/tea at Elliot Bay Books. After that, I spent awhile shop­ping in and around Pio­neer Square and Pike Place Mar­ket. I had an amaz­ing lunch at the Three Girls Bak­ery — a big slab of baked salmon with havarti, spicy Dijon mus­tard, and let­tuce on fresh rose­mary gar­lic bread. It was the best sand­wich I’ve had in recent mem­ory. I ducked into a lit­tle record shop at Pike Place before mov­ing on. In the jazz ‘New Arrival’ bin, I found an LP by the Aus­tralian Jazz Quin­tet — a group that fea­tured Erroll Bud­dle on bas­soon and tenor sax, and whose LPs I’d hereto­fore only been able to find on eBay.

Calder's Eagle
Alexan­der Calder’s “Eagle”

Next I headed to the rel­a­tively new Olympic Sculp­ture Park, an exten­sion of the Seat­tle Art Museum that sits right on the water­front. The park has quite a few per­ma­nent pieces by sculp­tors such as Louise Bour­geois, Ellsworth Kelly, and Alexan­der Calder. There are also a num­ber of tem­po­rary pieces on dis­play, most promi­nently (right now, at least) a num­ber of giant orange safety cones by Den­nis Oppen­heim. The park is also home to the PACCAR Pavil­ion, an expan­sive gallery space that cur­rently houses a large and inter­est­ing instal­la­tion by Geoff McFetridge called “In The Mind”.

Seattle Public Library
Inside the Pub­lic Library

After spend­ing awhile in the Sculp­ture Park, I con­tin­ued strolling around town. I stopped in at the mag­nif­i­cent Rem Kool­haas–designed Seat­tle Pub­lic Library to pick up a lit­tle some­thing for Veron­ica. I’d been there before, so I didn’t stay too long. Next, I wan­dered past City Hall and up into the Inter­na­tional Dis­trict for some sushi. Along the way, I spot­ted the fan­ci­est fire sta­tion I’ve ever seen, and a very decrepit for­mer hotel. Soon, I’ll have some pic­tures to post from the last por­tions of my trip — involv­ing boats, trains, and an eccen­tric millionaire.

Folklife, Part 2

Jun 6th, 2008 Leave a comment
Inochi Taiko Drummer

I had very lit­tle to do on Memo­r­ial Day, the last day of the fes­ti­val, other than repair some easels and dis­trib­ute a cou­ple of spon­sor ban­ners to stages for spe­cific shows. So, I was able to spend most of my time walk­ing around, tak­ing pic­tures, and lis­ten­ing to music. There’s always at least one Taiko group at Folk­life, and the high-energy shows are always fun to watch. The group I saw this year was Inochi Taiko, which per­formed early Mon­day after­noon. Other high­lights of the day included a pro­fes­sional jump-rope troupe (I had no idea such things existed), a per­for­mance by my friend Jerin, and per­haps the last thing I expected to see/hear at the fes­ti­val: a sing-along per­for­mance of Mozart’s Requiem Mass.

Punk Fid­dler

Mon­day evening, it was time to start break­ing down all of the fes­ti­val gear. I went around to the var­i­ous stages and areas, scram­bling to take down signs as soon as the pro­gram­ming in each place wrapped up. I worked until about mid­night, and man­aged to get most things pulled down that night. I was happy that this year — unlike every other year I’ve worked the fes­ti­val — none of my ban­ners were taken out by overly tall box trucks. After the pro­duc­tion crew and I had fin­ished for the night and locked up, we set out for some cel­e­bra­tory bev­er­ages. As soon as we turned around to start walk­ing, a Pepsi truck sped up the road in front of us and — BAM! — hit a ban­ner, rip­ping out two cor­ner grommets.

Jerin Falkner

With the help of my able assis­tant Whit­ney, all the sig­nage was taken down, sorted, and put away by Wednes­day morn­ing. I then threw my efforts into help­ing pro­duc­tion fin­ish all of their stuff. I think we were done in record time, and quickly com­menced the annual unof­fi­cial pro­duc­tion wrap party/bar crawl. As always, the fes­ti­val was a lot of work, but also very fun. After doing the same job for five years, it’s fairly low stress for me now.
I’ve posted another dozen or so pho­tos from Mon­day — click any of the thumb­nails above to see them.

World Percussion Ensemble

May 11th, 2008 Leave a comment
Congueros in Action

I still haven’t had a chance to play with my new cam­era as much as I’d like, but I did take a bunch of pic­tures last week­end at the UW World Per­cus­sion Ensem­ble con­cert. I’d planned to just take a few shots to see how my cam­era does under low-light (no flash) con­di­tions. But, I was asked to take pic­tures for the ensemble’s use, so I took pic­tures through much of the con­cert. The cam­era I’m used to is an old Pen­tax P3n film cam­era — man­ual focus, man­ual wind, etc. So, I got a lit­tle shutter-happy with my new toy, which is auto-focus, dig­i­tal, and very fast. I ended up shoot­ing 482 pic­tures dur­ing the hour-long con­cert. Of course, not all of these were good, as I was using the occa­sion as a learn­ing oppor­tu­nity (plus, the light­ing was bad and per­cus­sion­ists move alot when they play). Still, I was able to give the per­cus­sion stu­dio about 150 decent shots, and have posted 33 here.

Nevada State Railroad Museum

Jan 10th, 2008 2 Comments
Vir­ginia & Truc­kee
Loco­mo­tive #27

Last Mon­day, I paid a visit to the Nevada State Rail­road Museum in Car­son City. I’ve always been fas­ci­nated by trains — I used to spend long hours play­ing with my elec­tric train set, tak­ing over as much floor space in the liv­ing room as I could get away with. I still like watch­ing trains go by, and have taken some rail­road pho­tos before. The museum is small, but they’ve man­aged to pack quite a bit into the avail­able space. Also, they’ve done a pretty good job with the inter­pre­tive signs that accom­pany each exhibit. The museum’s col­lec­tion and exhibits focus on the Vir­ginia & Truc­kee Rail­road. The V&T was a short line that ran from 1870 until 1938 1950, con­nect­ing the mines in and around Vir­ginia City with ore pro­cess­ing plants in Car­son City and Reno. Pas­sen­ger trains ran between these cities and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties, as well. Update: See NSRM vol­un­teer Jim Lohse’s com­ment on this post for more about the final days of the V&T.

V&T #22 — Inyo

The crown jewel of the museum’s col­lec­tion is Vir­ginia & Truc­kee Loco­mo­tive #22, which was given the name Inyo. The Inyo was built in 1875 by the Bald­win Loco­mo­tive Works in Philadel­phia, PA. The loco­mo­tive pulled both freight and pas­sen­ger trains on the V&T for about 50 years, being more or less retired in 1926. This yeo­man ser­vice surely earned the Inyo the admi­ra­tion of its engi­neers and crew, but its real fame did come about until later. In 1937, Para­mount Pic­tures acquired two loco­mo­tives and a num­ber of rail­cars from the V&T for use in movies. The Inyo’s first on-screen appear­ance was in the Jerome Kern/Oscar Ham­mer­stein musi­cal High, Wide, and Hand­some. The loco­mo­tive also appeared in Union Pacific, Red River, and The Great Loco­mo­tive Chase. But, the role in which I know the Inyo best is in the old TV show “The Wild Wild West” — the 60s series on which the hor­ri­ble Will Smith/Kevin Kline movie was loosely based. Para­mount sold the Inyo to the State of Nevada in 1974, and sub­se­quently under­went restora­tion to its orig­i­nal appear­ance and functionality.

A Union Pacific Caboose
Out­side the Museum

In addi­tion to the two loco­mo­tives pic­tured above (and their ten­ders), the main museum build­ing cur­rently houses a box car, a flat car, and a cou­ple of pas­sen­ger coaches. There are a cou­ple of smaller-scale exhibits as well. HO-scale mod­els of var­i­ous his­toric pas­sen­ger trains are dis­played in a case next to a work­ing HO lay­out. A small case con­tains items from Nevada’s “Merci Car” — one of 49 box­cars given to the cit­i­zens of the US by France fol­low­ing World War II. My favorite of the smaller exhibits was “Loco­mo­tive Sto­ries of the V&T.” This con­sists of exquis­itely detailed hand­made mod­els of six­teen V&T loco­mo­tives, cre­ated by George L. Richard­son and donated to the museum. The mod­els are accom­pa­nied by pho­tographs of the orig­i­nal loco­mo­tives in ser­vice, infor­ma­tion about their con­struc­tion and use, and details about their cur­rent sta­tuses and post V&T uses, if any.

Turntable and Roundhouse

The museum grounds include a num­ber of things out­side the main build­ing. A Union Pacific caboose (pic­tured above) sits on rails just out­side the museum proper. Not far from that is a round­house with accom­pa­ny­ing turntable. The muse­ums col­lec­tion is much larger that what is on dis­play, and at any one time, a few of its pieces are under­go­ing restora­tion. Although I wasn’t able to inves­ti­gate fur­ther, I assume that this round­house is used for both stor­age and restora­tion. A short track encir­cles the museum grounds, con­nect­ing to the round­house and serv­ing a small recre­ated sta­tion. Steam trains and gas-powered motor­cars tra­verse this track dur­ing warmer months — I look for­ward to revis­it­ing the museum when they’re running.

Tahoe From Above

Jan 4th, 2008 Leave a comment
View From 9,123 Feet

Last Sun­day, my mom and I drove back up to Tahoe, this time to the south end of the lake. Just on the Cal­i­for­nia side of the CA/NV bor­der lies the Heav­enly Moun­tain Resort, a pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion for skiers and snow­board­ers. We weren’t there for the ride down the moun­tain, though; we were there for the ride to the top, and the views it would afford of the lake and other sur­round­ing moun­tains. The lower end of the ski area is actu­ally quite a way up the moun­tain, and is acces­si­ble either by road, or by a 2.4-mile-long gon­dola lift (our choice).

Gon­do­las Leav­ing the
Bot­tom Station

The gon­do­las leave from a sta­tion that sits at about 6,200 feet, less than a half mile from the shore of Lake Tahoe. As you ride to Malcolm’s Deck — the first stop — you climb an ear-popping 3,000 feet or so. In the photo at left, the ver­ti­cal white line on the left side is the path the gon­do­las take up the moun­tain. The Deck sits below the actual ski area, and is solely for sight-seeing. On the day we vis­ited, the resort was packed with skiers and snow­board­ers, but they all con­tin­ued up the moun­tain, leav­ing the Deck much less crowded. The view from 9,123 feet is spec­tac­u­lar — you can see prac­ti­cally all of the 191 square miles of lake sur­face, and moun­tains in every direc­tion. Smaller and closer sights include inter­est­ing rock for­ma­tions, snow-covered conifers, and lit­tle chick­adees flit­ting around in the snow.

View on the Trip Down

After we’d had our fill of the view (and hot choco­late), we hopped back into a gon­dola and rode to the bot­tom of the ski area. This actu­ally involved a neg­li­gi­ble change in ele­va­tion — we only climbed another 30 feet or so. The resort actu­ally strad­dles the state line, and at the ski area, one has to choose between Cal­i­for­nia trails (to the right) or Nevada trails (to the left). We stayed only briefly at the top, then again boarded a gon­dola for the trip back down the moun­tain. As it was early in the day, few peo­ple were trav­el­ing back down, and we man­aged to get a gon­dola all to our­selves. The view trav­el­ing down the line was quite impressive.

As usual, click the pho­tos above to view the entire gallery.

Christmas at Lake Tahoe

Dec 26th, 2007 Leave a comment

We cel­e­brated Christ­mas in Car­son City this year, where my mom recently started a new job as the Folk­life Pro­gram Coor­di­na­tor at the Nevada Arts Coun­cil. We spent the morn­ing extract­ing good­ies from our stock­ings, gorg­ing our­selves on crème brûlée French toast, and unwrap­ping presents. After a bit of loung­ing around, we bun­dled up, piled into my mom’s car, and set out west towards Lake Tahoe.

Car­son City lies at about 4,800 feet above sea level, and the sur­face of Lake Tahoe is at 6,229 feet. Between the two lie some of the Sier­ras, which we crossed via Spooner Pass (at 7,146 feet) on U.S. 50. We approached the lake sort of in the mid­dle of the east­ern side, and our first view as we emerged from the moun­tains was absolutely breath­tak­ing. We drove a lit­tle ways towards the south end, stop­ping a cou­ple of times along the way to enjoy the scenery and take some pic­tures. At our sec­ond stop, we came upon the M.S. Dixie, one of a num­ber of Mis­sis­sippi River pad­dle­wheel­ers that have been brought to Tahoe over the years.

Next, we turned around and headed for Incline Vil­lage at the north end of the lake. We stopped once more along the way at a spot with lots of big rocks along the shore. I ven­tured out as far as I could onto the rocks, in order to get a good look into the water. Lake Tahoe is amaz­ingly clear, with an aver­age vis­i­bil­ity of around 70 feet. This has appar­ently declined in recent years, with ear­lier mea­sure­ments of water clar­ity top­ping 100 feet. A vari­ety of fac­tors are thought to have caused the decrease in clar­ity, most of which are directly related to human activ­i­ties on, in, and around the lake. For­tu­nately, it seems that the com­mu­ni­ties around Tahoe are becom­ing aware of their own impact on the lake, and are work­ing to pre­vent fur­ther con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.
As usual, click any of the pic­tures above to view the whole gallery.

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