San Francisco and Northern California

I have been a bit delinquent as of late with updating my experiment. So here it is.
My Wife and I had a opportunity to go and visit San Francisco and Vanessa agreed to put us up during our adventure. Many thanks to her and Justin for making our trip possible.
I had also bought a new camera, not just for this trip but because my other camera just sucked and my wife and I wanted a better camera to help us document our life.
On our first day we visited Golden Gate Park. Truly beautiful landscaping, my pictures would not have done it justice, but, here is one picture; more novel than anything, because I was playing with my camera.

I took this at about 2 meters and thought it was pretty awesome I could get that shot.

We also saw this oddity and I thought I had to include it. This is called "The Dreamer" by Pepe Ozan. Click on it to learn more. It is really neat we first saw it from the second floor of the DeYoung Art Museum in Golden Gate park. I had to get a better look at this pink (or purple) head that was rising out of the park.
We then went and saw the Golden Gate Bridge. None of my pictures are really worth seeing from the bridge. And the one picture that we asked a fellow tourist to take of my wife and I, I managed to close my eyes for. Never Trust a stranger to take a good picture.
The next day we were on our way down route one. The views of the Pacific Ocean and landscape are absolutely superb.

This is a picture of my first time touching the Pacific Ocean.

For more pictures of our trip down the California Coast click on the link called my collection of picture.
We drove all the way down to Big Sur and ate some really good food at "the Fisherman's Grotto" in Monterey and "the Forest and Forge" in Carmel.
From here we were off to see Yosemite. I had decided that I had to see Yosemite while I was out in California because I was not sure if I would ever be there again.
Accessing the park was part of the adventure there are not very many roads into the park in an effort I am sure to preserve the natural Beauty but there was an amazing reminder of natures power because we had to wait at a 15 minute traffic light as traffic was routed onto a one lane road (to carry both directions of traffic) because of a land slide that had completely taken out part of route 140.

Yosemite is truly Awesome!!

Simply looking up at Cathedral Rock or El Capitan is humbling and awe inspiring at the same time. I wish now that I could have had more time but our whirl wind tour brought us first into the park valley where we had nice walk and just took in the power of it all then because we did not have enough time we drove to the highest point you can drive to at the top of glacier point.

These next two shots are from the top of Glacier point at the Vernal Falls. The only falls that were left running this time of year because of lack of rain.

This first picture I zoomed in as far as I could .Then to show just how much zoom that was I zoomed all the way back out.

I was really impressed with my camera which I was experimenting with the entire trip.
After Glacier Point I felt I had to go and visit Hetch Hetchy. This is now the source of most of San Francisco's water due to the dam that was placed across the valley in the early 1900's John Muir (one of the fathers of the naturalist movement in the country) fought this dam and said that Hetch Hetchy was one of the most beautiful places on earth. I would have to agree it would have been absolutly amazing before the dam. After they dammed Hetch Hetchy it is claimed that John Muir was so heart broken he died. My picture does not show the beauty of this valley but it is a link to a site that will tell you the history. I can only imagine the 4 water falls three would have been in view from where I took the picture and the 4th would have been where the damn was placed 80+ feet below where I was standing. The valley floor below this filled with wildflowers.

It is heart breaking what we do in the name of progress.


That night we drove home from this truly amazing national park in the pitch blackness of north eastern California. I am not sure I wanted to see what the cliffs actually looked like, and how close we were to a precipitous drop. And if you want to experience an unbeleivable road drive route 120 from Yosemite to San Francisco there is a section that looks like intestines on Google Maps.

The next day was spent at Fisherman's wharf in SF. What Day would have been complete in San Francisco without having seen the Seal Lion's in the "natural" habitat. I have to admit they are neat. We ended the day with a evening tour of Alcatraz Penitentiary. It was our anniversary and I thought that this picture would be appropriate.The Alcatraz tour was fun but what I really loved was the views of the bay and the city as dusk set in.

This was our last day in California and Vanessa and Justin went with Marika and I to see the Winchester Mystery house. I have to agree with Vanessa she was a Crazy old Rich bat with nothing better to do. This was a picture of the second stor door to no where. I kept imagining what the servants used to do to the new guys in the house. "Oh take the second door on the left and look out for the first step." But just to point it out in the lower left hand corner of this picture is Vanessa taking a picture of the same door.
I wish the the flight home had not been monumental but as it turns out we were a little worried we were not going to make it home to our pup (who had been staying with her brother for the week). At the last minutes of boarding we were bumped up to first class. That was the life after a week of travel and taking in everything we could we were not subjected to the cramped quarters of economy class, and instead could kick out feet out and recline our seat without guilt and take a nice long nap on our mid night trip across country and home.
Thanks for reading

Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Marika and I leave for a whirl wind tour of San Francisco and the surrounding area and our pup will be visiting her Brother to have a grand time for a week (we will miss her). I will also be visiting Vanessa who lives out there and has graciously agreed to put us up for the nights. I am looking forward to this trip (Yosemite, Alcatraz; which will visit on our anniversary, Monteray...) I have never been to the west coast and might not again for a long time. It is amazing that the world is so big yet so small at the same time.
Again though I find myself in a situation with lots to do (packing, mowing the lawn, cleaning the house...) so I should make this posting short. But, keep looking and also checking my Mobile Blog because there will probably be things posted on each during the coming week.

While I really look forward to this trip the sightseeing and visiting Vanessa, I know when I come back summer is getting close to an end and that means I need to get ready for school.

The New phase of the experiment will begin then when I have real work to do and students to teach.

Sailing Adventure Story 1

I wish I could say that this was going to be some kind of pirating adventure with lots of booty and rum. But, there was neither, only a little bit of beer and the sweet taste of victory. I have been Racing in a C&C 35 sailboat every Wednesday for the past two summers.

There she is...The 2nd Chance! (I don't how we got this picture)

We had a lot to learn last summer. And this summer most of the crew came back (Many of us were recruited from the Martial Arts School I attend and where the owner of the boat is a Black Belt!) Well, we have learned and yesterday we came in FIRST! I guess now when asked the question if we are more Pirate or Ninja we need to say we are getting closer to pirate.
Here is a link to the results page if you don't believe me...RESULTS! We are in class three (I bet this link won't work next week and if any body cares please tell me to update it because I will probably forget.)

I added this 'cause we be a little more pirate now!
(and because it is from the church of th flying spaghetti monster, click on it to learn more!)

Family Kayaking

This past weekend I celebrated my Sister and my fathers Birthdays. My Father wanted his children to spend the day together so rented kayaks for all of us to play in. My sister has been out traveling the world for the past few years and we have not seen much of her much less celebrated her birthday! (Look for link on the side to my see what my sister has been doing!)



We started out at Narrow River Kayak in RI and headed to Narragansett Beach. Avoiding hazards along the way. Unfortunatly, Thomas could not avoid my sister's paddle and got smacked across the nose.







This is my sister and Thomas, Thomas got her back for the nose whacking by putting her in the bow as they went out to explore and crash through the waves.

Here I am playing in the surf.

And this had to go in because it was a cool shot of my brother also playing in the surf.We all had a good time!

With out much more to say no one needed to go to the hospital and we all came back with a little more than some sun and salt exposure.
Click here for some more pictures

July Vacation in the Finger Lakes

When summer starts I really look forward to a few things. First is the time to sail whenever and where ever possible (I will talk about that in future postings). Next is visiting the Finger Lakes (what I mostly want to talk about now). And since giving up Television over a year ago now ( I am proud to say that I have only watched television about 5 or 6 hours all year and that was either in hotels or checking out coverage on things like the Live Earth Concert!) is the opportunity to read.

I have a great affection for the Finger Lakes as I have spent most of my life around them and a whole lot of time on them. Every year since Marika and I moved to the Nutmeg State we have had made sure to get back to Seneca Falls and spend sometime in the Huntington Family (Marika's mother's family) Cottage on Cayuga Lake.
We drove out on Friday Night and were in the cottage that night for 8 days of enjoying the Marika's Family and Enjoying what the Finger Lakes have to offer.

The First Morning on the Lake...














I love to wake up to the gentle sound of water washing over the rocks and the sun coming up over the water.

We of course get plenty of relaxing in...
This is Marika and a not so tired Coralee enjoying the serenity of the cottage and Cayuga Lake.

We did work to wear out our pup though visiting Taughannouck Falls State Park. We hiked up the trail in and out of the water bringing our puppy back to this park for the second time.

This is a filthy puppy at the end of the trail.

I try to bring the pup with us anywhere I can we also brought her to play with my in-laws dog and spent time bringing her in and out of the lake trying to make her believe that swimming really is fun. We also brought her along with us on our visits to the Seneca Lake Wineries.

We visited 4 wineries and brought home 3 cases of wine.

This is a picture looking out at Seneca lake from Fox Run Winery

Here are the winery we visited and if you want to see more check out their sites.

White Springs is a New Winery Near Geneva I liked their Chardonnay not a normal selection for me.
Fox Run has a wonderful red wine called Sable.

Four Chimneys is an organic winery what makes a really interesting Blueberry wine.
Fulkersons is one of our favorites for wines like Diamond and Red Zepplin.




At the end of the week I heard of a interesting exhibition traveling the canals of NY involving a

recreated canal schooner. I took a tour and learned some interesting things about the commerce of the time and got to see this 88 foot schooner. Unfortunately, I did not see it under sail but here is a picture from the web. Click on it learn more about the Lois McClure.

After a sometimes busy and sometimes relaxing week; where I got some time to read, a couple naps and a whole lot a family visiting; we hit the road for our trip back to CT all the while trying to tune into the Live Earth Concert that Marika's Sister was at in Giant Stadium. We got home from our vacation like every vacation exhausted.

This Coralee ready for bed. She is still sleeping most of Monday!

The End of the Beginning

Well, here are the results of the test. I think that I will be continuing to update this blog at least as long as my summer break continues. I am now back from vacation in the Finger Lakes and I am making a new entry.
I have learned about something that is really too much fun and may become a source of random entertainment on this Blog and that is I can post for free (well, I pay for unlimited text and picture messaging) from my cell phone. I could have fun with that. With that said soon I will be updating things from my vacation and putting up some pictures.
I feel the need to make a closing remark since this is the end of the beginning. I have recently been experiencing all of the (useless, entertaining, informational, (you pick the word and fill it in)) variety of websites on the WWW and I am not sure that this blog will ever compete. Maybe, I can hope to become somewhat of an Internet star, but I think that chances of that are quite slim and I am not entirely sure what the purpose would be anyways. But at least this site will be a source of information about a relatively normal middle school science teacher and his life. I will be curious to see how this site evolves. Hope that you will be entertained, and informed with all of the variety of (useless?) information that I post.
Enjoy!

In the Beginning...

There was me, my wife, our dog Coralee, and two kittens (OK they are 7 years old now but we still call them kittens) Skizers and Queue-tip (Q-tip for short).

The inspiration to start this blog was procrastination and because I thought it might be fun after reading a friends blog (Vanessa's is linked on the side, it will probably stay more up to date than mine.) Another source of inspiration is I have recently switched to a MacBook Pro from my old college Pentium III Dell; I have very quickly started cracking jokes about how bad the windows operating system is. The computer is new and I wanted something new to do with it. However, In defense of windows I am still running Windows in Parallel on my Macbook Pro, mostly because I needed to keep some of my old stuff and my school uses windows. I also plan on learning Linux using parallels, but this is all possible because Apple make a very fast, cool, computer.

Mostly, I am starting this page right now (9:00 am on a Friday morning) because I didn't want to think about the other things I needed to do. I am leaving on a vacation this afternoon and don't want to pack yet and I really don't want to mow the lawn.

I know that this is not much of a start, But here it goes anyways!

(Lastly, the true test of this will be whether or not I post anything when I come back from vacation)!)