Posts from various travels. Some trips have full travelogs.
Jason Mraz in the Taylor Guitar Suite This year's NAMM show was pretty quiet - no doubt an impact of last year's economy - with an exhibit floor that was missing major players (Apple and ProTools), a dearth of Rock 'n' Roll booth babes, and no line at the complementary hearing test trailer in the [...]
For Eric's day we went to the LUNAR monthly high-power rocket launch at Snow Ranch in the Sierra foothills. By being so far away from civilization they can get clearance to go to 15,000 feet. Today had a low ceiling, so there were only a few opportunities for the high-power engines. The rocket [...]
Every year between Christmas and New Years we do 'Family Days' where each member of the family is responsible for a day's schedule. For my day we went to the USS Hornet, a retired aircraft carrier moored in Alameda. We spent about four hours on board touring the ship - which wasn't enough to see [...]
Eric turned 21 in early November and we went back east to celebrate with him for a weekend. We took a road trip up to Maine to collect another state for everyone, and stopped at the lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, by Portland, ME. This picture of the boys is being used [...]
Taken at Santa Clara University in the late afternoon.
Teaching has its definite perks. We took our CMU ETC students on a field trip to learn more about the Bay Area - and how better than from a couple thousand feet overhead. Airship Ventures to the rescue! We took off from Oakland, headed over the Bay Bridge, past SF, around Angel Island and back [...]
We hit the Salinas Air Show again this year. The Blue Angels closed the show - it's always exciting to see them. Also present were some great vintage planes, like the P-51 Mustang, wingwalkers, the A10 Warthog (my favorite) and of course Robosaurus eating up some cars. You can see the full set on Flickr. [...]
We took a family trip back up to the Academy. We didn't get there early enough to get tickets for the Planetarium show, but we did manage to fit in most of the other sections (the Rain Forest, Aquarium, Africa Hall, etc.). My favorite shots from this trip are below, and you can see all [...]
Early morning boat cruise on the lake. About a dozen of us climbed aboard the camp's party boat to watch the sunrise from on the water.From the middle of the lake, looking southwestIf you know the area, Mt. Tallac is the peak on the right side of the image. The sun has just come over [...]
A number of us from Stanford Sierra Camp went on a nature hike in Charity Valley. The timing worked out great, the hills seemed to be in full bloom. I spent the first half of the hike squatting to take pictures then running to catch up, but I think it was worth it. Asters Larkspur [...]