Rafting prologue

I dont have any of my own photos back yet. But I decided to pre-empt my description of Sunday's whitewater rafting trip on the American river with this yet-to-be-purchased pic of our boat doing the Tunnel Chute. This is a class four rapid (class six is 'risking serious consequences or death') - And your's truly is going in first at the front of the boat (lower right).

This is what is said about it.
Tunnel Chute rapid is like no other whitewater rapid in the world. It is actually a man made chute that was blasted by miners to divert the river to allow better access to the previously natural river channel. The river narrows to a width just wider than the raft is long, the wall becomes vertical on both sides of the river and water pours in from the left side, and then the river drops as you see in these photos. The river then flows through a tunnel below the rapid. What a rush!

Look Dear

Deer on the summit moving between the observatory buildings. Just to add to my snake, bear encounters.

Some views from Mt Hamilton

In the last one you can see the bottom of the bay. On a really clear day with a zoom lense you can see San Francisco apparently.

Observatory Buildings

Observatory buildings. The first ones were constructed in 1888.

Lick Observatory @ Mt Hamilton

Saturday arvo we drove up Mount Hamilton to see the Lick Observatory and get some views of the valley. This was one of the longest, continously, tight narrow and windy road I have ever been on. A real thrill ride that left me with a real headache and tired arms.

Summit was beautiful. The Observatory was cool and the views were great.

You can get round-the-clock web cam shots from the roof at http://mthamilton.ucolick.org/hamcam/

USS Hornet #4

Tomcat on the hanger deck and the view down the hanger deck from the cockpit.

USS Hornet #3

Superstructure and the catapult on the flight deck. I froze a little in my shorts and t-shirt as it was a bit cloudy and windy on this morning. The sun came out as I was leaving :(

USS Hornet #2

Skyhawk, Avenger and Corsair fighters on display in the hanger bay.

USS Hornet #1

On Sunday I drove across the San Mateo bridge to Oakland. This place is an ugly industrial city. I guess thats why San Francisco is so nice - they managed to kick all the industry over to poor Oakland where it is hidden from the world. But I didn't go to see the architecture, I went to see the USS Hornet, a retired aircraft carrier that is open as a museum on the docks of the Alameda, an island in the port. This was seriously one of the most awesome things I have ever done over here. The flight deck, superstructure, hanger deck and deck 2 were all open to the public. They ran tours down into the engine rooms and of the superstructure. I spent about 3.5 hours wandering around- oh and taking 104 photos.

And the Grand Champion is....

Mashy Mashy Mashy Oi Oi Oi!
EASY win. And here was my booty. The Grand Champion on the label wasn't referring to the wine, it was referring to ME.
Before I started the first stomp the MC asked me where I was from. Some annoying woman down the front kept calling out "Is he really from Australia?" "I wanna see a drivers license" in some attempt to be funny. Don't know exactly what sort of scam she thought I was pulling by pretending to be Aussie but later in I did show her my drivers license and she turned out to have relatives in Brisbane.
For the next two hours I had to endure every stranger I passed saying "Great Stomp", "Well done" and "Are you really from Australia". Got very annoying but at least I had my fifteen minutes.
I've got loads of wine. Its American and I've gone off red wine but it looks good. I may give it away.

Stomp 1.

There were three half wine barrels on the back of a flatbed truck with a handrail. We got one minute to get as much juice as possible into a jar held under the barrel. It wasn't as messy as I thought, it didn't splash much and you didn't end up with red feet, rather just sticky feet from the sugar in the grapes. It really wasn't rocket science, try hit the grapes that were still whole and try and push the slop towards the hole in the front of the barrel.

Who easily won their round (against two old farts?) Why Mashy of course? I had to wait another round before the three winners were called back up onto the truck.

There was me, another middle-aged guy and a woman who obviously knew the owners/staff. For some reason they obviously wanted her to win, it may have been her birthday or some pathetic excuse like that. When we climbed up onto the truck, they specifically directed her to barrel no 1 but had no preference for what barrel the other two of us got. I could see easily that they had put more grapes in her barrel in an obvious attempt to cheat. Now anyone who knows me knows that was probably the worst thing they could have done. Seeing this was like a red rag to a bull and I just went at it harder than ever.

Grape Harvest Festival

On Saturday we went to the Guglielmo winery in Morgan Hill for their Harvest Festival. We went with people from our apartment complex in a limo bus. The winery was small but very nice. There was a huge tent on the lawn and about 3-400 people present. They had games to win salamis (it was an italian winery) and of course wine drinking, tasting. On arrival you were able to elect to take part in grape-stomping competition. There was room for only 9 stompers so they drew our entries from a jar. Who got the last entry? Why me of course!
The catered dinner was fantastic. Afterwards we headed over to the stomping area.

Mashy the Terrorist #2

I put the car in reverse to pull out and as I looked in my rear vision mirror a non-descript car pulls up behind me blocking me in. I'm slightly annoyed until I realise that this is deliberate and the guy is getting out of his car and coming towards me.
'So' he says. 'You were taking pictures over there I notice..'
'Umm yeah' I say.
Turns out this guy is from millitary security. As he tells me, they have cameras all around and they saw me taking photos. It was pretty impressive to have intercepted me within 1 minutes of taking the pics.
So the guy asks to see my pics. I have no problem showing him I am only interested in the sunset behind them and he obviously believes me. To his credit he was fairly nice. After making a phone call he say 'ok, I'll be happy if you delete half of them' Due to my nervousness I accidentally delete 5 out of the 6 I had so this shot is the only one I have left. Exactly what protection deleting HALF the photos provides them I don't know but I was happy to be out of there.

If I had someone to drive, I could easily get some great shots of the other dishes from the freeways around and no-one would ever know. And the articles in the local paper telling all about them really means this place is hardly a secret. Somehow I think Osama would be interested in oh-about 1 MILLION more potential targets.

So in short, Americans can sleep safely at night knowing their disused soon-to-be demolished educational antennas are being watched well but guarded completely ineffectively. And now the rest of us can laugh at their ridiculous paranoia.

Mashy the Terrorist #1

Ok, listen up and listen up good. After many weeks of blog-boringness the adventures of Mashy return with a vengance. Lets start with a little history of the Standford Dishes.
The freeway I use to go to and from work most days runs past an old radio telescope farm built by NASA and Stanford Uni in the 1950's. Originally there were 32 but now only 5 60 footers remain. The dishes were shut down in the mid 1990's and the univeristy is in the process of trying to get them demolished.
The view of these dishes from the freeway is pretty spectacular so I thought it would be a good idea to run down at sunset and take some pictures. To start - here is a publicly accessible website that has PICTUREs of the dishes. www.bambi.net
I was a little late and sunset had already started so I rushed down the freeway (only one exit) and turned off at the dish complex. Being so built up around the complex it was always going to be hard to get a good shot, but I spotted a smaller dish I had never seen from the freeway which was right in the setting sun. So I threw the car into a hotel carpark. There was a row of trees down the median strip so I ran onto it, crouched down and took some snaps. With the sunset about to peak, I wanted to run the car around the corner and get a look at the big dishes close up so I ran back to the car.

I seem to be a magnet for accidents

This is actually the second flipped car and fourth accident I have seen (plus one on fire).

The Presidio

Before I went home I went up the hill to the millitary base on the site of the old fort. I got some pics of Monterey just as the batteries in my camera ran out.

Aquarium #2

So the Aquarium was pretty good but not spectacular. A little bigger than Melbourne's it was pretty much on par. Their jelly fish displays were much better and the big fish tank was impressive but they had no sharks bigger than 1m and overall the Melbourne Aquarium is better. The sea otters were great though. To give them credit though I suspect Melbourne was modelled on Monterey to some degree as it is much newer. I spent a couple of hours here and walked back to the Monterey town having lunch on the way.

Aquarium #1

Oh Shit. The line went up around the corner and tripled back. Down the hill the line went inside and tripled back again.
Because I'd failed to look on the reverse side of the map I got, I wasn't sure how close the Aquarium was to the Monterey town. Turned out to be a 25 minute walk so I wasn't too keen to go back so I stuck with it. Actually the line moved pretty fast - I was inside within 30 minutes.

Dolpins

I had to wait about 5 minutes to get this photo while some fat woman stood next to the fountain and berated her husband with insecurities - Which way should i face? Where should I put my hands? I dont like my hair like that? You can see my handbag..blahblahblah (for 5 MiNUTES!). I just stood still with my camera in full view making it subtly clear I was WAITING for them. The husband looked sufficiently embarrassed, to give him credit.

Monterey Marina

Monterey 2

Another Fishermans Warf

Monterey 1

1.5 hours south gets me to Monterey on Sunday morning. I went down because 1. I have few places left to go on the coast near home 2. to check out the famous Aquarium 3. everyone keeps telling me to go.

Prelude to Monterey

On the day I went to Half Moon Bay I bought an outdoor photography magazine. An hour after getting home I had bought $120 worth of camera gear on ebay. An Opteka x.45 wide angle lense, a 2x zoom lens and a Hoya circular polarising filter. The circular polarizer is awesome. Check out the sky and water in my Monterey shots.

American TV #4

LOADS of ads on TV for anti-acid tablets etc. Telling you something about your diet? No - how could they possibly be connected?

Work 3

And on and on and on it goes.....

Work 2

And another one.

Work 1

This is the building I primarily work in.

Lazy

Because I've done SFA lately I thought I owed people some photos. So here to finally remove any doubt over which networking-beheamoth is my customer site are some pics. They have a whole suburb to themselves. Pretty mindblowing.