Two Beers and a Pretzel

After seeing the eclipse, I had a marathon driving day from Lassen to Crater Lake to Redwood National Park.  About 14 hours behind the wheel.  I definitely need to go back to Crater Lake after the snow melts and the weather improves.

The Redwoods were impressive.  Not as imposing as the Sequoia’s, but very tall…

There were lots of other plants… definitely a rain forest!

Down near the Ocean, there was a meadow where Elk often hang out.  I got lucky and saw a heard of females with one juvenile male.

Then I was off to Yosemite.  The drive thru Humboldt State Park and the “Avenue of the Giants” was even more impressive than Redwood N.P., but harder to capture images from a moving car.

On May 20, 2012, the moon passed between the Earth and Sun, creating a not quite total eclipse, where you can see a “ring of fire” if you’re in the right place (known as an Annular Eclipse).  The center of the moon’s shadow passed across the US in a line from Redwood National Park in Northern California to right around Lubbock, Texas.  I ventured up to Lassen Volcanic National Park to see the eclipse.

Entering from the South, everything looks clear…

Until you get to the top…

So I went around the South-West side of the park where you could get a sweeping view of the volcanoes and clearly see how they used to join together into a massive ancient volcano.

And a little closer in from Manzanita Lake:

At the top of the “Devastated Area”, a number of astronomers were debating how much eclipse we would see, since the sun would be about 19 degrees above the horizon, while the mountain blocked everything below 17.5 degrees.  I went back down the North side of the mountain to a plain with a clear view to the West and setup my telescope at a spot with a host of other eclipse junkies.

I had a filter for the scope, and tried to use it to take photos of the eclipse… they turned out OK.  Not great, but they get the point across…  still, the coolest lens flare I’ve ever shot…

The reflections off the lens, back to the filter and back to the lens are what caused the straight line distortions on the main image, and the blur in the lens flare… but still a pretty cool image.  It was even better through the telescope.  Larger magnification, and you could actually see the shape of the craters of the moon against the sun.

I got another good one at a much lower exposure level during the partial eclipse where you can actually make out a few sunspots.

While hanging out, I met a photojournalist from MSNBC, John Brecher, who took a Panoramic Image of our viewing spot during the annularity.  I’m in the blue shirt behind the tent.

And for anyone still following this blog, I’ll be updating it with a few trips from the lat 2 years…  I’ve just been avoiding adding mundane – normal life stuff, as that’s what Facebook is for, and this is a travel blog.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking for a great drive on twisty roads with very little traffic anywhere on the North-East side of L.A., and I think I’ve found it…

This route is 126 miles thru Los Padres National Forest.  About 15 of the miles are straight or thru small towns.  The other 116 miles are pure driving pleasure.

My roommate Brian and I have been mountain biking around Simi Valley.  People in San Fernando Valley and L.A. often ask “why did you move all the way out there?”  Well, it’s less crowded, cheaper, we have a killer view from out balcony, and there’s about a million miles of off-road mountain biking trails out here.

Wanting a GPS logger, I installed an app called MyTracks on my Android phone…  It works a lot like those handheld GPS units made for hiking.  You turn on the GPS, start recording and forget about it until you’re done.  Then you can export directly from your phone to google maps.

Click Here to see the map.

You also get stats, and a graphs of speed and elevation versus time.  The speed graph is on the phone only, but the elevation graph appears on the map if you click the pin for the end of the trail.

The stats look like this…

Total Distance: 16.99 km (10.6 mi)
Total Time: 3:02:47
Moving Time: 2:04:52
Average Speed: 5.61 km/h (3.5 mi/h)
Average Moving Speed: 8.16 km/h (5.1 mi/h)
Max Speed: 32.22 km/h (20.0 mi/h)
Min Elevation: 274 m (899 ft)
Max Elevation: 636 m (2087 ft)
Elevation Gain: 444 m (1457 ft)
Max Grade: 23 %
Min Grade: -15 %
Recorded: Tue Jul 20 17:19:00 PDT 2010
Activity type: mountain biking

We were slow because the trail was very sandy on the North part of the loop, so we basically walked our bikes up the hill and rode them back down.  It’s probably better to just go up the South loop an turn around for the downhill fun.  We’re also investigating starting the south loop, but taking the trail (middle range fire road) further… it runs into the Big Sky Movie Ranch – where they’ve filmed everything from ‘Little House on the Prairie’, ‘Bonanza’, and ‘Gunsmoke’  to ‘Coming to America’ and ‘Transformers’.

We’ve ridden to the ranch before and discussed signing liability waivers with the owner so we can bike on his land.  He’s already shown us where a mountain lion den is, and warned us about the horns on his cattle…  Mostly, he’s worried about teenagers going up there to get stoned, tag the movie sets, and possibly start brushfires.

SURF CITY

I’ve progressed in my Kite Surfing lessons to the point where I get to take a kite out into the ocean.  In the following video, I don’t have a board on, but I did learn to use the kite to pull myself over crashing waves (most of the time), as well as drag me out to sea, and more importantly – back to shore!

I did get on a board my last time out, but the wind conditions were too light for me to stand up on it.  My next step is to buy some gear of my own (board, kite, harness, control bar, helmet, impact/floatation vest, etc), and start practicing with it!

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HOLLYWEIRD

Yesterday, I went with Asa to the weekly Open Mic Night at the Cat Club on Sunset.  It’s usually a bunch of not-yet-successful comics and musicians – with the occasional appearance of actual talent (generally when Brian and Bekah show up).  Sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll get on stage and do some of my songs and see how I do.

So, I ended up sitting next to “Polo the Clown”.  His performance was keyed toward educating the audience about an ancient reptilian race hiding among us in an effort to maintain justice on Earth – and apparently he is one of them.  After his performance, I had the pleasure of listening to him expound on his performance by detailing the failures of commercialized (and diluted for the masses) Kabbalah and the power he wields against them through the “Evil Eye”.

Quite bizarre, but he was actually better than most of the comics who took the stage last night (most of whom embrace shock comedy in lieu of actually being funny).  I told Polo to check out late night AM radio if he’s looking for a nationwide audience already into conspiracy theories and ancient occult rituals.

Welcome to the underbelly of entertainment!