Log running in Yosemite

Log running!

Had a superb time with Kate (my sis) at Yosemite National Park two weekends ago. We set off on the Friday morning (it was meant to be early but ended up being about 9 or 10 I think).

We had a couple brief stops on the way up. First on the 580 to take photos of the massive wind farm. This pretty much set the theme for the weekend with a strong emphasis on photo-taking! Our second stop was in Oakhurst to be a bit miffed at missing the chocolate festival there by a week.

We got up there in less than 4 hours (not bad) to be greeted by some truly spectacular scenery, more good photo-taking opportunities and chaotic traffic in the park due to a temporary one way system. We headed into Yosemite Valley and did a couple shorts walks to take in the meadows and the incredible waterfalls. In the picture dwarfing Kate and I is the Upper and Lower Yosemite falls, together forming the tallest waterfall in North America, and the sixth tallest in the world!

After getting very wet taking close up photos of this spectacle, we drove up to Tunnel View to see the sun set over the valley. By now my camera had already run out of both memory and batteries (due to some slight oversights on my behalf) but there was a mass of photographers already there with tripods, medium format cameras, light meters all at the ready. It seemed like some of these people had been waiting hours for the perfect light which I reckon was around 6pm just before we got there.

We were camping at Curry Village, which is a huge forest village of permanent "tent cabins", set up over 100 years ago by David and Jennie Curry (so nothing to do with Indian food sadly). I thought it was a pretty cool concept - more comfortable and spacious than camping but still pretty basic and cheap. Great for families. The breakfast buffet is excellent especially for free! We missed the dinner so had to fork out a small fortune for the overpriced bar and pizzeria food, but there is a good atmosphere at the eating area in the evenings and we ended up chatting to a couple for Orange County.

On Saturday, we headed up to Mirror Lake on the lovely air-conditioned complementary (but crowded) buses. Again more photo taking and a bit of paddling in some ice cold water. We also saw some lizards and a snake on some sun-baked rocks. The lake itself is a seasonal lake and is only there during the Spring due to snow melt. Apparently it will eventually turn into a meadow. We ended up doing about a 6 mile walk all the way around it. Kate was glad when that was over!

We headed back in the evening to catch an hour of Andrea's leaving party then into the city for a precious few hours sleep at the hotel Steve had kindly booked us into in preperation for an early start at the Bay to Breakers run.

It was so nice seeing Kate for a couple weeks - going on trips together, exploring San Francisco, eating out, eating in and just hanging out. Thanks so much for coming to visit!!

More Bay to Breakers Pics

Here are some good pics of Steve and me running in Bay to Breakers last weekend:

http://www.sportphoto.com/event/event.cgi?EventID=32

Put in the secret code of bib number 574 to see conclusive evidence of me beating Wee Steve by at least a few inches! If anyone feels like buying me one of those pictures, please feel free!

Thanks again to everyone who sponsored me for the race. I managed to raise $200 for cancer research. You've still got a week to donate money if you haven't already.

Get Golden this weekend!!! It's finally here.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

Awesome. They've done it.

Lewis and I last night went to see the final episode of the Star Wars saga (for the time being anyway). We saw it at the Metreon in San Francisco on one of their massive digital projector screens. Being opening day there were of course huge crowds and queues, although not as many costumes as I'd liked to have seen. Maybe the 12.01am showing would have been better than the 7pm showing we were at for that, but alas it sold out too quickly. So we got their at about 6pm to join the line of about 500 people. Understandably, this led to us sitting smack-bam in the front of the theatre (Lewis got his leg-room anyway!). It just made the film even more immersive.

They have done it right this time. This is what Star Wars should be. It was awesome. Emotional and nerve-racking. Massive dazzling space battles, lots of one-on-one light sabre duels, inner struggles, crushed friendships, the rise of Darth Vader, and then of course some occasional comedy from R2-D2 and C-3PO. The story is of course absolutely solid. Everything just fits into place so well and there are some great strokes of genius in how it plays out. Despite knowing what is going to happen, the amount of tension and emotion the film instills is just incredible.

Anakin's fall to the dark side is tragically painful to watch, portrayed superbly by Hayden Christensen. Both him, and Ewan McGregor in the role of Obi-Wan have seem very comfortable in their roles and the chemistry created between the two characters throughout the film is just perfect. The relationship between Padme (Natalie Portman) and Anakin is now believable and sincere, rather than the cringe-inspiring form it took in the previous films. These two relationships make watching Anakin's betrayel of everything he knows overwhelmingly upsetting to watch, just as it should be.

I am so happy about this film. There is no doubt in my mind that this is one of the great Star Wars films, up there with the originals. You don't even need the first two. George Lucas, you have redeemed yourself. This is what it is all about. It is an absolute joy to lose yourself in the Star Wars world again. Thank you!!

British Food

Discovered this on Flickr - Shepherd's Pie at the Irish Bank pub. Will need to go and eat some of that!!

Even bigger news: there's a proper fish and chip shop in San Francisco!! I found it while looking at SF Weekly's Best of 2005. It's called Picadilly and is on Polk St (at Pine). It sounds fantastic. They fly in cod from Ireland, have good thick-cut chips and even wrap the whole thing in newspaper! Don't think they have brown sauce though - this is an English-style chippie, not Scottish :-( Still should be damn good though! Open until midnight on Fri/Sat night, 11pm on other nights. Good reviews on Google Local too! This is the mission for this week. Maybe a post-Star Wars meal?

178!!

Ready for the race

After months of training, the day was finally here. The 94th annual Bay to Breakers - a 7.56 mile (12km) run through San Francisco which has run every year since 1912 - was taking place today.

Wee Steve and I were there, at the front of the pack (as pledge runners raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society) at 6.30am, warming up, digesting our Starbuck's breakfasts and watching the flying tortillas! It was really nice being at the front of the pack (especially thinking of poor Declan behind about 70,000 people) - we got to see the mayor warming up and join in the count down to the start (accompanied by some great motivational music). Once we were off, there were no delays - straight into running.

Soon into the race, we were surrounded by naked people. Apparently illegal and "frowned upon" but nobody ever really gets arrested, although they do have to get dressed for the finish line. Steve and I started up a competition to high five as many people as possibly, with bonus points for cops and naked people. And they loved it!! Young, old, naked, clothed - we must have high fived about 150 spectators between us, including some daring jumps and diversions off the main track.

We high-fived one naked guy who gave us some beads to wear, which we will now cherish forever! And bring back to B2B 100 in 2012, which we have made a pact to come back to.

There were some great costumes - human centipedes, cat women, the titanic, a star wars family, a picasso guitarist, people on the loo, tiki-bars - it all added to the fun of the event.

The spectators were also great - cheering us on, playing music and high-fiving us (some reluctantly but willing and some loving it, especially when we had to jump for them). Thanks to them, and me and Steve pushing each other to run the whole way without slowing down we set an excellent pace and made it in 1:05:59 - a time we were very pleased with indeed! (I was aiming for less than an hour and a half).

And, out of about 70,000 people we finished in positions 177 and 178!!! Awesome! SO HAPPY!!!!

Exit row rant

In response to Wee Steve's post about people in exit rows on planes not taking enough responsibility:

I don't think you need to stay awake throughout the whole flight though. That's asking too much. What if it was a 14 hour flight to Australia or something? I'm sure if something happened you'd be awake pretty quickly anyway!

Plane crashes are obviously very devastating and if one occurs I imagine it's extremely rare that anyone survives the impact and actually has to open the emergency exit. But that's not to say you shouldn't be prepared - as you say - at least read the instructions and be alert during take off and landing (when most accidents happen). I personally always look at the safety instructions and work out how to open the doors if I'm within a few aisles.

This reminds me of when I flew to Minneapolis and the woman in the seat beside me, moments after the "no cell phones allowed and turn off all electronics during landing" announcement, took out her phone to make a call. She clearly knew it was against the rules as she was hiding it under her hair from the flight attendents. Couldn't she wait a few minutes until we'd landed? This is the very worst time to use a phone! Didn't she realize how important that rule is? It's not in her interest to get away with it if the guidance systems mess up and we crash land, is it?!?! So I told her to get off the phone (very politely and Britishly of course).

She retorted with "But you're using your CD player". I did have my headphones on, but had the player switched off, which I told her. Anyway what difference does that make? If I was breaking the rules, that doesn't mean she should too. And I think a cell phone probably generates a lot more interference than a CD player.

So Steve - I agree with you. People don't have enough respect for the rules of flying. Let's all do our bit and complain to them or the staff whenever we get the chance!!

Far more important though are the risks associated with driving - the American habit for drinking and driving needs to stop. There are just too many devastating stories. Don't ever, ever do it. Ever.

"Fucked up brilliant"

That's how Chris Martin described one of Coldplay's fantastic new songs while playing an incredible set at the Coachella music festival, near Indio in Southern California. The man is a legend. He was clearly enjoying himself on stage enourmously, bouncing all over the place with excitement and laughing at himself when he messed up his own lyrics. Very entertaining and much livelier on stage than you might expect. I really like their new material. Speed of Sound grows on me more every time I hear it and the other new stuff definitely lives up to classic Coldplay. Can't wait to get my hands on the new album. The other highlight of the set was the super-special version of "We're all at Coachella" Yellow. Fantastic. The new album, X&Y is out on June 6th.

The gang this time was me, Declan, Declan's friend Jude (from Edinburgh, but now studying in Austin, TX which sounds like the party/student capital of the world), Drew and Big Steve.

Other musical highlights were Snow Patrol, who seemed very good, but Declan, Jude and I had just gulped down a fair amount of Vodka as even water bottles weren't allowed in under the Draconian American drinking laws. I also really enjoyed UNKLE - lots of great dance music and lasers and so on, finishing with remixes of The Killers and U2 (the previous two gigs I'd been to!) Sage Francis was a surprisingly good hip hop act by this bearded black guy with a big robe. And Keane were also excellent. Very cool seeing all these bands with a backdrop of mountains, desert and palm trees!

Renting convertibles was one of the best decisions of the weekend! It felt so right to be driving down to LA with the sun beaming down on us and the wind in our hair. We had very tasteful Chevy Sebrings - nice handling and very quiet (compared with the Jeep!) but not too powerful. Probably a good thing or Drew would have got a ticket when the police stopped him. It is the way to drive though. You really feel a lot more in touch with the road and aware of everything going on. That didn't however stop us from getting lost - several times! Jointly to blame for this are:
a) Declan,
b) Google Maps,
c) Too many freeways in LA.
We managed to clock up about 100 miles more than Drew and Steve over the weekend (totalling 1270 over 3 days!), and I think we drove through LA airport roughly 5 times.

We were staying in about the worst area of LA (cheapest though!) - Inglewood, just under the LAX flight path! (I think Declan had a few close encounters with planes in the mornings) They did have good blueberry muffins in the hostel/hotel (LA Adventurers) though, and a bar that was open late. Leaving convertibles outside in this area is not a good idea though - and someone did attempt to break into one of them!

We spent Sunday relaxing on Venice beach (I think where Baywatch was filmed) and watching all the stuff going on. There were people driving all sorts of crazy contraptions - big wheeled fat-burning bikes, Segways, police on quad bikes, etc. I saw one lifeguard drive about 10ft in his big yellow pickup from his little shack, equipped with a megaphone just to scare the wits out of some poor swimmers who were in a no swimming zone! There was an impressive amount of sports going on - basketball courts, squash courts, paddle ball courts (kind of like short tennis / life-size table tennis). Of course there were also myriads of tourists buying souvenirs (us included). After all that we went on a driving tour of LA, led by me (now map-equipped) then Steve and Drew went off home and Declan and I stayed to get Jude to her 10.30pm flight. We investigated downtown, did some covert parking (as all the attendents had abandoned their lots), wandered around the desolate remains of the Cinco de Mayo celebrations (lots of balloons and flyers seems to be what that's about) and ended up having dinner at a beach-themed bar on Sunset Blvd.

The weekend ended with a night time drive back home, up the almost-deserted 101, fueled by red bull and the Alias soundtrack (resulting in inevitable tailing of other vehicles :-)). We made it in 4:44, beating Drew and Steve's time (up the 5) by 1 minute. Very proud. We actually caught the start of early morning traffic with people trying to beat the traffic into work. Those crazy commuters!

Photos here!!