Hot Rods in California

In August, our visitor marathon started and we first welcomed Michael and Ewa, good friends from my hometown Koblenz in Germany. We were very excited to have them here, both had never been to the U.S. before. Of course there is so much to see around here, and I was happy to learn that just one of the weekends that they were in town, happened to be the weekend of the Hot Rods in Pleasanton. Michael is a car freak, so what better place to be for him? It was a very hot weekend, but the trip to Pleasanton did not disappoint us. What beautiful cars....

As if the Hot Rod Show wasn't enough introduction to the American past and present, we stopped for a really nice. yammy BBQ at our friends' Shannon and Brian's house. What was so special about the BBQ? Well, we introduced Micha and Ewa to our new favorite BBQ game of horseshoes and had a phantastic evening.

Triathlon

In sunny Santa Cruz, I finished my first Half Ironman Triathlon yesterday :-) It started at 7:15 in the morning, with the sun barely up, with a 1.2 mile (2 km) swim around the Santa Cruz Pier. John was kind enough to join me and take some pictures; unfortunately Sabine couldn't make it since she was traveling to San Antonio for a conference. This is me at the start with the Boardwalk in the background.


The water wasn't too cold with the wetsuit, although it took a few minutes before I could get a decent breath due to temperature adjustment. As most of you know, I don't like swimming for the lack of scenic enjoyment, so I was doing the breast stroke. It is not the most efficient use of my energy, but I was still able to be faster than 30 people out of 845 participants........ (I suck at swimming). When I finally got out of the water, I had to run a quarter mile to the transition area, where I had to get out of my wetsuit and in my bike gear.


This took me quite a while, as I am pretty clumsy..... But I finally got going on my favorite part, the 56 mile (90 km) bike ride along the beautiful California coast on Highway 1.


It was overcast during the whole ride, and I averaged 20 miles per hour (32 km/h), which I was very excited about.

During the second transition from bike to run I couldn't locate my gear, which was very frustrating. I finally headed out on the half marathon run, 13.1 miles (21 km) along the Santa Cruz coastline.


The sun had come out, and it got fairly warm, so I was happy with all the water stops provided. After 5 hours and 52 minutes, I finally made it to the beach for a grueling finish in the sand.


I was very happy with my time, I finished 458th out of 845 participants, not bad for my first time.

Chicago

In early August we decided to finally use our free Southwest flights that I had accumulated thanks to my work gigs in So-Cal and spent a long weekend in Chicago. I know, August might not be the best time to visit Chicago, but we went nevertheless and learned to appreciate our nice and cool San Francisco summers. Sven had been there before and I had heard a lot of good things about the architecture of the City and how beautiful it was with all the art deco and the lake etc. We were able to get a hotel in downtown and from there we started walking to explore our surroundings... and we walked... a lot....

I was surprised to find the City as clean as it was, I guess there are just less homeless people due to Illinois' really inhuman winters. Water bodies such as rivers and lakes or the ocean always contribute to the quality of life for me so that Chicago scored on that one right a way. We walked along the shores of Lake Michigan where a huge boat party was happening and people were swimming and enjoying the beach.

Again, the architecture is breathtaking and so Sven went a little crazy with taking pictures (specially since he got a new toy: a digital camera). From the Tiffany Dome at the Chicago Cultural Center to the Sears Tower, the Wrigley Building and the Navy Pier as well as the Hancock Center where we enjoyed a bird's eye view of the City at the 96th floor while sipping cocktails, take a look at the pictures and you know what I mean with great architecture.



One of the highlights and a quick and easy way to see the Loop and the great buildings within was a boat tour named the "architectural river cruise" run by the Chicago Architecture Foundation with a very knowledgeable docent explaining the history, significance, and architecture of all riverfront buildings. I highly recommend to check it out.

Running

I ran from our office along the bay to the pacific ocean this afternoon. It was a very typical San Francisco summer day: nice and sunny at the Embarcadero, but as soon as I came around the bend, the fog was already hugging the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge was just a concrete footing with a white cover. I ran past hundreds of tourists at Fisherman's Wharf, and saw a sea lion browse around in Aquatic Park waiting for the kids to jump into the freezing water to come and play. Past the "Blazing Saddles" rental bikes at the Marina Green, I watched the pelicans make their way back from the bay towards their nesting rocks along Ocean Beach. The dogs were playing in the water at Crissy field while the kite surfers and kite flyers seemed the only humans who were enjoying the wind gusts that come with the fog making its way inland. At Baker Beach, I saw two red-tailed hawks playing in the wind while mom or dad was searching for dinner down below. The mansions with their beautiful views and trimmed gardens in the gloomy Seacliff neighborhood attracted hummingbirds, and they followed me up towards the Land's End trail. I watched the waves pound on the cliffs, and sometimes the sun came out to make a beautiful contrast with the fog clouds and the reflection on the water. The tourists at the Cliff House were witnessing this bizarre landscape from their fine dining seats, where it seemed that we were really at "Land's End"; the horizon had disappeared. My last of the 13 miles was hard, but the hot chocolate made for a happy end.

Sven

PS: sometimes pictures are not needed :-)

Fun in Las Vegas

A couple of month ago, my friend Shannon asked me to join her for an upcoming trip to Las Vegas for her brother-in-law Jacob's 30st birthday. Why not? I knew it would be very different from our other Vegas trips as a lot of partying, drinking and the typical Vegas stuff would be involved... Sven didn't want to join us ("are you nuts, it'll be 110 degrees..."), so I left him in San Francisco and met the "Alabama"-crowd in Vegas...

Shannon got us tickets to see the newest of the Cirque du Soleil shows named "Love", a show that combines the great Beatles music with the breathtaking acrobatics and performances of the Cirque's artists. What an amazing experience! If you have plans to go to Vegas and want to spend the money on one show, I highly recommend "Love" that's playing at the Mirage Casino. With the music blasting out of the chair in front of you, you get the impression that you actually ended up at a real Beatles' concert. To celebrate the show and the continue the fun, we visited the really cool Beatles' bar after the show:

As you can see, we enjoyed the nights drinking quite well.

During the day we walked through the Casinos and, rode the roller coater at the New York, New York. Susan and Jacob, fearless by nature (or alcohol) even made their way to old town and took a ride one the scariest of all rides at the Stratosphere. The less crazier of us went to the spa or the hairdresser at our hotel (MGM) and recovered for the next night :-)

The next evening, we had reservations at the "Red Square", a Russian restaurant in Mandalay Bay. With a couple minutes to spare before meeting the rest of our group, Shannon and I made our way to the casino. We each put $5 in a quarter slot machine to pay our tribute to the Las Vegas gambling fever and join the boys in their continuous loss of money. At least that's what we thought... Before we knew what had happened, my lucky friend had hit the jackpot! With the lights going off, the machine making crazy sounds only to be beaten by Shannon yelling even louder, Shannon won $2,500.

At the Red Square, we all visited the so-called Vodka Vault, which is pretty much a walk-in freezer where you can enjoy your Vodka shots (you get the Russian feeling). Because they want to make you feel special and not to freeze your butt off, the owners treat you into Russian fake fur coats, hats and winter military uniforms for some of the guys. What a great thing to start a fantastic dinner, thanks for spoiling us Shannon!

The entire trip was awesome. Thanks "Alabama"-crowd to invite me along, can't wait to visit you in Houston!

Abel Tasman

Sequence III in our New Zealand Series.... After crossing the Cook Strait from the North to the South Island, we went on a 2day kayak trip in Abel Tasman National Park. The name of this park obviously filled me with pride and joy, since Abel Tasman was a Dutch seafarer who was the first European to sight New Zealand. The National Park is beautifully situated on the so called Golden Coast in the northwest corner of the South Island; it gets the most sunshine in the area, so we figured kayaking would be excellent.

The first day we went on a guided trip to become familiar with the kayak and safety procedures. Our group consisted of 8 people including our guide, and was aptly named "Seals, Lagoons, and Golden Beaches". We took a water taxi north to the Tonga Island seal colony, where we were dropped off at a small beach. We headed a little further north and paddled into some beautiful lagoons. We also got to see seals and their puppies, who were 2 months old and very playful:

We saw a lot of them as we were kayaking south. For lunch we stopped at a gorgeous lagoon, with almost transparent water, and enjoyed our sandwiches and the break from paddling:

The water was warm enough for swimming. We continued on past some nice beaches as well as the actual seal colony before entering the Anchorage, where the rest of the group was picked up. We paddled back out and camped at the next lagoon over, Te Pukatea beach. There were a few campsites, one of which we had reserved, and they overlooked the beach. We put up our tent and hiked up to a viewpoint to watch the sun set. The lagoon had a perfect crescent shape, and we saw stingrays settle in for the night:

The next morning the tides had taken all the footsteps from the beach, which made for beautiful pictures (it also explains the "Golden Beaches" name for the kayak trip...):

We paddled around another island with a bunch of seabirds (like cormorants) on our way to the return point. The water was extremely clear, you could actually see you paddle in the water.

The outfitter picked us up and took us back to our car; even though we had been driving in New Zealand for over a week, we still weren't used to the left hand driving: we drove from the gravel road on to the regular road, when all of a sudden we see this big camper coming straight for us in "our" lane...... until we realized that we were in his lane and we swiftly switched....

More to come.

Sven

Mt. Shasta

2 Weeks ago, I drove up to climb Mt. Shasta in Northern California with a co-worker of mine, Ed, and his roommate Gary. We camped at elevation on Thursday after the most horrific "japanese" fast-food dinner that turned out to be greasy chinese food.... After a nice breakfast, we headed out from Bunny Flat; the snow was gone due to the lack of precipitation last winter, so we were hiking in shorts (these are all Ed' s pictures, i will post mine after I have scanned them):

We started encountering snow after a few hours, and the trail got a lot steeper. This is me on my way to Helen Lake, at which we arrived after about 4 hours:

This is (from left) Gary, Ed, and me with Ed's tent at Lake Helen, where it was very crowded, and everybody was camping on the small dirt section instead of on the snow:

We all felt a little light-headed because of the elevation and the sun blowing down on our heads; we went to bed as soon as the sun set, and got back up at 2 a.m. to head up the mountain. The early start guarantees the snow to be hard, so you walk on it with crampons and ice axe instead of sliding down on the snow. The top is still over 4,000 feet away, and the ascent is very steep, with an average of 45 degrees (100% slope....); the pictures give a little bit of an impression, but not quite (this is me at the red banks):



The sunrise is magnificent, you can see the silhouette of the triangular mountain in the Trinity mountain range in the west:




After reaching the Red Banks, the wind really started blowing hard, so we had to cover up and wear goggles. Step by step by slow step, we made it over Misery Hill and could see the summit, always a good feeling:



With the sun still shining, we made it to the top at 14,192 feet (4322 m) in about 5.5 hours and enjoyed the views. The clouds started moving in and it became overcast, so we couldn't glisade down. After a brutal climb down we picked up Gary at base camp and were able to glisade towards Horse Camp. I was very happy to have made it again, and who knows, maybe it wasn't the last time, as Ed mentioned on the drive home...... Thanks to Ed for the pics, mine are coming up.

Yosemite

We did our usual Memorial Day Backpacking trip on our own this year, and went to Yosemite. I found a trip a little bit off the beaten path (I hoped), and that turned out to be true: we only saw 15 people in 3 days. We hiked from Tioga Road into Pate Valley towards the Tuolomne River. It was pretty hot in the valley, but beautiful views of the river and a quick cooldown of our feet in it made it bearable. We did a little day hike the 2nd day and had some great views of the Grand Canyon of the Toulomne River before starting our way back up the hill. Our second campsite was beautifully situated on a rocky outcrop with magnificent views of Hetch Hetchy and its surroundings. This is us enjoying the scenery the next morning:

It was good to see that even Yosemite has areas that are still serene, even on a Holiday weekend. More pictures to come.

Next weekend I am hoping to climb Mt. Shasta with a co-worker, weather permitting.

Sven

New Zealand North Island

I have finally started scanning the slides from New Zealand, here is the first batch from the North Island. The main attraction are the geothermal active areas, which resemble Yellowstone in the US. The only difference is that since it is all located on private land, you have to pay an entrance fee for every single park you want to visit. We picked Wai'O'Tapu, one of the bigger areas, and browsed through sulfur-smelling landscape for a few hours. The colors of the water are fascinating, created by bacteria that only live at certain temperatures:

Our first hike would be "the best day hike in the world" as stated in every travel guide you could think of. Full of anticipation of going on the Tongariro Crossing, we got into the bus that took us to the trailhead (by the way, this is a source of income for I think half of the population, bussing tourists to their destination...), where we were released into nature with hundreds of others at the same time. We had to hike through lava fields and past volcanoes, very fascinating:

The group eventually broke up and we got to enjoy the surroundings; we started our final ascent of Red Crater, the highest point on the hike at over 1800 meters (yes, the metric system rules :-)). This is me on the last stretch with the active volcano Mt. Ngauruhoe in the background:

From the top of Red Crater we could see one of the highlights of the hike, Emerald Lakes, beautifully situated between barren land and old volcanoes:

Overall, the hike was very nice, but the title doesn't apply, I have done much better hikes. I also didn't enjoy the masses on the hike, but that was something we had to get used to. From Tongariro National Park we ventured south towards Wellington, stopping at Martinborough for some wine tasting (no crowds compared to Napa, which was really nice), and ended in Wellington, where we had to take a ferry to the South Island. The capital of New Zealand reminds me of San Francisco, situated on a Bay with some hills and seismic activity. We found the best comparison by hopping on the Cable Car on our way to the Botanical Gardens:

We also watched the opening game of the Wellington Hurricanes, the local professional rugby team. The Kiwis are extrmely excited about their rugby, it's all over the news, and people discuss it all day long. Even though I didn't remember all the rules, it was fun to watch, and I would recommend every NFL player to play a game without any protection to toughen up....