Hurrison sez...

"That's America, man. You can beat up black people and Vietnamese people in Southie and still become a movie star".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Wahlberg

Fourth of July

Over the long weekend, Dan, Chenxia Liu, Scott Johnston, and I decided to go hiking in the King Range Recreation Area. So we drove the many miles and hours from the Bay up to Shelter Cove, tightened down our packs, locked the Prius and started out. Almost all of our hike was on the beach the first day, causing us to make slow progress on the sand. As we hiked though, the area afforded continuous views of California's lovely Pacific coast.


Throughout the day, we say such strange and miraculous things as people with full backpacking packs as well as surfboards on their backs. After crossing many streams and walking all afternoon, we reached Big Flat camp and chose a site to stay in.


After pitching camp, making dinner, doing dishes, and stowing our food, we went to bed.













The next morning we intended to hike to King's Peak but set out rather late.

The day was hot and our trail crossed too many streams for us to resist.



After climbing at least 40 switchbacks, time was running out so we turned back and headed home for dinner. Dan whistled and I sang "Sam Hall" on the way home.














That evening (Sunday), Dan and I were pumping water at the creek and a black bear came sauntering along on the opposite side. He's hard to see, but later he visited our camp. To give him his space, we all went and watched the sunset and the stars from the beach next to Dan's bridge.







The next morning we tried to pack up and get out before the tide started coming in, and we got through the narrow bit of the beach in record time. Made it to the trailhead, each person separated by about half a mile, got our requisite fish and chips, and rolled home to Sebastopol.

Wall of '12 Accomplishments

by Tevis

Charlulz sez...

"If gay marriage is legalized, bromances will be real"

MiniCryoFAC

...was delicious! We made 12 brand new flavors, including 3 sorbets and a vegan flavor, and a lot of them were awesome. The winners seemed to be the mango lemon sorbet, pear ginger sorbet, roasted strawberry balsamic ice cream, and chocolate sea salt. We got fully funded by residential life for being part of the East Campus 4th of July celebrations; and the best part was people weren't pigging out so we had lots of leftover ice cream. Here are a few discoveries we made that can be put to use for further CryoFACs:
-actual baking chocolate tastes much better than cocoa powder and is easier to work with (no sifting!)
-with sorbets, half the sugar that the original recipe suggests is still too much
-dulce de leche bubbles up a lot when baking.
Thanks to everyone who helped make ice cream, set up, serve, clean up, and make extra ice cream. Maybe Featherweight can post some pictures.
Also, the fireworks were very nice from the sailing pavilion. Many people even heeded Tevis's gazillion e-mails about getting sailing cards. Fireworks were pretty, and maybe RJ can post some pictures of those.

Royd Rage sez

"People on Reddit are not your friends"

The Middle East

So freshly home from my Turkey/Israel/Jordan trip I have promptly gotten sick and realized how there is absolutely nothing to do at home. In any case, it was an amazing, though frustrating, trip.

We started in Istanbul. On the first day we asked the cab driver to take us to the 'hippodrome' which is an ancient racetrack up by the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia. Of course 'hippodrome' really only means race track. So he drove us 30 min outside of the city to the modern racetrack guarded by the Turkish military, and then kicks us out of the car. That was a fun one to fix, but making your getting lost mistakes in the beginning always kind of takes the pressure off. In any case we eventually made it to all the big beautiful places. Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia included.

Istanbul is laid out in a particular way so that every selling the same thing is on the same street or in the same neighborhood. So you end up with a whole hillside full of plumbing equipment, and a street full of LEDs, an entire shop selling soldering irons.

I went to visit my old physics teacher who now lives in Bahcesehir. I got to meet a lot of really cool boys who are at the school he works at, one of them will be an incoming freshman at MIT next year, andone of them won the Turkish National Science Competition.

He then introduced us to his friend in the Grand Bazaar, so no one tried to steal our money, and we got good deals, and we also got to go into his workshop and see the guys to do the copper carving for

his lamps, which are really beautiful.

After Turkey we proceeded to Israel. We were staying in Tel Aviv, which is a much less religious city, and it is on the beach, and it was wonderful. We did visit Jerusalem and saw my orthodox cousin, who is 18 and is 100% sent on being married within the year and having a million children, so it was really interesting to talk to her.

While we were in Israel we also wen't to Jordan for a little while. Jordan is a fascinating place because it is so incredibly different from the western world. The infrastructure basically doesn't exist. There are a lot of bedouins, but nomadic and settled. Jordan has been making a big effort to settle the bedouins, and have been building them houses, which are actually nicer than the tin shacks or unfinished grey brick houses most people live in. In any case we got to go to Petra, which was amazing. Just as amazing as National Geographic wants you to think it is.

Bedouins in the Jordanian Desert: Petra:

Then it was back to Tel Aviv for a week or so, and then 17 hours on airplanes to get home. One of the coolest things about Tel Aviv, though, is all of the street art, its everywhere, and some of it is actually interesting.

Anyway, I'm home now and trying to kill the time until I start working.