Pura Vida

So after SF, I headed home for Thanksgiving and two subsequent weeks of interviewing. Here are some photos of white-tailed deer in my backyard.

Deer in headlights?

Mid December, the family headed down to Costa Rica for a nice warm vacation in lieu of a crazy dangerous vacation to Asia. We traveled to a few different beaches on the Pacific coast, namely near the Manuel Antonio National Park and the Papagayo Peninsula, both of which were terrific. Mid-80s every day without a cloud in the sky. Here are some pictures of the wildlife in the area (it was dark a lot of the time, so pictures in general didn't turn out so great):

Three-toed sloth (we also saw the two-toed variety):

White-faced capuchin monkey:

Some crazy leaf footed bug (order hemiptera, family coreidae), still need to find a book on where to get species:

Lizard:

Hermit crab:

Lazy orange lizards:

We also briefly visited the Monteverde cloud forest area, as well as the Arenal volcano, both of which were awesome but far more touristy than I remember from high school. Overall, sweet trip.

T minus 17 days!

After a long hiatus

Monster post. Need to finish up SF ....

So let's start with a picture at sunset from outside my door. San Francisco has some of the nicest lighting late in the afternoon, which I usually failed to take advantage of, but this is a pretty typical image of the housing available in the area in which I lived. 

Last time I posted, we were allll the way back on the weekend of October 25th in Santa Cruz and San Jose. The following weekend, my parents were kind enough to visit the city (it's my dad's favorite) and naturally, we had the worst weather of the my entire time there. It rained 24/7 for 4 days straight. But we tried to make the best of it. My parents did a lot of shopping (Milwaukee leaves much to be desired) and I got to walk around some of the nicer parts of town that I hadn't spent much time in. We also had three amazing meals, the first with the McKenzies where it was great to be able to catch up and thank them for their incredible hospitality. The restaurants, namely the Boulevard, La Folie, and Gary Denko, served some of the best food I've had in my life. Mack and Beeler: we have a future date in SF to hit up those restaurants. Finally, we made our way up to Sausalito to have a quick walk around some interesting boating and art/photography shops.

Here's a picture of my dad and I waiting for the Sausalito ferry to head out at the Embarcadero: 

So that's that weekend. The following weekend was much busier. Saturday morning was the telecast of the Williams-Amherst football game at Jillian's bar where I met up with some older alums (there was a huge gap between the really young alums and the next generation that was there, which was closer to being '00 or '01s) as well as Matt Gustafson and Eugene Berson '08s and Mike Davitian '07. Afterwards, we headed out to the farmer's market at the Embarcadero since no one other than myself had been there. They also had this sweet mushroom festival that I had been really excited for, but ended up being much smaller than I thought (just a few booths, but some really cool shrooms, look below):

These are king trumpets, very solid, thick stems that you can grate like cheese or cut into smaller pieces:

Pink tree oyster mushrooms:

Misc:

Other farmers market pictures:


Flavored sugar, anyone?

Blue Bottle drip coffee:

A typical J Stone dinner. Pasta with mushrooms, shrimp, scallops, broccoli, and tomato in a white sauce (I actually made red sauces more often). A wonderful salad beforehand (greens, avocado, tomato, cucumber, and hearts of palm).

The next day, I headed across the Golden Gate Bridge ....

to eventually end up at the top of Mount Tam (short for Tamalpais), which is the highest point near SF. I hiked with a guy that I worked with named Chris and one of his friends whose name is escaping me.

A view to the northeast:

Lunch near the top: turkey, ham, cheese, and avocado on tasty bread. Chris is the guy on the right, and you can see Mount Diablo (which I will show you pictures of soon) off in the distance in the left.

Perhaps the only evidence that I was actually in SF (Diablo on the left, SF on the right, Mill Valley below):

Salamander?

A view to the north:

A decent view of SF -- on the far left you can see the city:

The hike didn't take nearly as long as we thought it would, so we headed down to Mill Valley, got some food and coffee, and drove to Muir Beach, pictures below:

So that was a damn busy weekend, but I got a lot of stuff that I wanted to do before I left done. The next weekend, I took the Bart out to Dublin where I met up with Matty G, his friend Becca (whom I had already met), and her brother Sam (whom I had not met). We had this great plan to climb all the way up Mount Diablo, which is in the east bay area, in an 8 mile loop. I managed to get us off to a poor start. The previous night I had gone out with Mike Davitian, who had the opportunity to show off his new apartment in Marina. After walking home, I must've set my alarm for an hour later than I had intended, resulting in my being about 20 min late to the Bart station. From there, Matt drove us on a slightly different road than planned (we were supposed to find a trailhead on the northern side of the mountain, but we weren't quite there yet). Anyways, we ended up near a trail that was probably about 2 miles long each way but got us to the top. Pictures from the way up:

At the top:

A view west. You can see the end of whatever mountain range this is, then some flatness, and then the beginning of the Sierras waaay in the distance:

A bug?

The way to lunch:

Going down:

On the way back, I walked near the SF city hall where there was a rather large demonstration against the passing of Prop 8. If you look closely, you can see a TV truck on the right with the camera way in the air:

In my last few days in SF, I also met up with James Ritterpusch '08 in Berkeley for a night of rock climbing in a gym that he belongs to. We started with some bouldering, but since I've never really climbed before and I don't have any technique whatsoever, my forearms were killing me in short order. He was also nice enough to belay me while I climbed for real, which was a lot of fun. I also made my way down to the Stanford campus where I met with a doctor that I had met at Williams. The campus is absolutely gorgeous, completely different architectural style from most Northeast colleges. Afterwards I met up with Matt Gustafson for dinner at a pasta place on the main street in town, very good food.

So that was SF! It was a blast, I wouldn't hesitate recommending for anyone to go there. There's always something going on or something to do that you haven't done, and the food is on par with the best in the world. Farmer's markets are all over the place if you like to cook. The different districts in town offer completely different things if you need a change of scenery. And it's just so much more diverse than what I'm used to. Simply put, a great change of pace.

Some people had wanted to see where I was living, so this is a picture of my room. Not much there, since it wasn't worth investing in. Usually wasn't that messy.

I'll be catching up to now sometime in the next few days. Leaving for Chile in a couple weeks!

Hope everyone had a great holiday and a happy new year.

Desperately needing to catch up ...

I think I'm about a month behind at this point. So time to, well, catch up. At least a few weekends, hopefully, before I decide to pass out for the night.

We left off ... where, jeez, I can't even remember. Oh, Fleet Week, right. Okay. So ... wow that five weekends ago. Sorry for the stream of consciousness.

The following weekend I spent in St. Louis, where I was able to visit my grandparents and aunt (and sister, for a short time). Plus, I had my first interview experience, which was good. Since I really can't compare it to anything, I think I'll leave it at that. My grandfather took me to a Rams game on Sunday, which was great, as I had never before been to an NFL game. Yes, sacrilege, but since when have I ever been a diehard Wisconsinite. Unfortunately no pictures from that weekend.

The following weekend, I headed down to Cuperinto to meet up with Matt Gustafson '08, who has been just incredibly nice to me the entire time I've been here. I took the Caltrain down to Mountain View, had a quick lunch, and went back to his house to meet up with a few of his friends to go on a hike. We drove up to the top of a ridge, and, in Matt's words, "moseyed" down a trail for a couple miles. It was a very relaxed hike, while offering some spectacular views. Here's Matt looking down in the valley below:

The rock that we hiked up (also great for climbing, lots of handholds). There was also a sweet cave in the back that everyone piled into.

Further into the hike, Matt on a very dead tree:

And a nicer view into the valley:

After the hike, we headed over to the the house that one of Matt's friends, Rebecca, had been house-sitting. We managed to cook a delicious meal (with and without cilantro) of tortillas/burritos with peppers, mushrooms, chicken, guacamole, beans, etc. Mmmm. Afterwards, we sat in a hot tub, enjoyed the really nice evening, and jumped on a trampoline for a while (Bryan managed to fall off and get the wind knocked out of him). I also got to sleep in a bed for the first time in a while at Matt's house. Wonderful.

The next day, I said my goodbyes to the Gustafsons and headed further south to Santa Cruz. I really had no idea what to expect, but in a nutshell, it's a surfing town. Also sports some just incredibly beautiful views along the coast. I started in the middle of town, wandering up and down the main street and meandering to a Patagonia outlet.

I had my fair share of shopping (not much was open Sunday morning), so I headed closer to the beach. 

There happened to be a big surfing competition in Santa Cruz that weekend. I grabbed a seat and watched for a while, amazed at the surfers and dismayed at my camera's short lens (there were a ton of guys with ridiculous 1600 mm lenses there). 

Oh, the Santa Cruz coast:

A view of the main street in Santa Cruz:

I had a ton of free time that day, so I also looped down to see a park that was recommended by a Patagonia employee called Natural Bridges State Beach. I was lucky enough to see probably several thousand monarch butterflies, which stop annually at this same location as a short rest for their weary wings as they migrate south. Apparently, there's a ton of milkweed there, which is primarily what they eat, plus it's very sheltered from the wind. Cool.

From the park, I headed north to attempt to see the UC Santa Cruz campus. Note that I was walking this entire time (by the end of the day, I'm pretty sure I had clocked 25+ miles). After getting to the top of this massive hill where the campus lies, I was dismayed to find out that, according to the trusty iPhone, the campus was hugemongous! I took a quick break and ended up not seeing any of the buildings on campus, mainly because I didn't want to get back to the city too too late. So from there I headed back to the main part of town, grabbed a bite to eat, took the 17 north to San Jose, and hopped on the Caltrain back to the city.

I really didn't know where to put this in a post, so I suppose here is fine. One of my favorite Palin posters that I saw in the city (I went back to the apartment just to grab my camera). Awesome. It was up election morning.

That's all I can muster for tonight. Much more to come.