Over the long 4th of July weekend I went up to the bay area to visit a few friends. While I was there I had some great dives at Monterey (including some rather dangerous moments), hiked in Little Yosemite, watched fireworks from the balcony of a 15th story apartment overlooking Alcatraz, had lunch at Google, and did so much more. Below are a few of the photos and videos of the weekend. I am also happy to report that my car worked wonderfully and still drives just fine.
On Thursday I drove from Los Angeles early in the morning to Mountain View and the Googleplex. Emily N, an old friend from the Writing Center days at OSU, happens to work for one of the most awesome companies in the world. I arrived just in time for lunch.
For some odd reason, Google doesn’t allow photos inside the campus. So because of that, I don’t have any photos from the inside. However, I can tell you that I saw the holodeck, the dinosaur skeleton, the Spaceship 1 copy, a cupcake statute, an adroid statue, a conference room shaped like a barrel of wine, the Google Giftshop (Beta), and several other cool things. Plus I got to hang out with Emily N and have lunch with her at the main Google cafeteria!
After lunch we drove over to her place to hang out, catch up, and play some video games. We were kings of Halo and Halo II (on the easy setting). Her cat, aptly named Loliver, also helped us play. For dinner Emily N treated me to some good Chinese food and a ride in her super fun new (to her) Mini! Her old car got stolen a while back and she just recently replaced it. Riding in the Mini felt like being in a retro-future fighter jet!
The next morning I headed across Sunnyvale to meet up with Alex, a diving buddy and fellow NASA intern. He is working at NASA AMES this summer doing some crazy cool reactor RTG’s that will power the spacecraft of tomorrow. We loaded up our gear in his SUV and headed off to do some diving at Monterey.
Our first dive site was at the Coastguard pier where there is a gentle sandy beach entrance. It’s a shallow dive with a nice reef and lots of people. We found a place for Alex to rent some weights and an extra tank, and hopped into the water.
At this point we decided to end our dive. We had been underwater for about an hour. During that time I had fought with my drysuit deflator valve and my right drysuit boot. The boot was retaining air due to a poorly placed dive knife (my bad) and the valve wasn’t dumping air like it was supposed to. In fact, it was hardly letting any out at all. This might not seem like a big deal but it’s pretty huge when you start turning into a human cork with nowhere to go but up. Ascending too fast can give a diver DCI otherwise often referred to as the bends although it also covers several other related conditions. I ended up having to hold onto kelp to keep myself from popping to the surface too fast.
We couldn’t quite figure out why I kept trying to pop to the surface. Both Alex and I tried to fight with the valve to no avail. I decided to try to redistribute my weights and fix my dive knife location to see if that helped on the next dive.
After a surface interval and bathroom break we hopped back in and swam out along the breakwater. Another diver in the parking lot had talked about a wreck off the jetty. We had decided to go try and find it.
On the way up to the surface I had yet another bout of runaway buoyancy. This time I needed Alex’s help acting as an anchor along with kelp to keep me down for our three minute safety stop. Both of us worked on my valve but with little results. Finally I burped my drysuit (and got a little water down my neck) to prevent a runaway ascent.
As we swam back to shore I also noticed that the corrugated tube on my low pressure BCD inflator had a crack in it. I didn’t have a backup with me. And it was about lunchtime.
We loaded our gear up and headed into town to a dive shop that Max, who is staying in Monterey with Trista (who works at the aquarium), recommended. Bamboo Reef Enterprises helped us find some aquaseal glue that would cure quickly and allow us to continue diving without a replacement hose. It turns out that Bamboo Reef is also the only Sequest dealer in town (the brand of my BCD). They didn’t have the part I needed.
While we were at Bamboo Reef we also inquired about my drysuit deflator valve. They didn’t have many ideas beyond what ESDS did when I called them. Both shops thought I was using my suit wrong. With Alex there, another more experienced BARE drysuit diver, neither one of us could see what I was doing wrong or different than him. I should note that this was not my first drysuit either. Previously I had owned an extensively dove an O’Neill drysuit. One good piece of advice that Bamboo Reef gave us was to try and run hot water backwards through the valve to break up any built-up deposits on the inside of the valve. That seemed to help on our next dive.
As it was getting dark and I was worried about the continued safety of my drysuit, I decided not to take my camera. Alex took his but hasn’t gotten me the photos yet. The south dive site at Monastery Beach was one of the best dives that I have ever done. It was stunningly beautiful underwater. The reef and kelp forest was teaming with all sorts of life both big and small.
This dive went much, much smoother than the previous dives. My drysuit was better behaved although still not perfect. I had to physically grab the deflator valve and shake it back and forth to get air to come out. Not the most ideal situation but it was much better than before.
After almost an hour we emerged from the ocean, loaded up our gear, and headed up to Max and Trista’s place to return some gear and visit. Alex and Trista grew up in the same town together and always have a lot to talk about. The latest gossip is evidently quite interesting to them. Max and I talked a little about research. Before we knew it, time had slipped by and it was nearly midnight. By the time we reached Alex’s place, we were both very tired and both slept quite well.
The next morning I woke up early, loaded up my gear, and slipped out onto the freeway to head toward Freemont and Maggie. Maggie is an old friend from back in the trenches of our undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum. She now works at a company that machines exotic metal.
Maggie suggested that we go explore an area in the hills above Freemont known as Little Yosemite. We headed up a pretty valley paralleling a railroad track that had a steam engine chugging up it. The road is frequented by road bikers including Maggie. She is a regular in the AIDS LifeCycle annual ride and leads training rides in the area.
In the afternoon I hopped in my car and headed into San Francisco to visit Sean and Katie. I met up with them downtown after having and adventure finding their place via several steep needlessly driven hills. We went out for a drink at the Keyhole (?) and then to dinner at a cute Italian place with good pizza. By this point the sun was sinking low in the west. This could only mean one thing. It was time to go to Sean’s relative’s sweet apartment located high up a skyscraper (15th floor!) looking out over Alcatraz and the downtown.
The next morning as I was getting ready to depart, Sean gave me two bottles of his latest homebrew batches. One is a barleywine that I can’t open until December at the earliest. The other is (I think) an amber or something along those lines that can be consumed in short order.
My next stop was Oakland to visit Melanie K, a friend from the internets. We went out for brunch at a local diner. I also got to meet her lovely cats.
The final activity before I headed south was one more stop in Monterey. My great aunt Barbara recently moved from her apartment into a nursing home up on the hill overlooking the bay. I stopped in to sit and chat with her, and to see how the place looked. On most days I am told she is just like her normal self. Some days though she is pretty out of it. The day I visited was a good day for her. We sat and chatted for about an hour before I had to leave in order to get back to LA at a reasonable time.
Rather than backtracking out of Monterey to 101 or I-5, I decided to take Highway 1 down the coast through Big Sur. The drive was beautiful although somewhat aggravating with all of the tourists driving at 20 mph. I stopped off in San Louis Obispo for gas and some food. In Santa Barbara I hit a traffic jam that lasted all the way until the Ventura county line. As soon as we crossed it, the jam disappeared and we were back to driving 70 mph. I arrived at Cal Tech at 11pm. My car had survived and I had a great weekend.
Thanks everyone for hosting me and letting me visit! For everyone who I missed, please remind me where you live so I can come see you on my next visit to the bay area in August.
