Downtime and Adventure Play

Yesterday we went to a lower-key adventure park called Hidden Worlds. Built around a system of cenotes and related caves and such, they've created a park in which one can snorkel, rappel, ride a zip line (two different ones, actually, including one that ends in a spectacular splashdown in an underground cave), and a “sky cycle” through the jungle. Not only is it much closer to our base camp, but it also does things in a smaller, friendlier atmosphere than Xcaret. The whole setup is run by maybe a couple of dozen people, and since the “crowds” are small, they manage very personalized, hands-on service. Things go at rather a more relaxed pace, but that's OK.

And today, more downtime! Hammocks, dozing, and playing in the water.

But first, we went over to look at the ruins across the road. They're small and not terribly distinguished, but they're interesting and easy to get to. It's amazing how hot and humid it is just a few hundred meters away from the beach.

After lunch, my wife and I borrowed a two-seat sea kayak (my first experience on a kayak) to paddle out to the barrier reef that protects our little bay, where we anchored it and snorkeled around a bit. The reef is not spectacular (there might be spectacular parts, but not where we ended up), but we saw plenty of little fish, interesting corals, and a couple of small lobsters. I spotted a number of the little flamingo-tongue snails that live on gorgonian corals.

All in all, a very pleasant way to spend the day. That's what vacation's all about.

Xcaret and Lobsters

Yesterday's adventure was a trip to Xcaret, which is sort of a theme park built around some Mayan ruins, a cenote (fresh-water spring/cave) and some other items. They've made it into quite a nice place, not at all as tacky as I'd been imagining.

First stop in the morning (after driving two hours to get to Xcaret) was the desk where we could arrange various specific activities for the day. As it turned out, the only one people wanted to do was the dolphin encounter. My wife, our daughter, and my mother-in-law all decided to go swim with the dolphins. Having had some fine, natural close encounters with dolphins on our recent Galapagos trip, I decided to forgo this.

They seemed to enjoy their swim. They certainly got up close and personal with the dolphins, but I had to feel that the animals weren't having much fun. I watched them playing with each other between groups of tourists, and they seemed quite pleased with that. During their human encounters, one definitely had the impression they were much more interested in their fish bribes than in whatever was going on with the visitors.

Xcaret has a number of quite impressive animal exhibits, including a natural bat cave, a manatee lagoon, a tapir, some spider monkeys, and a very nice aquarium that features terrific sea turtles, from very small to very large. And as usual in non-U.S. parks, you get a lot closer to most of the critters, which is nice.

At dinner time, we went to the big production show, covering some of the local Mayan history and culture, the Spanish arrival, and the breadth of the blended Mexican culture. The Mayan portion was quite good, including demonstrations of traditional Mayan ballgames, including one much like field hockey or lacrosse, other than the fact that the ball is aflame. Very cool. They kind of gloss over the details of the Spanish-Mayan "cultural exchanges" that eventually produced modern Mexico, making it all sound very easy and peaceful. But they do paint quite a picture of the rich variety of modern Mexican culture.

Today, downtime. I had to beg and plead to schedule a couple of days where we would not plan side trips and excursions, just rest and enjoy this lovely place where we're staying. This goes against the nature of my wife and her mother, who arranged the trip. But they have grudgingly allowed me a small amount of time to enjoy the hammocks on the beach.

So it's a lovely day of sitting and/or lying in various hammocks, reading books, walking on the beach. And then the much anticipated dinner: fresh, local lobsters! Absolutely delicious, grilled to perfection, and served with a tasty cheese pasta. Days don't get much better than this.

Working for The Man

Yesterday was tour day within Sian Ka'an. We were picked up by our guide at 7:30 am, which is notable because it takes about an hour to drive down here from Tulum. But these guys are locals. In fact, they live right around here. Alberto said they used to work through travel agents and tour agents, but realized that they were basically working for The Man, giving away a lot of the proceeds to outsiders and not necessarily promoting the environment.

Our tour took us to Muyil, a complex of restored Mayan ruins within the biosphere, and from there on to a freshwater lake, on a float down a canal, and then later floated through a cenote, one of the many freshwater caves cut in the limestone that makes up the Yucatan peninsula.

Alberto was a wealth of cultural information. For example, when I asked him how they made the mortar that holds the stone ruins together, he gave me a detailed description of the process, from how they cut and stack the poisonwood frame to how and when they burn the rock, to how much lime they add. Quite comprehensive.

Lunch consisted of delicious tamales made by a local Mayan woman, part of the community plan to keep the business in the community. And the cook who made the fruit salad and other side dishes is an artist they hired away from the tourist hotels. He carved a watermelon into a gorgeous centerpiece.

Can'Tcun

We flew in to Cancun on our way to Sian Ka'an biosphere preserve, where we're based this week. Just hanging out at the airport waiting for the rest of the family, I was struck by the nature of the place.

I've written about Americanized Mexico from my last trip to Cozumel. Big difference between Cozumel and Cancun is that Cozumel grew fairly organically from a small tourist town that served primarily scuba divers, where Cancun was created out of pretty much nothing in the 1970s, specifically to attract American tourists.

As a result, the ”city” of Cancun consists of resorts. Hotels, condos, bars, restaurants, sure. But there is no town in evidence. As we ate our Haagen Dazs ice cream in the wildly over air-conditioned airport terminal while the techno-disco music blared, I was reminded of a terrific song we like by Jim Hoehn called “Can'Tcun,” about a couple trying to plan a vacation where she wants a luxury hotel, and he wants a simple tropical vacation. Watching the tour groups with their enormous luggage, I had to recall the lines:

They measure their fun by the pesos they spend
Montezuma extracts his financial revenge
Gringo history I refuse to repeat.

And then standing outside the car rental agency, I was struck by the environmental impact of the tourism business here. I saw fleets of tour buses idling in parking lots with their air conditioners running to cool the buses while they waited for their passengers to arrive.

I realize our visit isn't exactly zero impact, but all seven of us are driving in one van, and at times we won't leave the place we're staying. Xamach Dos, where we're staying is quite environmentally friendly, using solar panels to generate electricity, only the natural breeze as air conditioning, and minimizing water use. The manager even told us not to bring plastic water bottles (we were bringing reusable metal ones, anyway), as she doesn't want them around.

Xamach Dos is located inside the Sian Ka'an biosphere preserve, 32 km down a bumpy road from the entry of the park, down the road toward Punta Allen. It's a lovely spot. We have two cabañas for the week (there are a couple more, but one seems to be under construction, and Margo, the manager, is living in the one the call the tree house right now. Accommodations are somewhat spartan, but hey, we're living on the beach in a biosphere preserve. Can't complain at all!

South of the Border

I'm about to upload all the posts I wrote while on vacation (again!) in Mexico. I'll try to keep things in reasonable order, and will tag everything with "Yucatan" so you can find them easily.

Sadly, I wasn't able to locate my camera before departing, so I have little in the way of pictures from this trip. We did have relatives taking some pictures, and bought some taken by professionals at one or two locations, so that will have to do.

Mostly, you'll have to settle for me painting verbal pictures for you. Heh.

Close to Home

I have, thankfully, not had to blog about cancer much lately. But it's never far from me.

Recently, a friend and coworker lost his mother to cancer. He posted the eulogy he delivered for her on his blog. Not that you need to be reminded, but I guess sometimes it helps to remember that these are not just statistics. Real, wonderful people are losing their lives to cancer, and every one of them has touched the lives of countless others.

Cancer affects us all, in one way or another. Stay strong, help out, and stay healthy.

Snow Bunny, Revisited

I meant to post this when I saw it a couple of weeks ago, but I just remembered today.

Tom Stienstra, who writes the Outdoors column for the San Francisco Chronicle, recently reported on a study of outdoor sports injuries. I was quite surprised, not so much by the fact that snowboarding appeared on the list, but more by the fact that it was far and away the leading cause of trips to the emergency room:

Twenty-six percent of all outdoor injuries reported by hospitals were snowboarders. This is stunning since snowboarding is not available across vast swaths of America, yet the sport creates 1 of 4 injuries in the outdoors.

Really: 26%. Next highest on the list was sledding, at 11%. The snowboarding number is just stunning. Hiking comes next at 6%, followed by mountain biking and personal watercraft at 4% each. My decision to stick to skiing seems better all the time.

The other thing that caught my attention in the column was Stienstra's recounting of his first snowboarding lesson, which sounds much like mine:

I took my first snowboard lesson two year ago with a group of a dozen 7 to 10 year olds and fell 53 times. Over and over, it felt like I was in pro wrestling and King Kong had just hoisted me over his head and slammed me to the canvas on my back. At least I didn't land on my head. An emergency room doctor told me that snowboarders show up with more broken collar bones than anything else, along with concussions, broken wrists and, in catastrophic cases, spinal injuries.

Ouch. Get outside, but play safe.

Smart Appliances

The era of smart appliances is upon us. And for the most part, this should be a good thing. The ability to adjust your thermostat remotely, or enable your air conditioner to adjust to power availability and pricing is just good sense. And even the ability of vendors to remotely diagnose problems instead of sending repair people makes great sense.

On the other hand, it behooves one to be smart about making smart appliances. This notion apparently didn't occur to the makers of the Jura Impressa F90 coffee maker. This is, in fact, the big techie nightmare: that some relatively innocuous, non-critical system opens a huge hole in the security that can lead to wider problems.

The fact that someone can reprogram your coffee maker to pour too much water in the cup is annoying, but can be fixed. The fact that your coffee maker can compromise your computer and therefore potentially your entire home network is downright frightening. Attacking the larger network via consumer commodity products is insidious and potentially devastating. Recent stories about vulnerabilities in wireless routers (you have changed your admin password, haven't you?) and digital picture frames highlight the social engineering aspect of this problem: taking advantage of naive customers to gain access to their systems, from where further mischief can be launched.

Caveat emptor.

A Two-fer!

There's an old saying about baseball, that if you go out to the ballpark every day, you'll see something you've never seen before. Well, tonight I saw not one, but two things I'd never seen before.

The first was a very cool play where Omar Vizquel stole home with two outs and the bases loaded. I've seen a steal of home before (not often), but always as part of a double steal. This was just a case of an alert base runner catching the pitcher asleep at the wheel. Good video in this clip. Better one here.

And the second new thing was that with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, just as A's closer Huston Street was winding up for a pitch to Fred Lewis, the infield sprinklers came on. It took a couple of minutes for the grounds crew to get them turned off again, at which point Street made quick work of Lewis. It was a weird little moment.

Really not a very good game, overall, but definitely worth going to for those unique events.

Cancer News

I just saw this post over at Pharyngula. It's a wonderful article about how scientific medical research is making a huge difference in survival rates for children with cancer.

As I've said many times, cancer is a horrible thing, and we need to work hard to make sure fewer people get it and make sure those who do can get better. And the answer to that is research.

Support it.

And for my Next Trick...

Excellent! Where is our next big dive trip? Komodo. Home of komodo dragons.

I trust that our dive boat will be a little more attentive. It sure is pretty, anyway.

In Memoriam

[Updated with link to Commonwealth Club panel discussion.]

I interrupt my postings about my Galapagos vacation with a sad note.

One of the first e-mails I opened when I got back in Internet range was an announcement that a friend had passed away shortly after I left. Rory Root was not a close friend of mine, really more a friend of some of my close friends, but I liked him a lot, and had developed great respect as well as fondness for him.

Highly unconventional (like many of my friends!), Rory was a college dropout who owned and ran a comic-book store called Comic Relief in Berkeley. But to dismiss him as some kind of marginal social character would be grossly unfair. Rory had a passion for comic books and their newer relatives, graphic novels. And he made that passion work for him, building a strong, successful business and a great network of friends. We were all surprised (and proud!) when Rory was invited to speak on a panel at the Commonwealth Club last year (MP3 of that here).

In addition to the very nice postings on the Comic Relief website, there was a very good obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle this past weekend, and a lengthy posting on the Comics Reporter site as well.

The outpouring of stories and memories speaks volumes about the number of lives touched by this kind, passionate, gentle soul. Rory will be sorely missed by many.

I will resume my Galapagos postings, back-dated into May, shortly.

The Middle of the World

Today we're off to the middle of the world. That is, not the center of the Earth (not the novel, not the movie, or the upcoming remake). Quito, the capital of Ecuador, sits just south of the equator, also known as "Mitad del Mundo." It's about a half-hour cab ride from Quito, and since some of our group wants to do some other sightseeing first, we get kind of a late start.

We've been advised ahead of time that there are two destinations that purport to be the equator. One is a monument erected by some French engineers around 1980, and it contains an ethnographic museum. There is a pathway leading up to it decorated with mounted busts of individuals I presume were the founding fathers of Ecuador (yet another instance where a little knowledge of Spanish would likely have enhanced the experience). And of course, the obligatory souvenir and t-shirt shops. The whole thing is known as Ciudad Mitad del Mundo.

And then there is what is locally known as the real equator, about 200 meters north of the official monument. Here, some of the indigenous people have put up their own museum called Intiñan Solar Museum, where they not only have some educational material about their culture, but also some demonstrations that purport to prove that they straddle the real equator.

I will leave it to others to debunk the demonstrations of things such as Coriolis force swirling water down the drain in opposite directions on either side of the line or balancing a raw egg on a nail. I find it somewhat more convincing that they say GPS devices indicate that it's really the equator. In any case, it was interesting. I've always wanted to know how they make shrunken heads or use blowguns, for example. The sundials and solar calendars were cool, too.

This was not our first flirtation with the equator, of course. Several days earlier, back in the Galapagos, we did a couple of dives at a location known as Cape Marshall on Isla Isabela, which is right about at the equator. Sitting at breakfast on the boat that morning, one of the other divers on the boat had his GPS-enabled cell phone out, and we watched as the boat swung on its anchor that the GPS indicated we were swinging across the equator.

The last adventure of our trip involved getting back to Quito to pick up our luggage and catch our flight home. Leaving Intiñan, we flagged down two cabs, but neither driver seemed very clear on how to get back to our hotel. And just as we got in the cabs, it started to rain. So we're driving back to Quito in the rain, trying to explain to the driver in halting Spanish where our hotel was. It seemed like our map should be helpful, but it turned out our cabbie didn't have his reading glasses. And apparently, the cab didn't have a defogger, either (other than the handy red rag he used periodically to wipe the windshield).

Needless to say, we were a bit concerned about making it back in time to catch our van to the airport. As luck would have it, the other driver stumbled onto a street we recognized, and we were only about 15 minutes late (and the van driver had waited for us!).

Civilization Far from Everything

It's been a little jangling these last two days, as we ease off the diving and back into time on land, so see parts of the Galapagos Islands where people actually live. Yesterday we spent some time in Puerto Ayora, by far the most populous place in these islands. Walking around there, one could easily be in any number of towns in the tropics that cater to tourists: restaurants, bars, art galleries, and t-shirt shops. And oh, yeah: people making a living.

We had a lovely time at the waterfront in Puerto Ayora yesterday, watching pelicans trying to steal fish from the fishermen, and fishermen cleaning their catch and tossing unwanted bits to aggressive sea lions and pelicans. We bought a few souvenirs here and there, and looked into a lot of the shops.

But after over a week of seeing mostly desolate islands and a few other dive boats, it's odd to see groups of tourists and the trappings that follow them everywhere. People dressed up for a night out. Internet cafes. Plastic shopping bags. Drinking straws. Fountains. Boardwalks. Buildings!

All these things that never catch my eye as I walk through my home town or the place where I work seem oddly foreign in this place. And I suppose the fact that the scavenging birds are pelicans, not pigeons, is quite stark. Or the fact that the sea lions just fit in, flopping for a rest on the dock, on the sidewalk, wherever. It's not like they've taken over a part of the town like San Francisco's Pier 39; they're just part of the town here.

The main focus of our stop in Puerto Ayora was a visit to the Charles Darwin Research Station. The bits we could see were mostly the visitor center, but we did get to walk through some of the areas where they incubate Galapagos tortoises. These are perhaps the iconic creatures of the islands, but this is the only chance for us to see them. They tend to live quite high on the larger islands, and are not easily accessible in our limited time on land. So unlike the other creatures we've gotten to observe in their natural habitats, we see these only in pens.

The tortoise breeding program is terrific. They rescue eggs from the various islands when they are laid, because they are vulnerable to introduced predators such as rats and pigs. They take the eggs to the research station and raise them for about 5-6 years, then release them back on their native islands. This is key, because all the tortoises on all the islands (and often on different volcanoes on the same island) represent different, unique subspecies. They're adapted very well to their particular environments, so it is important to return them to the habitat that suits them.

Although it was nice to see lots of tortoises (and the young ones are quite cute!), seeing them in this way just wasn't all that satisfying. Maybe it's because I'm jaded by having grown up near a zoo that had a captive tortoise (that we could touch and climb on – yikes!). Or maybe it's just the realization that this is the only practical way to conserve these magnificent creatures. If they didn't raise them in protected pens, more or even all of the subspecies would be extinct or closer to being so.

Animals at Play

One last post about our diving in the Galapagos. Over the last couple of dive days, as we moved back to the southern islands, we encountered wonderful wildlife. In particular, on some of our last dives at a spot called Cousins Rock, I had sea lions playing all around me.

First, as we swam along one side of the rock, one young sea lion would swoop down and dance around me. She would pause right in front of me, make eye contact, and then swim over, around, and in front of me. Then she'd head back up to the surface for air, and come back and do some more. Must have happened about 8 times, and it was great fun to watch!

Then, as we came around to the other side, we stopped by a big boulder, and a whole group of six or seven sea lions of various sizes came by. There were large adults and several juveniles. A couple of them just came down to the bottom and scratched their backs and heads on the rocks, wiggling like very happy critters. Meanwhile others chased each other, danced in the water, and generally celebrated being sea lions. It was quite an extraordinary show, right there, just feet or less from us.

But even more remarkable was the scene at Cape Marshall, where we were nestled in some boulders as the current ran by, and a group of sharks swam through repeatedly. I didn't have the best angle, but my wife had a front-row seat, wedged behind a rock as the sharks swooped right in on the current. She said she counted at least nine white-tip reef sharks, and they were clearly doing something I'd never seen sharks do before. The would swim in from the side, then sort of slide sideways on the current toward the rocks, hang for a moment in the current, then swim off to do it again. Truly, these sharks were playing.

I've never seen anything like it, and I've swum with a lot of sharks in a lot of places. Everywhere else, they were either feeding, hunting, or resting. Sometimes they just swim by. But I've never seen them do anything frivolous before. It was wonderful. I had no idea that sharks had a capacity for play, but that was clearly what they were up to.

Chalk it up to one more incredible experience in the Galapagos. It's hard to go home after all that, but it makes me look forward to further diving this year. We haven't been doing nearly enough of it.

Climatic Anomalies or Climate Change?

We tried one more dive this morning at Darwin's Arch, hoping for better conditions, but it was not to be. Same kind of murky water, lots of green slime covering the sand and reef, and little or no current. So instead of two dives at Darwin, we'll head down to Wolf Island and do an extra dive there instead.

One of the things that makes the Galapagos so incredible and full of life is that the archipelago sits at the convergence of three major ocean currents. The warm Panama current comes down from the north; the cold Humboldt current comes up from the south, and nutrient-rich deep water wells up along the equator from the west.

As a result, the underwater environment is highly changeable. As we were diving, we would often feel rapid changes in temperature as the current shifted direction, getting several degrees warmer or cooler all of a sudden, and often distorting the vision as the different currents mixed. It's a phenomenon we know well from all our diving in California, but very regular and very pronounced throughout the Galapagos.

It's a little unnerving to hear the dive guide saying that he's never seen dive conditions like this at Darwin Island. Apparently Darwin is consistently quite warm and clear, with easily 100 feet of visibility all the time, and currents running consistently and predictably. Yes, it's the change of seasons here, with the hot, wet season giving way to drier weather. But apparently that usually doesn't impact the diving at Darwin.

So one is left with the question, is this just an anomaly, or does is foretell of real, long-term changes driven by global climate change? It's the same question all of us are going to be asking for some time. Does this year's dry winter in California represent a normal, expected drought cycle, or does it portend a shift of climate? The answers to those questions are really important and probably not knowable with certainty for some time.

In any case, it is a thrill and a privilege to get to see this place, even if it's not at its best. If you want predictable conditions and animal sightings, you go to the aquarium. When you venture out into the real ocean, you are at the mercy of nature and the whims of the animals. And that's what makes it worth coming out here.

The Doldrums

After yesterday's excitement, today we had a pretty nondescript day of diving. We're still diving at Darwin's Arch, but the currents have been either in unusual directions or entirely absent. As a result, we've seen almost no interesting animals at all: a few hammerheads, a couple of Galapagos sharks, some turtles. But nothing like the last few days.

Patricio, the dive leader, says he's never seen it like this here. Darwin's water is "always" clear, with predictable currents, he says. We're hoping for better tomorrow, before we head back down to Wolf Island in the afternoon.

It's amazing how the currents and conditions affect the life around the islands. The smaller bits of life on the reef go on. Poking around, we still see all the usual little fish going about their business, crabs, lobsters, morays, and so on. And there are still schools of fish in the water, especially creole fish. But the big critters are just not in evidence at all.

One of the striking things about diving here has been the abundance in the ocean. Big schools of fish, big schools of sharks, big creatures like the whale shark taking advantage of the rich plankton brought in by the currents. Indeed, one of the reasons we're here is to document that abundance. A group I work with, the Center for Oceanic Awareness, Research, and Education (COARE) is here shooting video to help educate people about what a healthy ocean should look like. We can then contrast it with overfished, overused areas elsewhere.

But with the currents calm, much of that life seems to have gone elsewhere. We speculate about the effects of global warming on currents. Maybe it's just the change of seasons. Only time will tell.

Very, Very Special Big

Falling asleep tonight, I was thinking about an incident years ago when our daughter was still learning how to talk. We had taken her to Children's Fairyland in Oakland, in part to celebrate the impending reopening of Fenton's Creamery, a local institution that had been closed for some time by a fire.

As part of the festivities, Fenton's had provided ice cream (naturally) and their mascot, Myrtle the cow. I had never seen this mascot costume, just pictures of Myrtle on the menu and such. Neither had our daughter. Late in the day, she saw Myrtle go by and pointed, indicating that she wanted to follow. We hadn't seen Myrtle pass, so wanted to know what she was so excited about. She couldn't come up with a word for the creature she had seen (truly, the upright-walking Myrtle doesn't look much like a cow), so all she could muster was “Very, very special...big...!” Finally, we followed her, and figured out that it was Myrtle she was trying to evoke. We explained that Myrtle was a cow, and all was right with the world.

I'm having some of the same issues with getting my head around the whale shark we saw today. It's almost impossible to express the grandeur of such a huge, living creature. It is tempting to compare it with another experience with animals of a similar magnitude, when we swam with humpback whales three years ago in Tonga. Unfortunately, the experiences are almost entirely different!

Swimming with a whale, even briefly, engenders a connection. You make eye contact, and you catch a flicker of the intelligence and interest there. The whale may not choose to interact with you and swim away, but you get the clear feeling that it made a choice. And its movements are supple, dexterous, and elegant, often surprisingly quick. With the whale shark, there is no sense of contact, virtually no indication of anything going on inside. The animal moves slowly, steadily, seemingly inexorably, almost like a machine. You don't feel any sense of acknowledgment, much less engagement. But for the fact that it moves at all, you could easily classify the whale shark as non-living. It could almost be a machine, like a Disney animatronic creation.

Yet it truly qualifies as the most incredible encounter I've ever had in the water, in part because with the whales, we spotted them, engaged, and then entered the water. With the whale shark, it was a more chance encounter where we were in the water, it swam by, and we joined it for a while.

All that said, the whale shark did slow or pause several times. Was it giving us a chance to catch up or checking us out? It's impossible to know. It came, it swam with us, and it departed, leaving each of us to impute our own interpretations on its Sphinx-like mien.

My final thought, drifting off to sleep, was of Arthur C. Clarke's novel, Rendezvous With Rama, in which an ancient alien object passes close to the Earth on one of its long orbits around the sun. In the brief time it is within reach, men land on it, explore it, and draw some conclusions before it heads off into deep space again. So it seemed with the whale shark. We intersected minutely with its passage, but seemingly affected it not at all, yet it left a lasting impression on all of us.

It was very, very special. And big. And I'm sure I'll be projecting all sorts of things onto the creature and the encounter for a very long time.

Marine Megafauna

The whale shark is sort of the Holy Grail of scuba diving. They're relatively rare, living only in certain, mostly tropical, waters. They tend to be solitary, and they just...swim. So it's quite rare to run into one. In the group we used to travel with and dive with, it was kind of a running gag: if someone would elect to skip a dive, those who went would return saying they had seen multiple whale sharks or something.

Today we saw one. The real thing. It's hard to put into words just how magnificent these creatures are. The one we saw was female, about 30-35 feet long, and mostly gray with the typical spots on it. And it was beautiful, graceful, and seemingly either unaware of or at least unconcerned by our presence.

It was the third dive of the day at Darwin's Arch, near Darwin Island in the northern Galapagos islands, right after lunch. We were all hanging at the edge of the reef, watching and waiting at around 50 feet. We'd seen a few sea turtles and maybe a shark, but no big show. Then suddenly behind me, I hear noise: human noise. Hooting and hollering and general excitement. Someone tugged on my fin to get my attention, and I see pointing and kicking, as everyone headed off to see this creature.

And there it came, out of the murk, swimming a bit above us. We kicked up to get a better view, then all started to kick alongside, trying to keep up. We kept bumping each other and the rocks in our excitement and effort. The whale shark was swimming into the current, so we had to kick hard and sometimes pull ourselves along the rocks. At some point I realized that I was between the rocks and a slowly moving tail that was considerably larger than I was. One good flick, and I would be a Chard pancake.

It was hardest for the divers with cameras, as they are generally less hydrodynamic, but it was quite an effort for all of us. Besides the adrenaline rush of seeing a creature of such magnitude, there is also the realization that this is unique; you may never have another chance like this, and time just ceases to mean anything. At least two of the guys shooting video got great shots, and several of us managed to keep up with the creature for about 10-15 minutes, until it dove to a depth we could not follow.

After kicking so hard for so long, I was exhausted, my head throbbing. We moved up to shallower water on the reef to catch our breath and try to enjoy the rest of the dive. And indeed, we were visited by a couple of hammerhead sharks and at least one very inquisitive sea turtle. But this will always be the whale shark dive.

The Hand of Man

I suppose I should point out that in this idyllic place, there are still signs of human intervention. Today, motoring back from a dive to the main boat, we noticed a buoy in the water with an antenna on it. Moving closer, we found it was tethered to a fish attracting device (FAD) under the water. This itself is not a danger to sea life, but it indicates that fishermen from the mainland are trying to attract and exploit the abundant sea life, fishing in this marine preserve.

Needless to say, we cut loose the buoy and disabled its antenna. It will be turned over to the park authorities. Interestingly, we were chasing and admiring a big pod of dolphins when we spotted the antenna. It seems possible that they were intentionally leading us to this device, but I try not to read too much into that. It could certainly be a coincidence. Or maybe the dolphins were attracted to the fish at the FAD.

But there are certainly signs that people are exploiting and damaging the resources here. The dive guides tell of sites where they used to see hundreds or thousands of sea horses, and now they have to poke carefully to locate any at all. In the book Plundering Paradise: The Hand of Man in the Galapagos Islands, we read about commercial fishing of sea cucumbers. Formerly abundant, now there are areas completely void of them. It's like strip mining, but for living creatures. The ironic part about the sea horses, in particular, is that they are easily bred in tanks; one doesn't need to harvest them from the sea at all, much less decimate the population.

I'm not suggesting that people should be here (That would be the height of hypocrisy, wouldn't it?). But it is unconscionable to come to a unique and pristine area like this and devastate even a part of it. One can at least make the case that early visitors who killed and ate tortoises, for example, had no idea what they were doing in the larger sense. But in modern times, to come to a place and systematically strip an entire population is criminally short-sighted.

Animal Encounters

Just a few notes on the diving here in the Galapagos. We started with our initial dives in the southern islands, close to our arrival point, then overnight motored north to Wolf Island, whence we will go further on to Darwin Island. The diving has been quite amazing already. In addition to frisky, inquisitive sea lions under the water, we have also seen other big animals: hammerhead sharks (a first for us), Galapagos sharks, yellowfin tuna, sea turtles, and perhaps most remarkably, dolphins.

My only previous dolphin sighting in the water came some years back in Hawaii, where we spotted some a great distance away (one benefit to the amazing water clarity there). Today, however, we had spotted some from the skiff before dropping in the water, and for the first fifteen minutes we heard lots of clicks and squeaks from the dolphins still in the area. That alone was very cool, but we also saw a fair-sized pod of dolphins go by, not very far away.

After that, the noise settled down to just a single, repeating sequence of squeaks, which sounded like a dolphin trying to express some message. We then saw a rather large dolphin swim by us very close, maybe ten feet away, after which the squeaks changed slightly, but kept repeating. Eventually, the squeaks stopped and we completed the dive. As we were ascending nearly an hour later, we again heard clicks and squeaks and saw dolphins quite close by as we broke the surface and rode back to the dive boat. It was quite a remarkable encounter of a sort I've never had before. I've seen lots of dolphins from boats, but none nearly that close in the water.

Hammerhead sharks seem mildly interested in us, at least when they're traveling in small numbers. Schools of sharks just pass by; they have other things on their minds. But mostly, the sharks seem to come near, see that we're not food, and head off somewhere else. The Galapagos sharks seem indifferent to us. They go about their business pretty much as if we're not around.

Sea turtles, on the other hand, will often come to check us out. My wife and I have both had turtles come right up and look into our faces, and Josh, one of the trip leaders, seems to attract them with his yellow fins. He's had turtles nipping at his fins more than once!

The other animal we're seeing a lot of is moray eels. However, unlike most places where you just see their heads poking out of the reef, here they just seem to lay about, often with just their heads tucked under a rock, and the rest of the eel draped out in plain sight.

Land Excursions in the Galapagos

One of the great parts of this vacation is that we get to both dive in the Galapagos and also venture onto some of the islands to explore on foot. Today we got to do that twice. First thing in the morning we dove next to a small island called Isla Mosquera, near Baltra and North Seymour islands. Afterward, we got to go onshore, where we got face-to-face with some of the Galapagos unique creatures. Mosquera, by the way, is quite tiny; we could easily walk around it all in less than an hour, even stopping to take pictures. It's mostly just sand, although there are rocky bits, especially along one side. It's a fine haul-out for sea lions as well as a nesting spot for some birds.

The first animals to greet us, before we even landed, were sea lions. In fact, the skiff drivers had to navigate very slowly and carefully to avoid hitting any. Although they are related to the California sea lions we see near home, they are different in some ways. For one thing, they seem a bit smaller, although that may just be because we saw mostly juveniles. At home we see a lot of bulls and adolescent males, but here we had lots of very curious youngsters. Also, they seemed inquisitive, but not territorial. We encountered only one bull on the island, and he objected (slightly) when we got a little too near for his taste. But all the others, including the females who seemed to be babysitting the youngsters, seemed largely indifferent to our presence. I realize this isn't a great picture, but you get an idea of how many pups there were (you can see parts of 8 or 9 in this shot), and how close I got with my puny point-and-shoot Nikon Coolpix L5.

I should note that nearly all of the animals we have encountered are largely unconcerned with the presence of people. Some call them “tame,” but that's not the right word. They are unafraid of people because they have no reason to fear. They are protected from hunting or physical contact, so they have no reason to consider people a threat.

So we had all these young sea lions approaching curiously and playing within mere feet of us. Similarly, we were able to approach the marine iguanas on the island. The only ones that seemed to really notice us at all were a few that I startled when I stepped on a nearby rock. Otherwise, they just continued to sun themselves, even when I crept up close to take pictures.

It was really quite remarkable to be able to walk right up to and among these wild animals and photograph them in very natural aspects. The whole relationship with nature is very different here. I have experienced similar things in marine preserves, such as Point Lobos in California. The fish there are very approachable, largely because they feel safe. It's a wonderful experience to be able to relate to animals on that kind of level, rather than one of fear and mistrust.

The second land stop of the day was on North Seymour Island, where we saw frigate birds (both magnificent frigates and great frigates) nesting as well as blue-footed boobies, lava lizards, and the wonderful land iguanas. Again, none of them really seemed to pay us any mind at all.

Most of the frigate birds were nesting in trees that seemed to be almost dead sticks. Our naturalist guide explained that these were palo santo (“holy stick”) trees that bloom in the rainy season, but in the dry drop all their leaves and appear almost dead. On the mainland, they burn palo santo as an incense. We found a little piece, and you could easily understand that use: It's quite pleasantly aromatic, reminding me somewhat of tea tree oil. The frigate bird pictured here is a juvenile (with the white head), but it shows the palo santo pretty well.

Quick photo note: these are not my best pictures, by far, but they illustrate my points and I'm willing to put them out on the blog. Better pictures are available via other means.

Islas Encantadas

I'm about to start uploading the posts I wrote while we were in the Galapagos Islands. I will endeavor to tag them all properly with "Galapagos," but no guarantees. If I succeed, you should be able to find them all by clicking here, or on the Galapagos tag over in the margin.

I may not have mentioned this previously, but this Galapagos trip is really sort of the dream trip of a lifetime. Not only do I have the degree in Rhetoric mentioned elsewhere on this page, but I double-majored in Environmental Science. And it seems like for any environmental scientist, a trip to Galapagos is rather like a pilgrimage to Mecca, almost a duty, certainly a great desire.

The shadow of Charles Darwin certainly lies heavily over the islands (and not just the one named for him, shown in the attached image). But the islands truly are a wonderful laboratory of science: biology, geology, oceanography. Just fascinating.

I want to go back!

Notes on Quito

Turns out I have a few minutes tonight, so I'll write up soome things we did today.

We got up this morning and had breakfast at the hotel. I guess officially this would be a bed-and-breakfast, but it seems more like a small hotel. The staff are very friendly and helpful. After we ate, we got directions on some fun things to do. Since we couldn't do them all, we chose to walk around the center of Quito.

It was interesting walking through the neighborhood we'd seen the night before. On Sunday, most everything was closed down, and there was none of the club/bar/disco traffic, of course. We walked over to the park where they have a weekly art market, with artists displaying and selling their work.

The items that caught my eye the most were some stylized pictures of the local landscape (it looked vaguely like Quito to me) with a red train going through the sky above, with apples, fish, baskets of flowers, eggs, an balloons falling down into the city. We saw that several artists had portrayed the same general theme, so we figure it must be some local story. Unfortunately, our Spanish wasn't good enough to get the scoop.

My other favorite was a series of variations on da Vinci's "The Last Supper," where Jesus is still the central character, but is surrounded by a collection of modern figures. One had various political figures, from Hitler to Castro to Hugo Chavez to Nelson Mandela to Ghandi. I'm not quite sure what that meant. Another had some of those, plus Albert Einstein and some others. Another had Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, Mick Jagger, and other figures from entertainment. I dunno, but I liked them.

We spent an hour or two at the cultural museum across from the park where the art market was. They had very interesting, very accessible displays with explanations in both Spanish and English.

Later, we went to lunch in the old part of the city. We ate at a nice little restaurant in what used to be the archbishop's residence on the Plaza Grande caled Hasta la Vuelta, Señor... The name comes from a local legend about a libidinous Franciscan monk who used to climb over the monastery wall by scaling a large crucifix until Jesus started asking him "Until when, Father Almeida?" It was a good story, fun to read while we waited for our food.

After a brief trip back to the hotel, we met up with the rest of the group we'll be diving with in Galapagos at a nice restaurant called Café Mosaico, which has an amazing, panoramic view of pretty much all of Quito. It's quite stunning, and the food was good. After dinner, we chatted with Alex, the owner. He's from New York City, but his mother is from Ecuador, and he's lived here most of his life.

We're looking forward to flying out to the Galapagos tomorrow morning, and really can't wait to get started diving.

Straddling the Equator

Just a quick post from Quito, Ecuador. We're here for a day before flying on to the Galapagos, so we got to do a little bit of sightseeing.

Turns out our little hotel has free wifi, so I get to sneak in a post or two!


On our way back, we'll be stopping at a place that lets us literally straddle the equator, both the pace where some French scientists marked it andthe place where the indiginous Ecuadorans marked it, 200 meters away. Meanwhile, we got to go to a weekly Sunday art market, which was great and to the cultural museum.

We flew in fairly late last night, so when we went out to find dinner, most of the restasurants were closed or closing. We found a 24-hour cafe that had good food and drink, so that was fun.

Probably the last post for a while, but we shall see!

What's Up?

Sorry for the dearth of posts. Been a busy month at work, plus I've started taking taiko drumming classes the last couple of weeks. Great exercise, and lots of fun.

My wife and I are off on our first extended scuba trip in several years tomorrow. The rest of the family gets to stay home and go to school and such. Awwwww. My plan is to write up blog entries updating you on our activities, and upload them when we get back.

Destination this time: the Galapagos Islands!

Talking to a Banana

On a much less serious note: While Googling about for references to "cognitive surplus" (which is a fairly hot topic among bloggers, as you might imagine), I stumbled across a posting about this fine-looking product.

This seems much cooler than one of those Bluetooth headsets!

Cognitive Surplus

Just found a link (on Pacific Views) to this rather fascinating talk last month by a fellow named Clay Shirky, discussing the notion of cognitive surplus, which really amounts to the amount of brain-time we waste doing passive stuff like watching TV. The amounts he cites are staggering.

It's about a 15-minute video clip, but you can also read a transcript if you prefer.

Or you can probably get a lot of it from this couple of sentences:

However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.

And I'm willing to raise that to a general principle. It's better to do something than to do nothing.

How much better? You need to check out the rest to find out.

Outdated and Outrageous

From The Left Coaster, I see that my home state of California is still requiring all of its employees to sign a loyalty oath, per this report from the LA Times:

The loyalty oath was added to the state Constitution by voters in 1952 to root out communists in public jobs. Now, 16 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main effect is to weed out religious believers, particularly Quakers and Jehovah's Witnesses.

As a Quaker from Pennsylvania and a lifelong pacifist, Gonaver objected to the California oath as an infringement of her rights of free speech and religious freedom.

Oy. I had long forgotten this bit of McCarthy-era paranoia in the state constitution. I suppose I must have had to sign it myself, back when I was teaching classes while in college, but I must not have taken it all that seriously. And of course, those were different times, at the tail end of the Cold War.

Looks like it's time to agitate for an amendment. Although there has apparently been a move in that direction before, to no effect.

The good news is that the more onerous provisions of the original oath have apparently been removed. Ultimately, I don't really have an issue with having people affirm that they will uphold and defend the constitution, but not allowing personal variations is just wrong, as long as they don't negate the meaning of the agreement.

After a version of the oath was added to the state Constitution, courts eventually struck down its harshest elements but let stand the requirement of defending the constitutions. In one court test, personal statements accompanying the oath were deemed constitutional as long as they did not nullify the meaning of the oath.

Now, the University of California advises new employees who balk at signing the pledge that they can submit an addendum, as long as it does not negate the oath.

But I still think it's time to clear this up. Such regulation of beliefs is inherently unfair. As one dissenter put it,

"The way it's laid out, a noncitizen member of Al Qaeda could work for the university, but not a citizen Quaker," she said.

I'm sure that's what they had in mind when they created this mess.

Snow Bunny, Post-Season

Life is funny. I had no thought whatsoever of skiing this year (or any year, really). But peer pressure/family pressure is a strong force, and desiring to spend time with my family, I ended up taking up skiing over the last 6-8 weeks of the ski season. The fact that we had good snow well into April helped, since I didn't even start until March!

Anyway, I found it remarkably fun, and thanks to the magic of friends with cameras, you can even see what I looked like, scooting along the rim of Alpine Bowl at Alpine Meadows. Pretty stylish, huh?

American Political Discourse

It is getting very hard to satirize American politics, but this is a pretty good attempt:

LINCOLN: Ahem, I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect slavery will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you love America this much (extending fingers), this much (extending hands slightly), or thiiiiiis much (extending hands broadly)?

LINCOLN: I think we covered this…

GIBSON: If I may interrupt…

LINCOLN: Please.

GIBSON: I noticed, Mr. Lincoln, that your American flag pin was upside down…

LINCOLN: Yes, the wind caught it. Now, as I was saying...

GIBSON: We get questions about this all the time over at Powerline and on Hannity’s talk show. Mr. Douglas has said this is a major vulnerability for you in the fall. So I’ll ask again – do you love America?

LINCOLN: (scowling with a forced smile). Yes.

GIBSON: If your love for America were ice cream, what flavor would it be?

*sigh*

Your Assignment for Earth Day

Yes, Earth Day is almost here. It falls on a Tuesday this year, so many folks are observing and acting on it this coming weekend.

One easy thing you can do is read the comics. Jim Toomey, who pens Sherman's Lagoon, is dedicating the current week to shark issues, and this Sunday's strip will be an opportunity for you and yours to get involved. You can see the details here, among other places.

Get the word out. Contact the National Marine Fisheries Service to encourage them to protect sharks. Contact your representatives in Congress to support the Shark Conservation Act of 2008.

Feel Your Arteries Hardening

Words fail me.



OK, one word: YUM.

Slightly Somewhat Positive Whale News (I Think)

Just caught this on Yahoo news. Apparently protesters were able to significantly disrupt Japanese "research" whaling this season:

Japan had aimed to kill 850 minke whales and 50 fin whales on its annual hunt, but the total catch for the year came to 551 minke whales with no fin whales due to a series of offshore protests.

Still a lot of whales killed, but that's about 350 whales that might have died that didn't.

Ed Felten on Electronic Voting

OK, one more for today.

Just saw this clip on yesterday's episode of Rocketboom. It's part of an interview with Ed Felten of Princeton University, discussing recent issues with electronic voting machines, including the ways vendors are keeping outside experts such as Felten from testing and validating their machines.

It's short, but interesting. The whole interview is on WhyTuesday's website. Felten mentions that a good site for e-voting info is at VerifiedVoting. But you knew that already, didn't you?

Also, I don't recall whether I've talked/written about Rocketboom before. It's an eclectic little video log ("vlog") from New York City that tends to give a humorous slant to small news stories, but also sometimes slips in a serious report or a weird little "art" video. And they do a great job of keeping one up-to-the-minute with the latest in Internet memes.

Check it out.

Sports Fans Behaving Oddly

As the rest of the family was out of town this week skiing, I got to sit and watch the entire NCAA men's basketball championship game on TV. It was a terrific game, very exciting, sent into overtime by a last-second 3-point shot, and all that. Everything you want in a championship game, and more.

And since one of my good friends who is even more sports-crazed than I am actually attended the University of Kansas (KU) for a time, I had to congratulate him on the victory. All the hoopla around the championship got me to thinking about the legendary chant that KU fans use, "Rock Chalk Jayhawk KU." I've always sort of wondered what it meant, but hadn't gotten around to looking it up.

But someone did it for me, and I stumbled across the explanation today. I am most proud that it was originated by the Science Club. Nerdz Rule!

And I had no idea that the term "jayhawk" was not, in fact, a bird, but an anti-slavery advocate! It's fascinating what you can learn by accident.

This also brings to mind the horror I felt last night at the ballpark when the crowd started doing "the Wave."

I'm not a fan of the Wave. When I go to a game, I go because I want to watch the game, not to watch the other fans. I will admit that when I was in college, the student section at football games used to do a fun kind of vertical version of the Wave, rippling from front to back, rather than around. It was a neat effect. And it's kind of intriguing to me that the origins of the Wave are even more obscure than those of the "Rock Chalk" cheer.

But the fact remains that we don't do the Wave at the Giants' ballpark. In part, that may be because the seats don't really go all the way around the stadium, so you can't really go all the way around with it. And in part, I like to think it's because we're all busy paying attention to the actual game.

Which brings me to last night.

Now, you have to understand that this year is different for the Giants. Before the season even started, they have basically put up a white flag of surrender. This is not a team that is going anywhere soon, at least as regards winning. They score runs at an anemic rate, and although they pitch well enough to keep most games in reach, they just aren't considered good enough to contend for much of anything.

So last night was the smallest crowd in the 8-year history of the ballpark (only about 30,000 fans in a stadium that holds about 42,000). And in the middle of a scoreless game, someone started doing the Wave. It went around twice, then mercifully faded out. It's quite sad and disturbing that this is what we're reduced to.

On the positive side, the Giants played well enough for the second night in a row to win in their last at-bat, in very exciting fashion. No Wave needed for entertainment.

Anyway, I think cheers are much better than Waves.

Random Sock Thoughts

One of the things that became painfully clear (and I mean that literally) as I went skiing a few times over the last month is that the quality of one's ski socks is very important.

Back in the day when I used to ski as a kid, the norm was to wear thick, woolly socks (I had some lovely ones knitted by my mother). Nowadays this has been changed on two fronts: 1) socks are much thinner, allowing for a snug, comfortable boot fit, and 2) synthetic materials that wick moisture away from the body aid in promoting warmth and comfort.

Fair enough. But not all modern ski socks are created equal. Even the thin socks generally provide some ticker padding in the front, where the shin will press on the boot (assuming proper posture). But the size and shape and thickness of that padding makes a lot of difference. For example, I found that my EuroSock Euro Ski socks didn't adequately protect me from pressure (and pain) from the tongue of my rental ski boots. But in the same boots, my SmartWool socks felt just fine. (It didn't help that the second day I wore the Euro Ski socks, I put a hole in them just trying to pull them up.)

So I like the SmartWool socks, but one thing about them worries me: Are they the product of that most dangerous of creatures???

Speaking of "Seasonal Humor"...

I got a good chuckle out of this:

Such structures will figure prominently in the world’s first Rainbow Farm, currently in development and slated for a 2012 grand opening. In other news, the breakthrough promises to balance the world’s economy via an endless supply of leprechaun gold.

Heh.

Catching Up

I meant to post about this a while ago, but it slipped my mind.

My niece pointed me at this article about e-voting work being done by a professor at a place near and dear to both of our hearts, UC Berkeley.

My favorite quote is this one:

Soon, researchers and hackers discovered that, among other vulnerabilities, voting machines could be opened with ordinary keys from hotel mini-bars, and their vote counts could then be changed undetectably by simply swapping out their memory cards. In other words, any poll worker, driver, night watchman or other individual with unsupervised access to the machines could throw the results of a close election.

But Wagner maintains that there could be a positive outcome, eventually:

“I’m optimistic now,” says Wagner. “Four years ago, secure voting looked hopeless, but more and more states are getting it. Meanwhile, I’m also impressed with all the election officials I’ve worked with; they’re very dedicated and conscientious. There’s no money or fame in being a county elections officer. You do it because you care.”

It matters.

Not Very Friendly

Gee, you think?

Toiling in Obscurity

As a professional software developer, it is sometimes hard to explain to people just what it is that I do. Although at times I have been able to point to a screen or hand people a disk containing something I've created, I have to admit that the product of my work is somewhat nebulous and ephemeral. At least when I was a tech writer I could point to a set of manuals and say, "I wrote that."

The fact that I was writing manuals to instruct programmers in how to use software tools that enabled them to write other software was a bit murky to many.

Later I was working on software that "explored" networks, cataloging resources (documents, mostly) it found so that one could search for them. Still, pretty obscure, particularly to those who don't actively use computers or who just use them as glorified typewriters.

And now I work in the realm of enterprise middleware, meaning we write software that helps other software share information. Worse yet, I work on the software tools that enables other programmers to configure and program said middleware. So once again, I'm on the obscure edge of a pretty obscure place.

So this morning I found this article from Red Hat:

That got me thinking and sent me to Google to look for a short definition of middleware. I found a lot of them, but they mostly were either too vague or too dependent on the reader already having some knowledge about middleware.

And ultimately, he comes up with this answer:

Middleware is plumbing.

It's a fairly amusing metaphor, which the writer thankfully only extends to input sources (water pipes and faucets), rather than the output system.

In any case, the next time my mother tries to figure out what it is I do, I think I'll tell her I'm a plumber.

No, Really: DO NOT REPLY

I found this post in the Washington Post's Security Fix blog. I'm not sure whether it's more humorous or more disturbing, but it does point out some of the major issues in social engineering involved with computers and e-mail.

The issue is that a lot of companies send out mail from bogus e-mail addresses because they don't want people to respond to the e-mails. They often use something@donotreply.com as the "return address," hoping that a) people will see that and realize they shouldn't reply, and b) if people do reply, the message will simply vanish somewhere or bounce.

Except...there is a donotreply.com, and the guy who owns it gets all those messages:

As owner of www.donotreply.com, the Seattle-based programmer receives millions of wayward e-mails each week, including a great many missives destined for executives at Fortune 500 companies or bank customers, even sensitive messages sent by government personnel and contractors.

The social engineering part of the matter is this: good security practice tells one not to click on links in e-mail messages. But that's exactly what these lazy companies are trying to get people to do. So not only are they being weaselly and trying to send one-way messages and make it hard for people to respond, but they're also encouraging what is essentially dangerous computer behavior, because if you want to reply you have to click a link in a message.

What's with these companies, anyway? Is it so hard for them to get that if they send me an e-mail message, if I want to respond I will click "Reply"?

This is vaguely reminiscent of a company I told off yesterday. They have been calling for several weeks now, trying to get me to sign up for a service I don't want. I have tried telling them I don't want their service, I don't want to talk to them. I have tried rudely hanging up on them. Finally, yesterday as they started their spiel, I said "Stop." Had to say it about five times before she actually stopped. "Don't call anymore." She made some reply that indicated she didn't understand. I explained that I didn't want their service, and I didn't want them to call me ever again.

We'll see how well that works out.

99 Sea Otters

One way to spend Easter morning, apparently, is to go on a nature cruise. I didn't know this before, but my family had scheduled it, so I went along. It turned out to be quite lovely.

The destination this morning was Elkhorn Slough, off Monterey Bay. The cruise is run by Elkhorn Slough Safari, which is a little local operation. Captain Yohn Gideon has been running these tours for about a dozen years.

One feature I quite liked is that about a half-dozen of the passengers were given clicker-counters to count sightings of specific critters. So someone was responsible for counting sea otters, another sea lions, another (me!) harbor seals, and others blue herons, snowy egrets, and great egrets. The captain turns over the counts from each to researchers, so I felt like we were doing something useful as well as sightseeing.

And boy, was there wildlife to see today. We saw 99 sea otters (93 on the cruise, and six back in the harbor afterward), about 75 sea lions and 49 harbor seals. I forget the bird counts, except I know we only saw one heron. But I must admit, I was expecting to see maybe a couple of dozen otters, total. Seeing nearly 100 was a great surprise!

Anyway, it was great. Sunny and calm and pleasant, with lots of critters out playing, feeding, etc. Spring is a great time to visit the slough, and I will definitely be back again.

The New Splash Zone

We're down in/around Monterey this weekend, and I want to post my first impressions of the new Splash Zone exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I know some of my multitudinous readers are fans of the aquarium, so this seems pertinent.

Normally I would avoid a tourist spot such as the aquarium on a holiday weekend, but last night was Members' Night, so we got to go in for a couple of evening hours without the crowding that accompanies holidays.

We hit some of our favorite spots first, to let the throng of children work its way into/through/out of Splash Zone, then headed over there.

First thing we noticed is that it's much bigger. Basically, the whole second floor on the old end of the building is now branded Splash Zone, incorporating the old Splash Zone and the part upstairs from the big kelp forest tank that used to be called the Kelp Lab, as I recall. Since we came over the walkway from the Outer Bay side, that's the part we saw first.

I like what they've done to the old kelp Lab. It's still focused on the kelp forest, but with several important upgrades. One is a HUGE touch pool. It's really long, and it has a big fish tank under it, so you can see rockfish and kelp, and then touch sea stars and such on a shelf above. Very nicely done, and able to accommodate many more investigators.

There is also a very nice kelp canopy tank, where you can walk under and get a feel for what it's like to be under the kelp. It's not quite like diving, but it's a good illustration.

And there are numerous tanks with kelp forest fishes, including some wonderful kelp fish (they look like kelp, really). The label claims there are spiny lobsters, but they were not in evidence last night.

One favorite for us was that one of the new kelp tanks has a very young, small black sea bass. We have always liked the two larger ones who live in the large tank in the Monterey Bay Habitats section, so it was a treat to see a really small one, less than a foot long, right up close. Black sea bass are huge but slow-growing fish. We have encountered sea bass that were easily 7-8 feet long in the Channel Islands off southern California. They're very inquisitive, beautiful fish, and it's fun to see them in the aquarium.

There are also some new interactive kelp forest things that I didn't get to go through. Ten we headed off to the other side, the previous home of the Splash Zone. Superficially, it seems much the same. Beautiful tropical fish tanks as you walk in, but you quickly notice some differences. To the left as you enter, they've got cuttlefish on display again (they used to be down by the octopi)! It's a much nicer habitat for them, with piles of rock and coral they can hide in.

The play and splash area seems unchanged, but I could have missed some nuance there. But as you go past it to the penguin habitat, you see where they've made big changes. The penguin habitat is considerably larger, with much more vertical structure for the penguins to climb and sit on, and much better visibility for visitors. It's not just a one-sided exhibit anymore. The window curves around and provides much more viewing area. The penguins weren't very active last evening, but the exhibit looks great.

Just beyond the penguins, next to the gift shop, there has always been a spot to look down into the big Monterey tank with all the large sharks (and the black sea bass). That's still true, but they've turned it into a resting spot for the common murres that also live there, so you can see and observe these fascinating sea birds much more closely than before. Also, the barrier here is now clear plastic instead of metal bars, so it's much more inviting.

Finally, as you head out of Splash Zone, the tank that used to have moon jellies now has leafy sea dragons. The lights were out last night, but it looks like a good, fairly quiet spot for them.

Overall, they've managed to keep the spirit of the Splash Zone quite well, while expanding it to make it feel less crowded, and probably less frustrating to people who just come up to see the penguins. It's good work!

Snow Bunny, Part II

Hoping that I learned something from my last venture into snow sports, I went with the family again to the snow this weekend. Following my daughter's sage advice, I decided to strap a board to each foot this time, rather than just one board shared between the two.

And boy, did it work out better! (I told you she was wise.)

I must say, the technological advances in skiing since I last tried this are quite amazing and worthwhile. Step-in bindings are worth their weight in gold, and although the boots are a hassle to put on, they are much more comfortable.

Amazingly, after something like three decades away, I put on the skis and headed out to the hill, and it was as if I'd never left: I picked up right where I'd left off. Which is not to say I was any good at it, but my skills (and flaws) were almost exactly as they had been when I was a teenager.

But I did have to tell my wife, as we paused midway down our first scoot down the bunny hill (we were shadowing our daughter's lesson), that I'd already had more fun in the first few minutes that day than I had in the whole day of snowboarding lessons.

After a couple of hours of messing around, I took a two-hour private lesson with a really terrific teacher. She listened to what I wanted, and within mere minutes had corrected my worst flaws, and suddenly I was parallel skiing. Just that easy. We spent the rest of the time doing some drills and little refinements, but truly, within just a few minutes, I went from sloppy snowplowing to fairly competent parallel skiing. It was great! I suppose if I'd been able to make that leap as a kid, I might have kept skiing all along.

Anyway, it was great fun, and not nearly as hard on my body as being repeatedly slammed by the snowboard. I guess I'm just Old School.

Prevent Unwanted Presidencies

Driving past the fabulous Grand Lake Theater today, I was tickled by the message on the marquee:

PREVENT UNWANTED PRESIDENCIES
AMERICA MUST BRING BACK
HAND-COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS

As my throng of long-time readers will recall, this is a hot-button issue for me, and I agree completely. 'Nuff said.

But while I'm thinking about electoral politics, I have to point to this terrific post on LGM about the late, unlamented, Richard Nixon:

By the time his career ended, it was as if the nation's brain had been infested by parasites or poisoned by arsenic; and forty years after his election, we're still cramped up, delirious and vomiting and scratching our skin raw because of what he managed to do in less than six years. And the fact that we got a couple of fucking pandas out of the bargain does not, in my view, set things right.

This was the best-written screed on Nixon I'd read since Hunter S. Thompson's note appended his book "Better Than Sex," which included this fine paragraph:

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

As much as I like to excoriate the current administration, Nixon really paved the way for them. He deserves a special circle in political Hell.

Administrivia

I have just turned off the ability to comment anonymously on this blog. Over the last couple of days I've started getting comment Spam, so the system will now require a Google login or an OpenID login for comments.

I apologize for any inconvenience. If this is a problem for anyone (and I don't think it is, at least for those who leave the vast majority of the comments), please let me know.

I truly don't see the point of comment Spamming, but it appears it is now a fact of life here.

An Old Fashioned Butt-Kicking

Went to the snow for a couple of days. It was meant to be a work outing, but only the host and I showed up, and I had the presence of mind to bring along my ski-enthusiast spouse. Now, playing in the snow can be fun. But I haven't been on skis since I was a teenager (which is, um, several years ago now), and I've been having my doubts about taking it up again. On the other hand, snow-boarding looks kind of fun, and seems like it would be gentler on my knees. Several friends recommend it. OK, so I'll take a lesson.

Boy, did I get a lesson.

I mean, the instructor (an Aussie bloke) was great, and the basics were easy, scooting with one foot on the board, sliding, curving, and so on. No problem. Until the hill came into play. Not that the hill was a problem per se, except for two things: One, it had this nasty habit of jumping up and hitting me, quite hard. And two, once down, I found it nearly impossible to right myself and get back atop the board without once again falling on some already-bruised part of me.

I was prepared for this. Everyone told me that the first couple of days on the board are tough, and it's not until you've had at least three days of lessons and practice that it begins to be really fun. I must say, for me it wasn't fun. At all. It hurt. It was frustrating. I kept thinking that my first day on skis was (although frustrating at times) fun, and featured some accomplishments, and by the end of the day, I was happily riding up the beginner hill and snow-plowing down.

Not like that on the board. For one thing, you have to keep taking one foot in and out of the bindings. Now, once you're actually skiing a meaningful distance down the hill, this won't be a big deal, but when you're mostly stumbling and falling on the little class hill, you spend an inordinate amount of time removing and refastening the bindings. Add to this all the time spent sitting on your rear end trying to get back up, and a huge portion of your day is spent not riding your board.

I know it gets better. But it wasn't fun.

And did I mention it hurt? Nice, well-groomed, packed slope. That means it's hard. Not quite like ice, but hard. You feel it when you hit it. When you fall. When you slip getting back up. It hurts. Oy.

Ibuprofen is my friend.

Anyway, after tumbling and sitting much of the day Sunday, I was in no shape to get back on the hill today. I rested. I watched a movie. I did a little work. My spouse and my coworker went off to the ski resort and had a lovely day of skiing. I rested. I feel much better.

I came home and told my daughter about my adventures. She was very excited that I had taken a snowboard lesson (though not as excited as she was by the new skis my wife bought), but she suggested very seriously that the next time I go to the snow, I should try skis, because they're much, much easier.

I think I will take her advice. She is very wise.