4 posts tagged “california”
Although I have been running three to four times a week for the last two months, I had never run in a timed race prior to last weekend. For my first race, I signed up for a 5K just to see how things would go, but the results were posted tonight and I was so excited to see that I ended up placing 7th for women in my age group and 21st out of 259 women... wooooo!! My average pace was 9.35 minutes per mile, or about 6.4 mph.
I thought running with a huge group of people was a lot of fun, definitely a lot more exciting than running solo in a park full of territorial geese and navigating around goose poop, which is how I normally roll.
In the photo below, on the left you'll see the obligatory Runner Crosses Finish Line photo, and on the right you'll see the many hands attacking me shortly after I finished as evidence of how efficiently the race was coordinated:
1. If you like driving and would like to be part of a neat research project to determine traffic conditions using GPS technology, my professor is looking for volunteers to drive around with new Nokia N95 phones on a ten mile segment of I-880 in Union City, CA. You will be paid, and also have the chance to win one of the phones. To learn more about the experiment, go here.
2. For concert-going enthusiasts and music junkies, my friend Jerry frequently blogs about upcoming shows in the Bay Area: hey! let's go to concerts in san francisco. He does a really good job, so check it out!
Every day since I have been here (Berkeley, CA if you weren't keeping tabs on me), it's been bright and sunny outside, breezy, and chilly and crisp in the mornings and at night. Every. Single. Day. I'm used to living in Iowa, where the weather brings rain, hail, sleet, snow, and basically all ranges of conditions from humid and hot summer days to winter days where cold winds blow through the thickest clothes and whip past your face. When every day here seems like one of the maybe 10 perfect days of weather that occur in Iowa a year, something just seems wrong. I hear it's hot and humid in Iowa. So I won't complain too much about having too many clear, 70-80 degree sunny, breezy days.
Previously I promised massive posts and tons of photos. I'll try to fulfill that promise, but blogging takes a lot of time that I haven't had much of recently.
Since my last CA adventure update, I've gone to a SF Giants game, to Santa Cruz and San Francisco to spend one last weekend with Greg before he went back to Iowa, to San Jose to spend some time with my mom visiting her relatives for a couple of days, and around Berkeley and San Francisco to spend some time with Brent.
At the SF Giants game (which was the first live baseball game I've ever been to), I shared some really delicious garlic fries with two other people which are pictured below. There was an insane amount of garlic and parsley on them, and they turned mouths into potential toxic weapons, but they were so worth eating (and paying for).
So... then I went to Santa Cruz and San Francisco with Greg in one day/night. We drove (well, Greg drove) to the top of a hill somewhere and this was the breathtaking view at the top.
At the Natural Bridges State Beach, we were a bit disappointed that two of the three natural bridges that used to be there had collapsed due to normal wear on the rock from the ocean. But here is the one that remains:
San Jose, SF and Berkeley stories and photos will come soon.
On Friday, I went to Mountain View to visit my friend Greg. At the NASA Ames Research Center, I got to see the cab that all astronauts practice in before they ever actually go on a real shuttle, saw the 'Marscape' that was made to resemble the Mars landscape, and saw how big the world's largest wind tunnel actually is. Here are some pictures:
Here is one side of the ginormous wind tunnel. Can you find me? In the same picture, that face has doors that open up to let planes in and out. Holy cow, was it humongous! I wasn't even standing close to it, or else you probably wouldn't have been able to see me!
Afterwards, we drove from Mountain View to Santa Cruz. The drive was amazing. Seeing huge, rolling hills covered with towering redwood trees while driving on windy, twisty roads created an overwhelming sense that nature--not man--is the dominating force on this planet, the way that everyone should feel. It was truly gorgeous, but it's hard to explain. I was too busy staring open-mouthed and reveling in the beauty to take pictures, but if you're ever in California, the Santa Cruz mountains are definitely worth visiting.
Once we were at Santa Cruz, we went to the beach just as it became dusk, and walked around on the boardwalk. Here were some sea lions under a pier at the beach:
This is what they sounded like:
The next day, we drove through San Francisco, which was pretty foggy, and then to Santa Rosa, where the landscape began to change but was still pretty. On our way back from Santa Rosa, we stumbled across a chaotic-looking farm of animals, which I think was either a ranch or nursery for geese, sheep, Brahmas, and an emu. The man running the place let Greg and I have big loaves of old bread to feed the animals, and it ended up being a lot of fun. Here are pictures:
Then we drove back to San Francisco and ate dinner on the pier before Greg and I drove to Berkeley to drop me off before he headed back to Mountain View.
Something really cool that I like about being in California: being able to pick juicy plums from trees and plump, sweet blackberries from bushes on the sides of sidewalks and streets to eat. It's so amazing. The weather here is also fantastic. No bugs, crisp and chilly in the mornings and evenings, sunny and clear in the middle of the day. Also, I now have a bike (thanks to Greg!), so I can go exploring further and faster than the few miles I can walk every day before getting tired. I hope everyone is doing well! I hear Iowa is pretty hot and humid...
