Eagle watching

On the way to Whistler we went to Sunwolf Eagle watching. It was really cold and it was a lot warmer inside the lounge/reception. We were given a brief explanation of the procedure, while we ate tasty muffins supplied by Sunwolf. Then we swapped our hiking boots for gumboots. Next we went for a short drive in a van, where we unloaded the raft and pulled it into the river. Then we put lifejackets on and watched a safety demonstrastion. It was cool to see so many eagles, there was over 100 and lots of juveniles!




A Bald Eagle
We got some pretty good photos (Aunty Leanne in particular). We had a lot of fun spotting, counting and attempting to take photos of eagles. The view of the mountains was also noted. We also had complimentary hot chocolates. After departing the raft we did a little bush walk before we went back to the lounge/reception to eat complimentary chilli for lunch, which was very yummy!




Me drinking hot chocolate
By Emma
- Posted using BlogPress from Dad's iPod

Whistler - aww, pretty!

I know we've completely skipped over most of San Francisco and all of Vancouver but this one is too pretty to leave for later.

(The picture now links to a much bigger version when you click on it).

This is from the top of the highest lift on Blackcomb looking back at Whistler mountain.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Snow!

Both the kids have snow in their faces yet Auntie Leanne looks totally innocent. Do not be fooled!




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Vancouver. 7 degrees C

(Or 44.6 degrees F).

Obviously I've skipped some things. I just thought the temperature change was note worthy...


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Biking in San Francisco

We got to Blazing Saddles (the bike rental we were using) at 10:30ish. It took a while to get everything sorted, getting bikes (ours were tandems), helmets and a map with routes and places to avoid marked.




Tandems on the beach

Dad was on the front seat of our tandem and Mum was on the front seat of the other tandem with Zak on the back. We have ridden tandems a couple of times before: Over the Golden Gate Bridge and at Stanley park. Mum and Dad have also ridden tandems lots of other times.

We were trying to get to the Yoda statue near Lucasfilm studios and got a bit lost. After consulting the map we figured out how to get there. Inside the reception area there were books, trophies and little models of scenes and characters. We spent about 15 minutes looking at stuff and took some photos of us with Yoda.




Yoda statue

Then we biked up a steep hill, but walked most of it, it lead us to Golden Gate park. When we were biking through Golden Gate park we saw lots of trees, some small fields and some bison. It took a long time to cycle through the park, when we came out the other side it was very sunny. We stopped for lunch by the beach which we really needed because we were starving. It felt good to take a walk because our arms and legs were sore, although we had stopped on the way a few times to take our jumpers on or off.
Me and Zak walked around in the sand for a bit and attempted making sand castles from the sand, which didn't hold shape very well.




Me jumping in sand

After that we rode back through the park, the bike path went through some of the same parts as before. Then we cycled through the the wiggle (thats how the blazing saddles assistant referred to it). Next we rode through the centre of town then to blazing saddles. By that time we had all had enough, our limbs were sore and we were exhausted.

By Emma

- Posted using BlogPress from Dad's iPad

Computer History Museum

I was wearing a T-shirt that said 01000100 01000001 01000100. They had one for sale which said 01000011 01001000 01001101... How geeky is that!?! *

Our first stop was a demo of a 'Difference Engine'. This is a mechanical device, designed 150 years ago by Charles Babbage. The guy giving the demo was suitably old himself and gave a great explanation of how it worked and what the results were. Due to learning a method for working out the polynomial for a sequence of numbers as part of Zak's math homework during the year, it made a lot more sense to me than it ever did before...

This difference engine is on loan from a guy from Microsoft. The British museum hit him up for a donation to complete one they had built and he gave them money conditional on them building him one too. He wanted it for his lounge but it has been in the Computer History Museum since it arrived in the US.

We took a guided tour - the guide took us to the ENIAC display, on to its commercial derivative (UNIVAC) then on to some other of the more important machines in computing history (IBM 360, DEC PDP-8) and on to the super computers - IBM Stretch and CRAY-1 with a Connection Machine just across from them. (It was a bit like reliving 07.440 with Prof Bob about 20 years ago :-) ). The tour was pretty long and the kids, especially Emma, didn't stick with it for the entire time. We did another lap through after the tour and the kids found the games section and I found the personal computers. They had an example of everything I had ever seen prior to about 1982 including my first machine which was right beside their Apple 1.

I got only a quick look at their IBM 1401 and DEC PDP-1 displays before we ran to the car park to complete our trip to San Francisco to return the rental car by the target time of 5PM (which turned out to be more like 5:45).

(Unfortunately, no one other than me took any pictures and I don't have a way of getting it from my camera to the iPad...).

BB

* Mine says DAD, theirs said CHM (Computer History Museum).


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Moving right along...

Solvang to Monterey and Monterey to San Francisco...

Hearst Castle - I'm of two minds about this place... It is an amazing place but I wonder if the European buildings from which the ceilings etc came from still needed them... I get a sense that huge amounts of money had allowed him to pillage the art works from the less wealthy.
The tours are also on the brief side. Of the 165 rooms, we got to see 3. Yes they were amazingly constructed and decorated but we got no sense of the scale of everything, you need to do a couple of the tours to see how it all fits together.

From Hearst Castle, we headed up the coast with a red sunset over the pacific on our left. Emma was feeling a little queasy so Cathy and I took turns in the back so Emma could have the front seat.

The biggest attraction in Monterey is the aquarium. Once again Zak got to see his current favourite marine mammal, the sea otter and see many other creatures. My favourite bit was the feeding in their "Open Sea" aquarium. All kinds of fish zipping about. Especially cool was the school of sardines, swishing through the tank, with one or two of the bigger fish occasionally taking a pass through the school hoping for a live snack.
We zipped through a bunch of souvenir shops but got stuck at the Ghiradelli Chocolate shop for Sundaes and Hot Chocolates...

That was almost it for Monterey. Before leaving the next morning we visited a Monarch butterfly colony but it was a bit cool for them - they stayed in the trees unmoving - so we headed to Mountain View to go to the Computer History museum. My first ever computer was right beside the Apple I !!! See! It is historically important! No way I can throw it out!!! Lots more I could say about the museum but I'll leave that for another time.

BB

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

San Diego Zoo

Mum and I where the only ones going to San Diego Zoo because Zak was sick and Dad was looking after him.

When we got inside the first thing we did was take a bus. Our tour guide told us interesting facts like 'flamingos are pink because of the shrimp they eat'. But the interesting thing about our tour was the guide sang a song about the zoo.






We saw a few animals, then took the gondola. We had a great view of the zoo from up there, although Mum found the height intimidating!

We saw gazelles, grizzly bears, polar bears, giraffe, pandas, elephants, flamingos, capybara and lots more.

The snake we saw in the queue to see the Giant Pandas was well camouflaged and approximately as thick as my wrist. I looked into the enclosure but I couldn't find it until I realised it was right in front of me.

There were 3 Pandas. The mother and the baby where in one enclosure and the father in another. They are kept separate because they are generally solitary animals. The mother was munching on some bamboo and the baby was lying in a hammock... the father was nowhere to be seen. The pandas diet was made up of pear, carrot and bamboo. In the wild pandas only eat one or two types of bamboo.






This picture was taken in the dark... We were there early in the evening.

We were at the zoo until around closing time. We got given directions but still got lost and then we found our way to a zoo bus that took us near the entrance and gave us clearer directions on where to go. Then we had a bit of trouble navigating our way back to the hotel but we managed to figure it out.

By Emma

- Posted using BlogPress from Dad's iPad

To San Diego and back...

We got some blogage for Disney at Adventures of a Minifig which unsurprisingly became more of a Lego blog after discovering the Lego shop in Downtown Disney...

Zak was pretty right the day after we arrived in San Diego and we headed off to Legoland. I'm guessing that will also be covered in Adventures of a Minifig. We met up with my old riding buddy Rich and his 6 year old son Austin. Austin is a veteran of many Legoland visits and had his favorites he wanted to tell us about as well as rides he would not do. He and Zak became good mates and very thoroughly checked out the Minifig trading options around the park. We split with Rich and Austin for a while to do a MindStorms robotic challenge were Emma and Zak had to make robots complete a set of tasks.








Dawn, Rich's wife, had not been able to come down during the day but drove down to have dinner with us and introduced us to Pizookie's... A soft, warm cookie with Ice Cream on top... I keep expecting to get the kids left overs but it never eventuates!!! It was great to catch up with Rich, Dawn and Austin again but all the bike talk with Rich left me feeling quite guilty that my current lack of fitness meant we didn't ride together this time...

Next day we visited the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Park. It took us about 30 minutes to get more than 100m into the park because there were keepers presenting animals just through the entrance. First up was a Blue Tongued Skink which was soon followed by a really beautiful Golden Eagle. We had a great day viewing all kinds of animals and shows on training of birds and elephants, took the tram ride around the huge enclosures and got to see a Cheetah do a 100yrd dash!






SeaWorld is a bit Disneyfied for me but it was a pretty good day all the same. Watching the Dolphins just playing around after they had been doing some training was better than the Dolphin show which had too much of people swinging and diving etc... Zak and Emma have become big fans of dolphins, sea lions and sea otters.






That ended the San Diego part of our trip and we headed north again, passing back through LA to Solvang, stopping along the way to have lunch with Graham, who Cathy and I were at University with and his wife Janet, in Thousand Oaks.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Monterey,United States

Now in San Diego

So on the 27th, Pete dropped us at the airport (thanks Pete) and we flew to LAX. The flight was OK but none of us managed to sleep very well so zipping down the freeway at 80MPH, driving on the right, in a strange car, on about 2 hours sleep was a bit of a worry!

The first few nights, we stayed with Becky who we worked with at Platinum when we lived here in 1995 through 1998. We took the time to catch up with a few other friends from that time.
First was Matt (from Platinum), his wife Laura and their kids Autumn and Emily. Our kids met theirs last time we were here and Emma had plans to have frozen yogurt with them again like last time so that was what we did! The kids jumped right in as though we'd seen each other just last month!
Next day we caught up with Joe who Cathy did marathon training with. We had donuts with him and then went out to Lunch with another Platinum guy, Doug, and his family.

All of these ended up at weird hours because we were always running late and were hungry at odd hours because of the time change!

The season change has also been weird... During the middle of the day it was warmer than in Auckland (we even went for a couple of swims while saying with Becky) but it gets dark at 5 and the temperature drops rapidly when the sun goes down.

From Becky's, we moved to a hotel just up the road from Disneyland. We took the opportunity to see an Ice Hockey game at the nearby stadium. The team we supported when we lived here, the Anaheim Ducks, played the San Jose Sharks and won 6 - 3. It was a cool to be at the game and even better that the home side won.

I'll leave the Disney experience for someone else to write about but note that it was great to catch up with the Healy Family who we knew through Juggling years ago. Jugglers from that period are a bit thin on the ground now so when we went to the Orange Jugglers meeting the only person (other than Steve Healy) who we knew was Michelle Gerdes, Steve Gerdes staying away for the night because he wasn't well.

And now, we are in San Diego. Only just... Zak was sick last night so rather than the original plan on racing down here to do an attraction today, we stayed in the hotel in Anaheim until 12, drove straight to the hotel here and Zak and I have just hung out, watched a movie and done some laundry. Cathy and Emma headed out to visit the zoo. Zak is a lot better now but hasn't eaten anything yet. Hopefully he will be OK tomorrow so we can go to Legoland!

BB


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:San Diego,United States