15 May 10
Up Early, Even For Me
Today is the Davis Double Century. It’s too early here even for kingbirds. I must leave the house in an hour, having drunk enough tea to keep me going on a 200-mile course with many zigzags back and forth between rest stops (I’m driving, providing radio support, not cycling, but still). It looks like it won’t be too hot, meaning fewer heat exhaustion cases, but there’s always something, and it’s best to be prepared. Hope I am.
Today is also the 27th Worldwide Sketchcrawl. Can’t believe there have been that many. I won’t have much chance to sketch today but will try at a couple of the rest stops: cyclists are good drawing subjects, plenty of muscle definition to be had. And they all line up in exactly the same way for water and Gatorade and peanut butter sandwiches and bananas and potatoes and soup and coffee and muffins, staggering around on cleats, wondering how the hell they’re going to get up Resurrection and wondering whether this was really such a good idea. They’re a cheerful bunch, though, and this is such a well supported ride that it’s a good one for the “maybe I can make its.” Unfortunately for the support people, sometimes those ones maybe can’t, and need shuttling around. And their bikes… but then I get to meet really interesting folks and chat on the way to the next rest stop.
I’d like to put in a word here for an artist I admire greatly and whose work I’ve followed for some time now. Debby Kaspari of Drawing the Motmot lost her house and her studio on Monday in a tornado. She, her husband Mike, and cat Gizmo are all fine, but they have lost all their possessions. (I just saw in an update that after sifting through the rubble they were able to find Debby’s banjo and Mike’s guitar intact; I burst into tears when I saw this.)
There’s an art supply whip-round going on through Facebook through friends. If you have paper or paints or pencils or anything you think she could use, please check it out. There’s a paypal link too.
Right. Off to don the Second Ugliest Tshirt In The World and check in with Net Control. KI6IMU, Sag 10, reporting for duty…
7 May 10
Into The Merry Month of May
The Whole Earth Festival is this weekend on the Quad on campus. This is the 41st year it’s been run, and we’ve attended a good many of them in the 11 years we’ve been in Davis. By now the Whole Earth aesthetic is quite ingrained in us, and we were able to satisfy the annual need for it with a brief session this evening. (I may have to return on Sunday for the annual chocolate-covered banana however).
May has turned into quite a hectic month for us. The Whole Earth Festival starts off the events of the month. Tomorrow we are headed to Berkeley to meet friends and then in the evening we are going to West Sacramento to catch a River Cats game. A week from tomorrow is the Davis Double Century for which we are scheduled to provide radio support. The following weekend is the Maker Faire in San Mateo; we will be going down on the Saturday, and expect to be overwhelmed as we were last year.
No wonder I need a vacation. Which I am taking this upcoming week! Time to catch up on projects before I get to the Maker Faire…
4 May 10
Pondering on a Podcast
I spoke with my friend Dave Bonta on the phone yesterday. He was recording. Click here
for the results…
30 April 10
How You Know You're Not A Hockey Fan
I was tuning around on the AM broadcast band last night when I run across a match on 750 kHz — Vancouver was playing, I figure it must be the NHL playoffs. It’s late in the match. It sounds like they’re playing Portland. One player gets two yellow cards and is out of the match. There’s a free kick, a header, and three minutes of stoppage time. The cognitive dissonance is great. I didn’t know hockey was so much like soccer.
Afterwards I look up the teams. The Portland Timbers versus the Vancouver Whitecaps. Division 2 Professional League soccer (a temporary league, lasting just one season, we’re told). The broadcast was from the station KXL, in Portland, Oregon.
25 April 10
Birdathon/Sketchathon
I’m pooped. Between the walk into the campus arboretum yesterday and today’s walk to Pedrick Road from the house, and the three blisters I have that tell me I must have walked at least eight miles, and the pages and pages of the Moleskin accordion-fold notebook that are now full bar the final page (though why they use paper that will hardly take a pen, let alone a light watercolor wash, is beyond me…), I think I’ve finished.
Worst miss: American robin. Birds I heard but couldn’t see to draw: wild turkey, orange-crowned warbler, both towhees. Most unexpected bird: American white pelican. Bird I kept trying to avoid but ultimately failed: European starling. Most spectacular save: hearing Canada geese outside as I was getting out of the shower, grabbing a towel and my pen and notebook and running outside to draw them as they flew west-southwest. (I later saw a pair with three goslings on the creek and added them to the page with the hastily-drawn flyaways.) Birds I saw but wasn’t quite fast enough to draw before they flew off: Eurasian collared dove (a first for our yard and a first for my 2010 walkabout), Western tanager. Booby prize for the bird I think I’ll never be able to draw well no matter how many times I try: Bullock’s oriole.
Oh, and the not-a-bird that stopped me dead in my tracks: the river otter in the Arboretum. I hadn’t seen them since New Year’s Day. It was about 6:30 am; I think you just have to be really early.
Total number of birds sketched: 59. I had hoped for 60. But I think I’ll call it a day. If you offered to sponsor me, thank you; if you would still like to support Yolo Audubon in this birdathon, please feel free. You can still pledge the composite list or any one of the participants. More sketches are over on Bird by Bird.
23 April 10
Happy 40th Earth Day!
I remember the first one. I was in elementary school, and somebody organized us to pick up trash around the schoolyard — the school on top of the hill, with an upper and lower playground separated by a small slope planted with acacias and other trees. This session was before school started in the morning, and I was a little worried about making it to class on time.
A random Earth Day 2010 initiative that I like: the organization iFixit.com which is known for providing people with the resources, both informational and physical parts, to repair their Apple hardware, today announced a much more ambitious goal, to teach every person on Earth how to repair every thing they own. Their platform is an online set of repair manuals that anyone can edit in wiki-like fashion. Reduce, reuse, recycle, and repair: the fourth term in that mantra gets left out all too often.
18 April 10
Birds and Boozers
Yesterday we went out to our Breeding Bird Atlas blocks and finally got a couple of confirmed breeding birds, plus a whole lot of probables, including a hooded oriole, red-shouldered hawk, and great-horned owl. We have been lucky to meet someone in Esparto who not only has a fabulously overgrown yard, well-stocked bird feeders, and a good diversity of birds that visit them regularly, but who is also a good birder and is willing to keep an eye on her patch for us.
Back to Davis, and Picnic Day. I volunteered to run Net Control for the first UC Davis Amateur Radio Communications group — folks wandering around Picnic Day (more than 100,000 people) were invited to report incidents that were not worth an emergency 911 call but should still be noted.
Most of the incidents yesterday involved alcohol. There was a roof party on B Street (off campus) where a young woman got seriously injured. There were reports all afternoon of alcohol-related incidents, a couple of them very serious. It seems a shame that Picnic Day has become such a magnet for people intent on getting paralytic, but there you go.
Net Control out.
11 April 10
The Game We Didn't Catch
[It’s my turn to blog but I’m leaving the field open for Numenius, whose birthday it is today. – Pica]
We went to San Francisco today to catch the Giants game on the occasion of my birthday. Unfortunately a storm decided to pass through San Francisco at the same time. Undeterred, we trudged the seven blocks from Montgomery BART to the ballpark clad in rain jackets and ponchos through the rain, hoping the weather would let up in time for us to see some baseball.
The game wasn’t called off, but was in indefinite rain delay by the time we got inside the ballpark. We headed up one escalator flight to promenade level, where we milled about, happy to be under a roof, and grabbed a lunch consisting of garlic fries and hot chocolate. We were never even to make it up to our seats.
It didn’t let up. We watched the in-house televisions giving pre-game coverage commemorating the 10th anniversary of the opening of the ballpark. Eventually they switched the telly over to the final round of the Masters golf tournament. A bit surreal — watching golf (which we never watch) hanging out in front of a hot dog concessionaire, the rain pouring on the field of AT&T Park, all on my birthday.
Our giving up time was 3 PM, two hours after arrival. It was still coming down on the field at that time. The game had not been called — they were going to do everything possible to play the game today due to the logistical difficulties of rescheduling the game with the Atlanta Braves later on.
We left the ballpark. Two minutes later, it started letting up, and the sky was bright to the west. We wondered if heading out when we did was a mistake.
We took BART back to Ashby Station, where we had left our car, and got the radio. By 4 PM they still hadn’t made a decision about the game, and were checking on the condition of the field. By 4:45 when we were three-quarters of the way back to Davis the game was a go, the start time scheduled for 5:10 PM.
Back at home for the first pitch. Tim Lincecum didn’t get much warmup in, and it showed in the first inning: he walked a batter and gave up a two-run home run to Brian McCann. But he settled down quickly, and didn’t give up another run.
San Francisco’s offense got started in the 4th inning — Pablo Sandoval hit a triple, and was singled home by Aubrey Huff. Pablo had his first big day this season, later on hitting a home run and a single. Tim Lincecum ended up with 10 strikeouts. Jeremy Affeldt pitched two innings to close out the game, only giving up a home run to the Braves’ rookie phenom Jason Heyward. Giants win 6-3 — we weren’t there to see it. A fun day regardless.
10 April 10
Swarms of Spring
Lisa over at How’s Robb reported yesterday on her adventures in joining some beekeepers who were catching a swarm in a yard in the Oakland Hills; today we got to witness the same process, but out our kitchen window. Our landlord’s son is a beekeeper with a pretty substantial operation that is partly based out of a workshop that is around back where our house is. This past few weeks he and his assistants have been extremely busy building up beehives and starting to truck them around places. When Pica got home today, she saw that there was a swarm of bees in the peach tree just north. The beekeepers didn’t take long to collect it, as shown at left.
7 April 10
On Being a Fan
Most of my friends aren’t knitters. Most of my friends aren’t birders (though many are, perhaps the largest single group). Most of my friends aren’t sketchers or artists. Most of my friends aren’t calligraphers. Most of my friends aren’t the slightest bit interested in sports of any kind, especially not baseball.
Yet most of my friends seem to tolerate all these things in me. Thank you. It’s baseball season again, which has me happier than I can describe, and I hope you’ll forgive the effusion for a little while. It will settle into the June doldrums for both the Sox and Giants, into the vague hopes of August, into the dashed dreams of September. But for now, baseball leafs out as it does every spring, full of hope and promise.
Play ball.