I had a great New Year’s Eve, celebrating with Paul, Cynthia and friends in East Livermore. There was plenty to eat, drink, and light on fire. Each new year’s with Paul is something new. This year, he had Josh bring over half a dozen dry cleaner bags (ultra-light plastic). He slid straws together end-to-end to increase the length, and then taped them into a cross. Along the cross he attached birthday cake candles.

The tricky part was getting them outside. The house was around 70 degF, and it was only 20 outside. This caused a breeze to flow when the door was open. Once outside, the theory was that a hot, light balloon would fly in cold air.

The first balloon, despite a lack of optimism by the house engineer (Eric), performed flawlessly, and travelled somewhere over N. Wayne we guessed. It was airborne for at least 15 minutes, and seemed to climb the whole time. The second balloon went up, and came right back down in a tree near the house. After a few minutes, it did rise again, but then consumed itself in flames, dripping hot plastic down on the woods.

Please, do try this at home!

Here’s a photo I snapped last weekend when I rode my motorcycle up Mt. Diablo. The mountain is 3900′ (from a 400′ starting elevation). It’s a state park that’s basically in my back yard. There are several campgrounds and lots of hiking trails. Too bad they don’t allow dogs; they’d get more business from me :).

For getting your residency at the prestigous Rood & Riddle in Lexington, KY!!

This is an old picture from Alaska this summer. It’s the Alaganik Slough (slew) at sunset. It’s my current desktop background.

And, I’m quite happy here so far!

Well, so far the trip has gone without any real trouble. I made it to Charlie’s cabin in Franklin, NC on Tuesday night, and left Wednesday afternoon. The truck had been acting up the whole trip, and wouldn’t run well enough to make the climb up his mountain. He towed me to a parking space, and Wednesday we found that the distributor cap and rotor were corroded beyond salvage, and the wires and plugs were pretty much junk too. Luckily I got out of that break down for $55.

Leaving there, I took I-40 to Sante Fe, NM, where I’ve been visiting my friend Jess and her roomates. Today we got a rental truck from Lowe’s, and headed to the Sante Fe National Forest to cut several truck loads of wood for the winter.

I’ve done a lot of walking around San Francisco this trip. This morning I stumbled up to the marina district, and took a tour of a WWII diesel submarine. It was self guided, and there were no other’s on it during my self-guided tour. Pretty neat to have all that time to check it out. Most of the cool stuff is protected behind lexan covers.