Not too long ago I started reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Earth. Previously I read The Robots of Dawn and while I enjoyed the atmosphere it produced, I didn’t particularly like the book. This Foundation Series on the other hand, is something else entirely. I’m almost done with the second in the series (Foundation and Earth) and then I’ll move on to the third and final book of the original three. Jules dug up this one at Half Price Books. The cover is awesome.
Recently Jules and I traveled to the far reaches of King Range to go on another backpacking trip. This one was planned by a friend. The route followed roughly 21 miles over three days. The Buck Creek Trail is supposedly “infamous as having one of the steepest grades of any Northern California trail” with a 3,300 ft elevation change over 4 miles. We hiked up it and out on the last day. But what I really wanted to talk about are ticks!
Bloooooooood.....
Look at that guy, doesn’t he give you the willies? I’ve gotten a few ticks on me from time to time. I catch them them on my clothing and flick them off and that’s that. On this trip, however, the buggers finally got me.
Day two of the trip. We make our first creek crossing. I get to the far side, and take off my socks to ring the water out of them. First tick caught crawling on my arm! Flicked… done.
Day three. We’re climbing up the infamous trail and beating back the encroaching foliage. I find another tick on my arm. Flicked again!
Day three… still. We’re out of the woods and heading to a small pizza joint. My hip chafes a little. I think it might be from the hip belt and rub it. There’s something there! It’s a tick! Arrrrrrrgh!
Where's its head? It's inside!
One of the other guys we went with brought a tick key which we put to good use to pull him out. Minimal damage. Tick survived intact. Jules put him in a bag. Continued to pizza which was bad, but that’s another story.
Day three… again! We get home and prepare for a relaxing shower. What’s that under the band of my boxers? Another one?!? Blargh! This one I carefully pull out with tweezers. He didn’t survive but all of his body parts were there. We put him in a bag too.
We did some reading online and Jules called one of the nurses at the health center. Less than 1% chance of getting lyme disease but we’re on the lookout for the early warning signs. Constant vigilance!
PS. Neither of those pictures are of the actual tick that got me, they’re just borrowed for effect. But here’s a video I took of another guy in our party pulling out a tick.
I’ve been jumping between a few things today. Did a little work on a side project that I thought up on Friday, played a few video games and ran an errand for Jules. During the errand I took a few pictures.
Jules planted a ginger.
Flowers are blooming everywhere. I need to go on a hike.
These leaflets had a really nice texture to them. Really soft.
Lavenders are an excellent addition to any yard.
I can’t wait to grow my own fruit trees.
Renan Ozturk does dispatches from his expeditions. He describes them as “Episodic & on the fly creative content cut in the field and sent with satellite technology.” They’re pretty amazing. Here’s a series from a trip to Borneo.
Copied from Mike’s post at ThisMoment:
On Saturday Jules and I wanted to go on a hike so we drove north in search of a trailhead. We passed by one little lake that only had some fishermen and no signs of trails. Even though I thought Lake Berryessa would have more boat-happy people, we made our way over there.
As it turns out, we were the only ones in the parking lot. In fact, when we got there we didn’t see anyone on the lake at all. No boats, no people. So we decided to walk along the edge of the lake for a while. The water level looked low, but with the recent rains, some of the plants that had started to grow near the water line had become submerged. You can’t really tell from my photo, but there were bubbles forming on the leaves of the plants. Oxygen creation in action?
We continued to hike around and watch the water fowl. Eventually we made our way to a small hilltop overlooking the lake and I gave Jules her birthday present: a small blue bag from Tiffany & Co. I let her unwrap it until she got to the ring case and I promptly snatched it back. I sheepishly got on one knee, opened the ring case and blurted out “willyoumarryme?” at such a rate that Jules didn’t even hear what I said. But she assumed correctly and said yes. At that point I looked at the ring case and noticed I was holding it upside down. Why would the bigger half be on top? That doesn’t make any sense.
After she said yes I proceeded to try and put the ring on her finger. Failure! The ring was too small. So we had to pack it up for later.
After a little while we decided to leave the lake and check out a dam that we saw on the map. The dam itself ended up being fenced off but we got a pretty good view from the parking area. Apparently it has one of the largest spillways of any dam. They actually referred to it on the sign as the “glory hole.” Perhaps they didn’t know?
After the dam we returned back to Yountville to prepare for dinner at Ad Hoc!
This short video made me really nostalgic for Berkeley and the College of Natural Resources. This girl looks like she followed a similar routine as me. Class, work at the Botanical Garden, study, hang out. I even recognize the bus driver.
Ah memories.
I miss visiting Portland with Jules. Maybe we should take a trip soon. 
While a lot of the Netflix recs are pretty good, sometimes they can be very off:
While both are good movies, i think they fall into highly divergent categories.
