Sunday, October 21, 2007

Steady as she goes


This weekend was the Nike women's marathon. Tens of thousands of women runners flock to San Francisco for the occasion, pretty amazing stuff. Wei ran her first marathon, and Mike ran his last (or so he swore at the finish line). Maureen joined them for the second half. Beautiful weather, good times, pictures and a cool video here.
UPDATE: Wei's official time: 4:03:04; that's 266th out of a bunch of people. Unnur also finished, 1865th in 5:09:05 Both promised to work on their sexrank for next time, whatever that is. Reminder: the SF course is very slow (=hard), so don't go on comparing these times with flat courses.

Monday, October 08, 2007

Catalina - Airport in the sky


This weekend we flew to Catalina, a small island off the coast of Los Angeles. We packed a crew of 7 into two planes (C172 & C182) piloted by captains Roetter and Dupont, and headed down to SoCal on Friday afternoon.
Our first stop was supposed to be an isolated campground in an idyllic setting in the outskirts of Pismo Beach. The airport was indeed on a beach, but it turned out the place looked like the backdrop of a Mad Max movie with every "car" we came across towing another vehicle of some sort, liquor stores selling race fuel, and modern frontiersmen circling their (airconditioned) wagons in the dunes and entertaining themselves by burning the aforementioned race fuel in devilish 4-wheeled toys.
We were back in the air on Saturday morning. A beautiful flight over the ocean, with the Californian coast to our left and the Channel Islands to our right. Lots of pictures. After a little more than an hour we reached Catalina. The airport was built on the top of a mountain, it is a rather intimidating sight as the terrain drops off at both ends of the runway. Some say it is like landing on a (3000ft long) aircraft carrier. I would not know. I don't land on boats. The runway is also curved, so that you only see about half of it once you touch down, giving you the illusion you are running out of room, spicy...
A 35 min bus ride later we arrived in the town of Avalon, mingling with L.A. fauna. We ditched our original plan to camp for a last minute hotel room vacancy at the Glenmore Plaza (thinking of going? don't be fooled by the rates, lodging seems to be crappy but expensive everywhere on the island). Avalon is a great little island town with nothing much going on, probably very relaxing for a few days at a time. We spend the afternoon walking around and (for Mike and I) pondering if we should heed the warning signs for excessive amounts of Enterococcus faecalis (yes, it is what it sounds like) in the water, or go for a swim anyway. The water is amazingly clear down there, this is probably a pretty good diving/snorkeling spot. To be investigated further.
Saturday night was spent at a local karaoke bar, some of us enjoying the music, some the beer, and others marveling at the advances of plastic surgery and the effect of alcohol on a person's dignity. On Sunday, we rented "power" boats and fooled around in the water for a while before hopping back into the plane for a last good view of the island. Alex took his aircraft non-stop to Palo Alto, whereas I had to do a fuel stop in Oceano. We had a little hiccup on the ground (starter would not engage) but resolved the situation with the help of a fellow piloteer. Turns out the starter on this line (2006 C172SP) fails every 200hrs. Good to know. We landed in Palo Alto just before 5PM. Good trip!
Amy's pictures, Mike's pictures, my pictures and a cool video of the Avalon take-off