Surfin’ USA

Summer

As the interested reader might have noticed, my summer is quite uneventful and calm this year. If you recall, last year I was all over the place with conferences etc. This time around there was only one conference to attend in July in Pasedena, CA. That is about an hour from here, so no major traveling was involved. Other than that I’ve been mostly trying to focus on my work — and then it’s also nice to take it a little easy every now and then.

In early August I visited my buddy Dain in Seattle for a weekend (lots of fun, maybe I’ll post a few pictures later), and then Teiko and I went backpacking near Palm Springs, CA for a long weekend.

We took the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway to get from the desert ground (where it was 105F/40c) to about 8000 ft / 2500 m of elevation, where the temperatures were much more enjoyable. We spend two nights up there, hiking several miles and climbing Mt. San Jacinto Peak with 10824 ft / 3300 m above sea level — it was lots of fun, even though we had to adjust to the thinner air at first. Pictures below:

After descending back to the desert that is Palm Spring in summer time, we spend another night in a nice downtown hotel, before heading back to Irvine.