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.

Grand Canyon Backpacking

Last week was spring break here at UCI, which three friends and I took as an opportunity to get away for a few days. So on Monday Dave, Kenny, Matt and I loaded our backpacks in the car and headed to the Grand Canyon, leaving civilization behind us!

After a cold night at the South Rim (19F/-7C) we set out from the South Kaibab Trailhead at 7260 ft (2213 m) on Tuesday morning. We hiked 7 miles (11.3 km) all the way to the Colorado river at the bottom of the Canyon, descending to 2480 ft (756 m), where we set up our camp for the night at Bright Angel Campground. On Wednesday we headed up the North Kaibab Trail on the north side of the Canyon, hiking some 8 miles/12.9 km (including a detour to Ribbon Falls) to Cottonwood Campground at 4080 ft (1244 m), halfway up to the North Rim. After a night with wonderful, star-lit skies we did a little morning hike to Roaring Springs before grabbing our packs and heading back to the bottom, where we set up camp once more and headed to bed early. Friday morning we got an early start and set out for our ascent out of the Canyon via the Bright Angel trail, a 9.6 mile (15.5 km) climb from 2480 ft (756 m) to 6860 ft (2093 m)! With sore legs and blistered feet we eventually reached the South Rim in the afternoon, where we camped for another very cold night (16F / -9C) before driving back to Irvine on Saturday.

It was a great trip — even though I’m still sore. The views were breathtaking on every step of the trail, the weather was good throughout most of the trip, and it was nice to get away from computers, email, cell phones, etc. for a few days. Both Kenny and I took our digital cameras with us, and even though it’s hard to capture the full enormity of the Grand Canyon in pictures, the photos we took are still impressive. I therefore invite you to browse through them (and there are quite a few), first mine and then Kenny’s:

Playoff season

Like every year, some friends and I signed up for the intramural basketball league in the winter quarter. Also like every year, we competed in five group games and then proceeded to the playoff stage. And like every year, this implies everyone on the team is growing a playoff beard! This means you don’t shave until you are eliminated from the playoffs, beginning with the last group game. Here’s this year’s result, just before tonight’s playoff game:

Unfortunately, we narrowly lost the game tonight (and I got a bruised nose in the process). Hence this is the current situation, photographed 10 minutes ago:

P.S. Apologies to Teiko for being overly ’scratchy’ for the last two weeks.

Big Apple and Big News

This past December, after winter break started at school, Teiko and I went on a 2 night trip to New York City, which I had arranged as a surprise. We flew out of Los Angeles very early on Monday and returned late on Wednesday. The trip itself was rather packed with touring many famous places and tourist attractions, seeing “The Lion King” on Broadway (which was fantastic!), visiting a cozy Jazz club with live music, and eating lots of good food. We even had some snow!

At the end of the trip I had another special surprise for Teiko — but just check out the pictures below, especially the last three.

Yep, that’s right, I “popped the question” and she said yes! Yippie! And before you ask, as of now there are no concrete plans for a time and place, so stay tuned…

P.S. Happy New Year, everyone!

Home sweet home (other side of the Atlantic)

After a long day of traveling with a fair amount of delays, I arrived back in Irvine yesterday night. In spite of the ongoing strike at Lufthansa, I flew from Dusseldorf to Chicago — with a 2 hour delay due to the strike (it seems I was still lucky, Lufthansa started canceling intercontinental flights today). My flight from Chicago to Orange County was also 45 min late, after waiting in the takeoff line on the tarmac with dozens of other planes. In addition, one of my two checked bags didn’t make the connecting flight and will be arriving here today.
But given all the uncertainty beforehand (due to the strike), I am quite happy to be back in California in one piece and more or less as scheduled.

For those of you that heard of yesterday’s earthquake in the Los Angeles area, I was still in the air when it happened. The epicenter was reported to be ~50km northeast from Irvine. From what I hear the earth shook quite a bit for 30 sec, but there was no significant damage to buildings and structures. And more importantly, noone was hurt (in Irvine as well as elsewhere).

Backpacking in Yosemite

A few days ago, Teiko and I escaped crowded and busy Orange County for a while and drove up to Yosemite National Park for an extended weekend of backpacking. We made the trip up on Saturday, hiked from Sunday to Tuesday and returned late on Wednesday.

Saturday night we camped in Yosemite Valley, the central area where they have shops and hotels. Early Sunday morning we packed our backpacks and took a bus up to Glacier Point, where we started our 7-mile hike along the Panorama Trail to the backcountry camp in Little Yosemite Valley. With tent, water, food, and other things, I carried 50 lbs. (23 kg) and Teiko had 40 lbs. (18kg) on her back — so we were quite exhausted when we got to the campsite around 6pm that day. We quickly pitched our tent, cooked some dinner and went to bed early.

The next morning we left most of our things at the tent and started the 8 mile round-trip hike, climbing upwards, towards famous Half Dome. The last part is solid granite, which is so steep (I’d guess 80% inclination) that you have to pull yourself up on heavy iron cables that have been installed there. They say that lots of people get scared and turn around when they see the cables — and I have to admit, it is pretty intimidating. But Teiko and I decided that we didn’t drag ourselves up there for nothing, so we slowly climbed towards the top at 8800 feet (2700m), always setting one foot after the other, not looking up, let alone down. And boy, was it worth it! The views from up there are breathtaking! We spent more than an hour on the top of Half Dome before we got ourselves to climb back down again — still scary, but I found it a little easier then the way up. And what a great feeling it was to get off the cables and stand on solid ground again. Somewhere along the way back down to our campsite we then ran out of water (it was a very hot day), but eight long hours after we had left that morning we eventually got back to our tent thirsty but safely.

After a well-deserved good night’s sleep we packed up all our things the next morning and hiked another 5 miles back down to the main valley, where we pitched our tent again for the last night before we went off to indulge in some of the great achievements of civilization, pizza and beer. On the morning of our departure we went for another short hike to pretty Mirror Lake and made some photo stops on our way out of the park, before we eventually hit the road for the drive back south.

All in all it was a really unforgettable experience, even though both our feet hurt quite a bit afterwards and each of us had several mosquito bites that itched for some days. I’m definitely hoping we can return some day and explore other corners of Yosemite…

Obviously, we took tons of pictures over the days and it’s very hard to make a selection for a small gallery here. Therefore I’ll just refer to the extensive album that Teiko put together (click here), which is also the basis for the slide show above. I’ll conclude with a panorama shot of Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point, that I stitched together from several images (click for bigger version):

On the road again

Finally, here is the promised update. As I said, the last weeks have been filled with conference submission deadlines and I was mostly occupied with work-related things. In the end we submitted a few articles to different venues, I’m hoping the hard work will be rewarded by a positive response some weeks from now.

Once the deadlines had mostly passed, my parents came over from Europe to visit. They traveled quite a bit on their own, but Teiko and I joined them for an extended weekend trip to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. One week later my parents and I went up to the Santa Barbara region for two nights before they flew back to Germany. It was great seeing them again and the traveling was lots of fun! Below are some pictures, be sure to click the thumbnails for the bigger versions.

Back from the dead

Almost three months without any new entries here… my apologies!
I’ve been incredibly busy at work (since it’s high season for conference submissions), so not a lot of noteworthy things happened — and besides, I would not have had enough time time to write about it here.
I am hoping to catch up and share some pictures here over the next few days, so stay tuned.

Nature calls…

(Second post for today, wow! Make you sure you don’t miss the first one below… )

After eating way too much on Thanksgiving, Teiko and I used the long weekend and finally managed to take two days off to go backpacking in the nearby Cleveland National Forest.

So last Friday we headed into the San Mateo Canyon Wilderness, which is a virtually untouched area where you can basically set up your tent freely. We packed our backpacks with the gear for an overnight outing and hiked 3.5 miles (5,6 km) to the bottom of a canyon, where we pitched our tent at around 6pm; it was already almost dark at that time. We had some trouble falling asleep so early, but eventually managed to get some hours of sleep. The next morning we rose early, packed up our things and hiked back out — this time uphill, so it took us a little longer.

Except for some blisters on Teiko’s heels, it was a great adventure and I can’t wait to go for another trip, hopefully soon. Living in a densely populated area as Los Angeles / Orange County, the calm and quiet of ‘the wild’ can be a very welcome change…

One month, lots of pictures

It’s been more than a month since I last got around to writing anything here, sorry for the delay. Life is busy for me, and things are bound to get more intense with finals’ week coming up. Report, projects, presentations…

Anyway, I decided to finally take the time to share a few pictures that accumulated over the weeks, let’s see… It starts with a guided hike in the Laguna Coast Wilderness for which I joined some German colleagues. Then a picture from San Diego, where I visited Teiko for a day when she was attending a conference. It’s a very nice city, I’ll definitely want to go back at some point.

After the conference Teiko’s friend Sue and her boyfriend Josh stayed in Irvine for a few days and we took them on the same hike that I had learned about just a week earlier.

Finally, as you might be aware, Americans celebrated Thanksgiving on November 22nd; so we got a few friends together and had our own Thanksgiving dinner with everyone cooking and preparing some part of it. The food was truly delicious (and there was lots of it!), everyone had a great time.