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:

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!

Visit to the Holy Land

As I wrote earlier, I spent three weeks in Israel this summer. My visit was part of a research cooperation that we at UCI have with a group at the Technion University in Haifa. My Israeli hosts arranged for a nice room on campus for me and I spent most of my time with work related to our project.

I did, however, manage to explore Haifa itself as well as go to Jerusalem for two days. The latter was especially impressive with its rich history and religious significance for several major religions. Most of my stay there was spent in the Old City with its maze-like alleys, street bazaars and countless churches, temples, shrines, etc. I had come prepared with plenty of information about various sites and their significance, but it was still tough to keep up with all the different religious denominations and their respective beliefs. Among other things, I visited the Western Wall of the Old Temple (the holiest site in Judaism) and followed the Way of the Cross, along the Via Dolorosa, to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the site where it is believed that Jesus was crucified and later buried.

Naturally I’ve taken many pictures, a selection of which you can check out below.

All in all it was great trip, both from a work perspective as well as personally. Israel is a very fascinating country, and I hope I can return one day to visit more places, learning hands-on about its impressive history.

G’Day Mate!

After three weeks in Israel, I returned to California in early September for five busy days (hence no new entry on this page), where I had to prepare for this summer’s final trip: I was to present a poster at a conference in Sydney, Australia, for which I left on Sunday the 7th, taking a (looong) 14 hour direct flight from Los Angeles…

Well, I have just returned from this trip and I had a great great time. Fortunately I was able to squeeze in a few days of sightseeing in and around Sydney before the conference. I spent most of the time exploring Sydney itself but made a day trip to the nearby Blue Mountains National Park. I took plenty of pictures, some of the better ones can be found below. The conference also went well; I got some good feedback at my poster presentation, attended several interesting talks and met many new people.

P.S. I have not forgotten about the Israel trip, I just decided to write about Australia first.

Long overdue

I just returned from a great weekend visit to Jerusalem, a truly fascinating city. I will have some more details (and pictures) later, but first I feel I should catch up with my trip to Finland and Germany earlier this summer.

As you might remember, I traveled to Finland to attend a conference. On my last day in Helsinki I had some time to explore the city, of which you can find some pictures below. Helsinki reminded me quite a bit of Gothenburg (or Stockholm and Oslo, for that matter), and I liked it a lot.

After a week in Finland, I traveled on to Germany, to visit my family. The big surprise (although I was suspecting it to some extent) was that Teiko came to visit for a week as well, just in time for my birthday — what a great idea! On my birthday all of us (except for my sister’s boyfriend, who unfortunately couldn’t make it) visited the zoo in Arnhem, Netherlands, which was lots of fun (see below).

Update: I added four pictures from Teiko’s camera, taken on a day trip we took to the “Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord”, a nearby former steel mill area.

…and gone again

Since Wednesday I am now in Haifa, Israel. I will be here for almost three weeks, working with some people at the Technion University on a joint project. If time and money allows, I will take one or the other ‘touristy’ trip around here, so stay tuned.

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).

Home sweet home

I write this from my parents’ house, were I arrived late yesterday night, after flying in from Helsinki. The conference was over on Saturday, so I had most of Sunday to explore Helsinki as a tourist. I walked and saw a lot, it’s a really pretty city, reminding me of Gothenburg — in the end my feet were really tired and I slept until noon this morning.

Anyway, I will be in town for a little over two weeks, and I hope to run into a few of my old friends. My German mobile phone number for the time is 0163/6845919, so give me call or send me a message if you are in the vicinity!

Summer time is travel time

I am currently sitting in a lecture hall at the University of Helsinki, where I am attending the UAI’08 conference. I will have a poster presentation of some of my research work later today, and I am also involved in some things that my advisor is presenting here. Accordingly, the last few weeks leading up to this trip were very busy with preparation.

The conference will be going on until Saturday afternoon, after which I will have one day to explore the city on my own time, before I fly to Germany late Sunday, to visit family and friends for two weeks. (If you happen to be in the vicinity at that time, drop me an email!)