California Coast

I finally had a day off today! Thomas, Pawel, and I took advantage of our free time by heading down the coast. We started with the 17-mile drive along the Monterey Peninsula, where we saw the Lone Cyprus


and the Ghost Tree.


We also drove past Pebble Beach, but there weren't many good views of the golf course.

Next, we headed to Point Lobos, which got its name from the Spanish word for sea lions (sea wolves). We walked out to Sea Lion Point,


where I was met by a squirrel begging for food.


Most of the sea lions congregated on this one rock.


We wandered around looking for starfish in tidal pools. I didn't see any starfish, but there were plenty of crabs.


On our way out of the park, we walked along the southern coast of the point.


Along the way, I saw all sorts of life in the tidal pools, including anenomes


and sea urchins.


I also saw this crab, that seemed to be eating or cleaning itself with a foamy substance.


After Point Lobos, we went south toward Big Sur.


We stopped at Pfeiffer Beach


where I saw, of all things, a skunk.


Then we went back to the Monterey Peninsula and had dinner in Pacific Grove.

More Marina

Last night, I went to the Marina State Beach again (the same place I went Sunday night) for sunset. It is now less than a 10 minute walk from my hotel.




This morning, I decided to walk to work. It took about an hour (including a slight detour to Starbucks!).

I first passed by a small pond near my hotel


where I met a goose and two ducks along the path.


I was a little concerned because the goose kept honking at me, until I realized they just wanted food. Later on, a duck flew up to me hoping for food as well.


Today at work, we installed the racks in the plane. That's mine in the foreground:


Tonight, we went to Monterey again for dinner. From our table, we could see the restaurant we ate at three nights ago:


Other than that fence, the view was nice!



UPDATE: This is a picture Thomas took of (L to R) me, Abhinav, and Pawel after we got the rack into the plane.

Moss Landing

It was a productive day -- I'm pretty much done installing my instrument in its rack.


Tonight for dinner we went to Moss Landing. There were several sea lions sleeping on the docks.



I walked out to the closest unoccupied dock to take this picture.


Then we had dinner at Phil's Fish Market.

Monterey

With the arrival of the rest of the scientists from Boulder, I've moved out of the house in Salinas and into a hotel in Marina.

This evening, we went to Monterey for dinner. We parked at Fisherman's Wharf:


The wharf was full of sea lions, harbor seals, pelicans, sea gulls, and cormorants. I took several pictures of this sea lion basking on a rock (to the left in the first picture).



We walked down Cannery Row, which wasn't all that exciting.



After a nice dinner at a seafood restaurant, we walked back along the wharf -- and the sea lion was still there!


Swimming nearby was another sea lion. It happened to look at me as I was taking its picture.


I'm mostly done with the installation of my instrument into its rack. Maybe tomorrow I'll have it running on the ground.

Installation on the CIRPAS Twin Otter

I am now in Salinas, California to install my instrument on the CIRPAS Twin Otter. CIRPAS stands for the Center for Interdisciplinary Remotely-Piloted Aircraft Studies, and is part of the Naval Postgraduate School. The school is in Monterey, but the hangar is up the road in Marina. I'll be here for about a week installing, then I'll hand over control of my instrument to a graduate student from Cal.

Last night, we swung by Marina State Beach.


It was extremely windy


so most people stayed in their cars, then jumped out to take pictures of the sunset.


Today was a productive day. I got most of the big things into my rack.


Eventually, it will go into the Twin Otter.

MRI and Self-Diagnosis

After researching the web for images of heatlhy and injured menisci and ACLs, I can't find anything obviously wrong with my meniscus. Unfortunately, I don't think my ACL looks very good.

The left image shows my PCL as a nice dark band. I can't find a slice of my knee that shows the same for my ACL. At best, it looks gray and frayed, like in the image on the right.


I showed both Sara and Terri over Skype's webcam, and they agree. Unfortunately, I won't go to the doctor again until two weeks from today, since I'll be out of town working this next week.

The Fox and the Magpie

As I was walking to my car after work today, I saw a fox sitting on some rocks near a construction site next to the parking lot. Two magpies were squawking at it.


One magpie kept pecking at the fox's back.


This went on for about five minutes. When the magpie went after the fox's tail, the fox had finally had enough!


Unfortunately, Google compresses the video so you can't quite see the details.