Work/Play Bay Area Trip

I just wrapped up another Bay Area visit—there is some degree of familiar sameness to all of these visits, but then again, each is also distinctly memorable in its own way.


I gave the three presentations in two days to pretty positive results from the audience—I figured this was my ‘hat trick’ of conferencing. I sat in on an afternoon meeting on behalf of a coworker as well—but I did manage to earmark some time to hang out with friends at the conference. Also spent an hour or so on the beach, writing a few postcards—the conference is held at the Asilomar Conference Center near Monterey, which has a beautiful campus, right on the beach. Some photos of my time there here--check out how much the fog rolls in.


Not too bad. Glad I got to dip my feet into the Pacific, unlike the last time I was at this conference. Plus a shot of some washed-ashore kelp.


Then I caught a ride up to South Bay; Schmooz and Jen hosted a low-key shindig at their place. We were joined by folks who work down in the area plus families (Bradley and Janie, and Lucky, Karthiga, Jayshan, and Arvin) and Perlick and Jess (both moving to the Bay Area). Perlick had successfully completed his house-hunting and car-browsing mission in preparation for his move out here. It was really great to see so many folks there. Plus the Bay Area is getting an influx of people—Jofish, Perlick, Jess, and Janet are all moving there soon!

Photos from the visit on Flickr.


Headed up to the city the next morning, and had takeout lunch with U-Boat and Christy at the Instructables office. Remember… never go anywhere without your robot mascot!


I had made plans to spend the afternoon at Fort Point, a Civil-war era fort/battery that is directly underneath the San Francisco side of the Golden Gate bridge, and is now a National Parks Historic Site. It’s been on my list of places to visit, based on a New York Times article (“Guns on San Francisco Bay, and the Hiking Trails Left Behind”). Jess joined me on this trip, despite my warnings that extensive infrastructure dorkery might be involved.


The cannon were placed there to maintain security for San Francisco harbor as its importance grew during the Gold Rush. The overlapping fields of fire from Fort Point, Alcatraz, and other batteries would have made entrance into the bay by unfriendly ships near-impossible. The fort was also manned to defend against the Confederates during the Civil War…. it made me wonder—this was before the Panama Canal, so attacking San Francisco would have taken a lot of work. (“What, we’re sailing most of the way to the South Pole and back, just to make a symbolic attack on a West Coast port? And then need to get home? Sure, sign me up!”). Aha: The Confederate raider CSS Shenandoah planned to attack San Francisco, but on the way to the harbor the captain learned that the war was over; it was August 1865. It was still active during World War II, but decommissioned after that.

The MUNI bus drops you off at the toll plaza just before the Golden Gate bridge—there’s a section of the bridge cable on display; check out the close ups of the section--there are 27,572 individual steel strands, each about 0.192 inches in diameter. For those of you who don’t know how suspension bridges are built, they first build the towers, and then temporary walkways where the main cables are going. Then they send the hanging spools of cable back and forth from anchorage to anchorage, laying down the main cables strand by strand. Whoah. (check out this article).


The fort itself is a brick structure with walls 5 to 7 feet thick. I entertained myself extensively looking at the rust shadows and bolt holes at the gun emplacements, to figure out what was arranged where (“Oh, okay, there must have been a round track here, and a pivot point over there.”) Also wandered down to the exhibit of their powder magazine for the canon…. kinda like a wine cellar, but different, I guess.


I engaged in serious infrastructure dorkery—I stayed long enough that the Park Rangers kicked me out at 5 PM.

But even without the dorkery, the views from the fort are just spectacular, in all directions. Checking out the bridge from underneath, sea lions, the ships going in and out of the harbor, the breakers rolling down the rocks, the kite surfers getting mad air…. The view of San Francisco is from the opposite side that I am used to seeing (i.e., typically from the East Bay or the Bay Bridge).



My evening plans fell through (the lovely and brilliant Dr. O was running up against a work deadline, and had to cancel dinner plans), so I had a great dinner at Isla Tortuga. It included U-Boat’s experiments in making sauerkraut—very entertaining, even without the tasty results!


And here I am, on a coast-to-coast airplane ride, summarizing the trip. Many thanks to all of my friends for their wonderful hospitality and/or willingness to hang out while I was bumming around town!

Argh… tired… but still on West Coast time…