Mothers Day Weekend 2017

Alas, this post doesn't actually include Mom herself, but it was a weekend full of activity and friendship!  Friday after school, Lick colleague, Mariel and I took BART to Hayward and met up with my Head-Royce colleague Chris for drinks and merriment.

After dinner, we stumbled upon a video game arcade, yeah that kind of arcade.  Although no quarters needed (it's $5 for all you can play in one hour), we went back in time to play Ms. PacMan, Frogger, Dig Dug and lots of driving games!

So those of you who know my issues around "paninis" know what I'm freaking out about here!

Saturday afternoon, Onions and my friend Jeff (second from left) from Beijing was up in Marin County with his partner Terry (second from right).  I picked up their friend Ed (left) and we met up and went on a hike called the Steep Ravine hike from the west side of Mt. Tam down to the coast.

Done!

We ended just south of Stinson Beach, what a glorious day.

We discovered that there are cabins and campgrounds at the bottom base of Steep Ravine for rent from the State Park system.  Yeah, nothing available for the rest of the year!

Sunday, Mother's Day itself, and I arranged for Onions and I to go indoor skydiving!

That's the skydiving tube right there.

 Here are some video clips of us in the tube.  It's WAY harder than it seems.

Flying Ernie

Flying Onions

Still with a few hours left on this glorious afternoon, we headed over to Coyote Hills Regional Park, which I found just on Apple Maps.  It was a great place, with rolling hills right along the way north of the Dumbarton Bridge.

Looking southwest towards San Jose

The wetlands just east of the hills, looking towards Hayward and Union City. 

The weekend ended with Mongolian Hot Pot. Usually, I'm not a fan, but this time I was into it.  Onions was happy because he LOVES Hot Pot and now will have my satisfaction as reason for us to go more often!

Chen Ten -- Spring 2017 Edition

Two Years Down, Two Years To Go!

Scenes of Kansas City

After the Black Men's Think Tank morning, the weather was beautiful and I took the afternoon to go down to the World War I Memorial.  In the years after the Great War, the citizens donated money to build this monument and museum and named it Liberty Park. It is now a National Memorial.

This view looking north from the monument is the classic view of Kansas City with Union Station in the foreground and downtown behind it.

The Memorial entering from the south and the entrance to the Museum itself.

The interior entrance to the museum takes is a glass bridge over red poppies, the symbol of the fallen of WWI.  The red poppy became the symbol of the war from the poem, "In Flanders Fields"

I became particularly attuned to WWI after listening to the amazing podcast by Dan Carlin and his Hardcore History series.  In it I learned that WWI was particularly brutal due to trench warfare.  This is a recreated trench.....there were other models that showed a more realistic trench with much and walls that were collapsing.

It was the first war that was mechanized and therefore the casualties were greater.  Mechanized death.  In the museum, I learned the difference between a cannon, gun and howitzer.

To me, the most interesting things to see were the propaganda posters.

Even in ITALIAN!

I learned the Blue Stars meant a family member was overseas in service.  And we know gold stars mean a family member has died in service to the country.

One interesting thing that the museum ended with is a scene of NYC.  It was in stark contrast to the beginning of the museum which had scenes of European cities.  It proffered that the center of world power moved from Europe to the United States.

If you look back to the first photos of the memorial, you'll see two smaller buildings, these turned out to be the most interesting buildings.

Inside of of was this amazing mural that I was unable to photograph because of lighting, but these flags represent the countries of the Allied Forces.  On this side, the flags at the far end entered first in chronological order......and Greece last (in this set)

....on this side The United States after Greece but then moving chronologically away towards the far wall.

In the other twinned building, I was about to grab some of the ceiling level murals.

But it was these wall maps, that detailed major battles of the war that were amazing. It reminded me of the map room corridor in the Vatican Museums.

That evening, a couple colleagues and I went out for BBQ at the famed Arthur Bryant's

I learned what Burnt Ends are.....most importantly, no bones!

Walking around one day, I happened upon this place!

On the last day of the conference, I snuck away to get some more BBQ at a place called Jack Stack.  It's clearly more of a restaurant as compared to Bryant's.  I preferred the messiness and atmosphere of Bryant's.

The saga of the flight home below, but this shows our flight path.

So our flight from Kansas City to San Francisco was scheduled to depart MCI at 1845 Central Time and arrive into SFO at 2053 Pacific Time.  Due to the fact that SFO was doing construction/maintenance on of of the two landing runways, we were under air traffic control until they could schedule our flight for a landing slot.  We eventually departed MCI at 2350 Central Time.  I napped on the flight but did notice some hubbub a few rows up.  Then at 130AM the pilot comes on to tell us we are diverting to Fresno.  And the plane just descended quicker that I have ever experienced.  We were on the ground in 15 minutes. A passenger had experienced a medical emergency and was taken off the plane by medics. And so we sat there wondering...what next?  We were informed that the Fresno airport (FAT is its code) was officially closed.  They had to reopen the airport to have our plane refueled, and it is law that the emergency medical equipment that was used needed to be replaced.  While that was happening, the airline had to file a new flight plan and get a slot at SFO (at this time, not a problem apparently).  But the real issue is that the crew had to off the clock by 341AM because that's when they reached their 12 hour day limit.  At 310AM, we took off and landed at SFO at 348AM.  It took the airport 15 minutes to find someone to drive the jetway to let us off, and so we were finally off the place at just after 4AM.  We did find out that the passenger was at the hospital and in stable condition.  I didn't go to sleep that night and just went to the gym at 6AM.