Mild Amusements in the Bay Area

The last week or so has been pretty eventful.

There was the wonderful annular eclipse.  I drove 4.5+ hours north with two others from work.  We ended up in Redding, CA where a bunch of other astronomy enthusiasts were.  One of those that I was with had a lovely telescope for which he just happened to have a solar filter.  This made the viewing fantastic.  We had at our disposal several pairs of solar-view glasses.  I made a pinhole projection because I felt the need to contribute something.

Here is the result of my pinhole at the center of the eclipse.

The next day, I went to San Francisco to see a concert at night.  I ate at a delicious Venezuelan restaurant.  The cab drivers of Mountain View were too busy trying to jump start their cars and taking fares that involved several people to take me back to my lodgings (really, one asked me where I was going and then they proceeded to ignore me).   I had a fun two-mile walk at 1 a.m.

Then Air Force One landed on base.  I got yelled at for taking pictures from the wrong prospective and had to move so I could take this one.  Apparently, the US doesn't want pictures of the plane's butt.

I went to San Jose on Saturday with a friend from college that happens to be in the area.  We went to the Winchester Mystery House.  They wouldn't let us take pictures inside due to copyright.  Someone took out copyrights on every room in that house.  I also ended up on a tour with a birthday party full of 8-year-old girls.  Fortunately, before the tour "officially" started and before I was told not to take pictures, I took this one of a door that opens to a wall.

The woman that owned the mansion would talk to the spirits to receive the instructions on how to modify the home.  She was never to complete the project.  At the end of the tour, I realized that I hadn't seen the staircase to the ceiling, so I asked the tour guide where it had been.  She got another tour guide to take me back through the house on paths not taken by the tour so I could see it.  The amusing part is that they misunderstood me, and I ended up seeing several things that I wouldn't have otherwise seen in the process of trying to explain what I hadn't seen.  That made the tour almost worth $30.

I went to San Francisco again on what turned out to be the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Unfortunately, my less-than-adventurous travel partner did not want to stick around for those festivities, so we drove across it, and that was it.  I then braved the cable cars reluctantly (they are really cool, but they are just a tourist attraction, really...and one that I had experienced a year ago).  I went to the Cable Car Museum, where there are giant wheels turning the underground cables for the cars.  That was pretty neat, and I hadn't been to that before.  I ended up at Fishermen's Wharf, which was absolutely packed with tourists.  I got to see some sea lions hanging out.