moments in sandwich history (#1)

remember when subway used to cut that tiny little wedge out of the top of the bread, put all the meat and veggies into the small void they created, and then attempt to put that little piece of bread back on top? what a weird way to make a sandwich.

Pinnacles

our plan for this past sunday was to head south down the 101 to pinnacles national monument, for some hiking and camping.



pinnacles is less than two hours from santa cruz; however, it's on the opposite side of the santa cruz mountain range, resulting in a vastly different climate and landscape. it was over 20 degrees hotter at pinnacles than back home in santa cruz. the drive was through gorgeous rolling hills and ranch land.



we took two lovely hikes through the spires and valleys of the park. the first was up to an overlook amongst the rock formations that are the parks namesake:



the second brought us through a valley, up a pretty dry river bed, and through some tight caverns to a small mountain reservoir:



after our hikes we retired to our campground and took a refreshing dip in the kidney shaped swimming pool. once we found ourselves sufficiently cooled by the soothing waters we made our way to our campsite. we snacked on kosher beef sausage and crackers, and marveled as deer meandered right through our site.



our evening took a very unexpected turn when we realized that we had forgotten the key to our car-top thule box, which contained our tent, sleeping bags, camp chairs, stove, etc. after coming to the conclusion that one night of camping wasn't worth destroying the lock on our box, we headed for home, a bit earlier than planned. we capped the night off with a delivery pizza by a backyard fire. it's not camping, but it's not bad either.

bike ride home

this is a video i (david) made of a portion of my bike ride home from work. i made it by strapping our mini-tripod to my handle bars. in the video i claim it is my whole ride home, but i stopped filming after exiting the ucsc campus. the roads got pretty bumpy, and i decided it was a bit dangerous to keep trying to adjust the camera while dealing with auto traffic. plus, i don't need any creeps following me home. the music featured in this short is by old crow medicine show and the thrills. you can imagine that it is the music stuck in my head on my ride home.



links to this and our other homemade films are available on the video page of our website.

my enthusiasm was curbed

last week i was in cape cod for a conference on ribosomes. i had some difficulty getting there because both of my flights were delayed. it wasn't to big of a deal though.

for the return, i was scheduled to depart boston's logan airport at 4:30 pm, fly from logan to o'hare, and then from o'hare to norman mineta (san jose). to make a long story a bit shorter, there was a huge storm that stretched from texas to canada and shut down east to west air travel across this great land of ours. the result was that i got switched to a direct flight to san francisco and spent hours sitting in the airport bar, on a plane on the tarmac, and in a rental car. i finally got home at about 4:00 am. travel stinks.

the real point of this entry is that while i was waiting in the airport, i took some snapshots of my surroundings. very little of interest turned up, except that i think larry david (creater of seinfeld and curb your enthusiasm) was waiting for the same flight as me.



sorry for the poor quality of the photos, but i was under less than ideal conditions with the light coming from behind him, and having to take the pictures using stealthy surreptitiousness.

does larry david fly coach or is this simply his doppelganger?

new stuff

we got a new hammock while we were in peru. there is nothing particularly peruvian about hammocks, but it seemed like too good of an item to pass up. we sunk a couple of posts into the ground on either end of our back deck, secured them to the deck, poured a little concrete, and voila, we had ourselves an ideal spot for late afternoon r&r (marta also got a new hat at a garage sale around the block).



for david's 29th birthday his lovely wife marta got him, among other things, a fantastic new badminton set. we took it down to seabright beach to give it a test run, and as billed, it is fantastic. we were like a regular aparna popat and jack purcell out there today and would love to take anyone on who might make it out to santa cruz.

staple news

it has been a while since we spoke of anything other than our triumphant southern hemisphere travels.

now that we're back in santa cruz, we're back to work. i (marta) changed jobs recently. i left the los gatos ob/gyn practice that i've been working with for 6 months. i found a position as a women's health nurse practitioner in a large community-based clinic that serves mostly migrant farmworkers (they pick your strawberries) in watsonville, ca. the work is harder but the drive is much shorter and easier. you can find out about my new clinic at www.saludparalagente.org.

david is on his way to cape cod this week for a science conference. (read: week long party).

we kind of miss peru.

peru photos

they are finally sorted, cropped, commented, and on the information super highway. you can find the photos of our peruvian excursion at http://davidandmarta.com/photos.html. we also have some new videos, including the return of music video of the week, and a new photo of the week. now that this major photographic project is complete, you can expect us to return to regularly updating our site and blog.