It’s humbling to see the lengths he must go to in order to communicate, regardless of the import or impact of his ideas.

Of course he’s a scientific genius, and he has a lovely, gently dry sense of humor that tends to sneak up on the unwary.

It’s also very neat to know that the new Pasadena Convention Center was packed to capacity for a scientific lecture. That says something fundamental about the community.

It also says something fundamental about science and public science communication that, both in his presentation and in the other presenters remarks bracketing his talk, there were many, many references to Star Trek. “To boldly go where no one has gone before” has become so embedded in the psyche of everyone who works and dreams of humanity’s future in space. Gene Roddenberry’s hopeful vision of our future, the idealism that embodies, the wonder of exploration, and the depiction that just about everyone can make some kind of a useful contribution to that effort… these concepts capture the imagination of science geeks and science fans and everyday people in ways that are difficult to describe, and difficult to quantify, but it provides a shared philosophical vocabulary shorthand that we all collectively speak.

Yes, we’d like a moon base. Yes, we’d like a Mars base. Yes, we’d like a base on Europa.

Meanwhile, I will never, ever tire of seeing successful shuttle launches; I send good thoughts to the astronauts and ground crew of Discovery as it launches tonight.

Yes, we’re going to make remarkable progress figuring out if earth-like planets are common or rare in our galaxy. Go Kepler, go!

(Side note: if I say “Class M” instead of “earth-like”, how many of you understand what I mean? That’s a fictional classification… see what I mean about how deeply embedded Star Trek terminology is in our cultural vocabulary?)

Yes, we’re going to start making progress figuring out if simple life is common or rare on earth-like planets.

And yes, someday, if we don’t blow ourselves up or squander the resources of this precious, precious home of ours beyond its ability to support us and our efforts in explorations and analysis, we will figure out if intelligent life is common or rare on earth-like planets that support simple life.

And we might, just might, figure out if the behavior of intelligent life on habitable worlds toward an unfortunate path leading to its own destruction is common or rare.

I’m with Dr. Hawking on much of this; I hypothesize that earth-like worlds are not uncommon, and that the development of simple life is not rare, and that the development of intelligent life is not common.

I would like to believe that, in general, intelligent life does not commonly destroy itself or squander the resources of the worlds which supported its growth.

And I would like to believe that we can intelligently utilize the resources of our little planet without destroying ourselves or its ability to provide hospitality for us and for the diversity of life which surrounds us here.

And apparently, a whole conference center full of people in Pasadena feel the same way, and are also passing that feeling, that inspiration, along… in their workplaces, in their activism, in their passions, in their blogs and dinner table conversations.

I guess this little post is my contribution to the collective human hive-mind of the internet for today…. yes to hope, yes to discovery, yes to exploration, yes to idealism, yes to science being approachable and open and inspiring, and yes to public discourse on science being celebrated.

Here’s how I explained what I do for a living to an interested, intelligent, non-computer-inclined person:

You were curious about my work…

When I say “IT” I mean “information technology” — computers, networks, databases, and software programs.

Since nowadays much of IT is perceived to be like city power, water or sewer by end-user customers (email and the network to the internet is Just Supposed To Work, you know?), much of the IT project management work I do with the IT teams at USC is way, way, way behind the scenes of the university. But every now and then, I and the teams I work with are a tiny piece of some larger university-wide initiative that has a significant dependency on IT and the services we provide… and sometimes, there’s a really huge initiative.

Lots of my extended family members have no real clue what I do in my job.

I sometimes tell people that I make my living “herding computer geeks”. I’m an IT project manager, and offering the shorthand humor is easier and faster than providing a real explanation, which they might not be interested in anyway. I try not to offer too much technobabble unless someone intentionally asks for it!

A big company (that has since gone out of business) made a commercial to run during the Superbowl one year to advertise their IT project management and integration services. They used to offer (on a very large scale for very big companies) what I do on the scale of the university… their commercial kind of sums up what I do: EDS Cat Herders

The word “sysadmin” or “systems administrator” may be unfamiliar to you. That was my job title before one of my very savvy bosses here at USC figured out I could manage really complex projects with grace and aplomb, could give fairly polished presentations to high-powered committees and wear a suit comfortably, and also could still get technical enough to befriend the geeks and get them to work together to help get our projects done on time. (I hand out a lot of cookies in my internal meetings… you probably wouldn’t believe how much work most geeks will do if you just appreciate our work and then give out cookies!)

Here’s a site explaining what sysadmins do, and the little holiday they’ve tried to get started; they’re the unsung heroes of the internet, and the digital effects and animation that Hollywood depends on nowadays all runs on computer servers run by sysadmins, too: www.sysadminday.com

And yeah, sysadmins are geeks, and that’s kind of cool, in a geeky way: www.sysadminday.com/people.html

Sysadmins maintain the big computer servers in special facilities called data centers: www.sysadminday.com/hardware.html

One of the first big projects I managed at USC a couple years ago was the relocation of about 200 Unix servers from our old data center to our new data center, without breaking the services that our customers depend on (like email, or the calendar, or the software Blackboard that professors use to teach their classes, or the www.usc.edu website server) — my project team on that relocation project was about a dozen sysadmins plus a half-dozen hardware specialists. Contrary to expectations prior to my assignment on the project, there was only one complaint from a customer during the entire Unix team’s data center relocation.

Before that, at Caltech, I organized a data center move of about 65 Unix servers, with a team of about three. That project also turned out OK, but I have to recommend scheduling server moves to avoid rainy days unless you have a lot of plastic sheeting to spare.

Good sysadmins bring order from chaos; bad sysadmins make huge messes that give good sysadmins headaches and nightmares like you wouldn’t believe: www.sysadminday.com/horrors.html

If you want more nitty-gritty info on the profession, check out en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_administrator (that page is rather dry and dull, though).

Even though I’m now a project manager and am slowly building my connections in that professional PM community, I’m still active in the professional community of sysadmins, and I’ve got some friends across the globe in an organization called LOPSA (the League of Professional System Administrators) that I see once or twice a year at technical conferences.

LOPSA teams up every year with various conferences, including the sizable one put together by the open-source computing community in Los Angeles called SCaLE (Southern California Linux Expo)… that’s the conference I’m volunteering at on the weekend of February 20-22. My friends Jesse and Chris are teaching classes for LOPSA at the conference.

Your home computer is probably running Windows, or is a Mac. Do you know what Linux is? It’s a computer operating system (sometimes called an “OS”), like Windows or MacOS (one of which is the operating system that your home computer runs). Linux is an open-source variant of Unix, which is yet another operating system. Most of the really big computer servers that make up the internet are running a variant of Unix or Linux, and to a lesser degree, Windows.

I know that Pixar, the movie studio so famous now for so many gorgeous computer-animated films, runs mostly Linux for their animation computers; they seem to always be looking to hire Linux-specialist sysadmins.

Oh, you probably haven’t encountered the term “open-source” before, either. “Open-source” is a design philosophy that emphasizes technical and programming standards available to scrutiny by all, and a communal development environment… basically, it’s geeks designing and programming cool software in full public view of other geeks, so that the entire geeky technical community can contribute, and which will hopefully result in better products for everyone, and give the programmers more of an opportunity to learn from each other for the betterment of all. More info is at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source.

I hope I haven’t lost you in all this technobabble… it’s really not all that complicated, but IT does include a lot of specialized vocabulary that can sound very daunting. I’m happy to translate (from computer geek to English) if anything at all of this is confusing. If you want to know more… just ask.

In exchange, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of questions about your chosen profession at various points… I likely don’t know any of the specialized vocabulary that you use in your daily work activities, since I don’t work in your industry.

Tea makes everything better. In fact, here’s a link to my favorite tea shop: Infusions of Tea

I’m still moving some of my older content from both my shakal.org site and my LiveJournal, but since almost all of the content from shakal.org is now in place, I’m directing visitors here rather than the older site. I’m up to October 2002 in moving content from my LiveJournal, please pardon the construction dust…

If you’ve linked to or bookmarked any of my pages on shakal.org, please update your links and bookmarks, and accept my apologies for the inconvenience. After more than a decade, this website move was really necessary… but if it’s any consolation to those updating links, it’ll probably be at least a decade before I move again.

Thank you for reading here!

While I was doing all of this website spring cleaning, I’ve also heeded the grumbling some of you have sent my way that I didn’t have any photos of myself publicly viewable on Flickr. Fine, fine… I still have a bunch of more recent and some older photos I need to upload there, but here are at least a few so y’all can stop grumbling at me.
flickr.com/photos/naturedance/tags/adele

Current music: Oysterband - Milford Haven

I live passionately, and I focus intently on activities at home and at work. I am a perfectionist endlessly fascinated by life, the universe and everything. This also means that I am endlessly striving for one of those “work-life balance” things I’ve heard so much about.

I believe in imagination. I believe in hope. I believe that the journey to explore ourselves and our world is infinitely engaging.

I believe humanity needs to explore beyond our planet to have a better perspective on ourselves and our universe.

I believe that no single religion has all the answers, nor even all of the questions.

I believe that the United States and our world deserves better than the mess made by megacorporations and politicians.

And I believe that each individual person can make a difference.

I yearn for open spaces and fresh air. I find gardening to be cheaper and more useful than therapy or organized religion. I find peace and solace in wilderness.

However, I also love living in my current urban apartment, which is walking distance from used book stores, a used music store, a lovely little farmers market on weekends, more than a few fabulous restaurants, the public library, and the convenient mass transit rail station.

I enjoy organizing information, writing, reading, crochet, knitting, dancing, sewing, science fiction and fantasy, making jewelry, gardening, going to open-air markets, marking the passage of the seasons, road trips, learning about ancient cultures, camping (day-hiking, car-camping and backpacking in wonderful wild places), and enjoying good food and long talks with good friends.

I retake the Myers-Briggs/Keirsey indicator test every few years, and the results always seem slightly inconsistent; although I’m always coming up a rational NT, the other letters sometimes fluctuate slightly. In 1999, I came up as a Fieldmarshal (eNTj). I also took the Kingdomality test a while back, and apparently, my medieval occupational inclination is to be a Shepherd.

I’m an idealist, a feminist, an environmentalist, an independent thinker, and I care very much about equal rights for everybody regardless of gender or skin color or sexual orientation. I believe very strongly in womens’ rights to control what happens to our own bodies. I believe that the right to self-defense is a fundamental human right. I’m intolerant of intolerance and willful ignorance.

I’m a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, the Nature Conservancy, the Sequoia Natural History Association, Descanso Gardens, the System Administrator’s Guild, the League of Professional System Administrators, and the Project Management Institute.

Whenever my financial situation allows, I donate to the following charities:

• Heifer International
• Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders
• Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
• Wikipedia
• the we campaign to repower America — we can solve the climate crisis

If anyone cares about astrology, I’m a taurus, and my eastern zodiac sign is the water ox. This may have something to do with certain people’s observations that in certain situations, I’m a bit… stubborn.

To be honest, family and friends have actually used the terms “bullheaded”, “tenacious”, and, er… “damn hard to sway about anything” to describe me, though I’m sure they meant that in the best possible way! I take it as a compliment, and my peers and leadership at work certainly value my “sticktoitiveness.”

I love tending plants, and I love visiting gardens, parks and farmers markets.

I’m a member of The Nature Conservancy, The Sequoia Natural History Association, and Descanso Gardens.

I also enjoy visiting the Angeles National Forest, Los Angeles County Arboretum and the Huntington Gardens.

my garden

I’m currently living in an apartment with only the opportunity for indoor houseplants (Christmas cacti, at the moment, though I’d like to have a spider plant as soon as I figure out the best way to hang the pot from my ceiling) and a small container garden on the balcony. 

At various times, I’ve grown herbs and flowers there…

• spearmint
• rosemary
• chives
• succulents
• chrysanthemums
• geraniums and a Martha Washington (aka regal pelargonium)
• daffodils, tulips, irises and other assorted spring bulbs

I have also tried growing the following, but parts of the balcony get too hot and one year a nasty whitefly infestation took over…

• oregano
• basil
• dill
• parsley
• different pepper varieties
• different tomato varieties

farmers markets

The next best thing to growing food yourself is shopping for it at a local farmers market.

• California Federation of Certified Farmers Markets
• LocalHarvest “maintains a definitive and reliable “living” public nationwide directory of small farms, farmers markets, and other local food sources.”
• AMS at USDA has a list of farmers markets by state.
• Farmers Market Online has an open air market directory, too.
• The Chef2Chef portal has a directory of farmers markets by state, too.
• An interesting behind-the-scenes look at farmers markets: ATTRA - National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service’s Farmers’ Markets Marketing & Business Guide

my dream-garden

In the garden of my imagination, I have a yard filled with beautiful plants, flowers, herbs, fruits, vegetables, trees… I count the following online suppliers among the wishbooks of my dreams… (but before I order anything in reality, I’d check out a forum like The Garden Watchdog to make sure there’s no recent history of trouble with the companies order processing or products!)

• Gardener’s Supply Company
• Dutch Gardens
• Schreiners Iris Gardens
• Smith & Hawken
• Gardens Alive!
• Van Engelen, Inc., John Scheepers and Kitchen Garden Seeds
• Breck’s
• Burpee
• Park’s Gardens
• Spring Hill Nurseries
• Henry Field’s Seed & Nursery
• Seymour’s Selected Seeds
• Pepper Joe’s
• Heirloom Seeds
• Victory Seed Company
• Seeds Trust
• Wildflower Farms
• The Heirloom Vegetable Gardener’s Assistant
• GreenPeople.org

• Geology Underfoot in Southern California by Robert P. Sharp and Allen F. Glazner
• Wild Southern California - great site, lots of info and links
• Plants Blooming Now Outside The San Gabriel Mountains - from Introduction to Field Guide to the San Gabriel Mountains and Hikes in the San Gabriel Mountains Websites

Death Valley Sites

• Geology Underfoot in Death Valley and Owens Valley by Robert P. Sharp and Allen F. Glazner
• Death Valley National Park official site
• Death Valley National Park: Resources & Nearby Attractions (DesertUSA)
• The Dancing Rocks of Death Valley
  • Smithsonian Magazine’s 1999 article
  • The Mystery of the Rocks on the Racetrack at Death Valley by Lena Fletcher and Anne Nester
  • Fletcher, Lena and Nester, Anne, The Mystery of the Rocks on the Racetrack at Death Valley, Smith College geology paper, 1997.
  • Messina, P., Stoffer, P., and Clarke, K. C. “Mapping Death Valley’s Wandering Rocks.” GPS World April, 1997: p. 34-44
  • Reid, J.B., Jr., Bucklin, E.P., Copenagle, L., Kidder, J., Pack, S. M., Polissar, P.J., and Williams, M. L., 1995, Sliding rocks at the Racetrack, Death Valley:What makes them move?: Geology, v. 23, p. 819-822
  • Sharp, R.P., and Carey, D.L., 1976, Sliding Stones, Racetrack Playa, California: Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 87, p. 1704-1717
  • Sharp, R.P., Carey, D. L., Reid, J.B., Jr., Polissar, P.J., and Williams, M.L., 1996, Sliding rocks at the Racetrack, Death Valley: What makes them move?; Discussion and Reply: Geology, v. 25, p. 766-767
  • Stanley, G. M., 1955, Origin of playa stone tracks, Racetrack Playa, Inyo County, California: Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 66, p. 1329-1350.

Mojave Sites

• Calico Early Man Archaeological Site - California Online Highways
• Barstow California - California Online Highways
• Barstow Region - Digital Desert

Angeles National Forest Sites

• Hikes in the San Gabriel Mountains and the Angeles National Forest
• Index of San Gabriel Mountains Reports by Jane Strong - Observations about the Natural History–Weather, Rocks, Plants and Animals–of the San Gabriel Mountains with Links
• Echo Mountain Echoes websites from the Echo Mountain Echoes newsletter site

As always, more works are in progress… and I don’t seem capable of creating small projects for myself.

Afghans are portable hugs. Many of these afghans use a star-stitch pattern I learned from Leisure Arts A Year Of Q-Hook Afghans Book 2, the June pattern.

Now, if I can just untangle my fingers from all this yarn strewn about, I can tell you about my crochet projects… or you can go see them in my Crochet set on Flickr.

yarn barnage

This is a list of all of my completed projects, plus a few which are currently in progress.

• The Forest Green Baby Blanket - for friends R&J, begun summer 2007 and hopefully completed Real Soon Now
• The Cream/Navy Afghan - for cousin R for her wedding, begun spring 2005 and hopefully completed Real Soon Now
  • (Unfortunately I’m a couple years late finishing this; there was some confusion about which colors she wanted and my career chaos intervened…) Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick-n-Quick yarn, similar to the Poodle Afghan, but in cream and navy.
• The Jewel Green Lap Afghan - for friend R, begun winter 2004/2005 and hopefully completed Real Soon Now
  • Using Lion Brand Jiffy yarn.
• The Purple Scarf - for friend R, completed for New Years 2005
• The Purple Baby Blanket - for cousin R, completed spring 2005
  • One strand of Bernat Baby Coordinates, very lacy.
• The Yellow Baby Blanket - for D&S, completed summer 2004
  • I managed to get this one done on time, unlike their wedding blanket. One strand of Bernat Baby Coordinates, very lacy.
• The Green Baby Blanket - for J&N, completed summer 2004
  • N’s been crafting a lot himself lately, but I wanted to make a blanket for their new little one. Two strands of Bernat Baby Coordinates, very fluffy.
• The Green Baby Blanket - for Mom’s friend, completed spring 2004
  • Mom made a matching knitted baby hat with a little tassle on the top. They turned out beautifully.
• The Purple Baby Blanket - for H&D, completed spring 2004
  • Of course this one had to be purple. Two strands of Bernat Baby Coordinates, very fluffy.
• The Wedding Couch Scarf - for D&S, completed spring 2004
  • Yet another friend from college is now married… they couldn’t seem to decide on colors, so I chose a variegated yarn and ended up pleased with it.
• The Housewarming/Wedding Throw - for M&L, completed year unknown
  • This one is very similar to the Winter White afghan I made for Mom, but used only two strands of Red Heart. The yarn is flecked with black, brown, and tan bits, so it has a bit of a more rustic look to it. Turned out nice and thick, but drapey rather than as heavy as the three-strander I made for Mom.
• The Lavender/Turquoise/Blue/White Baby Blanket - for J&B, completed year unknown
  • Three strands of Bernat Baby Coordinates, cozily thick for Colorado.
• The Creamsicle Throw - for myself, completed year unknown
  • Started because I really did want one small enough for the couch.
• The Creamsicle Afghan - for myself, completed year unknown
  • Three strands of Red Heart again, and a throwback to my first orthogonal pattern which turned out very airy and soft when done with my huge Q-hook. This one is pale yellow, white, and peach, which when done together look, well, creamsicle-like. I was inspired by a beautiful cuddly foofy couch throw of S’s which is wedgewood and rose variegated and multistrand and just lovely and wonderful. But mine kind of… grew… it’s big enough to use on the queen-sized bed.
• The Water Bottle Carrier - a birthday present for my friend J, completed year unknown
  • This was my first non-doily attempt at thread crochet. I’m pleased with it.
• The Set of Navy Winter Scarves - for Mom & Dad, completed year unknown
  • I don’t remember which year these were, but I used two strands of a soft acryllic and they turned out beautifully. Dad’s is very, very long because he’s tall and likes to be able to wrap a scarf a few times around his neck and then tuck in the ends into his winter coat.
• The Hexagon Throw - for my friends J&B, finished Fall 2001
  • I obviously bought way too much Red Heart at once, but I adore the Grape Ivy vareigated colors, so I decided to make giant overgrown granny hexagon. It turned out to be a lap-sized throw.
• Winter White, Navy and Maroon Oversized Afghan - for Dad, finished Christmas 2001
  • I used Red Heart for this one, too, but it’s done with two strands rather than the three I used for Mom’s lap afghan. It’s a huge ripple afghan, made wide enough to wrap around two people or cover a queen-sized bed, and long enough that my 6′2″ Dad can tuck it under his toes and still pull it up to his chin easily. The blue bands are two strands of navy, the maroon and winter white bands are one strand of each.
• The Poodle Afghan - made for my cousin S for her wedding, finished Fall 2001
  • No, it doesn’t have poodles on it. Nor did I use poodle-fur yarn. Nope, it’s the poodle afghan because one of the colors is a dark grey that looks, well, poodle-colored. This one is the same basic pattern as Mom’s winter white lap afghan, but made larger and with Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick-n-Quick yarn. I love this yarn. Mom made a pair of matching quillows to go with it.
• Adele’s First Thread Crochet Project - a doily for Mom, started in 2000 and still in progress
  • It’s a spiralling pattern, and it’s still not done. Pheh. As of spring 2008, I’m still poking at it sometimes. I find thread crochet to be harder on the hands than yarn crochet.
• Winter White Lap Afghan - made for Mom, finished Christmas 2000
  • Once again, Red Heart. Of course, I chose a pattern which called for much thicker weight yarn, so I used the recommended Q hook size, but worked with three strands at once. The resulting lap afghan is quite heavy and very warm.
• The Granny Flower Garden Afghan - for myself, started in 2000 and still in progress
  • More Red Heart, this time a whole lotta lotta hexagons. This project is kind of stalled at the moment, but I haven’t given up on it yet.
• Adele’s First Big Honkin’ Afghan - for myself, finished sometime in 2000
  • Or, “Adele learns a new stitch and how to read a pattern.” I used Red Heart because it is the beginner yarn. Durable, no dye lots to fret with, forgiving and inexpensive. I started out making a granny square, and well, it grew. A lot.
• The Jeweltone Couch Scarf - for Janis, completed… year unknown, sometime prior to 2000ish
  • I don’t remember which year this was, but I used a beautiful variegated acryllic and a pattern of double crochets and chains similar to my white shawl, and it ended up big enough to curl up under on a couch, or to take to the office to sling around shoulders when office AC was too enthusiastic.
• Adele’s First Ever Crochet Project - a yarn shawl/throw, started in 1992 and finished sometime… later.
  • I have no idea what kind of yarn it is; some sort of acryllic with a pearly strand running through it. I knew precisely one stitch when I designed the pattern… it’s all double crochets and chains, and is almost painfully orthogonal. But I still like it.

• Travel to Burbank (LAX Airport to LA Union Station "FlyAway Bus" Service, Layover in Union Station, Connecting with Adele, and then Union Station to Downtown Burbank commuter rail service via Metrolink)
• Camping and Hiking Plans
• Getting back to LAX after the hike
• Trip Photos on Flickr

Travel to Burbank

LAX Airport to LA Union Station "FlyAway Bus" Service

The FlyAway buses pick up at every LAX terminal on the Arrival/Lower level under the green signs indicating "FlyAway, Buses and Long-Distance Vans." They depart LAX every 30 minutes on the hour and half-hour during the time Dad’s flight should be arriving.

According to the FlyAway website, "Passengers traveling from LAX to Union Station, and who did not previously purchase roundtrip tickets, must pay bus fare upon arrival at the ticket kiosk adjacent to LAX FlyAway stop at Berth 9 at Patsaouras Transit Plaza. Payment for tickets is with cash only."

When in doubt, just ask the driver how to pay for your ticket, and be sure to have cash on hand to pay for the $6 roundtrip ticket to Union Station.

More information:

• http://www.lawa.org/flyaway/
• http://www.metro.net/flyaway/
• http://www.mta.net/news_info/press/metro_037.htm

Layover in Union Station

This is the advice I gave to Dad…

The FyAway bus will drop you off at berth 9 (the little beige circle 9 on the map) in the open-air bus plaza. You’ll want to go down the ramp, stairs, elevator or escalator to get one level down from the ground level of the bus plaza down into Union Station itself, and you can do that in the center of the gray oval of the bus plaza, or in the half-circular dome in the building across the street from berth 3.

Once you’re in the half-circular dome, make sure you take time to enjoy both the dome overhead and the tiled floor beneath your feet; they’re really neat. Visible from the center of the domed lobby, looking north, east and south, there’s an aquarium, snack counter, and neat fountains if you’ve got a layover. There’s also a big mural to the west, up above the entrance of the tunnel hallway that goes to the trains and the historic part of the station.

• Multi-part environment in the Union Station east lobby, conceived by Richard Wyatt, May Sun, and Paul Diez, City of Dreams/River of History, 1995.

The escalator and stairs to the southwest from the domed lobby go down another level to the Metro Red Line subway but unless you’re actually taking the Red Line to go somewhere, you don’t need to go down there, and there’s not much to see aside from the wall-mounted neon art piece near the escalator, which is best observed from the top-of-the-escalator level:

• Bill Bell, Atrain, 1995. If you want to see more than flashing lights, you have to stand in the right spot and spend a bit of time squinting your eyes just right.

If you’re traveling by Metrolink commuter train, you’ll want to buy your ticket either from a machine on the north wall of the tunnel-hallway that goes westward from the half-circular dome. If you have trouble with the machine, you can get help at the Metro Information Center counter where there are also MetroLink personnel along the north wall of the half-circular dome. Be sure you’re buying a Metrolink ticket if that is your intent; Metro is not the same thing as Metrolink.

Once you’ve got your ticket and can enjoy the rest of your layover, you’ll want to walk down the sloping tunnel hallway westward from the half-circular dome past tracks 1 through 12 into the historical part of Union Station, which has really lovely architecture. That’s the gray hallway and the black-circled 1-12 on the map above.

At the other end of the sloping tunnel is the big lobby with comfy chairs, a newsstand, coffeeshop and a restaurant that’s usually open for lunch and dinner (though the lunch service was really, really slow the day we were there; we would have needed two hours for lunch at least).

• LA Union Station, Interior.

There’s also an outdoor garden waiting area just south of the newsstand and main lobby.

• LA Union Station, Outdoor Waiting Area.

More information about Union Station architecture and history:

• http://www.parkives.com/famous_union.html
• http://www.westworld.com/~elson/larail/laus.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Station_(Los_Angeles)
• http://www.metro.net/about_us/metroart/

If your layover is really long, you may want to explore historic Olvera Street which is outside and across the intersection to the west of the historic side of Union Station a bit, but it’s very urban; if you have lots of gear, it’ll be impractical.

Connecting with Adele

The morning of Dad’s arrival, I worked a half-day and took the USC shuttle bus back to Union Station at mid-day. We met up easily in the center of the bus plaza.

Union Station to Downtown Burbank commuter rail service via Metrolink

The Downtown Burbank stop is the one closest tomy home. For the schedule we used, this direct link might work:
http://www.metrolinktrains.com/dds/index.php?schedule_id=10002 Or there’s
http://www.metrolinktrains.com/lines/schedules/ and select the schedule for "Burbank Airport".

The we stopped at home briefly, finished the meal we started at Union Station, finished loading the car, and drove to our campsite for the evening.

Camping and Hiking Plans

We had been hoping to car-camp overnight at a trailhead and test the stove(s) Friday night. Saturday morning we were hoping to pack up the backpacks and hike in somewhere between 5 and 10 miles, and then trail-camp Saturday night. Then on Sunday morning we would hike back out and return to Burbank.

Trip Plan

If all is ideal, then we planned to head for the Chumash Wilderness in the Los Padres National Forest. We’d drive up the 5 freeway ~60 miles to the Frazier Mountain Park Road exit, take that westward for ~7 miles, and turn left at Lake of the Woods onto Lockwood Valley Road. The Chuchupate ranger station is ~1 mile along Lockwood Valley Road, on the left. We could chat with the ranger there if we got there by 4:30pm.

If we didn’t want to talk to the ranger or got there after the office closed, we’d go back to the Lockwood Valley Road turn and instead go west on Mil Potrero Highway through the town of Pine Mountain Club, to Apache Saddle. There we’d turn left onto Noroeste Road toward the Campo Alto campground, which is in the 8000s elevation.

So, where is this campground? Near the town of Pine Mountain Club, CA…

Yahoo! Map of Pine Mountain Club, CA

Google Map of Pine Mountain Club, CA

There’s a fairly detailed map of this area online at http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/lospadres/maps/rec/recmap_south_4.htm that includes the trails we’d be hiking.

There’s a wider-scale map of the whole southern portion of the Los Padres Natonal Forest at http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/lospadres/maps/rec/recmap_south.htm. I had detailed printed foldy maps of the area for us and for my roommate who knew our trip plans.

When I visited Campo Alto on 5/13/06, there were still a few small drifts of melting snow tucked in some corners of the campground area, and very few campers. The daytime temperatures were quite warm especially in the sunshine, but the shaded areas were nicer, and as sunset fell there was a chill in the shade.

There is a webcam pointed at Apache Saddle: Eric Mack’s Pine Mountain Club/Apache Saddle WeatherCam. That pages has lots of weather information as well as archived time-lapse movies of the past six days of webcam images.

And about where we’d be on Saturday night… we could hike over to the Sheep Camp trail-camp for the night, or if we’re feeling good on the trail, we might go to Lily Meadows trail-camp. If we decide to stay at Sheep Camp, we might do a little side trip over to the Mt. Pinos Condor Observation Site if we have binoculars with us.

If we don’t want to do that trail but do stay at Campo Alto, there’s another trail to out of Campo Alto to the Mesa Spring trail-camp instead.

Contingency Plan 1

Our first backup plan was to camp Friday night at Reyes Creek, southwest of the Chuchupate ranger station along Lockwood Valley Road some miles. The campground has a lovely creek flowing through it, but there were lots of campers there in the late afternoon of 5/13/06 when I visited. If we camp at Reyes Creek, we could hike the Gene Marshall Piedra Blanca trail to Upper Reyes or Beartrap trail-camps. Reyes Creek is in the 6000s elevation. This plan bridges the edges of these two maps:

• http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/lospadres/maps/rec/recmap_south_8.htm
• http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/lospadres/maps/rec/recmap_south_9.htm

Contingency Plan 2

Our second backup plan if for some reason one or both of us aren’t feeling well is to hike in Angeles National Forest, likely entering north of La Canada/ Altadena at Gould Mesa and then going to Oakwilde, Commodore Switzer, Bear Canyon and/or Millard. That’s on the Trail Map of the Angeles Front Country that we both have copies of.

Getting back to LAX after the hike

The Downtown Burbank stop is the one closest to home. For the schedule we used, this direct link might work:
http://www.metrolinktrains.com/dds/index.php?schedule_id=10002
Or there’s http://www.metrolinktrains.com/lines/schedules/ and select the schedule for "Burbank Airport".

If I’m headed to USC I usually catch one of the trains that departs Downtown Burbank between 6:40am and 7:55am depending on what my day’s schedule looks like, but we could take an earlier one or a later one depending on what time Dad needs to be at LAX. (Trains with "L" may depart up to five minutes early.) We bought Dad’s one-way ticket from Downtown Burbank to Union Station at the machine-kiosk at the Downtown Burbank station that morning.

I saw Dad to his FlyAway bus at Union Station before I hopped on my USC bus. Dad took the FlyAway bus from Union Station to LAX; they depart from berth 9 in the bus plaza every 30 minutes on the hour and half-hour from Union Station. Since Dad bought a roundtrip ticket for that bus before our hike, he could simply use the other half of it to get back to LAX.

More information abou LAX:

• http://www.lawa.org/lax/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_International_Airport

Trip Photos

We ended up camping Friday night at Campo Alto as a storm blew through with a smattering of rain and tiny hail, leaving an amazing sunset just visible through the trees as we turned in for the night. We hiked in to Sheep Camp with beautiful weather on Saturday and set up camp there, and then hiked without weighty packs down to Lilly Meadows Camp and back up to Sheep Camp by evening, when the wind began to grow stronger. On Sunday we hiked under overcast skies through truly amazing wind back to the trailhead with a detour up near Sawmill Mountain, where it was sleeting a bit.

Feel free to browse my Flickr set of photos of this trip.

Until one day in spring 2005.

Suddenly, out of the blue, It All Made Sense.

I picked up a mess I’d started years before, and just started making motions with the needles and thread that felt right. At first the stitches were twisted, but within a few moments, after Janis showed me what “the stitches are twisted” meant, I had an “Oh! Aha!” moment and I’d gotten it. I set aside the mess, picked up a circular needle and some yarn waiting to become part of one of my crochet projects, and after a quick check in one of the books to make sure what felt right (which I think I remembered from watching Mom) was actually one real way of casting on, I was off and running. It took Janis and I a bit of flipping through our books to figure out that there’s a name for the method that came naturally to me; it’s not the way most folks poke the needle or wrap the thread, apparently. But suddenly, she can show me a stitch once and I understand it, try it a time or two, show it back to her to make sure I’ve got it, and then I can just run with it.

So I’m knitting.

I can’t seem to put the needles and yarn down, actually.

I’m knitting!!

online resources

• PatternWorks
• KnitPicks
• Lion Brand Yarns
• Plymouth Brand Yarns
• Bernat Brand Yarns
• Elizabeth’s Fiber and Yarn Store
• Knitter’s Review — oooooooh… there’s a review of some of Knit Picks’ yarns!

brick-and-mortar resources

• Elegance Designer Yarns in Pasadena, CA
• Skein in Pasadena, CA
• Needle in a Haystack in Montrose, CA
• The Patchwork Penguin in Tujunga, CA
• Unwind in Burbank, CA
• The Needlecraft Cottage in San Diego, CA
• Sheep Street Fibers in Morgantown, IN
• Massachusetts Avenue Knit Shop in Indianapolis, IN
• Stores in California that carry Plymouth yarns - I’m addicted to socks made of Sockotta, and there’s so many neat colors… and sometime soon I hope to be able to make my own…
• Even more yarn stores in California

my projects

• The Red Hat - started Christmas 2006
  • For Mom.
• The Purple Fluffy Scarf - started Thanksgiving 2006
  • For someone who likes purple.
• Lots of Ladder-Yarn Sparkle Scarves - started (and some completed) during 2005, 2006, 2007
  • For myself and others.
• The Red Scarf- completed Christmas 2005?
  • For Mom.
• The Brown Scarf and Hat - completed Christmas 2005?
  • For Mom.
• The Felted Carry-Bag - started spring 2005, still unfinished
  • In progress. Three colors of Lambs Pride worsted weight.
• Adele’s First Knitted Socks - started spring 2005, still unfinished
  • In progress. I’m still figuring out how to deal with sock-weight yarn and small double-point needles, but the socks Janis has made for me are oh so very comfy that I must be able to make my own.
• The Purple Hat - started and finished spring 2005
  • My second knitted project. Lots of knits on round needles, with help from Janis to finish the ends and make the pompom for the top.
• The Small Felted Party Purse - started spring 2005, still unfinished
  • My first knitted project. Lamb’s Pride worsted weight plus sparkley bits. The knitting is done, but I haven’t attached the strap yet or felted it.

• White River Gardens in every season of the year
• The Childrens Museum including the theaters
• Indianapolis Muesum of Art and its gardens
• Indiana Repertory Theatre
• Indianapolis Civic Theatre
• Phoenix Theatre for edgier plays
• Clowes Memorial Hall for all sorts of performances
• Connor Prairie Living History Museum and its upscale dinner restaurant
• Old Metamora (go for a ride on the barge and the train)
• Clifty Falls State Park
• Turkey Run State Park
• Brown County State Park (watch out for lots of deer and chubby and clever raccoons
• McCormick’s Creek State Park
• Mounds
  State Park
• Shades State Park
• Spring Mill State Park (watch the blacksmith and buy some fresh stone-ground corn at the waterwheel-powered mill)
• The Eiteljorg Museum
• Monument Circle lit for the winter holidays (the lighting ceremony is always the day after Thanksgiving)
• The Indiana State Museum including lunch at the L.S. Ayres Tearoom by reservation, and the IMAX theater