Warm Welcome at Camp

Harlan drove up the day before, and had a nice pot of chicken wild rice soup waiting for us...

...accompanied by grilled fresh caught brown trout, just hours out of the Escanaba river.

Checked out a used pontoon boat for sale on the lake.

Still dithering.

Otherwise spent Monday relaxing, waiting for Erik to arrive and watching more football with more gourmet dining... Harlan's pot roast.

 I think I will arrange for Harlan to prepare camp for our arrival in all future trips.
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San Francisco to Gwinn by way of Green Bay

 First rain of the season slowed our departure from EssEff, but United made it up in the air.

The plan was to drive with Dad to Shag Lake and get there in time for the Bears game.

I love it when a plan comes together. We spent the much of trip listening to the Green Bay Packers lose on the radio.  If  there is anything better for a Bear fan that a day when Bears win and Green Bay loses, I guess it must be this...

Driving the full length of Wisconsin during the Packer's loss, listening to the homer announcers make excuses for Aaron Rodger's terrible throws for interceptions and try to explain the truly horrible coaching by McCarthy, all followed by hours of anguished Packer fans calling into the post-game autopsy. 

It was very entertaining. Quickest six hour drive ever.

First Day of Americas Cup Final Team Oracle starts in the hole and keeps digging.

Hope for a competitive Final Series in the America's Cup was muted when a 2 point penalty was assessed against Team Oracle for cheating in the 45 competition.

Larry Ellison's Sailing Team Was Slammed With Huge Penalties For Cheating 

"Now a jury for the America's Cup has imposed severe penalties on the team, harsher than any in the race's 162-year-old history, reports Reuters Ronnie Cohen. The jury docked the team two "points" and kicked three people off the team. Oracle also has to pay $250,000 to two charitable foundations. The America's Cup finals are a series of 17 races. Those two points mean that Oracle will need to win 11 races while its competitor, Emirates Team New Zealand, will only need to win 9."

After the first day of racing, it does not look like Team New Zealand will need those two penalty points. The first race looked competitive for a while, but the Kiwi's seem to have Larry's boys outclassed.


As noted in prior posts, we've got a view of about half the course from our vantage on Russian Hill. Sigrid got out the long lens and I was playing around with time-lapse video on the droid and conventional video from the Olympus Stylus Tough. I suspect this may not last more than a week, so we'll enjoy it while we can. Some sample shots from the terrace:

 

UPDATE:New York Times coverage of the race:

Already in Hole, Oracle Drops First Two Races to New Zealand

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — Emirates Team New Zealand skimmed above the waves of San Francisco Bay faster and better than the defending champion, Oracle Team USA, on Saturday to win the first two races of the 34th America’s Cup.

The Coolest Smartwatch

When big and clunky was cool.

It is on. Samsung and Qualcomm introduced their first entries in "wearable" technology today. The two new smartwatches join the fray with previously announced entries from Sony and the kickstarted Pebble.  I'm not exactly sure why they felt they needed to get these products into the public eye now, considering that neither will be available to purchase until later this year. You don't suppose next week's Apple announcement has something to do with it? The tech press is not expecting Apple to announce their iTime or whatever they'll call it, but maybe Apple's competitors know something that the press doesn't.  In any case, Samsung got most of the attention with fawning reviews like this piece in TechCrunch:

"Your Turn, Apple"

"I’m sold. One picture did it. The one above by Josh Miller at CNET. I want the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch. It doesn’t matter if the UI is sluggish. I don’t care if it requires charging once a day. I don’t even care if Samsung overloaded it with applications, which seems to be the case. I’m not going to buy it. But my inner nerd really wants it. The Galaxy Gear watch is hot, even if it has a critical flaw. Samsung just beat Apple to the punch by a large margin. But that should be expected. Samsung is a different company than Apple. Samsung iterates where Apple innovates."

Watching the hoopla, I was reminded of the first smartwatch - the HP-01.  I was working for Hewlett Packard in 1977 when they introduced it. Unsurprisingly, HP completely failed at marketing a high-end consumer product that retailed for $700.  By '79 they gave up and blew out the remaining inventory to employees for about $100. That must have been when I got mine. Pretty sure I would not have paid full retail for it. I was just as cheap then as I am now.

After an extended archaeological search, I found it. In the back of a drawer that had not been opened in decades.  I remember thinking it was the coolest thing on the planet when it was new. I wore it all the time. It was quite the conversation piece. You could put a girl's phone number into the phone's memory. Of course, there was only enough memory for one phone number at a time. You had to be judicious with a watch like this. Since the display is comprised of power burning LEDs, when you pushed the button the time or date was displayed for only 2.5 seconds. You've got to pay attention with a watch like this. 

My favorite bit -  A 200 year calendar!  Right in the watch!  This being 1977, with the watch using the conventional eight digit date display (LED's are expensive), HP had to figure out a way to distinguish 1909 (the year after the Cubs last won the World Series) and 2009 (when they also did not win).  So there is a "21" button on the watch. You need the button to tell the watch you are entering a 21st century date.

As I recall, the coolness factor lasted about a month.  Then it was just big and clunky. I liked it and kept wearing it though, until the batteries finally wore out. You had to take it to a jeweler to change the batteries. Never quite got around to it. It went back into the box, moved across the country, and made it into the back of that drawer where I found it today.

I took it to a jeweler down the street, expecting to find a corroded mess when he opened it up. Those dead watch batteries were in there for over 30 years. But - a miracle. The batteries were intact. In five minutes, with three fresh batteries, the watch was working again. 

It looks like big and clunky is cool again. Sooo...  I'll be wearing this watch again.  I'm pretty sure I've got the coolest smartwatch on the planet. Hey -  I just pushed the date button and for 2.5 seconds it said "09-04-13."  That dot at the end is to let me know that this is the 21st century. Way cool.


Cross-posted at Medium

Watching Doug Dive

Got a call from my dive buddy Doug. He was going to be on the North Coast with wife Peggy and wanted to get some abs.  Of course, while still in the early stages of rotator cuff surgery recovery, I couldn't even get into a wetsuit, let alone dive.  I met them at the cove anyway, to live vicariously watching Doug dive.  It was motivational, I still hope to get back in the water before the season closes in November.

A beautiful day and great conditions.

Doug and Peg approve of the new driveway

The usual drill...

Climb down

Get in the water

I like to watch.

I had to be satisfied doing a little picking in the shallows.

Sometimes you get lucky

Peg kept a watchful eye from the blufftop. Doug got his limit. I found a couple.

Traditional apres dive celebratory beer

It's always fun at the cove, but when you get them home you have to clean and slice the buggers.

Kitchen converted to ab cleaning assembly line

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

 Shell popped and added to boneyard collection

From the ugly to the sublime ...

After slicing, trimming. Can't resist sashimi samples.

Small trimming scraps become ceviche'

More sashimi

To tired to cook the ab steaks tonight. Tomorrow - Abalone Piccata.

Transatlantic Passage - The Movie(s)

Captain Jim has been busy compiling pictures from our transatlantic passage into short slide shows. There are too many pics for one slide show, so he broke it up into four flicks. IMHO - they're all good, but get better as we get closer to Portugal. 

The complete series with his comments and links to his blog:

Morpheus Transatlantic Passage - Chapter 1 - Preparation

"Almost five weeks have past, since we first arrived in Europe.  They have been five busy weeks, but that's no excuse for having not put together an overall summary of the journey....Well, the good news is that I am finally working on getting that massive post written and published..."

Morpheus Transatlantic Passage - Chapter 2 - Saint Martin to Azores:

"...a slideshow covering our journey from St. Martin to to the island of Horta in the Azores.  As previously mentioned, and documented in detail if you followed our daily blog posts, we had a very good trip...."

Morpheus Transatlantic Passage - Chapter 3 - The Azores

"We enjoyed our short stays on both Horta and San Miquel.  If we all had more time, we would have happily stayed in the Azores for another couple of weeks.  But, we didn't have that time and there was a passage across the Atlantic Ocean for the four of us to complete... Our initial arrival came with a bit of "land sickness" as the earth felt as though it was moving under our feet.  14 days at sea gets your inner ears used to constant movement..."

Morpheus Transatlantic Passage - Chapter 4 - Azores to Portugal

 "Other than Mike's injury, the last leg was flawless and we roared into Cascais, Portugal on a broad reach in 20+ knots of wind on a warm sunny day! The perfect finish to a nearly perfect trip across the Atlantic Ocean!"

Morpheus - Atlantic Crossing - Azores to Portugal from Jim Gregory on Vimeo.
Thanks Jim. Great job. Great passage. Great experience.

America's Cup Racing is underway! Sort of.

It's been a long time coming, but America's Cup racing finally got  underway on San Francisco Bay. We have been anticipating this ever since it was announced that San Francisco was selected to host the competition. The excitement was fueled by the knowledge that at least part of the course would be visible from our vantage on Russian Hill.

Over the years we've watched the teasers leading up to this event, including the 2003 Oracle Alinghi Moet Cup Challenge, and the more recent  World Series Regatta.  But today began the real deal.

Emirtates Team New Zealand Kicks Italian Butt

 The competition begins with the Louis Vuitton Cup - a  round robin tournament to determine which challenger will face current champion Larry Ellison's Team Oracle. The first scheduled race in the round robin today was between Emirates Team New Zealand and Italy's Luna Rossa.

 I was ready. Since I am recovering from a recent rotator cuff repair, there was nothing to do but settle into my new recliner, log into YouTube and Twitter coverage on my laptop, orient the recliner to the front window, keep the cold pack on the shoulder, have binoculars and camera standing by, fire up the time-lapse app on the Droid, sit back and enjoy.

Yes - you read that right - a recliner. Since I am in recovery mode Sigrid insisted I get a recliner while the arm is in a sling.  FTW! This is a piece of furniture that was considered an unacceptable mis-match to our decor for the last 20 years of our residence in the condo yet it is here now.  But I digress...

What a race! Emirates smoked Luna Rossa at the start, extended their lead around the first turn and into the downwind leg. By the time Emirates appeared on the portion of the course visible from my recliner, Luna Rossa was nowhere to be seen.  In fact, Luna Rossa was never seen by anyone at anytime during the race. Because Luna Rossa was pouting about a rule decision and decided to not race. Really:

"With a terse announcement posted on its website Saturday, Luna Rossa Challenge wrecked plans to unveil America's Cup racing Sunday on San Francisco Bay by saying it won't take part in the opening race. The Italian team said it would wait until an international jury decides its protest against safety measures introduced by regatta director Iain Murray. The jury is schedule to convene Monday. It is not known how long it will take to decide what has become an extremely thorny issue. Instead of a race Sunday, fans will see only Emirates Team New Zealand on the race course beginning at 12:15 p.m."

So all the Kiwis had to do was complete the course and not capsize the catamaran to win the first point of the tourney.  Whatev.  It was a chance to preview the races that will be taking place all summer leading into the big series for the Cup in the fall.  Some pics and video from the historic first "race" on the bay:

For more reportage on America's Cup Opening Day events, check out the on-the-ground-coverage by The Other Mike blogging at Civic Center:

"The first Louis Vuitton Cup race was set for today, between New Zealand and Italy, but the Italians have just announced they are boycotting today's race because of recent design change demands being made by Oracle USA, supposedly for "safety." An international sailing jury will announce a ruling on the issue Monday, at which point either litigation or racing or both will ensue. So far, this event has been eerily cursed and perfectly bizarre." 

True.