California: Exploratium, Gilroy Gardens, and the SBUV3

Caiqian had an interview at Stanford. Given the amount of schoolwork I had at the time, I decided to tag along. Before we knew it, we were both at the airport where my Uncle Oreste was waiting to pick us up. Our California trip began by seeing the San Francisco seals.

Seals

After seeing the seals, we went to San Francisco's Exploratorium, where we observed lots of fascinating science experiments, including a vapor vortex that we were allowed to touch.

Twister

One of our favorite exhibits was seeing the live sea urchins, which were eating baby carrots at an astoundingly slow pace.

Om Nom Nom

Our favorite exhibit however was the Magnetic Labyrinth, captured on video below. The magnetic labyrinth consists of a ferromagnetic fluid trapped between two glass sheets, manipulated by a magnet underneath that the user holds. Caiqian loves it so much that I'm now attempting to recreate it back in Austin.

After we left the Exploratorium, Caiqian bought some turtle bread, which is apparently a thing here in California.

Turtle Bread

Later, when Caiqian was having her interviews, Uncle Oreste brought me out to a golf range, where I swung a real club for the first time. There are certain appeals abut playing golf over other sports, such as its slowness and lack of running. Maybe I'll take up golf in the future.

Swinging a golf club for the first time

One of the best parts of our California trip was seeing Gilroy Gardens, a one of a kind flora-themed amusement park.

Why is this park trying to deceive me?

The park featured many surreal trimmed bushes, which I now know is called topiary.

Word of the Day: Topiary

There were also fun vehicles around the park, like a Ferris wheel, miniature car, a train, and even a monorail.

Monorail! (Simpson's song, opens in new tab)

My favorite part of the park however were the circus trees, which were art works made of trees. The most famous one was the basket tree, which is made from 6 Sycamores grafted 42 times.

The Basket Tree

There was also the arch tree, which is made from two trees grafted into one.

The Arch Tree

A personal favorite was the Oil Rig Tree.

The Oil Rig

Currently Caiqian is playing Fire Emblem Awakening, which fits perfectly with this tree.

Emblem Tree

Caiqian and I also enjoyed the majestic four legged giant.

The Four-Legged Giant

Unfortunately, that's we began mimicing the trees.

Two two-legged giants

The sillier the shape, the more Caiqian and I tried to replicate it.

Zig-zag tree

Curvy Tree

Eventually, it started getting hot and we decided to leave the park, but not before snapping pictures of the remaining circus trees.

Ring Tree

Sideway Rope Rectangle Tree

Revolving Door Tree

My favorite part about California wasn't Gilroy Gardens though. It was riding on Uncle Oreste's Self Balancing Unicycle, Version 3 (shorthand, SBUV3). The first time I rode it, I couldn't go a yard, but by day three I had managed to make it down a whole street.

SBUV3

The SBUV3 was an incredibly useful stepping stone for learning how to ride my unicycle, which has been a project of mine for months now. I'll be sure to post when I've finally mastered the art of unicycling.

Road Trip 2013: Stars, Mexico, and Lots of Guano

Day 1: Driving out to the Star Party

For Spring Break 2013, Matt, Mikey, Nicholas (my brother), and I drove out to west Texas to Big Bend National Park and back. Most of the first day was spent driving, but that night we went to a Star Party at UT's own McDonald Observatory. 

Freezing for the Constellation Show 

At the outdoor Star Party, our guide used a green laser pointer to point out constellations, a passing satellite which briefly reflected the sun's light, and a happenstance shooting star. Afterwards, Matt said hi to an acquaintance who happened to work at the observatory buildings. Matt's acquaintance then invited us to go see the big 107'' telescope at the actual observatory on the top of the hill that wasn't open to the public. Score!

McDonald Observatory's Harlan J. Smith Telescope

The drive to and from the observatory was perilous. On the way up, we had follow Matt's friend in total darkness, and on the way down, we had to drive ourselves down the hill by only using our emergency lights. Nevertheless, we did make it to our Big Bend hotel that night, ready for our full day ahead.

Powergrid

Day 2: Exploring Big Bend National Parks

Big Bend River Tours

The next morning, the four of us began our day by canoeing the Rio Grande. We split up into two canoes. The first consisted of Matt and Mikey.

Standard Canoe-Trip Chest-Bump

And the second canoe had Nick and myself.

Nick looks a little too happy.

At first the Rio Grande seemed like a modest river. But soon after we set off, towering walls appeared on either side, reminding me of Lord of the Rings when the fellowship traveled down Anduin.

Left = USA. Right = Mexico 

Halfway through our journey, we stopped on the shores of Mexico to eat a quick lunch. The first thing I noticed was how extraordinarily dry the soil was.

Do you suffer from chapped lips?

Who knew that our road trip was going to be international?

Posing in Mexico

Big Bend's "The Window"

After the river tours finished, it was just after lunchtime. That gave us enough time to take of Big Bend's many hiking trails. Mikey decided that the 5.8 mile "The Window" trail was the trail for us.

Our four brave young heroes.

What was confusing for us was that the trail started off with a  beautiful view between towering mountains, which roughly felt like a window. 

The Window?

If "The Window" trail  began with the great view, then what was on the other side?

Profile Pic Gold

Not knowing exactly where we were headed, we continued down the path, as as we walked downhill, our view steadily became worse as we descended into the plains.

Five more miles to go

We took several breaks, and drank many bottles of water. 

Almost there

After what felt like hours, we reached the true Window. Our pathway narrowed into a stone hallway of sorts, and then abruptly ended in a multi-hundred foot drop. The stone floor also became polished and smooth, leading me to believe that we were walking on a dried up waterfall.

The True Window

Finding the end of our path was a thrill. I love being next to large drops, and the lack of safety bars  made me feel alive.

The Gang

All doubts that our journey wouldn't be worth it disappeared as we sat on the cold, smooth stone and gazed onto miles and miles of landscape.

The View

All good things must come to an end though, and by the time we climbed back to the car, we were exhausted and achy. Fortunately  last activity of the day was visiting Big Bend's natural hot springs. The four of us all relaxed in the pleasantly hot water, soothing our aches.

Big Bend Hot Springs

Unexpectedly, we got another treat while visiting the hot springs. Across the Rio Grande, in Mexico, there was a man with a pony who had set up a small tent. Everyone in the hot springs watched as he rode his pony across the Rio Grande, crossing into the US, just meters from us. We were perplexed again when we saw him ride back to his tent in Mexico a few minutes later. After we left the hot springs, we realized that he had set up a table to sell hand-crafted Mexican trinkets. Gotta make a living I suppose.

The Last Day: Natural Bridge Caverns

For our last adventure, we decided to go to Natural Bridge Caverns. But instead of just going on a normal tour, we took a personalized tour that promised to give us the real spelunking experience. The guides warned us that we should wear clothes we didn't mind throwing away. But no warning could prepare for the guano that would soon envelop our lives.

Clean Shirts

The trip began innocently enough, with us taking the regular tour and learning about the cave's history. But at the end of the regular tour, we went under the guide rails, and soon the wide cavern rooms became narrow, short pathways. That's when we noticed the floor started becoming more and more covered in guano. 

For those of you who don't know, guano is bat feces, and before we knew it we were stepping in feces that was over a foot deep. Nick ended up having losing both of the soles of his boots to the muck, while Matt had the unfortunate incident of having the muck suction off his boot, causing him to step directly into the filth.

Over a foot of Guano

At first we tried to limit the guano to our hands and the bottom of our pants, but as the path became more difficult to navigate, we eventually gave up attempting to be clean.

Crawling on back = good idea?

After we had lost all of our dignity, we encountered the worst part of our ordeal, The Birth Canal. The Birth Canal is a 50 foot long, 16 inch high crawl space covered in feces and blockaded by mineral columns.

Entrance to The Birth Canal

I followed the tour guide so that I would be able to snap pictures of the others from the other side. Since Matt was a C-section baby, I believe this is the first picture of him being naturally "born".

Aww he's so cute.

After Matt I caught Nick squeezing his way through.

Nick strong-arming his way through the guano

On the other side, we finally reached the end of our exploration. The guide handed us all clean water bottles and we all had fun talking in total darkness. In addition, the guides showed us a hole where we could fling poo balls, so we all had fun flinging feces into this hundred-foot deep hole.

Halfway Break.

The trip back was much like the trip heading out, except for one steep, uphill section near the beginning. On the way back, we got to ride the "guano slide" down to where we began.

Nothing says fun like a guano slide!

When we finally reached the light of day, everyone was looking at us, and for good reason. We were changed men. What once was white, now was brown. We embraced out guano existence, and Nick had even put on bat-poo war paint. At last, our road trip was over.

Dirty Shirts

And that wraps it up for Road Trip 2013. The next post will be in quite a while, when I go with Caiqian to see the lovely city of San Francisco. Stay clean!

Run For Your Lives!

After our Fall 2012 school semester ended, but before going to Florida, Caiqian and I participated in Run For Your Lives! Run For Your Lives! is a 5k zombie marathon race where racers run through obstacle courses while avoiding zombie volunteers. The zombie volunteers' job is to chase the runners and pull of the velcroed flags attached to the runners' waists.

Clean Pre-racers

After we got suited up, we lined up for the 9:30 am run.

We were desserts.

After a bit of a jog, Caiqian and I hit our first obstacle course, the barbed-wire crawl.

Real Barbed-Wire Crawl

I was surprised to find that they used real barbed wire, which forced to crawl really low (lest we tear up our shirts). Crawling was more difficult than I thought it would be, and by the end Caiqian and I were aching.

Caiqian was not amused

Next up we had the mud pit, which was a  three-foot deep hole in the ground full of muddy water. Since Caiqian couldn't swim, she politely side-stepped this obstacle.

Caiqian wasn't having any of this.

However, the most interactive obstacles were the zombie volunteers. Some simply stood around, while others would run at you full speed for hundreds of feet before moving onto the next runner.

Safe (for now)

Sometimes there were obstacles, sometimes there were zombies chasing us, and once or twice there was a combination (those were especially difficult).

Real-life cardio

Slowly but surely, Caiqian and I eventually lost all of our survivor flags. Despite our flags being pulled, we still completed the course, we just weren't considered "survivors". I lasted a bit longer than Caiqian, but to be fair Caiqian's last flag was taken by surprise when she took a rest against a metal fence. Either way, I'm going to go ahead and say that we probably lack the cardio necessary to survive a real apocalypse.

At his point, we thought we were dirty. Little did we know.

Caiqian and I had a lot of fun. The course tested our flexibility, agility, endurance, and balance.

Balance Beam Challenge

Despite our best efforts, at some point we both realized that trying to keep our clothes clean was also a futile attempt.

I didn't win the balance beam challenge (note the legs)

The biggest object that we had to cross was the water slide, which actually scared Caiqian the most since it ended in a wading pool (remember, she doesn't swim). Eventually, I managed to talk her into sliding down.

Water Slide (Featuring Santa)

At last, we reached the final challenge, where we had to climb underneath a fence. By the time Caiqian and I were there, the ground was so slick that I actually slid underneath the fence. At last, it was over!

Last Challenge.

Even though we were not survivors, we did get medals for finishing the race. Victory!

We got medals!

After the feeling of victory settled, we realized that we were still exhausted, cold, and completely covered in mud. What were we to do?

Smile?

Fortunately, or unfortunately, there was a solution for us. After the finish line there was a large shower structure that was spraying out semi-clear water. Caiqian and I couldn't tell whether or not the water was hot, or warm, but all we really hoped for was that it was not ice-cold. We were sorely disappointed.

Ice-cold showers

This wasn't the last time I would be covered in filth. Tune in next post to see what Matt, Mikey, Nick, and I did for Spring Break 2013.