Beer Drink'n Fun

On Rob's most excellent suggestion we drive to the lower mountains to visit New Melones Reservoir on the Stanislaus River in the California Central Valley, or about 60 miles upstream from the river's confluence with the San Joaquin River. This point forms the border between Calaveras County and Tuolumne County, home of Yosemite. It is about 30 miles or so from our cabin. The reservoir is huge - 2,400,000 acre-foot capacity - making it California's third largest. The stoppage was formed by the New Melones Dam, which was completed in '78 and built by the US Bureau of Reclamation for flood control and, of course, water skiing or tubing. I learn that the lake's depth is about 1,080 feet and now, thanks to the drought, is 100 feet below normal. It feeds the San Joaquin valley, the world's most productive agricultural land and without H-2-O a desert. We rent two boats for skiing and beer-drinking while the kiddies swim, jump and ride the day away. By the afternoon everybody beat-red (despite 50 sun-block) and happily exhausted. Sonnet stands up on her first pair of water skies and has the thrill of her life time... after me, of course. We agree: our white trash day a huge success.

Devon

Mary and Devon, who is a great kid. Devon is the oldest of three and these days his favorite sport is downhill racing which he does about every weekend in the Connecticut mountains nearby Mary and Amado's second home. He is also a swimmer and footballer, which he and Eitan bond over. Devon BTW is Eitan's self-proclaimed BBF and with brother Simon they have a blast rocketing about (there is a bit of a thing against girls right now but this will pass, oh boy).

I'm pretty much out of touch with the news and the world which is heavenly. I did see that Max won his libel case against News Of The World which I guess is interesting. Fleet Street is world class, God bless it, but goes too far on occasion - this why we love it dearly, Brother.

Mercer

Here is the inside of Mercer Caverns. Without lighting there is complete darkness. Initially Madeleine wants nothing to do with the caves remember Wales but she joins in the end. The children as all sorts of interesting questions: "where do the rocks come from?" (Madeleine); "Why does that look like chocolate?" (Maya); "Is there any gold?" (Devon); "Is there any gold pylate? (Devon) This last question flummoxes our otherwise informed guide. From there we descend 208 steps - despite this depth it is not the bottom, where a breeze enters the caves providing oxygen and cool air. While there is general curiosity where the air source originates, it against California law to dig or damage the pristine below for discovery. Various methods BTW were used including blue smoke which, it was believed, would exit somewhere outside Mercer and provide the source. Fat chance, as the current kept the smoke inside and smoked everybody else out. Eitan BTW reports that there are only 192 steps to the bottom and if there was a bet I would put it with him.

Soph

Sophie

Everybody converges for what has become our annual re-union. This includes Rob and Sloan and their two children, (Sophie pictured, wearing my new glasses) and Mary and Amado and their three. Sonnet is in charge of the first evening's dinner and we all have a manic catch up drinking super-sized vodka tonics and California wine. Ah, this golden land. My parents join the fun and they enjoy being surrounded by the commotion. In one corner: 8 animated adults catching up a year's life and the other seven kids glued to "The Empire Strikes Back." A battle rages for the loudest- it is a draw, Dear Reader, it is a draw. The brief summary: Mary a partner at Boston Consulting, Rob investing $500M, Amado teaching and Sloan involved with a charity and contemplating her next star-up. The children meanwhile are just bigger, more animated, more interesting and engaging. Rob and I in particular take pleasure teasing the little Shakespeares and I think it debatable who is more the child. Repetition is often a theme and boy can we get their goat.

Saturday we spelunk Mercer Caverns in Murphy's - it is my first time despite 25 years of here. The Caverns are named after the gold prospector Walter Mercer who discovered the caves in 1885 and filed a claim. Legend has it that Mercer was napping under a shady oak when he saw some waving grass despite no wind. He was intrigued to discover a small hole, no bigger than a foot, that was cool and omitting a breeze. He dug to find a cavern descending 16 stores - he thought he had discovered an abandoned gold mine. The caverns are covered with stalagmites and stalactites and various rare formations which come from the calcitised limestone bleached from dripping rain water. While disappointed no gold, Mercer made his fortune touring his cave with candles and rope - though uncomfortable and dangerous, tourists lined up by the thousands to pay a pinch of gold-dust (about $45 today) and see the spectacle. We do to but for the reduced price of $12 per adult.

Deck

Who is the center of everybody's attention I wonder? Grace has made the kids visit fun, fun! fun! bringing games and the Star Wars trilogy, which we enjoy equally. Last week she took us rose shopping and we returned to 1530 with flowers and plants happily placed in the back-yard. Eitan and Madeleine seemed to enjoy the activity and now they leave something of themselves behind. In the garden. I like gardening myself and England is the place to be for this particular pastime. The British love their backyards and there always seems to be a radio program on the subject covering winter chills, shrubs and various composts. Our garden is small and simple but I like tidying it up, cutting the lawn and clipping back the bushes. The kids just like the dirt. Back to here and dirt: they have not bathed in four days. Eitan flat out refuses my direct order to do so and I tell him what he will give me in return for The Missing. He proposes two-dollars. Then five and ten. I raise an eyebrow at ten which is a substantial portion of his saved $52. I note that ten bucks will get him ten ice cream cones, two DVDs or a CD. Says he: "ice cream cones are $1.50" and the deal is done.

Pong

Eitan discovers a new sport at the rec. Yes, he is obsessing (and pretty good too).

California is beset by forest fires including Big Sur where Sonnet and I spent our honeymoon. Closer to home, there is smoke coverage in Bear Valley at 7,000 feet due to an uncontrolled fire at Yosemite which has forced evacuations inside the park. The dry summer and lack of water hurt.

Poolside

Madeleine and I are at the Big Trees pool not far from my parent's house in Bear Valley. We are at the pool because Eitan wants to play inner-tube water polo which begins at 5PM. Only we arrive at 5:05 and he refuses to play. So. We. watch the game and... he. very.. upset.

The Orensteins have been visiting this area since '83 when Moe and Grace bought the house with two families including the Sapersteins. It has been a fabulous place for winters and summers which is my preferred time of the year since I do not sky downhill (Bear Valley has several good bowls and recently purchased by Vail Resorts and expected to be expanded). There is excellent cross country skiing and this we used to do often but not since London. Scenic HW4 is snow blocked for four to six months of the year at Ebbotts Pass making us a 60 mile dead-end which gratefully has curtailed development. Today it is the same as it ever was but us who are a bit older. The kids love it and we are soon to be joined by our Marine and New York friends for a grand reunion.

Duck Lake

Sonnet and I walk to Duck Lake in Stanislaus National Forest. We split the house at 6AM where, BTW, Moe and Eitan awake preparing for the day: "swim lessons, 10AM!" Eitan shouts. Our hike is reasonably tame - only four miles - but the views of the mid-sierras brilliant and the alpine lake is isolated, surrounded by ridge-line and a deep meadow. We end with a four mile jog and I may report that my wife is a serious runner - she weighs less today than when I met her and the London marathon has her in all kinds of shape. Also her stride has changed - faster and better form. She's thinking about signing up for a few races in the fall.

Moe and I talk about the law - he retired in '97 at age 62 and notes that the business has changed since he practiced. "We used to bill maybe 1,200 hours a year and barely kept track" he says. "Now a top partner is expected to do twice that amount." (Moe watches Eitan and Madeleine in their swim class - what joy, no doubt).

We receive a scratchy NPR on the radio - enough to know that the Labour Party lost their third test in Scottish burough which three years ago was soundly pro-labour. Scotland of course is where Super Gee is from. While many of the UK's problems are not due to Brown, he was the chequer while these problems were in the works - like Britain's borrowing where we are the most leveraged consumers in the world or the housing market which is perhaps worse than the US. Brown has also made a hash of things like the non-dom and ten "p" tax and of course the withdrawn elections. His ass is grass.

Alpine

We arrive in the sierras Wednesday and straight to the pool, of course. Eitan has highlighted the pool activities which include inner-tube water polo, swim lessons and bingo+the snack bar. Both kids have been saving their bucks for one full year to buy nachos, ice cream sandwiches, skittles and M&Ms. It is borderline obsessive behavior but now it bears fruit: Eitan screams at me when I tell him no junk-food before lunch. I relent. Yesterday we go for a family hike on Emigrant Trail to Alpine lake. Madeleine complains the first half non-stop but I don't pay attention to her who-is-me. Eitan, on the other hand, makes several attempts to block our progress by refusing to continue. I continue onward leaving him to himself. Once out of eye-sight I hear the patter of feet and he is two inches behind me practically walking on my feet. Everybody happy when we arrive at the lake which is beautiful as ever. The kids ease their return with walking sticks and seem to enjoy themselves - we are out for 1.5 hours which is a nice break-in effort. At the end I tell Madeleine we will walk it again and she: "You're mad."

Madeleine announces matter of factly that there are 17 miles in an hour. Sonnet and I are a bit surprised and she clarifies herself: "Penguins walk 17 miles in an hour" she reports, from "March Of The Pengquins."

Slide

Madeleine takes off at Chordineses which, Dear Reader, I have been doing since 1976. The cool thing is to bring wax paper which really revs up the action. The next-door Berkeley Rose Garden has eight public tennis courts where many North Berkeley kids picked up the sport - I did anyway, batting a ball against a cement wall before I followed an endless lane-line down the middle of a 25 yard pool. Similarities I wonder? Sonnet and I have a "date" last night and head for a Japanese where I drink a lot of sake, thank you very much. Regardless we are up at dawn's crack to run the fire-trail near the kiddie farm - Sonnet is in super shape following the marathon and her training reg. She weighs five pounds less today then when we met in '93. Her body looks trained and beaurtiful and she has all the gear of the serious middle-aged runner = runners, shades, sweat-whisking materials... it is all good. Yesterday Eitan gets his wish and we spend two hours swimming at Strawberry Canyon. That box be checked.

Guv

Sonnet reads the kids Harry Potter and everybody entranced.

Berkeley is THE heart of liberal America - how could it not be? - and I have yet to meet one person who has a kind word about our government and the war (Moe is cautious in his criticism but it is there too). For many of Berkeley's '60s generation and my parents age, a life-time's work invested in public institutions like education or the judicial system or the environment has stalled or been set back. Oh boy. My generation takes these things for granted in large part because we did not have to fight for them - no civil rights movements, no assassinations... the '80s were Boom Times and distractions plenty. Today the apathy seems worse - at least no war going on during my college days - but maybe Barack will change this somehow if elected. Perhaps young people will go back to government instead of investment banking like I did in '89 when 75% of Yale's graduating class applied to Wall Street (I don't know about Brown). Berkeley too has gentrified and the hippies of then are the home owners of now and the properties here valuable: a house bought in the the '70s for less than a hundred grand is worth well over a million now. Telegraph has cleaned up - no drugs, comic book shops, pinball arcades or vinyl records like Rasputins. Despite such change the soul of this place is the UC which ties the community together as ever - for me, it is as simple as rooting for Cal football and our annual dogged cheer applies aptly to government today: "just wait 'til next year!"

LHS

Moe takes us to the Lawrence Hall of Science where I have not been since 1977. I am pretty sure of the year because my parents signed me up for computer programming at LHS and, on first day, I spotted Erin Oleigh who I had a huge crush on. Anyway, I chickened out and never went back. And so went my chance to found Microsoft. LHS is the public science museum and research center for K-12 education at the University of California, Berkeley. It's sweet and has all sorts of inter-active stuff which I may have enjoyed more than the kids. Now the focus is on nano-technology which makes sense as Berkeley is trying to become the Bio-tech center of the Bay Area ceding technologies to Stanford and the peninsula. Moe tells me that the leading nano-tech centre is not far from LHS and in fact visible from the hill-top which offers a wonderful panoramic view of the bay. LHS was built in '68 and reminds me of the early '70s funkiness and space agee programs like Space 1999. Ernesto Orlando Lawrence BTW was Cal's first Nobel laureate . He is up there with Pappy Waldorf who took the football team to three consecutive Rose Bowls ending in '51. Hey we lost all three - but go Bears!

Chordinese

Madeleine and Eitan way excited about the slide at Cordenices Park, where we be this morning. Eitan spies a football camp and is naturally fascinated - when I inquire whether he wishes to play he demures: "don't have my kit, dad." We watch from the sidelines and Eitan comments on "the skills". We then rough-house until he cries and I turn my attention to Madeleine and the long-slide - pictured. New glasses rejected by Sonnet but I get used to them.

Chordineses by the way is walking distance from my parents house and many touch-football games played their in my yuf. It was also a good place to get stoned or have birthday parties. It is adjacent to the Rose Garden and for a while was pretty run down but Berkeley has since re-invested in the park and now it is fab.

Lamp Shade

Eitan in the dining room. He, Madeleine and Sonnet arrive yesterday and I greet them at the airport - everybody happy and wired to be in "San Francisco!" they scream. We drive across the Bay Bridge to Bezerkeley and Sonnet makes several comments "only in Berkeley" as we drive by a VW bus painted flowers or the granola team planting shrubs in a round-about (this nearby Kee Tov where I used to go to camp - Kee Tov moved and it is now a theology school Go figure). Tabitha and her team come over for a BBQ and the kids hit the sack 8PM.

Cal I for NI A

Gnarly

Frederic Larson at Half Moon Bay, 45 minutes south of San Francisco on HW 1 (The Great HW). Photograph courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle.

I arrive SFO Thursday in time for dinner in Berkeley with my parents and Katie, who is speaking at a conference for women bloggers. She stays in the St Francis, Union Square, where her gathering takes place. 

Meanwhile, I am with Industry Ventures yesterday then join Christian for dinner at our usual favorite Delfino's where we have a five course meal and about everything on the menu. From there we watch episodes of The Office (American version) and Steve Carroll hilarious (jet lag, Dear Brother). Usually we make a late-night donut run at the 24 hour bakery then hit Barnes And Noble for CDs or DVDs but tonight it's a pass. 

Christian BTW is free from his high flying career which required him to rise at 3:45AM for the NY equity call shortly before the markets opened. He now has a couple years to catch up his sleep. California is in a major drought - the worst in 30 years - which brings back memories of '73 when Moe rationed water allowing two inches bath water then used for toilet flushes (remember that Moe?). We sure learned how to conserve, oh boy. 

Northern California forest fires have smoked out even the Bay Area but not since I've been here. Meanwhile back in London: Sonnet prepares for her long flight tomorrow spending today packing, having her hair done etc. 

Eitan attends a six-hour football party and so on cloud-nine while Aggie takes Madeleine for a girls afternoon including the Kung Fu Panda at the movies. Everybody excited including my mother who hits Mr Mopps to buy toys, books and DVDs. Mopps has been in Berkeley since '73 and so an institution - all the kids at King Jr High shop-lifted and the poor owner put a sign up "One Teenager At A Time." Mopps is on Martin Luther King Road, which for us is Grove Street renamed.

West Coast

I am off to California in 30 minutes. I prepare myself for the long haul by swimming some laps and packing - yes, last minute I know. Sonnet and the kids join Sunday and everybody excited about le grand adventure. I will have dinner with family, including Katie who is in the Bay Area for Stanford and The Op-Ed Project. Fun!

'84

Sonnet and Marcus - ah 1984, the year of Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, The Karate Kid and this photo. Also The Terminator, which I recently watched, and is decidedly irresponsible - I mean, Arnie demolishes a police house in is search for Sarah Con-ur. Not a good message for us yuf then.The only band formed that year worth listening to, and who I still own, was Big Audio Dynamite which was Mick Jones from the Clash. Sweet. Otherwise this was the year I returned from Geneva, swam at nationals, became a Senior in HS and got into college somehow and had my first girlfriend, Malika. She moved on pretty quickly I recall and we broke up at prom - but this another story I think. Pretty big stuff for then.

Lear

The Thames at Southbank nearby OXO wharf. It is the afternoon and I arrive for a double-date early to mill about and make a few phone calls from my mobile. The weather and vibe good and London is the place to be on days like this. Sure the city suffers a bad rap when it comes to weather but in actuality rainfall is the same as San Francisco - about 40 inches a year. The difference is ours spread across the year nor does the data capture gloomy winter days+early sunsets. But let us not dwell on this now- today it is summer! and skate-boarders skate, violinist play and tourists photograph themselves here and everywhere along the river. Oh, and as the kids would shout: "the tide is out!"

We meet friends Jan and Nes for dinner at OXO tower (pictured, upper right) which offers the best view of the city, in my opinion, stretching from Parliament and London Eye to St Paul's and the city. From there we see King Lear at the Globe. It is hard work, Dear Mother, but David Calder who plays Lear is brilliant. He looks like a king too, with a white beard, bald crown and large middle supported by thin, muscular legs. It is his voice, however, that enthralls. I prepared for last night by listening to Lear on CD - I read the play sophomore year in high school - but the language still at times foreign, though the emotions raw. I had forgotten poor Gloucestor who in one bloody scene has his eyeballs extracted in a particularly wretched treason. Ian McKleen played Lear last year at the Old Vic (tickets impossible, btw) and his king different from Calder. I've heard McK described as an actor playing himself in the role, while Calder an actor playing Lear. Either way - rapture.

"The oldest hath borne most: we that are young,
Shall never see so much, nor live so long."

Fair

Sonnet and Madeleine from last summer. We look forward to repeating the good times.

I'm in Eitan's class this morning to do some pasting in the children's work-books. This gives me a chance to ease-drop, which I do with pleasure. The kids are asked to describe their favorite moment from the school year and Eitan says: "discussing Christiano Rinaldo's goals." Later he provides this example of a highlight: "It is when Christiano Rinaldo scores a goal." The boys has football on the mind for sure.

Side View

Here is a self-portrait and a view of myself I rarely see and different from my mind's eye - I mean, is my chin really that small? Interesting to think how self-perception is shaped. Do our surroundings set the standard or is it a cerebral thing? Kate Moss for instance has the benefits of bone structure and curves (or lack of) but also the fortune to live in a society that values these things. I do not think of myself as particularly attractive, Dear Reader, but I have never doubted that I was attractive. I thank my mom for this - she was always quite positive about appearance. This leads to now: regarding aesthate, Eitan+boys are preoccupied with other things like football. Young girls, on the other hand, receive a direct message re one's looks and happiness thanks to a pervasive advertising, which caters to prepubescent "tweenies" or younger. Girls absorb the comps via television, comics, billboards, shops and everywhere. Take a day to focus on this, oh boy, and you shall see. Madeleine considers herself a tom-boy, as we know, which is healthy but different from her school norm of barbies, dresses &c. She is not immune to the beauty-message so I check in occasionally with her on this. To now it is all fine but this will change, sadly I am sure.