Condors at Pinnacles

Volcanoes were one of my favorite subjects in elementary school and Pinnacles National Monument is one of my favorite places currently, partly because Pinnacles is half of an ancient volcano (the other half is somewhere near LA) and partly because this is where I got hooked on rock climbing. But this adventure to Pinnacles with my mom and two brothers John and Steve was to hike to a spot where we could hope to see some California Condors.

Currently there are only 280 California Condors in the world. Of these, 135 are wild and of those, 15 are flying around Pinnacles. Today was a release event open to the public for up to five more juvenile condors but unfortunately they didn't feel like leaving their pen today. Fortunately for us there were several wild condors flying around near the pen.

At first it was hard to tell if we were seeing any condors or not as we looked through our binoculars to the ridge across from the viewing area. With a six foot wing span, Turkey Vultures are big birds and look very similar to a condor. But with a nine foot wingspan for the condor, it was easy to tell what we were looking at when these two birds glided around in circles near each other.

A little Kelvinite

Well my good buddy Kelvin has gone off and become a daddy. The good news is that he picked a good woman to be the mom, Susie. The result of this great adventure is little Simon Andrew Ning. All this puts a big smile on my face and I look forward to seeing the little guy soon.

Super Diamond

GO SEE SUPER DIAMOND!!!

Now some might say, "Surely, he can't be serious?"

Yes, I'm serious. For reals. Serious. ...and stop calling me Shirley.

It doesn't even matter if you like Neil Diamond or not (be forewarned though, you may find yourself checking out iTunes after the show). These guys rock and they know how to put on a show. That's all there is to it.

They're from San Francisco, they've been around since 1993 and I can't believe no one made me go see these guys already (major props to Colleen for putting the email out about this show). So I feel I must shout out to the world one more time,
GO SEE SUPER DIAMOND!!!

This show was paricularly choice as Bay Meadows was having their dollar night so the ambiance and the venue made the show all the more surreal (how often do you see a show that breaks every 20 minutes so everyone can go outside and watch a live horse race?!). To make it even more surreal and truly random, I kept thinking the bass player looked really familiar. It wasn't till around the second to last song that I noticed he was playing a five string bass and I remembered him as one of the counselors from boy scout camp, Camp Oljato. I'd brought an acoustic guitar my senior year and I remember jamming with this guy, Andy, because he had a five string bass. Random!

Love Is Chemicals

So I was looking online for some good live music in the city and came across my friends' band, Love Is Chemicals. I met a girl named Jenny last week who lives in the city and she said she likes live music so she was a good sport and checked out the show with me at Hemlock Tavern. The opening band was very, shall we say, amusing. I had to wonder if they were even legal to be in the bar. I just smiled and clapped for them remembering that I'd done some pretty embarrassing performances in my time. Love Is Chemicals was painfully (or pleasantly if you were in the audience) more rehearsed of a band than the opener and has come up with some great San Francisco pop material. I'd listened to some of their stuff on MySpace and liked their mellow pop sound. Playing it live they added a nice energy to it. I think the last time I saw them live was when they opened for Civil War Moustache at a new year's eve party back in 2001. They've matured nicely as a band. It's cool to see them still at it and it appears they are gaining some success. They go on a mini tour of the northwest in a few weeks and are releasing another album soon.