The Jumbotron

We're kind of a big deal now. Andy, John, Stephanie and I made it on the Jumbotron at AT&T Park during Saturday's Giant's game against the Brewers. Got some pretty rave reviews:

"U look aaaawwwesome on the big screen!" - Karen Duffin

"Nice shot! - Heather Linebarger

"Nice moves Bradshaw on the big screen! Yeah, there's just nothing more I can say about it." - Jessica Matthews

"Bradshaw, your lookin good on camera up there! We just thoroughly enjoyed watching you dance and shake your bootie!" - Katie Kalemba

80's Party

Best 80's outfit: Jon Bon Jovi


Best smile: Yahaira


Best karaoke guitar solo: Eddie Van Halen


It's the Eye Of The Tiger!!!
Mark "Sonny Crockett" Wangsgaard, Celeste, Robert "Def Leppard" Bradshaw and Kramer

I'm officially an Uncle!

Name: Radley Black Bradshaw
Weight: 7 pounds
Parents: Christofer and Devan Bradshaw


Proud parents


Dad - with the t-shirt to prove it!


Mom catching some well deserved Z's

The Lost Boys Return

Cruised down to Santa Cruz with my brother Andy and some new friends to catch the movie The Lost Boys on the beach in front of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. The town of Santa Cruz and the Boardwalk were used as the setting of this 1987 cult classic vampire movie. It was awesome to hear the crowd cheer during the opening credits as the camera panned from the ocean to the lights of The Boardwalk. This movie was likely the pinnacle for the Corey boys but more importantly it started Jack Bauer aka Kiefer Sutherland on his way to saving America several times over in a days work. Afterwards we walked back to our car along the spooky train bridge also featured in the movie.

Big Sur

Sunset from the best campsite on the west coast.

Oakland earthquake

Apparently there was an earthquake in Oakland at 4:42 this morning. I didn't feel it. I want my money back.

Rollin VIP with Ozzie!!!

Managed to score a last minute VIP ticket to Oz Fest so I could tag along with my brother Andy and his buddy John. We rolled up at 9pm, next to the tour buses, in VIP parking, just in time to get in and catch the Oz man himself take the stage. Andy and John had lawn seats and I planned on kickin it with them on the lawn for most of the show. I had a little trouble talking my way in the common folk entrance instead of the VIP entrance until a manager came over to see what the issue was. She had overheard "VIP" and tried to bend over backward to make sure I was being taken care of - all I wanted was to walk in the regular entrance!

Ozzie took the stage like a giddy little kid who can't get enough of the spot light among adults. It may have taken a few songs for his vocals to sober up to being legible but he certainly had the energy and enthusiasm of an aerobics instructor. Periodically he unleashed a fire hose loaded with foam upon the first dozen rows like a kid with a new toy. Zakk Wylde ROCKED on guitar and Faith No More's Michael Bordin wailed on drums while his kids peeked out from behind the drum riser. I waited till the last 20 minutes to go down to my assigned seat on the 20th row. All the ushers continued to bend over backward every time I flashed my VIP ticket. When Crazy Train came on everybody tried to rush to the very front row. The usher in front of me tried to keep everyone back but just smiled and waved me by when I flashed the VIP! I got to about the 12th row before being stopped. Just as well because Ozzy threw several buckets of water on the first few rows and continued to wield his foam hose to the end.

Observing the demographics of the fans at this event was also quite entertaining. The range was all over the board: little kids, junior high kids, generation X,Y,Z etc., die hards, has beens, "normal people", over the hill, sober, three sheets to the wind and just about anyone in between. After the show, as we waited to escape the VIP parking, it was hilarious to see how uncool some prima dona on a bullet bike can be when they rev their high pitched Ninja next to a leather clad grandma sitting on her heart thumping Harley.

Quintessential R.R.A.T.

I don't know what is more random, the fact that it just rained at 10:30PM on July 10th in Palo Alto or that I went for a walk around the block in the rain, bare foot, by myself and drinking Gatorade.

07/07/07 in Zion - The Perfect Day?

Here are some pictures:


Going down the first rappel.



The Palo Alto crowd (Dave, myself and Sara)



The Crew right before the last rappel. (front to back: Brent, Ronnie, Tara, Sara, Reina and myself)



Sara descending with grace down the 165' last rappel of the day.


Here's an email from Reina regarding this calculated adventure:

Friends new and old,

07/07/07
was the perfect day. Yes, triple 07 was Better than Bond. There was action (9 rappels, including a 165 foot free rappel in the sunset), blood (a few burns and a bloody nose), terror (Tara can tell you about that), and romance (even the cesspool stench couldn't keep 4 women away from Evans, Brent Evans).

With that, let's look at the results for the
Perfect Day Behunin Canyon Awards

* Brent wins sacrificial pimpin' frog award. …By the way, judges are wondering if you've showered yet. Judges also want a personal demonstration of how you like the women walking; feel free to post it on YouTube.

* Reina wins best guinea pig award.

* Sara wins the wet t-shirt contest (self-proclaimed and uncontested). Looks like she won 2 awards! The other is…most appreciated for being a great hostess. And the canyon walls are echoing, "Here, here!"

* Tara wins most improved. (And she actually wasn't even too sore the next day! Hard core, Tara! Speaking of hard cores…)

* Ronnie wins hard core award. Oh wait, there's some confusion among the judges… judges say she actually wins… best hair award!

* Robert wins most willing to save Jefe.

* Dave wins best giggle. That's right, best giggle.

Thanks, folks. All I've got to say is, YAHOOOOOO, let's do it again!

Send Pics Soon,
Reina

Here's a video showing what I hope was a calculated rappel:

The Drive to St. George

My friend Sara and I wanted to join our friend Dave and company in Zion National Park for some good old fashion canyoneering. So in true Robert's Random Adventure Tours style we made a road trip out of it.

Here are some choice moments and memories:
-Our smokin red hot rental car that made me forget my train of thought the second I hit the accelerator for the first time.
-Ten hours of enthralling entertainment watching the thermometer reading on the dashboard soar ever higher.
-Ice cold air conditioning driving through Baker, CA.
-Sara's snoring. *
-A cultural experience named Jenny Rose (restaurant - not a girl)
-Huevos Rancheros
-Fake tattoos
-Some of Sara's music (okay, okay, almost all of it)
-The fact that she didn't complain when I played my Led Zeppelin CD.
-The fact that it was a hundred and what?!?! in St. George (NOT!)
-Meeting Sara's aunt, uncle and cousins.
-Jeff and Mary's generous hospitality.
-Playing boys against girls pool basketball.
-Poolside pizza
- ...did I mention Jeff and Mary had a pool!
-Dust In The Wind
-My very own guest room full of Legos!



*J/K, more like an opportunity for taking in the sights and quietly meditating while she slept quiet as a mouse.

Half Dome McTwist

Andy and I at the top of Half Dome.

I love Yosemite. I don't think I can ever get enough of it. In fact I drink it every day - but that is a different story. This is about Half Dome, a 4,800 ft granite dome sliced in half by a glacier millions of years ago. I'd already hiked Half Dome several times previously and though it is a breathtaking and rewarding view from the top it can be quite crowded. So I vowed several years ago that the only way I would do it again was by the light of a full moon.

-to be continued-

Camping At Foothills Park

l to r: myself, Andy, Bryan


Three brothers Bradshaw, Bryan, Andy and myself, represtented at the father son campout at Foothills Park. We downed some burgers, shared some campfire stories, roasted some marshmallows and then instigated a little game of zorch. The layout was a little in favor of zorch so we ended making a biltz run so that one of the young'uns could make the grab of zorch's treasure.

The rest of everyone's families, including mom, dad and John Bradshaw came up the next morning for some of momma Bradshaw's famous corn meal pancakes. John brought his guitar, played a few songs and got everyone singing.

A day in the Foothills

Cooked myself a nice pre-marinated juicy steak from JJ&F's at Foothills Park for a barbecue organized by Joe and Angela. After leaving there I decided I needed to do some exploring, so I headed up Page Mill Road a little ways to Foothills Open Space Preserve. Lucky for me there was one parking spot left of the two designated for this small preserve. Coincidentally, I happen to have my GPS and knew of two geocaches in this preserve. The half-mile trail leading to the grassy knoll was easy enough, as was the first cache.



The rest of the trail leading to the second cache was, shall we say, not currently maintained. It was obviously a well used trail at some point in time, judging by the well worn rut, but the dense brush and trees that had since grown over it made for an interesting hike/crawl. My GPS batteries gave out while crawling through an overgrown tree about 500 feet from the second cache. By this point I felt committed to finding it, or rather I wanted something to show for all my scratches and scrapes. I figured I could roughly gauge the distance on the trail and that with the dense foliage it couldn't be that far off the trail, if there was a trail left by then. Thankfully right about the time I was ready to turn around, or try bushwhacking a new route back, I found it. I opted for the known route back and found it fairly uneventful, except for the baby rattlesnake I nearly stepped on.

In The Studio

Laid down lead and rhythm guitar tracks on Angie's song Movin' Out. She's been recording several of her songs at A&D Studios in Sunnyvale with Andy Deguara. I had a lead part all worked out but ended up having to make up most of it on the fly because the initial rhythm track was already recorded in a previous session. Re-recording a new section would be too hard to match the tone. After that Angie laid down some conga percussion on two other songs of hers. Andy was really great to work with. I may have to record some of my songs here to add to a Dirty Edelweiss album.

White Water Rafting

Ahh Yeahhh!


Ready to put in at Coloma.
l to r: Dave, Julie, Katie, Adrian, Glen, Erin and myself


Dave, Katie and I jump around.


Chillin' at the end of the run.
l to r: Adrian, myself, Julie, Erin, Glen and Katie


A little deflated afterwards.

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.

Gossip Rock

Me and my favorite jacket

Today's goal was to find the crash site of ill fated United Flight 615 in the east bay hills above Union City. I read about this 1951 plane crash a couple years ago and have wanted to find the location ever since. I found the exact coordinates of the crash site on www.geocaching.com just this past week. I also found coordinates for a brand new geocache nearby that was yet to be found called Gossip Rock. 'First To Find' was still up for grabs, very enticing!

The hills in the east bay are mostly grass and lack the tree cover that the Santa Cruz Mountains have so the views of the bay were spectacular as I gained elevation, rather quickly, hiking through Dry Creek Pioneer Regional Park. I chose a ridge I thought was most likely to get me to my goal but after a lot of climbing I began to realize Flight 615 would be on the ridge just to the south of me. As I reached the top of the ridge I was climbing, Gossip Rock was clearly visible not more than a quarter mile south of me on a clear posted trail. I hadn't seen anyone since the ranchers herding cows a mile or so below so I had the whole ridge to myself. Gossip Rock is a big pile of rocks with a nice canopy of trees which makes for a nice shady rest spot on a ridge that is otherwise completely open.

It didn't take too long to find the ammo box cache cleverly hidden among the rocks. I signed the first page of the empty log book and noted how beautiful the morning was with views of the bay below and lizards playing on the rocks around me. I lounged on the rocks for a few minutes and then decided I should head out if I wanted to make it home in time to take a shower before going into work at 1PM. After a slight detour and some birdwatching I quickly made it back to my car. Flight 615 would have to wait for a different day.

It's a boy!

The latest ultrasound pics from Christofer and Devan Bradshaw:

Here's the little guy at 22 weeks.


Yep. It's a boy alright.

Return to Black Mountain

I think Stephanie was secretly jealous of my trip to Black Mountain a couple weeks back so she organized her own trip and was nice enough to invite me. This time we managed to enjoy the sunset while hiking up to camp instead of while driving to the parking lot, mainly due to Daylight Saving Time. Alan covered most of the two mile uphill dirt trail to camp on his unicycle. Bryan still joined us after dark but since he'd been there before I didn't go searching for him this time. Alan tried to introduce us to some card game called Killer Bunnies, but I think we enjoyed reading the cards more than playing game. We strolled to the very top of the mountain and gazed out at the lights of the south bay before calling it a night under the stars.

TNF Product R&D (aka: retail camping)

Claire and I decided to do some product testing at work. She is 5'1" so she wanted to see if the Blue Ridge kids sleeping bag designed to accommodate up to 5'0" would work out. It fit her with barely an inch to spare ...which she didn't.

I tried out the Pyxis sleeping bag inside the Bullfrog tent with a Therm-a-Rest ProLite 3 and Compressible Pillow. The Pyxis, which is filled with PrimaLoft, rated to 0˚F and weighs 3 lbs. 6 oz. kept me quite cozy and toasty. I own and use the ProLite 3 all the time and love it, unless I am sleeping at 10,000 feet on top of snow, in which case I think I would want the ProLite 4 next time. I also think I need to pick up one of the Compressible Pillows for general camping. Keeping my head elevated prevents my zees from preventing a tent-mate's zees ...if you catch my drift.

Our little adventure was going splendidly and we were accomplishing so much valuable product research ...until a customer walked in the store.

Sunday drive

Went to the King's Beach ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the second week in a row. Wonder if anyone recognised me from last week even though I was with a different group of about a dozen friends.

Glen, Julie, Chris and I decided to take the scenic trip home so we headed south on Highway 89 around the west side of the lake to Highway 88 and homeward. We stopped for a scenic lunch above a frozen lake and enjoyed reading questions from the book, 4,000 Questions for Getting to Know Anyone and Everyone by Barbara Ann Kipfer.

About five minutes after getting home my mom called to see if I wanted to go to a cello concert. Vicky Wang, a rather accomplished cellist who completed formal training at Juilliard, played a phenomenal concert of pieces by Chopin, Brahms, Schumann, Saint-Saens and Rachmininoff. Russ Hancock, who puts together these occasional Sunday evening Ensign Street Concerts accompanied her on piano. It was quite a treat.

...more Tahoe

Another weekend in King's Beach at Lake Tahoe. This time around was a lot less ambitious and consisted of walking along the lake shore with Glen, Erin and Christina, driving Christina to the Reno airport, cruising downtown Reno with Glen in the middle of the day, reading a book about Stephen Hawking, napping (no relation to choice of book), Erin's chocolate chip cookies, homemade dinner with a dozen friends, swimming in the 90˚F pool, every one one of us jumping in the 40˚F lake, running back to the 90˚F pool, meditating in the sauna, dominoes and topping the day off watching The Goonies.