Kyle Dickerson – Page 105 – If we had a Marriage, These Would be its Thoughts

Views of the Bay

May 12, 2013 3:30 pm

Driving to Tilden Regional Park from Livermore takes you along a “mountain” pass where the road winds back and forth from the Bay-side to the valley-side. There are some stunning views from some of the pull-offs. So on our way home from the park we stopped so I could hop out and take a few pictures.

I turned the pictures monochrome because the images were very blue and there wasn’t much of any other color visible.

Here’s a view of San Francisco over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (or locally, The Bay Bridge, even though there are many bridges over the bay). The gigantic tower in the background is Sutro Tower.

This is a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge. The second tower is just barely poking through the clouds. And I believe that’s Alcatraz in the lower-left corner. I used a very strong noise removal filter on this one which gave the whole image an oily quality to it which I like.

Tilden Regional Park

3:14 pm

Last week we learned about Tilden Regional Park. I don’t remember how, but I had stumbled across something that mentioned the “Steam Trains” which sounded interesting. As it turns out, they have a great little narrow-gauge, scale-model (I think it’s 1:5) train system. For $3 per person you get to ride the train around for about 15 minutes. They have tunnels and bridges and roundhouses and water towers. It’s great fun.

Heather thought it was pretty fun, but she was a little unsure about the whistle. It would startle her every time it blew.

Also in the park is a “Little Farm” with some animals. Heather loved watching the ducks and chickens run around. She made sure to keep an eye on the rooster which kept crowing. The cows weren’t interested in us much because we didn’t bring any food for them, but we were able to get some face time anyway.

From there it was on to the carousel. Yes, this park also has a carousel (and no parking/entrance fees!). The carousel is $2 a ticket or 7 tickets for $10. Given that Heather’s favorite part about Disneyland was the carousels we figured this was a good bet. And she got very excited when she saw it and realized what it was.

Heather mostly had her ride face on, but she was loving it.

And here’s photographic proof that I was there too.

Getting up to the park takes us through Walnut Creek, so, of course, lunch on the way home was at the new Chick-Fil-A.

Word of warning:
We decided that anytime anyone comes to visit us from now on we’ll need to go ride the train and carousel. They run all year round, weather permitting.

2007 Honda Civic Efficiency Update

May 7, 2013 7:41 pm

Just an update on the gas mileage efficiency I’ve been getting with my 2007 Honda Civic (automatic transmission). The orange line represents the average, which is currently hovering just above 30MPG. The EPA rating was 25/36 so I’m doing pretty well still.

It does look like the efficiency may have dropped a little bit starting around autumn 2011. But it’s hard to say for sure since the gasoline formulations change regularly what with the summer/winter mixes and inconsistent ethanol levels.

Vacation Part 1: Aquarium of the Pacific

April 28, 2013 8:45 am

We went down to southern California for most of the week on a short vacation. We drove down on Sunday and met up with Josh (of Project Runway fame) for dinner. On Monday we met up with him again to go to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.

Traffic in the Los Angeles area is notoriously bad, but what makes it even more fun is when they hold a Grand Prix event on the blocks that surround the place you’re trying to get to. The Aquarium had been closed over the weekend for the race, but reopened on Monday. However, they were just starting to take down all of the fencing, barriers, stands, etc. from the race. So roads were randomly blocked off and everything our GPS unit wanted us to do was simply not possible. We finally wandered into a member of the event staff at yet another intersection where our only allowed movement was a U-turn. They were able to tell us how to get to the aquarium.

Heather thought it was pretty great.

Being my daughter, she loved the penguins. Mainly the penguin statues though; which she, of course, felt the need to kiss.

Turns out that having a third pair of hands with us made things much more manageable: one to handle Heather, one to push the stroller, and one to take pictures. Thanks again, Josh!

For somewhat unknown reasons, the aquarium also has a lorikeet exhibit you can walk through. You can buy a little cup of nectar to feed the birds. This wasn’t any of us, just some random other person feeding this bird.