I went and saw the annular eclipse in Tahoe this weekend. I went along because I was kind of interested. It turned out that it was MUCH cooler than I thought. I am planning on the whole family going and seeing the full eclipse that will pass by just north of here in about 5 years.
Elizabeth and I went to see the Tour of California again this year when it passed by. I was able to see the finish in Santa Cruz as well as the start in San Jose. It was pretty neat being able to walk around the pit area before the start. The ToC has varying levels of teams, from the large pro tour teams with fancy painted up buses, to the development teams mostly based in the US that were changing out of the back of their car.
Lego is finally over for the year. We have had the Lego field setup kit in our living room since August. This year was our most successful ever. We made it to the regional championship. We won the project award this year as well. The kids project was the Lunch Tockz. It was a little electronic device that monitored time and temperature of food in your lunch box to tell you whether it was save to eat or not. The kids worked really hard. Overall, they did extremely well. At the competitions, they generally only give 1 award to a team. Otherwise, I think that we may have one more than one. The kids did really well in all the presentations (Robot Design, Teamwork, Project).
Another year, another FLL (First Lego League) team. This year there were more tournaments than ever with more teams. Our team managed to not win any awards at the tournament, but did qualify for the Silicon Valley Regional. They are now busily preparing for the next tournament in January.
We spent the day racing at the local velodrome. The kids really like it (Margaret doesn’t actually like racing against anyone). They had a fall in one of their races. It was exciting, but luckily, no one was hurt. Even I got out there and raced (I was the slowest of the adults, but I beat all the 11 year olds).
In the past years I have seen KOM points and even a start for the TOC, this year I went to see the hilltop finish at the top of Sierra Road. This turned out to be the victory for Chris Horner that allowed him to win the overall.
Sam and I went and stayed on the USS Hornet overnight again. Fun was had by all. We got to hear ghost stories. We had clean up duty after supper. We got to explore the ship as much as we wanted.
We tried to hike to the waterfall. The hike was nice, but we ran into snow shortly after we crossed the bridge on the Tahoe Rim Trail and lost the trail, so we didn’t actually make it to the waterfall. It was a good hike though, we got to walk over some snow and the dogs had a good time.
Another year another day at Maker Faire. Again, it was more than we could see and do in a day. We launched rockets, rode some strange 2-wheeled contraption, did some silk screening, and a bunch else.
The Tour of California came through here. I saw it again at the top of the most important climb of the day. The top 3 people came over the top all together. I also went to see the start. The start was interesting. It was good to see the riders while they were stopped instead of while they were racing.