These are pictures from a week-long trip touring central Scotland (September 12th-18th, 2013) with Darlene and her friends, Jane and Janie, before continuing on to Norway. I’ve organized the Scotland portion of the trip into three separate galleries:
Days 1-3: Kingdom of Fife and Stirling
Days 4-6: Loch Ness and the Highlands
Here are some pictures of Darlene and I trying out my new toy: a latex vacuum bed, from Kink Engineering. I’ve long wanted to try one of these! It’s a “bed” made of latex that you slide someone into and use a vacuum hose to suck out all the air, leaving your volunteer/victim shrink-wrapped and pinned in position. You can’t budge a finger! And the thin latex sheet amplifies every sensation so that running anything, fingers or feathers or whatever feels wild and amazing. And of course it feels and looks super-sexy shiny!
So here she is, my beautiful shiny girl in blue:
And of course I had to try it too – it feels awesome!
Just a couple of pics from an afternoon last Friday checking out the Loch Lomond reservoir and park in the Santa Cruz Mountains. And yes, we were the proud crew of that fuchsia paddle boat! We also hunted for a while for a nearby geocache but came up empty.
Darlene and I camped out on the east side of Pinnacles National Park this past Sunday to watch the Perseids meteor shower. We had some fairly dark skies as Pinnacles is in a somewhat remote location. The glow of lights from Hollister and Salinas (about 25-ish miles away) were apparent to the north but the Milky Way was still quite visible. And the crescent moon set nice and early. We spotted probably several meteors per minute. There were a few clusters of four or five.
I made a little video of some time lapse images I captured during the night:
As it was a Sunday night, getting a campsite was easy – most of the sites were vacant — not so on a Friday or Saturday night! There was lots of wildlife though… of the more natural variety. We had multiple visits from human-habituated deer, rabbits and a coyote in our campsite. (I don’t count the yellow jackets!) We went for a hike to see the nearby talus caves and saw a couple of bats but part of the caves were still closed to protect the bat colony. (Talus caves are formed by rocks and boulders falling into a narrow area to form a ceiling and block out the sky.) On Monday, we hiked the High Peaks loop and happened to run into an old coworker from FileMaker. We also saw some turkey vultures and possibly some California condors.
Pictures and video from this year’s annual Pirates of Cache Creek event with the Outdoor Adventure Club – click through for the full gallery:
Dressed and on our way to the Pirates of Cache Creek weekend event with the OAC:
And Darlene discovers what happens when you rely on striped nylons for sun protection:
Got some friends together on Sunday to try out Artemis — a “spaceship bridge simulator” game where each person takes on a different role and we work together to successfully complete the mission: helm, weapons, science, engineering, communications, command. We did have some “technical difficulties” and some “minor disasters” (our ship sometimes completely destroyed) but everybody enjoyed the experience — it was a lot of geeky fun!
Darlene was busy working but she was there in spirit — particularly after she sent a photo of herself in uniform. (Yes, those boots may not be “Starfleet regulation” — but I wholeheartedly approve!)
Enjoyed another day of sailing on Saturday, July 20th with Darlene and her friends out of the OCSC Sailing Club. We left from Berkeley and crossed the bay towards San Francisco and made our way around Treasure Island while watching some of the competitors in the America’s Cup.
Click through for the full photo gallery and a little video of the day:
