Sports Fans

Our 3-week vacation has begun. DH had been down in San Diego taking a class for the past 2 weeks, so the boys & I flew down Monday night to join him. Direct flight from Anchorage to LAX - very nice! Now that AK air charges for checked bags, we carried on 2 bags & checked 1 + carseats (no charge for those, TG), made getting out of LAX relatively easy. (Finding the correct parking garage is another story..)

Our first event was attending the World Football Challenge on Tuesday night at the Rose Bowl. My favorite English Premiere League team, Chelsea FC, was playing. I've been pretty excited about this game & seeing my favorite player, Michael Ballack. However, come to find out the night before that MB had injured his toe during their stint in Seattle, and was flying home for treatment. What?!? Apparently there are better toe doctors in the UK? Oh well -

Team Stretch

We were seated in the Chelsea fan area- behind the south end goal. Not too bad, and the price was right. We were able to watch Petr Cech (goalkeep) warm up. Very exciting. This was also the goal Chelsea was shooting for during the 2nd half & where we were able to watch Lampard convert a penalty kick for a 2 - 0 lead. A man behind us gave my youngest a Chelsea flag to wave during the match. Apparently the man was from London, so the flag is truly authentic. He let us keep it & will be a nice adornment to my classroom this year.

Overall a great evening - Will Ferrell was the honorary captain for Chelsea, Charlize Theron was in attendance to support the Special Olympics, and I spied Ashton Kutcher (w/o Demi) sitting on the sidelines. Pretty fun. Finding our car was quite the challenge after - most fans were parked at the adjacent golf course & there was really no rhyme nor reason to finding your spot. We wandered the course in the dark for quite a bit before we were successful.


Day 2 of vacation brought us to Petco Park to watch the trouncing of the Padres by the Florida Marlins. Pretty quick game w/a 5 - 0 final in favor of Florida. Bummer... I guess all of our good karma for the team of choice wore off the night before.

The nice thing about the baseball game is that it provides plenty of opportunity for knitting. During the soccer match, you stand for the entire 90 minutes w/non-stop action. Not very conducive to knitting (at least not for me). So - I've almost finished sock #1 that I cast-on during our flight from Anchorage Monday evening. My goal is to finish at least 2 pairs of socks prior to Sock Summit.

Well - more to come. Plans during our San Diego visit include time at the pool, the beach, and a visit to the World Famous San Diego Zoo.

Perhaps some knitting photos on the next post. Before you log off for the day, be sure to wander over to Winston's Mom blog to wish her a happy birthday! Ciao!

Mono Lake & Yosemite

Hello again... So my last post was my poor attempt to reconnect in blogland. Now that I have access to hubby's computer and therefore all photos from this summer, I guess I can provide at least a bit more visual stimulation.

I think my last vacation post was about our arrival in Wisconsin. I hadn't discussed our trip to Mono Lake etc. So - here are the Cliff's Notes:

July 8th & 9th, 2008

About the time the temperatures were soaring into the 100's in Sacramento, we departed to visit the Eastern Sierras - specifically Mono Lake & the east side of Yosemite. Many of you may remember Mono Lake being the center of attention for many environmentalists back in the 80's. Essentially the Los Angeles basin was diverting water from the tributaries that feed into Mono Lake. As a result water levels dropped & had a negative impact on the ecosystem. Eventually (I'm a science teacher - I can use ambiguous terms for historical dates, like 'eventually') measures were passed to stop the diversion of water with the hopes the levels of Mono Lake will return to normal. Political history aside, the natural history of Mono Lake is very interesting. For specific details, you may want to go here.

The formations you see in the picture above are called Tufa Towers. They are formed over time from the reaction of dissolved calcium from underground springs and carbonates that exist in the lake water. In a nutshell - limestone (Calcium carbonate - CaCO3) is formed in what is called a precipitation reaction. Yes - chemistry in the real world; my students will be thrilled! The towers are so impressive due to the level of the lake dropping as mentioned above.

The chemistry didn't stop there!! The blurry photo above shows Iain holding a piece of pH paper. For those of you who have forgotten, pH paper helps measure the pH (power of hydrogen) or how acidic/basic a solution is. This color is indicative of a pH of 10. On the pH scale (from 0 - 14), pH values above 7 are considered basic. Soap is an everyday example of a basic substance. Soap is slippery - a property associated with all bases. After wading in Mono Lake, you feel a bit slimy & need a clean water rinse.

You might think that a lake that has such a high salinity (I believe Mono Lake is twice as salty as the ocean) and so basic would be devoid of any creatures. Au contraire Mon frere! Check this out:

**Sorry for the sideways video - don't know how to edit & apparently this is how I took the video.

Alkali (basic) flies are pretty neat! They are everywhere! Normally you'd think - gross, I don't want to touch those yucky flies. Apparently the feeling is mutual since you can run through a swarm of these things & it's like the parting of the red sea - the darned flies just get out of the way!! My boys had a field day w/this - running through the flies to watch them scatter. To their delight - I even ate a fly larvae! Crunchy & a bit salty, but not too bad. I ate one after learning that the indigenous people used to eat tons of the larvae as part of their diet - high in protein!!

Fascinating political & natural history. I just love this picture - the two boys totally engrossed in the wonders of nature - so cool!

During this time we also attempted to visit the east side of Yosemite. I say 'attempted' because of this:

If you look close enough, you'll see steam emanating from under the hood.

A quick fix - adding a little lake water... (don't worry - we read the owner's manual & it said under emergency circumstances, water can be added. We think this constitutes as an emergency)
As we were heading up over the pass into Yosemite, the temperature light flicked on letting us know something was wrong. Luckily there was a pull-out nearby & a lake. Turns out all of our coolant had leaked out... not good.

Here's something you certainly don't want to add to your vacation photo collection:

We had the van towed to Mammoth Lake to have a VW mechanic take a look. Turns out a hose popped off & that caused all of the coolant to drain out. Fortunately it was a simple fix - reattach the hose & fill up w/coolant. I guess we'll have to save the east side of Yosemite for another road trip!

Okay - more of our adventures & perhaps some knitting content (must get batteries...) next time. I need to make dinner so my 8 yo will stop climbing in the refrigerator.