Dichroic Reflections

I got rocks!

Rudder had a bit o a problem on Friday night. While packing for a trip to the Netherlands, he couldn't find his drivers license. We'd had to use them a lot when we were in Vegas in December, because they wanted to see them every time we used a credit card, and he couldn't remember using it after that. He finally recalled that he'd had to show it at the hotel in San Diego in January, and when he called them, they had the card. Why they couldn't have actually called to tell him they had it anytime in the past three weeks we have no idea. So they'll be sending it to him, but that doesn't help a lot with his trip, on which he was supposed to rent a car. This is another time when his anal-retentive tendencies have come in handy: he did find a photocopy of his license. It's possible they'll let him have the car with that and his passport, but I don't know how likely that is.

Fortunately, he'll be in the Netherlands as opposed to, say, the US. He can take a train from Amsterdam to Eindhoven, where he'll be working, and then he should be able to get rides in to work with other people.

I went for the traditional "Rudder's away" massage yesterday. Today I was going to go for a long hike, but I decided to go row after dropping him off at the airport, since the lake is right by it. So I did a shorter hike today, up a small mountain called Usery Peak. It's 1.6 miles to the end of the trail, which isn't at the top of the mountain but at a formation called the Wind Caves (so 3.2 miles round trip), and it's about 800' elevation gain. I always think of it as being a short and easy hike, and am always surprised at how steep it is. But I didn't stop for any breaks on the way up and didn't have any problems with my knees or ankles, which tend to be weak, on the way down. Also, on some hikes I've had an issue on the way down in which when I step at an angle, my boot feels like a knife cutting into a tendon below my ankle bone. I don't know if the problem is from the boot or from my foot, but at any rate it didn't happen today.

I think my favorite part of the hike was near he end, when a little girl, maybe four or five years old, who was going up with her family came up to me and said, "I got rocks!", holding up her hand to show me three rounded stones. (Actually, she said "I got wocks!") This was, again, on a hiking trail. On a mountain. In the desert. No death of rocks, from sand grains on up to boulders. But she was pretty excited about her three special "wocks".