Sunset

Yesterday was the last day of my internship. I could enjoy the cafeteria with all the Indian, Mexican, Chinese and American food for the last time. Well, that's probably not really true, as my corner of the cafeteria in fact rather looked like this...

It was a hot summer day, I can't imagine any temperature below 20 degree at the moment, let's see how it is at home when I fly back... Cindy enjoys the lying in the Sun of top of the sign to the "Java Java", which is of course just a cafe named after a programming language ;-)

After the sunset, I had to return my Sun identity and leave the office. 4,5 months of working as a researcher at Sun Labs are over...

San Francisco Giants

One of my deeper cultural experiences was watching a baseball game of the San Francisco Giants. The stadium is at a very nice location, such that you can also see the ocean from the upper places.


The impressive stadium was the positive thing, the negative thing was that the waves on the ocean were most of the time probably more exciting than the game itself... Mostly it comes down to one man trying hard to hit a ball with a device that just does not seem to be the right one for this purpose. The other guys on the field basically just standing around watching him as you can see on the picture below.

Only on far too few occasions the ball gets actually hit and only then there is some movement in the game. This fun part usually lasts about 10 seconds. Anyway, people watching the game seem to be more interested in their garlic fries, hot dogs, and popcorn. So they did not really care about the outcome. Cindy and I were of course big fans for the San Francisco Giants that lost pretty high in the end ;-) On the picture below you can see us standing on one of the seats. And yes, the jacket and the hood were really necessary as the wind coming from the ocean is very cold in San Francisco...

Planet Granite

As my internship finally comes to an end, I have a lot of "last" days. Today was my last day at Planet Granite, the climbing gym that Harald, Doug, Ben, and me used for weekly climbing sessions. Well, Cindy was there too as you might guess ;-)

Despite all the additional weight of the dog, I could actually complete some climbs and improved my climbing skills from being able to do a 5.6 (as on the picture) to a 5.9. The world of 5.10 and beyond is still mostly closed for me, but I will work on it...

As a true fan, Cindy is very proud to wear a Planet Granite T-shirt as you can see on the picture below. Well, maybe it is a bit too large, but they didn't have dog sizes there...

Good bye, Karthik! Good bye, Aritra!

The summer is coming to an end and so are our internships. Unfortunately this meant that I had to say good bye to my two first Indian friends in the last weeks. First, my working colleague Aritra left. You can see us below, sharing our office with Cindy. I tried my best to make a hiker out of him, which lead to two remarkable ascents, one to the top of Mission Peak and another one to the Nevada falls in Yosemite (even without bear-repellent spray ;-)). During our working hours we shared a lot of common goals that glued us together...

Shortly after Aritra, Karthik left too. He was my appartment colleague and also my hiking partner for nearly a hundred miles. And most importantly I could sit on the co-driver's seat of his car for a few thousand miles... He also learned me some basics of living here, e.g. that a red traffic light in America really does not necessarily mean you cannot go. Although his mountain biking skills made me feel bad, I appreciated the time with him a lot. Below you can see us (Harald, Christos, me, and Karthik) celebrating his farewell.

Pinnacles

The last August weekend, I made my first awkward steps in outdoor climbing in the Pinnacles National Monument. This post is so let, because the incredible temperature differences at that place caused me to have a cold. We spent two nights on the main campground. First we tried to climb "Rat Race". On the picture below you can see Cindy and me while roping down. It was pretty scary to be the first one hanging his life onto the rope...


On the next day the others did a more difficult climb called "Tourist Trap" (because there were always many low shoe tourists gazing at the climbers). First, Doug did the lead climb. On the picture below is Harald who went second. Third, Ben did successfully complete the climb.


The third climb we tried was going up the "Monolith". I already was a bit sick, so I did not try this one. It was also a bit scary at the beginning as you were immediately very high above the ground. Doug was quite excited during the lead climb. Below you can see him at one of the critical places where he must not fall, because the rope does not really protect him...


Watch out for Doug jumping off the wall!

Cindy was always busy studying new routes. Below, she analyzes carefully the white chock signs on the wall.