5/31/09 winding down and a couple of stops on the way home.

I got to meet Audrey's roommates. We talked about having people and finding people, and how wonderful being in California had been for her. We talked about things that were challenging too. I am so glad that i got to see her, and I think seeing her might have been one of the reasons it was exactly right that my trip turned out the way it did. Above is Audrey's mandala.
We had breakfast at Starbucks and she got me to the airport. She sent me number for people in Chicago in case there were plane issues or I had to be there longer than I thought.
When I actually got to Chicago I didn't have time to use them, just a brief stopover at an internet kiosk and I was on my way.
It was late by the time i got into Massachusetts, but my friend James came and picked me up. There is something about being picked up at the airport late at night that makes one feel very loved.
Also I once again had a really good conversation with a lady while I was waiting for James. I seem to meet good people everywhere.
James and I stayed up talking for a bit about life and the meaning of things, and what we see for ourselves, and then he had to get to bed, and I crashed on the couch with his cat May lcking my face intermittently.

5/30/09 Maker Faire and injury and a kidnapping.

I woke up on maker faire day bright and early. I got packed up and then checked in with the Ria. While she was getting ready I decided to go rest on the couch and ponder for a bit.
My back apparently decided it wanted to stay on the couch longer than I did, because when I tried to get up it hurt to walk, and for a brief period I was holding the wall.
Thankfully Miss Ria is a massage therapist, and she made things better. They still hurt a lot, but at least I could walk without holding onto walls.
We left for maker faire without the exact parking directions, so we called our friend Jen in Massachusetts, and got her wonderful husband Cole who helped us by reading off directions from the website. Cole Rocks in lots of ways.
Maker faire was quite the interesting event. I did not get pictures of the moving soda bottle sculpture that was probably my favorite thing, but I did get photos of a lot of other interesting things.
The driveable cupcakes were pretty high on my list of cool things.
then there were mechanical giraffes,
Giant tesla coils.
and odd seemingly flyable contraptions, or maybe just shaded sky chairs
But mostly we were there to see and support Brent and Evonne and the lightening temple.
They have been working with a group of design an build an interactive muscial station where people can work together to make music. That day they were working on playing it through the tesla coil, but eventually they will have play loudly through the coil and have people do performances with electrical wands around it I beleive.
You can see the idea for the final product here http://lightningtemple.wetpaint.com/
And you can see Brent standing by the interactivtaion station here
(don't feed the Brent)
I loved playing with that thing. you and five other people can play beats and sounds and syncs that go together. It was lots of fun.
I also met Evo who is a very cool woman to know.
I think I told her later in the day that I wish I had met her on another day as that day I could barely stand up, and so I had NO energy, even though I was in this place with all these cool ideas, and interesting things, and had I not been injured I would have likely been bouncing from place to place to see everything. I kind of spent the the diet pepsi and mentos show squating on the ground to avoid pain so I missed it.
Thankfully after that Miss Ria came to my rescue again with a massage. She also likely put something in my back back into place, because about 20 minutes afterwards I regained the ability to stand up straight. However that was pretty late in the day by that time, so I still didn't see too much.
I did have a really good conversation with Brent about how he uses the lightening temple to build community, and he talked about teaching people tings they want to le4arn about technology and holding respect for people.
There were lots of people who worked hard on this but Brent has been working like crazy and ignoring things like sleep. However since I spetn most of the day sitting and watching I was able to catch this shot to prove that even Brent's need sleep.
So as our afternoon wound down Ria and I had been able to make plans to have dinner Audrey, a friend of ours from college. Audrey had also lived in Rochester for part of the time I was there fro grad school. Audrey is an amazing woman to know, and she made my time in Rochester so much better, so I was very grateful that i got to see her. We had dinner at a nice little Italian restaurant.
I love the shot above, but I figured I should take a good one.
So we chatted away and the original plan was for Ria and I to go to the house where Brent and Evonne were staying and sleep there, and then Ria would take me to the airport in the morning, but the Audrey asked if we could come to her house and spend time there. She wanted us to see her people, and was totally willing to welcome us into her space. That is a very Audrey thing. I remember when we were in Rochester she took me one weekend to her family's retreat/camp space, and wandered around in nature and came back and listened to Steve Miller band and talked about life. I knew this night would be different, but that in Audrey's presence there would be warmth and life would be good.
Ria really wanted to spend time with Brent and Evonne, but we figured there was no reason I couldn't go, all we had to do was move my stuff from Ria's car to Audrey's, and Audrey would drop me off in the morning. SO that is how I got kidnapped (not really) to Albany CA.

5/29/09 Hold on or ride the waves

Ok so you know how sometimes things take a while to process.....
Yeah while the 2009 tour took some time to process. SO it's July and I'm finally posting about the last week of May. I say it was processing time.
The most memorable thing that happened on the 29th was the trip to the Monterey bay aquarium. http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/
Ria knows people, so we got the backstage tour.
That's Ria next to Brad and Dave our Tour guys, and on the left is this guy she knew from a writing class who apparently wrote an episode for a foreign TV show.
Brad and Dave were most amazing and gave the best tour. if I had posted like oh say three weeks ago I could probably remember all of what they told us but I remember most of it, and some of the good environmental points. I think i mentioned before my friend Jen and her family were traveling across the country visiting places that help make American life more sustainable, and eco-friendly, and her son was interviewing people about it. (http://ourrenewablenation.blogspot.com/) When I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium I felt like I got a feeling for what that might be like.

We started off at the kelp tank which has to have moving water to keep the kelp alive
The kelp tank is the highest tank in the aquarium so they can use gravity to help pump the water into other tanks, and keep the flow in this tank. We continued in the aquarium proper and saw sting rays, octopi, and various other fish and sea life

Dave told me a story about these fish called California sheepheads. The most dominant fish in the group of females will become male if the male is taken out. There was one fish who was half way transitioned because the male was taken out and then brought back. It kind of made me think for a moment about gender constructs, and transgendered people and how nature already has some precedents exactly for that. Who would have thought?

Then the tour went under the aquarium.
There were three main points to Dave's tour of ecological wonders behind the scene. I remember 2 of them clearly, and I hope I'm not just fudging the third.

The first was sand filters. The basement of the aquarium is filled with giant filters which are basically giant tubs filled with sand. They let sand and natural processes filter out the creatures form the bay so that they get good water for their tanks. They have computer set up to monitor water pressure and back wash the tanks if the pressure gets too high.
Sometimes they have to go in and clean off the machinery
This little baby is something they pull through at times to clear out the pipes.

The second major point of the aquarium underground tour was heat exchange through water.
There are metal mesh things inside these tubes where two pipes are running, and the heat exchange allows them to control the temprature of the tanks and through that of the aquarium using the water they had pumped in. It's amazing what water tempature can do.

I beleive the third point of the tour was filtering out any sea life from the aquarium water before returning it to the bay. The bay does not need exotic life added into it as it could damage the ecological balance that currently exists, so they go through a multistep process to ensure nothign living gets out. Two of the steps include uv rays and oxidizing the water.

Nothing living gets past that.

After our wonderful underground tour Dave and Brad had to get to work so Ria and I toured the rest of the aquarium ourselves. I came across this sign, and it felt like a metaphor for my trip, and it was at this point I decided to ride the waves.
It got peaceful after that.
Of course the jellyfish, seahorses and giant tank certainly added to the peaceful atmosphere.

Please note that the lighter looking fern on the right is actually a seahorse that cleverly looks like plant life. NO I'M SERIOUS. it was kind of bizarre.
I didn't grab a bay shot, because the bay was a little busy, but there was peace even in the bay's business.
After our Aquarium tour we walked the rest of cannery row.
We were attending a birthday party for a girl I had not met before and I found a nice simple birthday gift for her. We also met a psychic who said my aura was spiritual but could be happier. I was thinking "Well it hasn't been the best week, and you should have seen me before I went to the aquarium."
From there we went to Ria's dojo where the first tiem in America someone was testing for the high rank in swordsmanship. So it was a big deal, and a ton of people for the dojo were there for the man's test. It was also a wicked cool show.

this was the guy.
there was group deomnstrations
There was him bringing a live sword within inches of people, butting up vegetables in people's mouths, and cutting up what looked to be old blinds.

And there was some fighting with not live swords.
It was very impressive.
I enjoyed it immensely, and also happened to have a great conversation with the guys partner who is interested in studying how kids and teens can be supported in developing good emotional and social skills, which is something I happen to be working on a group for, and interested in seeing if it can support kids and teens in a mental health setting but also in a more public school setting as well. We had a good conversation, and I will be interested to see where she goes to school and what research she gets into.
Following the demonstration Ria and I headed out to the birthday party, but made a detour to Heather and Dave's house.
Dave is the guy that gave us the tour earlier in the day. He is also a cool musician and his girlfriend is currently studying integral studies. We had a long talk about the project she is working on and how it relates to community building. Heather and Dave at the time I saw them were trying to find the community that fit best for them, and whose values they resonated with the best. I think that is pretty amazing. I think starting in middle school people start longing for the community they fit best with, but at that point still don't know who they are so they muddle around a lot. As adults we do our best to fit in with the communities around us i guess, but someties I think there is still a longing to be a part of community that really fits what we value. When people actually have the courage to go look for it, and stand with integrity in what you believe, that's very cool.
So I am curious to see what they will find
Then it was off to the birthday party which was at a sushi place.
This is the birthday girl Sarah
This si the birthday girl in the obligatory hat. This is a cool girl also named Liz who sat near us. She was good to talk to.
And this is my Ria being very contented. because it was a good day.
After sushi and party we were tired peeps, and we knew we had to get on the road early for maker faire so we went home to bed.