What’s up there?

Hey what’s up there? such an unexpected question that stops everyone all of the sudden.

An airplane, maybe, one guy yells out the answer hesitantly.

No way, it’s a rocket.  Look at the white smoke it leaves behind.  Another one chimes in.  He answers with a bit more assertion.

UFO! another creative mind contributes.  That basically overpowers everything else and just kills the discussion instantly.

I stood there in silence with no answer.  Their guesses were as good as mine.  We were young, ignorance and lack of curiosity.  That was the price for growing up in a third world country.  Five minutes later, we kids turned around and continued our  nhay ngua, jumping horse, game.  The way the game works is that a loser, select  randomly by either black/white palm or rock/paper/scissor, has to bend down for others to jump over .  It is a crucial game.  Kids can team up on one particular and make him suffer by slapping so hard on the back before jumping.  It sometimes bring tears to game.  But we all loved it.

I slowly found the real answer to the mysterious question through my growing up, through scientific explanation and through talking with adults openly.  Yet, it was not all satisfied until I got to sit on that airplane for the very first time to the America.

Sometimes 20 years later…

Not all engineers and scientists want to work on an outerspace mission.  It’s just the novelty of the job while some of us would rather chasing the big bucks at a corporate level.  I guess I was one of them -  ’til now.  My career has made a complete circle to where I started.  With some exception, this time I get to sit in with all these big brain, big ideas people here at AMES and JPL in L.A being part of the Mars exploration.

These past couple of months have been very interesting.  My workstyle has changed significantly.  More reports to write, slower pace, more research to do, less politic to deal with.  On a fun day, I can just take my laptop and head to the beach and work instead.

Some 20 years ago…

The correlation between the past and present is the fulfillment of my curiosity.  The surprises in finding the unknowns and uncertainties in life.  The discovery of the undiscovered.  The stride to make the most unfortunate event more fortunate – the positive attitude through our tough time.

-D-

The birth of mountain biking

It was here in Northern California.  Check out the forum with Michael Krasny.  There’s also a documentary movie called, Klunkerz.

-D-

Over the cliff

There’s always some stories to tell after we got out of Skeggs.  This weekend the heat wave visited the Bay Area at somewhat 100F.  HS and I  loaded ourselves with soda pop and bbq foods prepared by our unemployed chef friend outside in the heat as we were waiting for the temperature to get cool down so we can get our weekly ride.  Not until 6.30pm we left to  Skeggs.  Got there around 7.3opm.  Technically we got about 45 mins of sun due to well covered redwood but still we decided to try out new trails with steeper climbs and longer ride.  We made a couple of wrong turns and ended up with some crazy climb.  Even pushing our bike up was tiring.  My energy level ran low without proper carb intake before the ride.  At 8.43pm, we  were heading out on back to Bear Gulch road from Steam Donkey via Blue Blossom.  There was no sunlight left, barely could the trail be seen.  At one point, HS stopped to pull his bike over a root but I didn’t – I tried to ride over it.  My front wheel went over and stopped.  I uncleatted but fell over the right and tumbled down the side of the trail.  Fortunately I reached out and grabbed a hanging root of a redwood before the real drop begins.  Lightly scrapped up but all were good….we made ourselves back to the road at like 9.15pm, didn’t get to the car ’til 9.30pm and there was a park ranger waiting for us.  I guess if by morning and the truck is still there, a missing effort will proceed.

HS’ video clip of me climbing out of  hell  http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=542492149&k=Z6G6ZXS3R4WNUGLFVJ34TQ

-D-

To the “thriller”

his music, his dancing and his revolution in pop music.  Here to the king! Let’s for a moment, forget how people lived their life but remember what is best from them and their accomplishments.

-D-

Call of the wild

Last time I biked at Wilder Ranch was at least 5 years ago.   This week we decided to go back there to explore the remaining of this park.  See trail map.  Enchanted and Zane are the two most fun down hill trails without the mud like Skeggs.  Enchanted is all covered  in the redwood with soft ground while Zane is exposed in the sun and rocky so hang on to your handle bar.  Make sure you go clockwise when you hit Enchanted as shown in the map.

-D-

Skeggs – day 3

More Skeggs this weekend.

• highlights: enjoyed the downhill and jumpings
• lowlights: broke my chain many many many  times.  Walked the last 1 mile.  I finally broke in my new mountain biking shoes with blisters on my heels.

Here are some video clips of me and Hao doing some mini-jumps on Methuselah right before the trail splits to Gaint Salamander.

-D-

It’s a brand new day

“He has such a comforting sound… like a warm cup of tea on a rainy day” said YM.  The uncertainties from my world and your unknowns make every day is a brand new day

Brand New Day – Joshua Radin

-D-

Cooking with tofu

Every since after the blood bath I haven’t bought any meat (poultry, pork, beef or even seafood) believe it or not, with the exception of going out or  eating off of my roommate’s cooking. I actually have more tofu these days and definitely not because I am trying to be green…simply I am broke and cheap altogether.  In addition, I don’t think I can change my diet just like that … very hard.   I wanted to try something other than my typical: tofu+eggs, tofu+tomatoes, tofu+egg+tomatoes soup, tofu miso soup. and mabo tofu without the meat part.   I really liked the spicy tofu salad at Zanotto’s but I just think it’s expensive and I can totally make it at home.  Here is my first attempt after interpreted their ingredients:

* green onion

* celantro

* sesame oil

* sweet chili oil

* peanuts (I used my left over pine nuts instead)

* exxxtra firm tofu.  Grill them up!

* pepper (I used the little Asian type for extra spicy)

Taadaa…

tofu salad

Not as good as Zanotto’s…maybe next time.

I actually like cooking with tofu for various reasons: clean, fast, easy and light to digest.  It’s not messy and I don’t have to spend the whole night to clean up and degrease my kitchen.  A few weeks back my friend HH and his friend MQ and I had a little discussion about how the food industry can contribute to the green movement and not just the car industry.  Also read this opinion piece from NPR, The Slavery of Our Time by Jim Motavalli.

If you have any tofu recipes, pass them along because very soon I’ll be sick of eating tofu and turn back to the tasty red meat.

-D-

1,000 miles

This week mountain biking is back to Santa Cruz area.  I actually started out from Felton.  A small town on highway 9 before hitting Santa Cruz.  I did hike a lot in the past along the railroad track on the opposite side and had seen lot and lot of bikers.  The fork I started out is called Pogonip.  This is a huge park.  It connects to UCSC campus and you can actually get to Wilder Ranch from there.  Single tracks here are more difficult than at Skeggs.  I would compare them to Demo (or Braille) – more technical and narrow and sharp turns.  It’s very easy to get lost in here for there’s no sign/name for each trail.  You just have to explore the place yourself and be familiar with all the trails.  If you think you’re lost, stay on the fire tracks and eventually they all drop down to highway 9.

Pogonip - off of 9 in Felton

single track with redwood in the middle...jump it!

duck

Ricon road parking...

On the road biking side, after a 43 miles bike ride along beachy highway 1 – Pescadero – Stage Road – Pigeon Point lighthouse with my club today, I hit the 1,000 miles mark on my bike…yoohoo…

Climb profile

-D-

Things that make me :-?

1. It was an exciting moment when my cousin told me she had switched to WordPress from Yahoo blogging.  For one, Yahoo blogging is just yuck. I don’t like the interface and many other things.  Well, my cousin didn’t change it out of her will or care so much about my opinions.  She changed because the Viet Nam government banned people from using Yahoo blogging.  For whatever reasons, I just think it’s the most ridiculous thing ever.  In Viet Nam, if the government can’t control a certain activity – banning is the way to go.  Take for example, they banned firecrackers during Tet (lunar new year). This is why VN is still VN.  Taking away some of the most fundamental in people lives is not making the country better or safer.  They are taking away people’s competitive edge and the ability to advance in today’s technology.  I hope they don’t ban blogging all together.

2. The joy of going for a  hike or mountain biking at a park will soon diminish in California.  There will less parks to choose from for more than 200 parks will be closed and we all know why.

3. Last time I saw a female on scooter was in VN of last year.  That’s very rare here in the States but I saw one this morning on my way to work and I thought it was sexy.  Not so much in the sexual way because I didn’t see her face but the novelty of commuting via scooter/vespa is.  There’s a point to this…so read on.

Instead of calling a shotgun, let’s take a systematic approach to the problem.  This is how people in my new office commute to work:

• DG is in his 50s.  He lives about 7 miles from work.  He commutes with a bicycle
• CB is in his early 70s. Give or take his apartment is 10 miles from work.  He commutes with a motorcycle
• Me (Duc LE)  in his 30s with a fair physical condition.  I drive 14 miles to work.  Shame…shame…shame on  me as you may think.

Yes, there are only 3 of us here in the office , which means two third are commuting within 10 miles to and from work (excluding those with big new house in Tracy and commute for 2-3 hours to work) so why do we need such a big locomotive like cars and SUVs and Hummer and they cost a lot of money to do so.  With all the admiration to Better Place for their revolution, I still think that they only focus on a part of the problem.  What about traffic?  On a good day I get to work in 20-25 minutes and I don’t even want to talk about the bad day.  So why don’t we scale down our transportation system?  How many of you fill up all the seats in your car in a normal work week?  What do you store in that spaceous Escalade trunk? A dead cow you ran over on Altamon Pass?

This is from P.J. O’Rourke in his new book Driving Like Crazy, “By the late 1980s, cars — particularly minivans and SUVs — were providing a smooch-friendly environment. What with fold-up seats and fold-down video screens, it was a regular hotel suite in there.  But why bother when kids could walk to each other’s parentally unsupervised homes, or ride a bike or a skateboard. Contemporary teen sexual activity has a small carbon footprint.  The other point of a car, besides taking a girl for a ride in it, was finding a girl to take for a ride. Boys did this by looking cool in cool cars. A few boys — high school football stars and such — could look cool without cars. But these were the boys who had cool cars anyway.”

Since car is not the place for smooching anymore and girls are riding vespa to get around…so guys, why bother with a hot convertible Boxter or a souped up Acura or a shiny wheels set on a Hummer that I can litterally use it as a mirror to pop my pimple.

Look at the photo, she only occupies 1/2 of the lane.  This is not Viet Nam.  In Viet Nam, it doesn’t matter if you are on a vespa or in car or taking public buses, you are screwed.  We have a decent size  roads here.  On a 3 lanes road, we can possibly fit 5 vespas and the traffic won’t be so bad.  Furthermore, if all these vespa are electric, we’re there…solving multiple problems at the same time.

Imagine this, you can pull up next to a hot girl and start a conversation.  Let me tell you something, you can’t do that in a car.  That actually will open up new opportunities for businesses – ride by dating.

Let’s do the math here: 14 miles in 25 mins for my commute.  That’s is about 35 miles/hour.  That can safely and leisurely be done on a vespa.  For those  still love to drive to work…Arnold can charge them big bucks to balance his 20+ billion debt so my mountain biking parks remain open.

There are so many ways out there to improve our problems but the thing is, we don’t want to change.  We are living by the engineering rules, if things don’t break – don’t touch it.  Until some catastrophe happen then it may be too late.

Remember – it’s sexy on a scooter/vespa

-D-