change of status

I'm now a Caltech employee!

summer student dinner

A couple weeks ago I announced to the summer students, "We should cook dinner together!" With Bree in New York and Jeff an absentee housemate, I'm left to fend for myself. But group cooking (and eating) sounds fun, whether at a co-op or among summer students.

"Okay, you first!" Sonia, one of the summer students, announced in reply. "Cook dinner for us on Friday!"

And so I was immediately roped in to my own scheme.

It went excellently. We departed work early on Friday (7:30 pm!) and quickly descended upon the Armenian grocery store, where, hungry, we eagerly filled our basket with everything that was conceivably related to making pizza. For the pizza substrate, we picked a big round piece of (presumably) Armenian bread--I think it was called "Pourri"--and a couple bags of pita for good measure.

The pizza turned out excellently. This mysterious annular bread made a delicious crust, and we covered it in tomatoes, artichoke hearts, zuchini, garlic, olives, mushrooms, mozarella, and I forget what else. We should have taken a better picture of it.

Malibu Creek

On Sunday I went climbing at Malibu Creek with the Alpine Club. I was immediately impressed with the place; it is no wonder it was coveted even by Ronald Reagan and by Hollywood. The walk in--through the fog, towards the mountains--felt like a walk into a mythological landscape.

The streambed of Malibu Creek looks like the track of a fairly significant river, but right now—arly summer in the driest year of California's known history—it's mostly dry. Nonetheless, large pools are still filled with water, to the delight of many who picnicked beside them and frolicked within them. This has got to be one of Los Angeles's premier swimming holes.



The first route we set up was "Planet of the Apes," a large, partially over-hanging wall, pockmarked with a bounty of holds. (The 1968 movie was partially filmed in this park.) We set up three routes there: one 5-10a, and two harder. Climbing routes are rated in difficulty in some numeric scheme of which I do not know the details. But I think climbers could have left themselves a little more dynamic range in the rating system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_%28climbing%29


Sonia "flakes" a rope; Wayne sets anchors at the top of Planet of the Apes.

After a few hours at Planet of the Apes, we took down our ropes and continued up the trail to a place called "stumbling blocks" in the climber lore. The more experienced climbers in our group were eager to get to more challenging rock, rock where they could lead climb.

There are two general ways to set up a climb. You can "toprope" the climb, which is exactly what it sounds like. There must be a way of hiking to the top of the climb before you climb it. There you set up anchors and put your rope through a caribeener. One end goes to the climber, the other goes to the belayer, who takes up the slack in the rope as the climber climbs, protecting them if they fall.

The other way to climb is to lead, where you place "protection" into the rock as you go, clipping a caribbeener and your rope into the protection. If you fall, you fall as far as your most recent protection--actually twice as far. The protection you place used to be cams and nuts that fit into crevices in the rock, but nowadays climbers call this "trad" climbing and our climbers spoke about it in terms of awe, adventure, and accomplishment. Instead, the lead climbing today uses bolts pre-installed in the rock. "Sport climbing" is lead climbing using these bolts for protection, with the climber clipping into them as they're encountered.