Fireworks and Leafblowers

What a CRAZY 4th of July! After half a day spent indoors in lab, and being kind of down that I hadn't done anything fun, the evening turned crazy in a flash. But good crazy. I had a lot of fun, and despite being in pain now (I will explain), it was of course all worth it.

As mentioned, I spent my morning in lab. I really had wanted to go in to continue something I've been working on - building some contraptions to hold whole rat brains for imaging under a microscope. Basically what I'm doing is cutting up test tubes, sanding and leveling them, and gluing them onto giant microscope slides. Their diameter is just big enough to fit my brains. So, first thing when I went in late morning today was make sure that the tube I cut up yesterday was actually big enough. It was. I sanded it down a little more than I had yesterday, washed it, and set it out to dry. My plan had been to sand and get ready several tube pieces. I was then bad and decided after the brain fit into one nice tube that I could finish the rest tomorrow, and then took a practice GRE for three hours. This was part of the GRE homework for last week that I didn't do because I was too busy. It was good that I got it done, even if it's really frustrating that my scores on practice tests have only gone down since the class started. I'll finish up the brain-contraption making this week in lab, and it should be okay since the brains I have won't be ready to image for another few weeks anyway.

After lab, I met with my wonderful gov school friend Mark for 4th activities! We opted not to go into the city because it would probably be a disaster and a zoo, so instead just stayed locally. Not a bad idea, considering that the Berkeley Marina had lots of fun activities going on which I'd really wanted to explore anyway. The marina is actually pretty big, and the main attractions for us to see (read as: the adult friendly things) were in Cesar Chavez Park.

Kite flying area over the hills in Cesar
Chavez Park

View of the marina and bouncy slides in the kids area

After reading through the list of activities available (Cesar Chavez Park was designated as the "activity park"), I decided that if I did one thing on the 4th, it would be this: zorbing. For those who don't know what this wonderful thing is, it's essentially a human sized hamster ball which you can have fun in in different ways, including rolling down hills or just running around in. These particular ones that they had at the 4th festivities were just for running around in, and it was a wonderful thing to be able to cross off of my bucket list. HUMAN SIZED HAMSTER BALL! AND I RAN AROUND IN IT!!!!! Really, I had way too much fun with this.

Mark and I running around in the zorbing balls,
frequently crashing into each other after gaining speed

Gaining momentum and running and running
as fast as I could!

It's more exhausting than you think it is! Hamsters
really must get a lot of exercise from this!

After we left the zorbing balls completely dizzy and exhausted, we wandered up the hill to the kite flying area. Here's first a view of the bay from the top of the hill:

So many people were flying so many huge and colorful kites! I wish I had invested in a kite just to be able to fly it here. It was a beautiful scene to see over the hills, to just watch all the kites soaring and dancing around in the sky. Not only was it so beautiful, but it was really a perfect place to fly kites - great wind, and no trees!

You can see Berkeley in this!
Look for the Campanile!

Me with a beautiful kite and hilly background :)

The park is also actually a park and was only somewhat filled with all of the 4th activities. We next just wandered all the way to the end of the park, through lots of bushes and hills, to a lookout point. The views of the bay were absolutely gorgeous (as always, as I say about practically everything in California!!!)

The next several pictures are probably of no interest to anyone except me, but I'm putting them here anyway because I really couldn't resist (and there were more, I chose the bestest ones, and yes, there were a lot of best ones!). On our walk back to the main area, we saw a cute fluffy animal scurry across the path. Upon closer investigation, we couldn't figure out what it was! It has a slightly less bushy tail than a squirrel, looks like a squirrel when it eats, but has the body of a bunny. We named it a squnny. I really should buy a field guide to mammals of the Bay Area and figure out what it is. We saw two more squnnies on the walk back, these photos include all three of them.

The squnny pensively looking at the ocean

SEE! IT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE A SQUIRREL
WHEN IT EATS. BUT IT'S NOT A NORMAL
SQUIRREL.

A pelican I saw in the harbor area on the walk back!

After a quick stop back at the dorms for dinner, Mark, two Amgen girls and I headed to see fireworks. We planned to go up to the Lawrence Hall of Science plaza to watch them, since we'd have an AMAZING view, and be able to see many sets of fireworks at once. This was planned only because Mark is awesome and has a car, and we wouldn't have to walk up the giant hill.

Upon reaching the intersection leading up to the giant hill, we discovered that the road was closed to vehicle traffic, and the only way up to the Hall of Science was on foot. At this point we had less than 45 minutes until the latest fireworks show started and didn't know what else to do. I told myself I'd never dream of walking up that hill again. We essentially ran up that hill and made it up in half the time it took me the last time I went up there. Can't wait to feel the consequences of that in the morning!

It was really nice because the plaza wasn't really packed, and we were able to find spots ok. People did start to leave in waves, so eventually it wasn't as crowded on the viewing area as it was when we originally got there. Here's part of the view that we saw. Picture what you see here five times the length. Oakland is two lengths worth to the left, and Berkeley continuation + North Berkeley area two lengths worth to the right.

It was a very different fireworks experience than what I've seen before. Picture fireworks going off every several miles in sets of about three for that entire panoramic stretch I described above. At the same time. THAT is what we saw. They were small and far away, and not booming in our ears, but we saw at LEAST 15 different sets, as many as 5-6 going off at the same time. (The ones in Oakland seemed to go off forever!). It was pretty amazing and definitely worth the physical pain and suffering of getting up the hill.

While watching all of the little sets of fireworks around Oakland and Berkeley, we saw something extremely odd on the lower level of the plaza. I guess this just must be normal nightly maintenance, but there was a guy running around with a leafblower cleaning the area. We all just picked it out as the strangest thing to see during a fireworks show. I understand that it's probably normal, but somehow it came off as really weird to us. It went on for a while, too. Probably weirder for all of the readers that I'm mentioning this, but it was certainly something that made the night memorable for us!

Eventually, the two main/biggest fireworks shows started - Berkeley Marina and San Francisco. Berkeley Marina was right in front of us and pretty big, so I got some okay photos of that. It was a bit foggy over San Francisco, but we could make out the fireworks okay. But, the main point of my going up there was to enjoy a new fireworks experience, and it really was something to see so many going off at once over a huge landscape. The shows themselves were okay, nothing particularly special, but it certainly was a special experience.