Minors go to Wine Country

Yesterday was a scholar birthday! Only a 20th, but that didn't stop us from having some awesome plans! Bonnie (birthday girl), Amanda (her roommate), Mark and I went to wine country! (Yes, for a 20th birthday. It was still a great time). We went to two wineries, both very different atmospheres but very enjoyable.

Our first stop was Benziger Winery in Sonoma Valley. It was one of the two wineries I was able to find that specifically said people of all ages would be welcome on their tours. I liked the use of "minor" on our ticket (you'll see why later).


This tour was unique in that we took these elongated golf cart things  out into the vineyards in addition to the general tour about actual winemaking. The winery is on rolling hills and the patterns of the grape vines are beautiful on the landscape. As is with everything else I've done in California, the pictures do it no justice to actually going there and experiencing this. Not only was the landscape at the winery beautiful, but it was surrounded my mountains/hills/whatever you want to call them, and it only added to how
 beautiful the whole experience was. 

Benziger practices biodynamic farming, so it's really eco friendly. We learned about things like water irrigation and animals that help with the farming in addition to general things about growing grapes. One of the neat things they had on display was an actual model of the different levels of soil and how root growth into the different layers is actually really important for the quality of the fruit and absorption of different flavors. Who knew!

The next stop on the tour was the area where they have all the machines to actually make the wine. None are in use right now because it's not picking season, but we learned all about how the grapes come off the stems, what the sorting processes are, and the differences between making reds and whites (which was actually really interesting to learn about, it's a difference in the way they're allowed to ferment).

After visiting all of the wine machinery, we went to the caves where the wine is allowed to age. The entrance was beautiful! Here, we learned all about barrel making and storage. Barrels are EXPENSIVE, and so much work has to go into them to make sure that the wine is perfect! The oak which faces the inside of the barrel can actually be "toasted" to different levels, and each level adds a different type of flavoring to the wine. The caves the barrels are held in also contribute to the "biodynamic"ness of the farm, as the land is being double used - since it's on a hill, they can have grape vines above, caves below!

A visit to the caves completed our winery tour, and next was the tasting room. Bonnie and I, being minors, could not participate, but we were allowed to eat little merlot chocolates that the winery paired with the dessert tasting wine! We were told by the over 21 in our group that the wines were pretty good. The winery did put out some of their best wines, bottled on site, for the tasting, probably because they are a smaller family owned place.

Before leaving, we toured a little walk through outdoor exhibit on biodynamics (the fountain pond in the photo below). They had lots of signs and information about the process which was really neat to learn about beyond what we learned on the tour.

Lunch plans were never decided beforehand, so we asked the people at the winery what they would recommend as a good lunch option. We ended up at Cafe Citti's, a little Italian place. It's super fancy in all aspects except ordering at the counter, and the food was mouthwateringly delicious. I still salivate when I think of that meal. I had a penne with mushrooms and a creamy garlic wine sauce. There is really something to be said about the little, local restaurants, especially little Italian ones out in wine country! It is definitely a place I will remember and would go back to in a heartbeat on future trips to the area. 

The next stop was Sterling Vineyards, about half an

 hour north of Benziger, not in Napa or Sonoma Valley proper. Minors were also allowed on this tour, BUT LOOK AT WHAT IT SAYS ON OUR TICKETS. Children. Pffftttt. 

 This vineyard visit was particularly special in that you took an AERIAL TRAM up to the winery, which is a huge Greek-castle style estate on the top of the hill/mountain. What makes it even more special is that you can see views of that whole area/valley from the tram and the top, which is of course so beautiful. Below are photos from the tram ride up. 

And finally we're at the top! We didn't have the proper views of the castle to take a photo of the whole thing at once, but even in these, it's pretty stunning! In the left photo below, you can see the whole valley peeking out from behind the wall.

This vineyard was a lot bigger and had a lot more of a detached atmosphere than Benziger did. But hey, I'm not complaining about the gorgeous tram ride, views, estate, and allowing of minors on the tour, even if they did call us children. This tour was self-guided through the wine-making and aging facilities, all contained within the estate. As seen by these huge and numerous fermentation tanks (and the GIANT aging barrels below), it's clear that this is a much higher capacity winery. They do also have a large area for small barrel aging, though it's not in a cave, just a very large, cold room. 

As mentioned from the tour at Benziger, the insides of oak barrels can be toasted to different levels to enhance the wines with different types of flavors. Sterling had a great little cheat board talking about the toasting and what the different levels contribute to the wines.

After walking through the estate, we came out to the terrace, which as expected, had an amazing panoramic view of the valley. Amanda and I got fixated on a castle and tower across the way, and I've also included several viewpoints from the terrace. It kind of reminded me of being in a spy movie, where everyone is out on a terrace overlooking a valley, sipping wine, all fancy-like, and there are lots of secret missions going on. I think I was the only one who thought that, though. 

Amanda, me, Mark, and Bonnie on the terrace
in front of the main area of the valley 

The wines here (I'm told) were okay, not as good as the ones from Benziger. Although Sterling did offer a good sampling, it was probably not as fancy as Benziger because they are a lot bigger and probably have a much wider array of wines, and weren't necessarily going to put out their best, grown and bottled on site, wines on the general tour. 

This was the driveway into the winery

And thus ended our day in wine country. I was very sad to leave, and still am thinking about how amazingly pretty this area of California is. It's one of the reasons I love it here so much - EVERYWHERE you go is stunning. But anyway. Visiting wine country was an unforgettable experience, even if I wasn't of age. I learned so much about the wine making process and got to visit two beautiful places (not including the drive there, which was amazing in itself!!!). I feel so fortunate to have been able to visit this magical place.

I am caveman. Hear me roar.

The work I did in lab today excited me so much that I will be dedicating a post entirely to that success. It's actually not as big as I make it out to be, but I thought that what I did was really cool and I'm really proud of it.

As I believe I've mentioned several times, my main project involves making transparent brains. My goal is to look at them in 3D and trace fluorescent projections from primary somatosensory cortex to higher processing regions. The transparency is working great (I think), the fluorescence is there, and the main problem has been how to image the brains. I think I finally found the right microscope (I'll find out for sure next week), and the only other problem was holding the brain steady during imaging. I needed to either find or build a containment device. I had the general idea to make a circular chamber, attached to a microscope slide, that the brain could fit in. After trying to cut up centrifuge tubes and realizing they just weren't the right size for the brains I had, there was no other choice but to just build the containment device I needed to exactly the right dimensions. Actually, that I didn't realize on my own, I was told it by my mentor. It's safe to say I had a major mental freak out at the thought of having to build something by myself like that. 


After some discussion with my mentor, we decided that it'd probably be better to build what I needed as a square instead of as a circle. Squares would be much easier to build, and it'd have about the same dimensions as a circle would. And, I could make any dimension I wanted. After carefully measuring several mouse brains (my controls, which I'll be trying first on the microscope next week) to determine the best size device to make, I finally settled on a good size to make a trial contraption to hold my brains in. 


So, yesterday and today, I've learned how to use several useful tools and machines. (Like a giant electric saw, which is really scary!). No worries, I still have all of my fingers :). My poor lab, I kept having trouble in the first few hours yesterday and would need to find someone and say "I don't speak tool...please help me!". I'll outline the main steps to making my brain holding device:

• Start with a block of plastic
• Cut it to the desired length and with (band saw)
• Cut out the inside dimensions (end mill). This was the tricky part. The original larger plastic blocks we had were higher than I wanted them, and the end mill tool I was using was too short to penetrate through the entire block. I had to use the end mill to carve out the inside dimensions as far in as it would go (which was luckily exactly the height I wanted). I was left with a border, a square canyon, and a square in the middle, still attached by the bottom
• Cut off the bottom so that block is at desired height and pop out the middle square (Dremel and hand saw). I was left with a block with the inside completely cut out. 
• Perfectly level both sides of the block (end mill again). 

End up with final product, which is exactly how I pictured it in my mind:

The idea is for the brain to go right in the middle, and the outside plastic walls hold it in place and prevent slippage during imaging. And, since I designed this to be the exact dimensions of the brain, it's a perfect fit. Now all I have to do is glue it to a microscope slide! 

I never thought I could be successful at building something on my own, constructing something and making a physical object out of a mental image. I was able to physically represent my thoughts. That's an amazing feeling which I've never experienced before. It was so neat to be able to see my idea come together slowly and work with my hands to make it happen. Also, it was kind of exciting when I'd be cutting up the block, and tiny pieces of plastic would go flying everywhere, including on me. (no worries, I was wearing eye protection!!). By lunchtime today, I was COVERED in tiny bits of plastic, which were really obvious on my black sweater. And hey, I don't mind getting dirty if I get something cool out of it! All the better that I got dirty, what's the fun in doing something cool if you can't get a little dirty? Plus, it makes for a great story to tell people. "Why are you covered in white powder?" "I spent my morning drilling through a block making a custom brain holder!!!!". 

By the way, did I mention I've been trying my best to learn about all the fun art programs like Adobe Illustrator? I drew the above image! On my computer! Super simple actually (several weeks ago I would have cried at the thought of having to produce something like that), and I'm proud of myself. Any progress is good and I'm really glad I'm learning :).

And to top it all off, I was so excited that I stayed in lab for an extra hour and started to construct a second containment chamber. It's only about a third done because eventually I told myself I was being ridiculous for staying in lab so late. So I'm going in tomorrow morning to finish it!!!! (Yes, I'm that excited about building this that I'm going into lab on a Saturday morning).

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. 

Berkeley Marina fireworks

Berkeley Marina fireworks

Both Berkeley Marina and San Francisco fireworks (over
Pier 39 area, I believe) in one shot

Happy 4th, and let's hope I'm not too sore in the morning! 

Halfway Through? WHAT?

I realized in lab today that we only have four full weeks left in lab + one week of presentations. I definitely had a major freak out as I'm certainly not ready (and have no desire) to leave Berkeley, my lab, my program, and CA in general.

In lab news, my research is really picking up. I'll mention a few progress points here. I'm going to start helping out with a second project this or next week to study inhibitory circuits in primary somatosensory cortex. In regards to my transparent brain project, there is unfortunately a lot of time left before my brains will actually become transparent, so in the meantime, I need to figure out the best way to image them. Hopefully my tracer worked and I will be able to successfully map projections in 3D! My main focus right now is probably going to be building a contraption to hold brains in for microscopy. For a detailed research description more than I've given here, you can see BU's Undergraduate Neuroscience page. Last week in GA groups we presented preliminary talks to practice for the end of the summer. Mine was by far the presentation with the biggest cool factor. In addition to the required background and methods, I also presented "results," which were actually just my control transparent mouse brains that you see pictured on BU's website. Not my real results, but hey, it looks awesome and everyone loved it!

I also had a super fun Friday, for once! After lab I went to Saturn Cafe, a vegetarian diner! I had a really awesome veggie burger with delicious onion rings.

 

After dinner at Saturn, I went to go see Brave, finally! The best part about the movie was the theater. I've never seen one so fancy!!!!!! We sat on giant comfy couches, and the theater was decorated like an old Egyptian tomb, or something similar. It was so elegant and by far the best movie theater I've ever been to. And, the other best part was that the student rate was only $8!!!!!!!!!!

And here is Scrat during the Ice Age commercial!!!! I love squirrels :). 

I won't say anything about Brave to not spoil it for those who haven't yet seen it. Yes, it's Pixar, so by default it must be good, but I, like the many others who told me this before I went to go see it, did have some issues with it. I probably shouldn't say more than that so that I don't get chased after with pitchforks and angry mobs for spoiling the movie. 

 Saturday, I spent the morning in San Francisco on Embarcadero! I had breakfast at Crepes a Go-Go (cheddar cheese with apples and cinnamon - BEST BREAKFAST EVER!). I wandered around the vendor area for a little while, and then followed people in orange shirts down Embarcadero to AT&T Ballpark because I wanted to see what it looked like. Along the way, I saw this crazy bow and arrow sculpture!

...And this timeline about evolution in the Bay Area!

Finally made it to the ballpark, which was really cool! They had giant statues which I could see from the outside, and it just looked like a fun place to be able to see a baseball game. 

After coming back from SF, I had lunch at Smart Alec's, a fast food place near my dorm. I had a lovely eggplant sandwich and way too many fries for my stomach to take, but that's okay because it was all delicious. I then wandered around Berkeley with some of the girls from my program, went clothes shopping at another Cal gear store we discovered and just general wandering through a lot of the places I walk by all the time but never get the chance to go in. It was a nice relaxing way to spend the afternoon. 

Sunday was our last organized activity (they figure now that we're halfway through the program, we should all know each other enough by now and be able to plan our own activities). Our final activity was biking across the Golden Gate Bridge. This may seem like the coolest thing ever until you remember that SF is notorious for being foggy ALL THE TIME. See below for what a sample view of the city looked like that day.

Yeah, not so fun when you can't see anything. I of course had a good time (despite the many hills we had to go up to get to the bridge), but I do wish that we had actually been able to see more of the view/bridge than we did. 

Very pretty view of the shoreline below

Biking group!

Some friendly pelicans I saw on the way back!

For my not organized by the program activities, no definite plans have been made yet for either the 4th of July or the upcoming weeks. I have a general idea of what I would like to do and will of course post all of the details of my adventures when I have them! In the short term, I will mostly be focusing on making sure I get all of the necessary data for my projects, making sure I actually start to seriously study vocab for my GRE, which I've still yet to register for, and finishing up and finalizing the list of grad schools I'll be applying to in the fall. I refuseeeeeee to believe this is all coming up so soon and my program is already halfway done. No, no, I have no desire to go one step closer to being in the real world :(