Adventures in Onionism

Here are my favorite 30 photos from the superbloom, taken with both phone and camera. Here are 189 photos , mostly everything I took with my phone. And here is George prancing. VID_20170408_185954 from Garret Christensen on Vimeo .

Well, regardless of what happens to my home university/state/country/planet thanks to our new president, I got to see Hawaii before it all went up in flames. One of the funders of my data science home (the Moore Foundation) set up a conference in Hawaii for their postdoc and early career researchers. (If anybody wants to set up a research transparency and reproducibility-related conference in Alaska, that's still on my list.) I flew to Kona a few days early, rented a car, and went to Volcanoes National Park. If I'd had more time to do research I would have hiked in the Waimanu valley instead, but VNP was pretty cool. I backpacked in to a pair of secluded beaches where I had small beaches and coves, with camping and snorkeling all to myself. The hiking to get to the beach was pretty underwhelming, as it was mostly lava and grass with no shade, but obviously the point was the beach, not the hiking. After the beaches, I drove back to Kona around the island in the other directi...

GF and I wished 2016 good riddance together, which was fun. We had the house to ourselves for Christmas and after making pancakes and vegan (TVP) sausage Christmas morning, I found a discarded tree in perfectly good shape not half a block from my house. So we gave it a new home and decorated it with cut-outs from Science and the New Yorker . We also went to see the SF Gay Men's Chorus at the Castro Christmas Eve. Camp is definitely, definitely not my style of humor, so mostly I enjoyed it for the fact that they, unlike MoTab, would pretty clearly not perform at the inauguration of the next president even if they'd been invited. I finally managed to find GF a steel-framed bike that fits her (47.5cm Terry Symmetry), so that was her present. We took it for rides around the marina and Treasure Island. We also went to Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument. I didn't really know anything about it before going, I was just looking for nearby B...

Remember that " go camping for a month this summer without losing your job " thing? Here's how much I camped in 2015. "Camping" includes car camping in the truck, honest-to-goodness backpacking, or staying up all night long running. March: 2 (4MPH Challenge) April: 2 (Zion 100) May: 7 (MeOw, Ventana, American River, Emigrant) June: 2 (Solstice 24, Carson-Iceberg) July: 7 (El Dorado, Emigrant, Tushar 93K) August: 3 (Desolation, Sierra NF) September: 11 (Tahoe 200, IMTUF, Bear) October: 2 (Florida) December: 4 (Nevada) 40 days by my count. Not too shabby. Also, Strava says I ran 2,485 miles (with 330K feet of climbing) over 251 runs. That's definitely the most running I've done, but not the most miles on foot (2007 CDT yo-yo). So pretty good. I'm not sure how I feel about the Barkley waitlist, but I might as well do a shit-ton of super steep training, so I'm back on the horse. I should probably also make some goals about research,...

Did an easy group trip to Emigrant Wilderness this past weekend. I brought my Little Brother, who had been camping a few times before, but not backpacking. Friday we arrived after dark, to find that it was full, and I hadn't made reservations. Tthey get full? I guess. I never sleep in them, so I don't know.) Thankfully, even in the dark, it only took me 60 seconds to find a dirt road with a pullout and a nice hunter camp for us all to camp in for free. Saturday we hiked from Kennedy Meadows resort (the northern one, for you PCT thru-hikers) to Kennedy Lake. It's a pretty well-maintained trail, with a fair amount of stock travel, but it wasn't anywhere near Tuolumne Meadows to Vogelsang level of donkey-shit awfulness; in fact it was quite nice. It's 6 or 7 miles up to Kennedy Lake, and the trail peters out right when you get to a narrow leg of it. To actually see the lake, you have to make your way through some boggy ground, and there really isn't anywhere ni...

First, a very important question. I am in search of a high-altitude, wifi-enabled, dog-friendly coffee shop on the western slope of the Sierra between HWY 108 and I-80. Where is this magical place only a few hours from Berkeley where I can go to work for a few hours, still bring George, and easily get in an evening run, camp in the truck, and get into the wilderness the next day? Towns along 49 are too low and too hot in the summer, and not very close to real wilderness. I guess Truckee is probably a good option (I do have friends there), but I'd prefer more access to granite, which is mostly further south. Kirkwood on 88 was OK this weekend, and it seemed like there were a couple potential places on 50 on my way home today. Anyway, I'd love some recommendations. Now to the point: I braved holiday traffic to get to the mountains. I drove up 88 on Friday. Set up camp near Caples Lake (Schneider Camp) and hiked up Little Round Top for an excellent sunset. Saturday I had big pla...