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Well, well, well.  Hello again blog world!  It has been a while, and I guess it’s really time to post this, seeing as orientation is tomorrow, and we ride on Sunday.  All I can say is I’m glad my riding has been more consistent and more frequent than my blogging

There’s just too much to be said about the fourth member of my LifeCycle team, Stacie.  I guess that’s why a draft of this post has been sitting in my blog for a month and a half now, unsaid.  I’m not going to be able to more than scratch the surface, but this is just an introduction, after all.  Stacie and I met very soon after I moved to Santa Barbara, and have been inseparable since shortly thereafter.  Stacie is a graduate student in sociology at UCSB, where she is studying women in the military, teaching classes and TAing students, generally living the academic life in style.  Two years ago she was a “roadie” for AIDS/LifeCycle, and I caught a taste of how much fun it was from seeing the closing ceremonies in LA and hearing all her stories.  Having decided to ride it this year, she didn’t have to work too hard to convince me to ride as well

Stacie has always amazed me with her stick-to-it-iveness.  She has been so consistent and hard-working in her training, that she’s going to be very well-prepared for the ride.  And, she has this amazing ability to organize and systematize things.  Ask her how many miles she rode on any given day for the past couple of years, and she’ll be able to tell you.  She has really motivated me during the training because, well, as evidenced by my blogging, I often have a short attention span and don’t stick to things very well.  In addition, she’s done so much to organize all the logistics of getting to San Fran and everything about the ride, that all I can say is I’m glad she’s on my team I’m on her team .

It’s going to be a great ride; I can’t believe it’s only two days away!

Let’s say hello to the third (in no particular order) member of our team: Katrina. She’s definitely the veteran of our team, having roadied on the ride two years ago and ridden last year. In addition, she has major fundraising chops, possibly related to the fact that her mother is head of fundraising for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. That jersey she’s wearing in the picture is the one she got for raising over $5000 last year, so, yeah, she’s really showing up the rest of us.

Apart from being a fundraiser extraordinaire, Katrina is a graduate student in Sociology at UCSB. I would try to explain what she studies, but I feel that my doing so would not do it justice. I know the motto of this blog is to open my mouth without worrying about being made a fool by what comes out, but I can’t be making other people into fools by not explaining correctly what they do. Was that a lame enough excuse?

As the next member of my LifeCycle team, let me introduce Erik. (Did I mention these are in no particular order?) Erik and I work together in John Martinis’ group at UCSB, where we met two years ago when Erik joined the group. We first really got to know each other during the long ride out to Joshua Tree for Thanksgiving that year (see picture), where Erik schooled me in rock climbing. We’ve been working and playing together ever since.

Erik is one of those people who knows how to enjoy life. He like good movies, good music, good food, good company; he likes to tell you why he likes these things, and his enthusiasm for them is infectious. To be clear, when I say he likes good food, I also mean that he likes to make good food and share it with others; his dinner parties are most definitely not to be missed.

Erik also loves the outdoors, probably a result of his Colorado upbringing. He’s a climber, hiker, explorer, and for the last few years, a cyclist. It’s going to be a real good time riding with him in June.

My first apartment in Santa Barbara was at 775 Camino del Sur (where the picture above was taken). When my first roommate up and got himself hitched, we put out an ad for a new roommate, and who responded but one Matthew Villeneuve with the email “iammatthew2@unnamedemailservice.com”! That was very serendipitous, since we already had a Matthew in the place (me) and now we had numbers to tell us apart. Of course, we’ve been arguing ever since then who is number 1 and who number 2, but I say we should definitely go by email address Actually, I think Matthew V. should be Matthew 5 (get it?) but that has not yet caught on.

Eventually the Camino del Sur rent got raised on us and we moved out to a cheaper (and, truthfully, much nicer) place across Isla Vista on Madrid road, Matthew V. joining me after his study abroad program in China (ask him about bar-hopping in Nepal. He has lots of great stories!) That time, too, came to an end when the proprietor who had so nicely kept the rent low to lure in grad students died, leaving the property to her daughter who promptly doubled the rent. By this time Matthew V. had graduated and moved up to Sacramento to work for a state senator, and I moved with some friends into my current place on the “Green Mesa”. It was a sad time, with the other Matthew gone.

But, fortunately, Sacramento just didn’t have the allure of Santa Barbara, and Matthew came back after his internship in the capitol. He decided to join us for the ride, got himself a bike, and, despite being relatively new to cycling, is probably going to smoke all of us on the ride

Well, that’s the story of me and Matthew 2. Let’s all give a big welcome to the first member of team 54545!

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll be writing in AIDS/LifeCycle 7 this coming June, and I’ll be doing it with my fearless team from Santa Barbara, team 54545.

There are five of us on the team, Stacie and Katrina, Matthew (2), Erik and Me. I’ll be saying more about each of them later, because they’re all very cool people, but for now, the important thing is that there are 5 of us. Our team name is supposed to be read as a sentence: 5 (riders) 4 (“for”) 545 (miles). Thanks to Erik for coming up with that! We toyed with lots of other names before finally settling on this one (punster that I am, I was pulling for “Riders’ Guild,” but we decided we don’t really have anything to do with the Writers’ Guild, plus there will probably plenty of Hollywood typs there who are actually IN the Writers’ Guild, plus by the time the ride rolls around, the Writers’ Strike will be old news and the joke will probably not be very funny anymore. Oh well.)

Work is now in progress on a cool team jersey and logo. Stay tuned!

Well, it’s April Fool’s Day (April Fools’ Day?), so a happy April to all. Instead of playing fun pranks on other people I spent the night and much of today in the cleanroom! Unfortunately, I’m not pulling your leg when I say that. I was feigning enthusiasm, however.

Actually, I can’t say that cleanroom work is all that bad; when things are working, it’s rather Zen, in fact. Still, for me it’s just a means to an end, and I’ll be happy when it’s all done. For now, I’m working on some Rhenium SQUIDs for Robert McDermott at University of Wisconsin, Madison. When that is done (hopefully in the next day or two) I’ll be throwing myself fulltime into my thesis project, and I’m much more excited about that.

Gotta go see whether my wafer is done…

Stacie, Erik and I had a great ride this morning down the coast to Carpinteria, then up over Casitas pass to an overview above Lake Casitas. We came back up the coast and along the pier in Santa Barbara, for a total distance of about 60 miles. I was definitely running on empty by the end, so I’ll have to work hard over the next few months to build up the miles. But, considering all the climbing we did, I feel pretty good, and boy, was it ever a beautiful ride! Followed the ride up with a nice spaghetti lunch, which I probably should have had for Friday dinner instead, but oh well!

Just returned from a little campfire on the beach by Ellwood. It was a very clear night, lots of stars out, but also very windy. The wood for the fire was all driftwood that was clearly saturated with oil and let of nasty black smoke when it burned. Not your typical pleasant campfire smell, more like a chemical factory. But otherwise it was very nice.

On a completely unrelated note, I just have to mention two crazy videos, to be watched in order:

1. incredibly awesome
2. incredibly funny

Earlier this year, Stacie and Katrina convinced me to sign up for the AIDS/LifeCycle, a 7-day bike ride down the California coast and a major fundraiser for the cause of AIDS treatment, prevention, education, research, etc.  Stacie, Katrina, Matthew V., Erik and I decided to form a team and ride together.  We’re also going to be working on fundraising, as each participant must raise at least $2500 in order to ride.  I signed up two months ago, but am really just now getting started on fundraising.  This definitely puts me behind the curve, but I hope I’ll be able to make it!  Check out my participant page for more information and to make a donation , and our team page for more information.

NPR’s Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me came to Santa Barbara last night! They taped a show in the newly-refurbished Granada Theatre and Stacie, Matthew, Katrina, Erik, Joao and I all went. I’ve been listening to the show for a long time and have become a big fan. It’s one of my favorite podcasts, along with This American Life, Radiolab, and several from TWiT.tv. So seeing the show live was a real treat. On stage were host Peter Sagal, scorekeeper Carl Kassell, panelists Kyrie O’Conner, Paul Provenza and Paula Poundstone, and table full of 5 or so producers and techs. They ran through the whole show, taking calls, playing all the usual games, etc. in about two hours, which will be edited down to an hour or so of air time. There were several brilliantly funny moments that I won’t spoil here, but for those who want to listen to the show, I have just three words: ropey sea creature. I actually don’t know how much of that discussion will make the final edit, but hopefully you’ll get a taste of just how funny it was live.

After the show, Stacie and I worked our way up to the front of the theatre to get autographs from Carl Kassell and Peter Sagal. Stacie reprimanded me for calling Carl “Carl” (“It’s ‘Mr. Kassell’!”) but if he minded he didn’t say anything. As we were walking out, we saw Drew Carey coming up the aisle to talk with Carl Kassell. He was looking casual and definitely blended in to the crowd, I almost didn’t recognize him. Anyway, it was a star-studded evening!

Update: listen to the show here (I can tell you it was even better in person.  The ropey sea-creature discussion, for example, went on for several more minutes.  Peter Sagal just let Paul and Paula riff off of each other for a while, and had the whole audience rolling.  Also, several comments were references to earlier bits of the show that got edited, for example Kyrie’s “oh, Mike Gravel” in the lightning round referenced an earlier Gravel comment that didnt make the final version.  Also, there were a few mis-timed quips that got edited completely; not all the panelists jokes worked.  Very interesting to hear the before and after.  Another thing I noticed about the broadcast version is that you can actually hear Kyrie laugh, which adds a lot.  She was usually covered by audience laughter in the theater.)