Clouds & Clockwork

This past weekend, we decided to do something we haven’t really done in a long time (or basically ever, unless you count that one time we went in VA beach and just watched 30 Rock on Alan’s phone, which was perfectly fun): go camping! Our neighbors, Eric and Stephanie, invited us to go with them to Humboldt State Park, which is about 4 hours north of San Francisco. It’s also home to the Avenue of the Giants, some of the most amazing and breathtaking redwood trees. We’ve wanted to go up North for a long time, but we almost always end up venturing south when we do a weekend getaway. Fortunately, the northern California coast did not disappoint!

We started our trip at (long before) the crack of dawn. Because 4+ hours is more than what we’d like to drive for a one-night stay somewhere, we knew we wanted to leave early and maximize the amount of times we’d actually have there. Plus, driving North means driving through San Francisco and getting across the Golden Gate Bridge can be pretty terrible if there’s traffic. But leaving at 6 in the morning really isn’t that bad. We were the first people to get coffee from Philz (mmm delicious), and we were able to catch an awesome view of the Bay.

Instead of going straight to the campground, we chose to drive a bit further north to Eureka. It’s technically the largest coastal city between San Francisco and Portland, but it’s a pretty small and slow-moving place. We grabbed lunch at the Fresh Freeze and visited Woodley’s Marina before stopping at Sequoia Park Zoo. This zoo was tiny, and it had very few exhibits. But it had all the exhibits that mattered: an eagle (AMERICA! murca), otters, and… RED PANDAS! (This can't be capitalized enough). We were really worried at first that we would only be able to see the red pandas sleeping, but we got lucky. Right before we left, a trainer came to feed the red pandas and train them so that they are comfortable with the vet. It was all unbelievably cute really, and it’s got us pumped for our upcoming trip to the San Diego Zoo! Here are a few of our favorite pictures from the zoo:

We finally made it to Humboldt State Park and set up camp after leaving the zoo. Although the campground was completely full, it was still remarkably tranquil. It was quiet and peaceful, and the view from our tent was amazing. Stephanie and Eric arrived shortly after we got our camp set up. We spent the rest of the night cooking hot dogs over the fire, falling off a small cliff, making s’mores, and just chatting and catching up. Camping definitely provided a much needed escape from the daily grind in Silicon Valley. (Apologies for the blurry picture of our campsite! It was the only one we took.)

Sunday was mostly uneventful. The drive back from a new place is always more dreadful than the drive there. We did drive through Shrine Tree, which was… underwhelming (terrible) to say the least. (To be fair, I’m not really sure what we were expecting. But it was lame, and I definitely would not recommend it, especially since you have to pay to drive through it). Fortunately, Sunday wasn’t a total bust. Even though most of it was just packing up camp and sitting in a car, we were able to go to Black Sand Beach (spoiler alert: it's actually rocks. No sand.) before driving all the way home. It was ridiculously far out of the way, and there were a few points on the way there that we were convinced Stephanie and Eric had only concocted this plan because they needed a place to bury our bodies (I'm still not convinced otherwise). But it was worth it. The beach was so secluded, and we mostly had it to ourselves. The waves were violent in a very awe-inspiring way. It’s definitely not suitable for swimming. (We were actually warned by a local, who saw us with our pink inner tube and feared we would be taken out to sea). Here’s some pictures and a video so you can check it out too!

So, that was our trip up North. It was a nice little getaway, and we hope to be able to do more camping in the future!

A rare sighting of us in our natural habitat.

Hi! This is our blog. We figured we’d start off with an (obligatory) introduction and describe what our plans for this blog are. So, we'll cut right to the chase.

I’m Lindsay. I’m a PhD student in political science and typically think a lot about what most people find boring and Taylor Swift.

I'm Alan. I'm not a PhD student but at least I think about cool stuff like food and cats and programming.

We plan to co-write a lot of posts, especially those about stuff we’ve done or places we’ve been recently. We thought it would be a good idea to have a way to distinguish between our different “voices” in the posts we write together. So when you see normal font, then it’s something that either one of us could have written and will mostly be used for description. If it is in purple and italics, then it’s a comment by Lindsay. If it’s blue and bold, it’s Alan. You’ll probably be able to tell by what the comments are, but we figured we’d be safe.

The main purpose of our blog is to keep our friends and family up to date on what we’re doing on the West Coast. Turns out, we’re both terrible at keeping in touch even though we miss everyone a ton. So, there’ll be a lot of posts about our vacations, weekend trips, and one-off things we do. (I’m personally hoping it’ll inspire us to do more than sit around and watch Netflix). We’ll also be posting (hopefully somewhat regularly) about things we’ve done in the past. Think of it as a “Throwback Thursday” (#tbt) with text. We’d like to record some of our more interesting past memories while we can still remember them.

We don’t want our blog to be only about things we do (aka our boring lives) though, so we’re also going to write about things we think about. These posts will mostly be solo-authored, so you don’t have to worry about distinguishing between the different texts. We’ll let you know who's writing, but again, you’ll probably be able to tell by the topic. Lindsay will probably write about philosophy and political science, while Alan will write mostly about math and computer science. (If it’s a post about cats or just contains cat gifs, it’s probably Alan as well). There’ll also  be a lot of random stuff.

The only thing left to talk about for now is how we picked the name of our blog. It’s a reference to a lecture by Karl Popper, titled "Of Clouds and Clocks." In it, he makes a lot of good points about the philosophy of science and the problem of free will (I’ll write about this problem in a future post because it’s pretty interesting), but we’ll only talk briefly about his use of clouds and clocks here. Basically, he uses clouds and clocks to describe a spectrum of predictability. Clouds, like gases in general, are really hard to predict and are highly irregular systems, while clocks—at least those that work properly—are reliable and predictable in their behavior. We chose the title "Clouds and Clockwork" because we think this spectrum is applicable to everyday life (And because Lindsay wouldn't accept Blogzilla, Blog to the Future, or Blag). After all, what each of us does is a bit of both. Our days are both predictable and random. We’re creatures of habit, and yet, we are also fickle... 

Before we get a bit too poetic (no one needs another "artsy" blog), let us just say that we hope you will join us for all the clouds and the clockwork in our lives.

- Lindsay and Alan