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One of the more interesting cultural details about living in Northern California is experiencing and “preparing for an earthquake”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/earthquakes/archive/ready.dtl&type=printable. Experiencing one is easy: it just happens, it’s usually over before you know what it is (if you’re lucky), but it’s disconcerting as hell.
The biggest one I’ve felt and was actually aware of was a [...]

Maverick’s reef looks like a staircase or wedge, with rising steps of stone that urge incoming swells to launch skyward. Anyone who has ever gone into the water up here in NorCal understands what it’s like: _cold_. Like getting-your-nipple-pierced cold. Only until you travel south of Santa Barbara does the Pacific current bifurcate; SoCal gets [...]

I went camping in Big Sur with the good folks at my day job last week. About two and a half hours from Palo Alto, it’s a gorgeous 90-mile stretch of coast line that starts a little after Carmel. Forests full of gigantic redwood trees, miles of hiking trails (along with tons of poison oak) [...]