California Zephyr: SLC-MTZ

Dateline: Sunday December 23, 12pm
Location: Benicia

We made it in last night only about 2 hours behind schedule. There was a "police action" on the tracks outside of Suisun that stopped us dead in the tracks for about 30-45 minutes, and before that we were held up in Soda Springs, high in the Sierra Nevadas just below Donner Lake, for about an hour while a freight train was put back together ahead of us.

The service was pretty lousy on this final leg of the trip. Apparently the good people of Amtrak did not stock the dining or lounge cars, nor staff the dining car, to match the number of passengers. Our 8:30 breakfast was served at 10:30am (around Wendover, Nevada I think), and our 2:30pm lunch was served at 4:30pm, around Colfax, CA. At any rate, once the staff finally explained adequately what was going on, the irate passengers took pity on them and relented in their complaining and short tempers. By mid-afternoon most of the ruckus had settled down and we were mollified, having accepted our mediocre lot. All that was left at lunch were turkey burgers and salads, all that was left at dinner was turkey and risotto (canned rice and tomatoes).

If anyone from Amtrak management is reading this blog (reasonably unlikely, I know), take note: You have failed the good citizens and rail passengers of the US. This last leg represented a complete and total disregard for passenger service and customer satisfaction, if not basic safety. You had ample warning that the train would be full, and plenty of opportunities to re-stock the cars between Salt Lake and the coast. This was a pathetic, almost laughable example of bureaucratic mis-management. Worse still, you hung your downtrodden, underpaid attendants and train crew out to dry, giving them nothing to work with and no way to satisfy their passengers.

Dateline: Friday December 21 11pm
Location: Salt Lake City Amtrak

We spent the day at Ali & Eric's house in SLC, and had a delightful dinner with Eric's parents Michael and Mary Lou in Ogden where Alex was quite the showman.

We took a taxi over to the Amtrak station and now we're waiting for the Zephyr with a large, lively crowd.

California Zephyr: DEN-SLC

Dateline: Salt Lake City, Utah
Friday 12/21 12:00am

Dinner last night aboard the train was a blast. We ate with two wonderful gentlemen, one an economics and business major from Cornell College in Iowa, on his way home to the Bay Area for the holidays, and the other a young German man just getting underway on a 30-day, mostly-train based tour of the US. We had a lively and fascinating convsation over our steaks, burgers, pork and sides, that spanned politics (Reid (?) from Iowa was knee-deep in Iowa caucus hullabaloo), the economy, and radio engineering (both of our table guests had backgrounds in production and engineering, same as Dana and I). So we ended the night geeking out over how to jury-rig monaural RCA cables into antiquated sound boards.

Before dinner, we had one more cocktail with our next-door roomette neighbors, Tom and Amenda from Lafayette, and their fast friend Joe from Omaha (my sincere apologies to everyone if I got any of these details wrong, by the way!) We had met this threesome earlier on in the day after Alex spent an hour or so of gleeful screeching and cooing. I was worried he was disturbing everyone on the train, so I brought over the last half of our bottle of celebratory champagne to share. Suffice it to say, the gang was happy to share with us, and we struck up a day-long friendship -- hopefully longer! They were happy enough to share in Alex's delight and we had lunch with Tom and Amenda, where Tom shared the details of his recent solar panel installation. This is something I am definitely going to investigate further. We watched the scenic beauty of Glenwood Canyon scroll past us as we ate our lunches in good company.

The most surprising and rewarding thing about train travel is clearly the company! After the novelty of the train itself has worn off, there really isn't a great deal to do. Either you bring a good book, computer game, or other diversion, or you start chatting up everyone you can. And what a generous, friendly and carefree bunch we had aboard!

We got into Salt Lake City on time. We were greeted by a monumental snow storm! When I checked the weather on Google just past Glenwood Springs and my earlier posting, Google seemed to think it would be a little light snow, highs in the 40s in SLC. Well sir, Google had it waaaay off! It was dumping snow when the train pulled into the makeshift station. The platform was covered about 4 inches deep. It was chaos.

Apparently Salt Lake City is rebuilding its downtown transit hub, including the train station. The stately old Union Station lies shuttered just a couple of blocks from what passes for a train station for the moment -- namely, a pair of run-down, cramped temporary trailers, connected both to the street and the platform by rickety gang planks crossing over the beginnings of new construction on the inter modal transit hub. As I said to Eric last night, "It looks like a frickin' pirate ship!" And it did. Complete with surly deck mates.

The good people at SLC Amtrak clearly did not have their heads screwed on last night, or at least were caught unawares by the storm. The station was a mess of people, luggage, and lost souls adrift amid the falling snow. We stumbled, unassisted, from the train and eventually found our way through the melee to the makeshift station, where the unhelpful station agent told us we would have to wait outside until all of the boarding passengers were cleared. Wait outside??!! Are you high?? Dana has a lot of motherly good sense, and told the guy flatly, "I have a baby, it's freezing out here, I'm coming in," and proceeded to shove past the agent into the dingy station.

There we were met by the smiling face of brother Eric who swooped us up in his warm Lexus and escorted us back to Sugar House for a wonderful night's sleep. Now we're spending the day re-stocking, doing laundry, and sleeping in. Alex is in love with Ali and Eric's two cats, Mu and Epsilon.

Dateline: Glenwood Springs, Colorado
Thursday 12/20 2:30pm

Just pulling out of Glenwood Springs now, just shy of the 1/2-way mark. Had lunch with Tom and Amenda and watched the splendid scenery of Glenwood Canyon. Wowee!


Dateline: Denver's Union Station
Thursday December 20, 2007

We're all checked in and our sleeping car has been assigned. We're about to board the California Zephyr! Breakfast will be waiting for us on board the train -- we can eat in the dining car or in our room. Tipping the car attendant is customary.

Wireless via my cell phone is working, although blogger is CRAZY slow to load. A real throwback to the 1990s.

Alex just fell asleep.

We took a very nice limousine here from home. It was a real treat for all of us, and definitely a good way to travel.

Looks like we forgot the camera, so probably no pictures 'til we pick up Ali and Eric in Salt Lake. That'll be tonight around 11pm.

San Diego

Our intrepid biologist...

...found an unfortunate, huge shell that had beached itself, probably in the last big Pacific storm.
Did I mention it was huge? A nautilus?

So she gave it a good home back in the kelp beds past the breakers off the lee side of the pier.
Mommy, Daddy, Great-Mommy, Great-Daddy and the little pearl.

We also visited Dana's grandmother Bettie. It was the first time she had met Alex, and vice-versa. I couldn't resist a 4-generation photo:

Susan (3), Bettie (4), Alex (1) and Dana (2)

Bettie is a very happy great grandmother.

Later we met up with Dana's cousins and Aunt and Uncle...

Everyone had a ball! (Susan, Ruthie, Nealy, Shimshon, Leslie, Dana, Scott, Me, Alex and Herb)

Speaking of balls, later still we went to Balboa Park and visited the Science Center with our friends Martha, Jeff and Veronica (age 3). Along with an entire section devoted just to little babies, where Alex got to play with huge foam blocks, they also had tons of interactive exhibits that were appealing on many different levels, from infant to Berkeley grad.

Here Alex learns about Bernoulli's Principle, which states, "Balls are fun to play with."

We also learned how trains work. This will prove to be good experience later this week when we ride the BIG train to California!

Look at all the animals!

All aboard! (rear to front, Martha, Jeff, Veronica, Dan and Alex)

Thursday morning we board the California Zephyr!

Holiday, Finals, Work Madness

Alex the avid reader (just like his Mom!)

Sometimes I can get Alex to sit still long enough to play him a song (Blackbird, in this case)

Ryanne and Alex. Ryanne is one of the best things that's happened to us since his birth! Alex is crazy about her (so are we!)

Alex's big blister

The year is careering to a close as we approach the Christmas holiday. Dana is putting the finishing touches on her Constitutional Law final exam this week, a 1,750 word masterpiece of legal thought and analysis. Her professor was adamant that it be absolutely no more than 1,750 words, so we have been struggling to come up with terse and witty phrases to replace the typical long-winded, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink legal essay verbiage.

At work, my project is finally taking shape. The software analysis software project has gone through its final set of checkpoints and is now ready for public release. You can rest assured I will announce it here as soon as I am able. But sadly it's not very sexy unless you're a lawyer or an open source software developer, or possibly a CIO or director of IT operations. My team has been putting in some very long hours and bending over backwards to satisfy the whims of our management team and their ridiculously risk-averse stance. Now I think we've cleared all those hurdles and have just enough rope to hang ourselves.

We'll be heading to San Diego to visit Dana's Mom and Herb this weekend. We leave Thursday evening and get back Sunday. It should be a very fun trip for all of us. Dana and I can escape our work and school headaches, and Alex can hang out with "San Diego Grandma." Plus it's been snowing like crazy here lately, so we can get a few days' respite from shoveling the driveway. We had about 4 inches last weekend, and another 2-3 inches yesterday. Now it's sunny. My neighbor Bob let me borrow his snowblower, so Sunday morning I had fun for about 45 minutes clearing everyone's sidewalks on the block, plus Bob's driveway. He offered to let me use it anytime. What a guy!

Alex's bedtime routine...

I guess if I don't talk about Alex a bit more soon, they'll revoke my blogging license, so I wanted to share the details of how we generally get Alex to bed each night. There are three basic scenarios:

1. Angel Alex: When he's had a busy enough day, sometimes Alex just falls asleep, often before we've even taken him upstairs to his crib. Sometimes he'll be in the car going home and fall asleep and we can manage to shuttle him into his crib without disturbing him. Sometimes he'll fall asleep on the floor whilst playing. This is relatively rare, maybe once a week or so, depending on what we have going on.
   
   
2. Sing-along Alex: About half of the time, Alex likes to be sung and rocked to sleep. Usually this task falls to me, since Dana doesn't know all of the Cal fight songs by heart. Alex loves all of the Cal songs, but he seems particularly drawn to Sons of California, the California Drinking Song, and By (a.k.a. the Bowles Hall Drinking Song). The majority of times, if he's tired enough already, we only make it through about three songs. I call this a "Three and out," referring to the type of paid gig that the Cal Band's Strawhat Band would sometimes be called out to perform, where we'd play three songs and have a free drink and pack it up and go home. Usually I'll start by singing the first song, but then just hum the last two or so. Other times, I have to go through the entire pre-game show, or more, to get him to settle down. We'll almost always do this routine while he's in my arms, as I walk around the bedroom rocking him gently. He must have a green squishy pacifier in his mouth and a blanket in his hands with a satin trim. These are non-negotiable.
   
   
3. Snuggly, wiggly Alex: A bit less than half the time, Alex and I will snuggle up in bed together. I wrap my arms around him and tuck a blanket around him. If he's especially wiggly, I put him on my chest, face down, and gently hold him in place to keep him from wiggling so much. I usually do this either when I'm too tired to stand up anymore, or when he seems a bit too wiggly or restless to put up with rocking in my arms for very long. The major advantage of cuddling in bed is that once he falls asleep, he's already in the lying-down mode, so I can usually scoop him up and place him in his crib without disturbing him too much. It's always a crap shoot switching him from vertical to horizontal, so starting out the exercise lying down is a nice way to avoid that gamble.

More Travel, More Fun

Fun stuff, that karaoke. I'm still amazed at how talented our neighbors and perfect strangers can be, much less our own family members! And since the smoking ban in Colorado took effect a year ago or so, it has been downright pleasant to spend a few warm hours at the Derby. The only reason your throat is sore at the end of the night is going a little too overboard belting out Changes in Latitude or You Can't Always Get What You Want.

This week I have a business trip Wednesday-Friday to Philadelphia for a customer event. For the first time I'll actually be presenting and interacting with customers instead of just observing and taking notes. It'll be weird and different, but involve a lot less typing and a lot more schmoozing. They expect me to be an expert in MySQL and JBoss, which is partially true, but only among certain audiences. At a developer conference I'd stick out like a sore thumb, but among the CXO and director set, I'm a super star. Or so they think...

Last night I got an hour to myself while Alex slept and Dana studied to work on the house. I began touch-up work on the new closet upstairs. I had previously cut and stained the shelves for the closet, and last night I installed them permanently. I also patched all my screw and nail holes with wood putty, and began work on fixing the alignment of the strike plate for the bedroom door. All of this involved drilling and countersinking woodscrews, then filling with a truly noxious substance called plastic wood. It looks and feels like peanut butter and smells like nail polish remover. ick. But the stuff just works.

My colleague from China, Tommy, came for a visit this week and delivered a little green bottle of strong rice wine. Mmmmm... so after I knocked off for the night I tipped back a very small glass of the stuff. It's about 110-proof, and $0.80 a bottle for the cheap stuff, but for some reason I like it.

Dana is studying for her Intro to Patents class final exam, which is Tuesday afternoon in Denver. I think she'll knock it dead, but you just never know, and it's especially hard for me on the outside because this fall I haven't been following her progress as closely as past semesters. I've been stressed out and having those forgot-to-study-and-naked-on-exam-day dreams. I hope she's not as stressed out as me!

In other great news, I sat for and PASSED the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam on Sunday morning! I began pursuing this professional credential almost 2 years ago, taking a formal 6-part class after work for several months, but then a lot of things got in the way. Being a self-directed study program, it was easy to procrastinate and put it off. So it's a huge relief to have this "in the bag" and not have to worry about it anymore. Not to mention a nice feather in my cap! The most rewarding part was when I told my friend, colleague, and fellow PMP Julie at work today and she said, "Nice job, pimp!" (a common compliment among certified project managers).

Friday Night Karaoke at the Derby

Fall Into Thanksgiving

Before I describe our recent travels, here are a couple of photos we took about 2 weeks ago when the leaves began to fall in the back yard. Alex really enjoyed playing in the crinkly, colorful leaves, and he had fun trying to eat them too.




Shortly after these pictures were taken, I invested in a high-powered Toro leaf blower/vac. I used it to great effect to collect most of the leaves here and mulch them for use in the garden this Spring.

Last week, we all traveled to San Francisco for a Patent Bar exam review class that Dana took to prepare for the Patent Bar. She was in class for 8-10 hours each day from Wednesday through Sunday. I worked from my parents' house in Benicia on Wednesday, Thursday and part of Friday. On Thursday I drove down to the corporate campus in Cupertino to work for the day and meet with one of my teammates who I hadn't had a chance to meet yet. My Dad was just wrapping up a 2-month stint working the graveyard shift at the plant. Fortunately his project wrapped up on Friday and he was able to spend the rest of the weekend with us, albeit a little groggy.

Three generations of (sleepy) Stangel men.

Here's the latest picture of the airplane project, a Glasair IIS-RG my Dad is building. Next up: windows!

We returned to Colorado on Monday evening. On Wednesday our Thanksgiving visitors arrived. We have my sister Alison and her husband Eric here at our house. My Mom and Dad and Dana's Mom and step-Dad are staying at the Bed and Breakfast just down the street, enjoying lavish breakfasts from the proprietor Mark -- every breakfast is topped off with an ice cream-based dessert.

Grandpa Herb, Susan, Carla and Dana working on Thanksgiving dinner in the kitchen

This year for Thanksgiving we prepared a deep-fried turkey out in the back yard. This is the second time I've fried a turkey, and I'm more convinced than ever that it's the way to go. Cooking time of 3 minutes per pound means that the entire afternoon of cooking can be done in 2 hours or less. We used a mixture of canola and corn oils. The 15-pound bird was brined overnight with extra seasoning.

It was a pretty chilly Thanksgiving here. We gave our native Californian families a run for their money!

Of course, it's no good heating up 3 gallons of oil if you're just going to cook a bird. So before the turkey, we deep fried some doughnuts, then we made authentic sweet potato french fries with about 8 sweet potatoes and yams. Both made for excellent appetizers (despite everyone's initial uncertainty). Will the deep-fryer become the new barbecue?

The finished product!

Kupuna kane Herb with the little keiki

The high Thursday in Berthoud was about 30F, and once the sun began to set below the fence in the back yard, it started to drop quickly. I think by the time we took an evening walk it was about 15.

After dinner, Grandpa Herb and Uncle Eric favored us with a guitar duet. We had fun singing along with several tunes we sort of knew the words to.

I joined in playing Alex's alligator for accompaniment.

And here's a brief video of the hit of the evening:

Our evening walk, with Alex in his snow suit!

This morning I got up early to head over to the ACE hardware store for their usual post-holiday rebate sale. I picked up some awesome Stanley tools for a song, plus free Christmas lights and a free cordless electric screwdriver set. Hard to beat that! They even let you file for rebates online now, so I don't have to spend $0.41 on postage or cut out any UPC labels!

Stair Master

Alex has mastered climbing up stairs, as evidenced by the video above. (Hit the "play" icon to watch it). In the course of about 2 weeks he went from tentative wobbly clambering to confident climbing. The next step is teaching him to go down stairs.

Badada Bread (Dan's Banana Bread)

Wednesday night I had enough time to myself in the kitchen after Alex went to bed and before Dana got home from class to bake a loaf of "Badada Bread," probably our favorite baked item. I haven't made any since the day Dana went into labor, when I baked some for the nurses at the hospital (they loved it and treated us like royalty).

A couple of years ago, I started with a recipe from The Best Recipe, but have made several major changes to suit our tastes -- mostly less sugar, less fat, great taste. Here's what we ate:

Badada Bread (Dan's Banana Bread)

Dry Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups walnuts (1 cup chopped) or more (optional)
1/4-1/2 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)

Wet Ingredients:
3 very ripe bananas, smashed to a thick paste
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2-3 tablespoons butter (may be substituted)
2-3 tablespoons yogurt or mashed bananas, in addition to amounts above

In a large mixing bowl, shake dry ingredients together so they're uniform
In another large mixing bowl, stir wet ingredients together so they're uniform
Fold dry ingredients into wet ingredients, but don't over mix (leave chunky)

Grease & flour loaf pan, pour batter in.

Cook 75 minutes at 350 F on lower middle oven rack.

Let the loaf sit for 5 minutes before devouring.

This recipe also works very well as vegan badada bread - just substitute the eggs & butter with equivalent amounts of more bananas, more yogurt, apple sauce, smashed-up tofu, or other typical substitutes. Adding crushed flax seeds and wheat bran is also great. It is pretty hard to screw this recipe up, except if you under-bake it so the center of the loaf is gooey.

What do you like with your badada bread?

Note, this is how we do it "a mile high," for you flat-landers out there, you might have to fiddle with the temperature or the time or the flour or the moisture or something -- I still haven't figured out the whole altitude cooking math, I just know what works for banana bread in Berthoud.

Satisfied Customer.

How To Add Comments

Many people have asked me how to post comments on this blog. I admit that it is not at all obvious, even to a seasoned web-surfing guy like me. So here is a brief aside that describes exactly how to add comments:

1. Go to the blog (Hint: If you're reading this, you're probably done with step 1)

2. At the bottom of the posting you want to comment on, click on the text that says how many comments there are ("0 Comments", "1 Comment", "2 Comments", etc)

3. You'll see a new page, where you can type in your comment in a box on the right-hand side of the page. On the left-hand side you will see all comments that have already been posted

4. Just below the box where you typed in your comment, you will see three options for identifying yourself.

• Google/Blogger: If you have a Google GMail email account (that is, your email address ends in "@gmail.com"), you can type in your account name (the part before the "@gmail.com") and account password, and your comment will be attributed to your name.
• Other: If you do not have a Google GMail account, or do not want to use it here, you can click on the small circle next to "Other". Then you can type in whatever name you want to be associated with your comment. You can type in "John Doe" or "Pinky Fingerstops" or "Great-Great Grandpa Jack" or anything. If you have a website, you can also type that in here, but it is not necessary.
  
• Anonymous: Finally, you can also post an anonymous comment, by clicking on the small circle next to "Anonymous". By doing this your comment can be posted without including your name.
  

5. Once you have decided how or if you want to include your name with your comment, just click on the big, orange button that says "PUBLISH YOUR COMMENT". Your words of wisdom should now appear in the list of comments for that blog posting.

Pirate Alex