strandbeest at the exploratorium with @donttrythis

Strandbeest - n. Walking sculpture of the type invented by Theo Jansen.

I’ve been fascinated by these since I saw the first video of them, way back in 2007 or 2008. I think it was a Kottke link. But, only at a distance, in the way that you laugh at people that take the cinnamon challenge, not like it’s something you would ever see or do firsthand. Well, I finally got to see them firsthand, and I didn’t have to go to the beach.

The show was at the Exploratorium, which is the platonic ideal of a hands-on science museum. They create direct experiences that lead to an intuitive understanding of science. Do the experiment, know how it works. The strandbeest exhibit was no exception, with several hands-on beests to walk back and fourth, and models of the leg to play with and see how it works (stiff sections made of triangles, and moving sections made of odd quadrilaterals).

I went twice, once to see Savage’s work-in-progress beest, and at night, for the unveiling and adults-only evening. There were several other people showing off similar devices; a couple motorized horse-like builds, and a giant Burning Man build out of plate steel. I even got to ride the strandbeest bike, which was jerky and steered like a cow and I desperately want to buy a welder and build one now. It was delightful and weird those are maybe my two favorite qualities.

The highlight of the evening was the unveiling of Savage’s machine. “Like everything I do, it didn’t work until the last minute,” he said. Or something like that; I’m sure the whole thing will be up on tested.com eventually. First, he rode it on the milk crate seat, then, realizing it would hold his weight, he jumped on top and pedaled it from there. There was a nice Q&A period, and then everyone dispersed into the night.

Sidenote: every time I think the color balance is too hard, I should just put it away and look again after getting some sleep. It’s almost always exaustion, and not the color, that’s the problem.

an evening at black butte lake

The campsite at Orland Buttes, on Black Butte Lake, is really something special. Bathrooms with showers, running water, flushing toilets, all the modern amenities you may not get at some lesser campsites. The lake itself is about 20 feet below where it historically was, from my super unscientific ‘look at the shoreline for a while’ method. The water is relatively clean, even on a holiday weekend, and all of the other people there were fairly chill.

Most of the weekend, I shot with the Mamiya RB67, a mammoth film camera that’s older than I am. I seem to have gotten the hang of shooting with it. We’ll see when I pick up the exposed film on Friday. But the last evening, after we’d gone back to camp and had a colossal dinner, we ran back over to the beach (really just a lot of clay, no sand) to watch the sunset. That’s when I took most of these photos, excepting the first and last. It was the first time in quite a long time that I’ve felt that good taking pictures.

The image of the buttes was from the road on the way to the beach at sunset, and the stars were a couple hours after, propping my camera up on the ground with my binoculars. The skies at night were just incredible. I woke up at 4am on the first night, and after my trip to the bushes was done, I’m pretty sure I could see Andromeda without binoculars. Might be worth a winter trip, when the haze will be lower and not as hot during the day.

a traffic jam caused by google

So, on the way to camping, Sophie and I came upon a large traffic snare. Instead of just sitting there in the jam, google maps directed us to take some side roads, a thing that it’s done in the past when I’ve hit this sort of traffic. The detours are usually interesting, at least, a break from the monotony of the interstate.

Anyway, we get off of I-5 and onto some side road, then the access road, then another side road, then through a neighborhood, in a shortcut that no sane person would ever attempt. After all that, we hit a two lane county road that was to take us back to the highway, where I tweeted: “In a traffic jam on a secondary road caused by Google maps. AMA” A bunch of other people, it seemed, had gmaps on in the car to get them north. At this one crossroads, we all hit the same stop sign. Even with that, we all saved 20 minutes over the traffic jam.

Which didn’t really mean anything, by the time we got to our campsite. We still had hours of daylight left. Easiest time setting up I’ve had in a while, since most of the time we leave after work, get stuck in traffic, and get to where we’re going sometime between 10pm and midnight. We even had time to cook a nice dinner.

annie and adam's new digs

This was a sort of unintentional party. We were supposed to be getting ready to go camping, but decided to go out for dinner with a bunch of folks, including Annie and Adam who’ve just moved into a new place. Then we decided another round sounded good. Then another, and then we decided we should all go back to the new place and check it out, with a stop at 7/11 for beer and supplies (I had a random gummy bear craving, so sue me).

The place is awesome. Nice big kitchen, long living room with north facing windows (north light windows are my fav), and even an office. Sweet little place.