Sunday, July 24, 2011

Swimming with the balls

We had lots of fun last week, with visits from Zach, Tiffany,  and Nick.   After being here for 6 months, I finally got to go see the Great Salt Lake.   At 2,000 square miles (4th largest terminal lake in the world), it was surprising hard to find.   I knew where it was, but finding a good beach to wade in took a few tries:

 

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Nick found a shrimp, which are harvested from the lake for fish food:

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That picture reminded me of this one, taken 16 years earlier in Australia:

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We took a short hike up the hills up the road, but I messed up and made it a longer hike then intended.    We forgot the sun block and Tiffany got burned:

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But we tried to take good care of her after that:

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The next day we took a tram at the SnowBird ski resort to the top of a 11k foot mountain:

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Z & T are experts at getting their picture taking, but I didn’t get Nick turned around in time:

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Zach let Tiffany get away from him (he was trying to give her his shirt to protect her sunburn):

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He eventually caught her:

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And peace an tranquility ensued:

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We also had a nice visit with Nick’s co-workers, Scott and George.  In between the fun, they had several productive Skritter company meetings:

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This was another hike we took, to the top of Signal Hill.   We climbed up an abandoned tower with Nick, despite his fear of heights, leading the way!

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Zach was chiding me for having a mis-adjusted wine bottle shelf,   I acknowledged it was indeed crooked, then ignored it.   But Zach can not ignore such things, saying if I left it as is, a bottle might fall and break.   So he springs to action to fix it, and promptly drops and breaks a wine bottle:    

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We all laughed for 5 minutes.  Then we discovered blood mixed in with the wine.    Zach spent an hour picking out 20+ shards of glass from his feet:

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But that didn’t stop him on our Mount Olympus hike the next day:  6 hours, 7 miles, 5,000 feet up (10k ft summit):

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Nick got so excited on this part of the climb that his legs fell off:

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For you curious hikers, here is a Google earth view:

Here is a 360 photosynth view from the top:

http://photosynth.net/userprofilepage.aspx?user=brucewinter&content=Synths

We had lots of pool fun:

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Here I was teaching the boys my childhood trick for getting on the diving board directly from the pool:

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After which many un-successful attempts were made:

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Until Zach discovered the secret, which involved some alcohol:

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We also had some nice visits with Abby:

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And lots of fun with our desk chair balls.   One of the challenges was to try to get a ball fully submerged.   Many techniques were tried:

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In the end, a 3 person team approach worked:

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But not on this try:

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Here we are seeing who can head bounce a ball the highest:

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And here we are seeing who can stay balanced on top of a ball the longest:

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Zach and George were the masters of this, but out of the water, Nick was the master ball balancer:

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He is also the master of upside-down-ness:

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And master of the one legged squats:

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I can do 1/2 of these … the downward 1/2.

If you haven’t had enough photos (hard to imagine), there are a bunch more here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/zachwinter/SaltLakeCityUtahJuly2011

Bruce

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