Snow trip

Saturday started off as a beautiful, sunny day so Colin, Janet and I headed up into the mountains to enjoy the snow. We weren't going to ski or do anything energetic, just enjoy the beautiful scenes after the recent snowfalls. Well, it was absolutely beautiful up in the Sierra Nevadas near Tahoe, as the accompanying photos show.

We had a nice, relaxed day, just driving around and stopping at a few viewpoints to enjoy the splendour of God's creation in its crisp, white blanket. By the early afternoon, the weather was closing in and it was good to be heading back home to spend the evening indoors with a roaring fire!

The photo with Colin next to the snow bank was taken to give an idea of the depth of the snow fall.

Tour of California: Final Stages

Well, there were no great surprises in the final stages of the Tour of California. Levi Leipheimer rode an awesome time-trial and was then very ably shepherded by his team to the overall victory today. Lance Armstrong finished in an incredible seventh place overall, and Mark Cavendish very deservedly won the sprinters competition.

The ToC organisers were blown away by the crowds, estimated at over two million, who came to watch the tour (that's warm bodies on the roadside, not the TV audience!). That's particularly impressive when you factor in the really awful weather for the first half of the week. The big increase in numebrs was partly ascribed to Lance Armstrong's return from retirement — it seems to have provided a much needed good news story in the face of all the drug scandals of recent years.

It promises to be a very good year in the professional cycling world.

ToC: Stages 3 and 4

Well, I haven't been wasting too much time watching TV this week, I'm pleased to report! The last two stages of the ToC have both been won by Mark Cavendish (generally accepted to be the fastest sprinter on a bike today — and he is really fast in a sprint finish). Much to my sister's delight he comes from the Isle of Man, which makes his TV interviews interesting — I can barely understand a word he says, so how the average American manages is anyone's guess!

Levi Leipheimer remains in the overall lead, and Lance Armstrong in fourth place.

Tomorrow is the time-trial stage, which is always a crucial and often deciding part of a cycle tour.

ToC: Stage 2

Well, an excellent break-away by the local favourite, Levi Leipheimer, made for a very exciting end to today's stage of the Tour of California. Armstrong also edged up another position to fourth place overall, and their team (Astana) now have three riders in the top five — a very strong position for Leipheimer and the team.

Why do I suspect that my productivity might be a little low for the next week?!

ToC: Start of Stage 2

It's a public holiday here today (President's Day), so I have a long weekend in Rocklin. That means I can sit in Colin and Janet's family room, with a fire going, watching the Tour of California — it's a tough life sometimes!

Today's stage started just North of San Francisco and took the riders over the Golden Gate bridge, which they had been able to shut down for the race due to the holiday. It would have been a stunning sight if the sun had been shining, but we have another day of very grey, wet weather. At least we're getting some live camera coverage today, albeit rather broken up a lot of the time and with much wiping of the lenses by the cameramen!

ToC: Stage 1

Well, I was really glad I hadn't stayed in Davis for the start of the first stage of the Tour of California — it was a very cold, wet, windy day! I felt really sorry for the cyclists who had to get out there and ride in the awful conditions (they were so bad that the helicopters and planes that relay the TV signals from the camera motorbikes couldn't get up until they were quite close to the end of the day's route).

Francisco Mancebo had an awesome ride, breaking away after about five miles (on a 107 mile stage), and going on to win the race, despite being caught by two younger riders just before the end. Lance Armstrong continued to produce an amazing performance, leading the chasing group into the finish, and putting himself in fifth position overall at the end of the day. Not bad for someone who retired three years ago!

Toys

One good thing that happened this last week was that I got access to the compute-cluster in the Computer Science Department here. That is a very cool toy! It has 36 Sun V20z computers, each with two processors and four gigabytes of memory (full specs below), all connected by a high-speed network to each other and a 4TB disk array.

There is some special software (Sun's Grid Engine) that is used to manage and share access to it, and I spent most of the week learning how that works. I'm itching to try out my latest research system on, but that will have to wait until Tuesday as it's a long weekend here (Monday is President's day).

Sun V20z:

• 2 x 2.6Ghz AMD Opteron processors
  
• 4GB of RAM (running at 400Mhz).
  
• 2 x 1Gbit Ethernet ports
  
• 2 x 100Mbit Ethernet ports
  
• 1 out-of-band processor for remote management
  
• 73GB hot swap SCSI hard drive
  

Tour of California

Well, I'm way overdue for some blogging. Again, it's more because of nothing to say than busyness, fortunately.

Anyway, today was the start of the Tour of California. That was a short time trial, and took place in Sacramento. I didn't even think of going into town for it, as you would have to endure huge crowds and terrible traffic just for a few seconds of watching the cyclists fly past, and the TV coverage is great. It's also a rather cold, windy, drizzly day.

The main highlight of the day was Lance Armstrong's return to competitive cycling (he did ride in an Australian tour earlier this year), and the crowd went wild when he set off. His performance was pretty impressive for a 37-year old who retired three years ago, and he finished the prologue in tenth place.

This is the fourth year that they have run the Tour of California and I am very impressed at the number of top European riders that they have attracted — the line-up would not embarrass any of the top European tours. Team Barloworld is racing in Europe at the moment, which is a pity — I would have liked to see them racing here.

The first stage of the Tour starts in Davis tomorrow. I'll be watching the TV coverage again!

The Superbowl

Yesterday was the day of the Superbowl. For most of my readers that's probably as meaningful as the fact that today is Groundhog Day! Just in case you're as ignorant as I was, the Superbowl is the final game in the (American) football series, and is a Big Deal here. For the past week or two the media have been in a frenzy, and shops and ads have been pushing everything from beer and chips to large-screen TVs in preparation for the big game. I had no real intention of watching, as "football" is still something of a mystery to me, despite numerous attempts by my house-mate and others to explain it. However, it turns out that most people watch it, not for the game, but for the major adverts that aired! Now that's something I can appreciate!

As it happened, Colin and Janet's Bible study group was having a social to watch the game/ads together, and I was invited to join them. We enjoyed some pizza and brownies (note the good, traditional American foods!) and then settled down to watch the game/ads, which had been recorded by our hosts. To my untrained eye, American football seems to consist of a few short bursts of action interspersed with seemingly interminable periods of standing around doing nothing. The joy of watching it late, was that we could fast-forward through all the tedium looking out for the ads, and any particularly dramatic plays on the field. And there was one of those. Even I could appreciate the record-setting run made by one player from his own goal line to score a touchdown for his team!

As for the ads, I thought they were good, but not as earth-shattering as I had expected (perhaps a sign of the tough economy). There was a strong preponderance of testosterone-rich ads for big trucks, fast cars, beer, chips and action movies.

At half-time there was a concert by Bruce Springsteen, which was pretty mediocre in the opinion of all present at our Superbowl party.

All in all, it was a very interesting cultural experience!

Just getting back to the point I made earlier about my lack of understanding of the rules of "football", just after we arrived at the Superbowl party, Colin and I got involved in trying to explain the rules of cricket to a couple of American men. As we chatting, part of my brain was analysing the discussion, and I had to concede that it must have seemed to them like cricket is as bizarre as American football is to me. I guess it's all case of what you have grown to understand and enjoy over a long period of time!