California - Oct.4 - Oct.11. I’ve only been there once before, down near LA & San Diego way back in the 70’s with a Country Rock Band. I was with "Rockfish Railroad" and we were fronting for RCA newbie Gary Stewart.

We wrapped up a cross country tour at The Palomino, (where "Smoky & The Bandits" was filmed) playing for the RCA country music industry big shots.

We sounded OK. The house band was the best I ever heard - and I never heard of them. We were way out of our league but we were there doing it.

40 plus years later and now my #1 son is a Computer Guy for the Dept. of Energy at Lawrence Livermore National Labs in Livermore, CA. He’s got the best job ever - he works in a pure science fiction setting (only it is real) and part of his chore is to break things!! Yeah!


That’s over simplifying a bit - he "stresses" new chip submissions to the computer lab and does evaluating reports. This is about all the detail he is allowed to talk about and way less than I understood.

Parenthetically, he is a member of a pretty small club - scientists who have set fire to equipment using software only.

The rough story goes - he was on-line ready to remotely submit a test regime to the manufacturer.

They gave him a logon and he started his test routine. Immediately the other side calls back - STOP! STOP! STOP! The chip is smoking!!

I guess that particular test was pretty decisive right away. Wouldn’t that be a fun job? The Lab is obviously a very cool place to work. He loves it and I’m terribly proud he’s at the top of his game there. My oldest kid is a government scientist - really.

Every 5 years or so The Lab puts away all the cool stuff they don’t want you to see and they invite parents & families to visit the facility. This opportunity is what brought me out to the San Francisco Bay area for the first time ever.

I had booked the flight months ahead of time. The original route was Asheville, NC to Atlanta, GA to LA International and finish in Oakland CA.

They changed my route & swapped Salt Lake City for LAX. OK by me. I took the red-eye to ATL from AVL and since the plane left so early I spent the night before at The Clarion near the Asheville airport.

My room at The Clarion was clean & nice enough and when I checked out the bar that evening I found about 40 people around my age dancing?!? Seems Tuesday nights are "Shag Night".

I was invited to join but gracefully declined. After a Guinness or two though they were much more entertaining - old couples moving in a grid block together around the dance floor to loud canned music. Not bad. They were having fun. Me Too.

I carried my brew and sat outside at a picnic table, watched the almost full moon rise and called my sweetie for an evening chat. Sacked out early and caught a shuttle to the airport.

At 4:30a I walked out of my room and up to the front. The only soul beside me there was a nice lady at the desk. I said "I need a ride to the airport?" She grabbed a set of keys and said "Let’s Go!!" 5 minutes later I'm at the airport. Way efficient.

Once I’m past the TSA checkpoint and in waiting mode, I get to think a bit about flying.

We take mechanical flying for granted and it seems like normal everyday actions to queue up in several places, read lighted signs & make directional decisions, to walk down portable hallways (still pretty normal, right?) and finally sit in a crowded metal tube with wings & wait.

Soon enough we begin to taxi down the runway and pick up speed. I love the "big push" when the engines crank out a huge 10,000+ RPM sound and inertia shoves you way back into your seat and the floor tips up in front of you. I begin to think empirically about what I’m doing.

It breaks down to this - sitting in a "sky chair" forty thousand feet in the air, moving way fast and time traveling! Zowie! Pretty impressive technology.

I am a creature of short attention span and even this miracle gets boring with enough "nothing else" going on. Economy class seats are endurable - not particularly comfortable and more than 3 hours on one’s butt can bring on worries of lividity.

There were TVs installed in the back of each seat. They showed movies or the current position of your flight on a map. I wasn’t prepared with headphones so I watched some silently and then went to my reading. I had a good book and a window seat on the long hop so it was as OK as it can be.

Here is a video of the approach & landing at Salt Lake City. Click the lower right hand to go "full screen" on any video.

There is some really barren land around there and we flew over a huge open pit mine. One more sky hop, one more air hour and I’m in CA.

Ben met me in Oakland and I was person to person with my #1 son for the first time in years. He looks great!

The drive to Livermore (where Ben lives - near The Lab) was fascinating and I rode mostly with my mouth hanging open in wonder. The dry tan hills were spotted with dark green shrubby trees looked to be about the same color as what I remember in southern Italy. About 90% dry tinder - I can easily see how fires ravage the area regularly.

The poor looking soil however, is apparently just right for grapes. I understand they need a bit of a challenge. There are wineries galore in the Livermore / Alameda County area.

The locals are becoming serious competition for the famous Napa Valley vintners. A local saying is "We grow grapes & make wine, Napa makes Auto Parts."

Competitive snobbery, yes but delicious product. We went on 2 "Tastings" at two different wineries and I learned the difference between "grocery store" & "Fine" wines.

That was fun except now I’ve acquired some "taste" and look down a bit on the "Ingles Vintage" that I generally imbibe. I may occasionally splurge on what I now know is a better product.

Several other guests were scheduled to arrive at Ben’s for the Lab Tour but they didn’t all show for the first couple days that we had together. It was great! Plenty of father/son talk, good food and a drive to the beach for the west coast sunset. The video most of you have already seen -

Bay Area population density is higher than Western NC. The mostly nice homes are too close together for my long term comfort, but I can understand why - it is gorgeous & fantastic & way "evolved".

Little common sense things accumulate like bicycle paths on all the streets, like the streets being a bit wider (& easier to drive), traffic lights are both overhead (so you can see ‘em coming) and also mounted on the pole about halfway down so you can see them change with the sun visor down. Interesting.

Most of the people are encased in moving metal wheeled boxes and very few on legs. Cars are everywhere and Siri is a lifesaver.

Flip on your I-phone (or whatever), key in your destination and a crosslinked wireless network of all Siris’ currently on the road, gives constant updates on traffic conditions & the best route every few minutes.

The trick is to time your journey so as to not be caught in the mob. It works pretty well and Ben is expert at navigating the time slots. I often saw traffic stopped dead in the opposite lanes while we zipped along with little resistance on the other side of the road. Generally, arriving early offers more possibility and is better than a frustrating wait on the road.

I caught first sight of the Bay and my first smell of ocean salt air (I love it!) on that drive to the beach. Ben spoke about a beach he visited with 10 thousand elephant seals calving & mating, etc. He said the sound was one of the most incredible on the earth and you had to watch out for the seal pups, who would happily come over to investigate you. That’s OK but the protective parents can take offense and "mess you up" - so don’t allow contact. Got it.

Here is a movie I took on the ride. I like the sun blasted shadow trees and too bad you can’t smell the video.

Half Moon Bay is a lovely quiet beach town preceded by flower farms. I was an insanely happy dog hanging my head out the window nose "wide open" as we drove the last few miles to the Pacific shore.

One of my first historical jobs was in a flower shop. All my kids know I love the scent of a mass of blossoms or the inside of the cooler in a florist's shop. Camille knowingly steered me to the flower stall at market last year in Queretaro - fantastico!

Well, the approaching drive to Half Moon Bay was that in spades! Mixed with fresh salt ocean air. I could have happily floated away on the breeze.

Ben and I walked the pretty deserted beach, communed with rocks shells & beach glass, sandpipers, gulls and a few humans. Then we sat on the dune line and pretty much wordlessly comfortable in each other’s presence, watched the Pacific Sunset at Half Moon. Very Nice. Here’s the beach panning vid (with waving self shadow & son.

Ben’s current roommate’s (Joe Di Natale), Joe's brother Louie & Ben’s grad school roommate Josh were eventually gathered to the apartment on Portola Ave. It is in a great neighborhood, very clean & easy to get around. Livermore is a picturesque "Pleasantville" type city. I really enjoyed it."

The train station for "BART" (Bay Area Rapid Transit) is under re-construction in Livermore and it is a bit hard to tell where the passengers actually get delivered.

Right now, it is mostly re-bar, half built structures and portable hurricane fences. We did finally pick up our guest and when we were about to leave a tiny East Indian lady was looking for the bus stop.

The bus may have already gone and we could not get definite info re. the bus schedule so Ben offered her a ride.

She was a day worker, a cleaning woman for Livermore Gardens - an apartment complex. Her destination was not 15 minutes away. I admired her trust, getting in to an SUV with 5 strange(very) guys.

When Ben delivered her, she kissed him on the neck (had to reach - she was way short of stature) & thanked him. I gave her a "Namaste" which she returned with a big smile. I was so very proud of #1 son’s kindness & generosity.

The next day we visited the Computer History Museum - a fascinating time sequential tour with history’s calculators and computers under glass displays. Way cool stuff. I saw a bunch of original calculating engines, a WWII German Enigma Machine, a huge prototype disk hard drive, The Supercomputer Cray-1, and all kinds of neat computer stuff.

Click ANY photo on the page for the full size shot





Link to The Computer History Museum







Oh yes, I also saw (not at the museum) the longest burning light bulb (still going!)

This Shelby brand bulb is straight out of Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
Here’s some photos & history. Now, to be clear - the bulb did go dark during the occasional power outage but it has never worn out.



Ben was potentially on-call to guide a Saturday tour at the lab if needed. The call did not come so we all went together on our scheduled day - Sunday.

Sunday at the Lab.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was established in 1952 as the University of California Radiation Laboratory at Livermore, an offshoot of the existing UC Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. It was intended to spur innovation and provide competition to the nuclear weapon design laboratory at Los Alamos in New Mexico, home of the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic weapons.

Edward Teller and Ernest Lawrence, director of the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, are regarded as the co-founders of the Livermore facility. (and whose photos are on Ben’s office wall)

The 3 main impressions I got from the overwhelmingly informative tour were from the NIF (National Ignition Facility), the HEAF (High Explosives Application Facility) & the Terascale Simulation Facility (biggest computer in the world until China recently edged us out) (This is where Ben's office is located).

At NIF, they blast a bb sized globe of special stuff with 192 concurrent super amplified laser beams to approach Fusion. (They are geting very close.) At HEAF, they happily explode things in observation containers, and at Ben's building, they facilitate these experiments and more with very mighty copmuters.

NIF (link) is like a giant-sized perfect model of some super-alien machine. No dust, no grease, the wrench turners wear "clean suits" & face masks. The facility is so far out looking that it was used (allowed to be used) as the warp core in the engine room of the Enterprise in the most recent Star Trek movie "Into Darkness". Very convincing equipment (link).

The crew at NIF was not above a bit of pranking.

Via Simon Pegg (Scotty), the Star Trek actors were issued "Neutron Crème" that they were instructed to dab on to their facial points (nose tip, hairlines, chins, etc.). The Hollywood crew was also encouraged to lightly jog in place if idle, so as to shake off stray particles.

Here is a link to Benedict Cumberbatch reading aloud the disclaimer (Ha! Big Surprise!!) You can see in the video how fantastically futuristic this real equipment looks - no wonder it made a great starship "engine room".

I was totally fascinated and again spent hours in abject wonder. There is no other place like this and when they "set it off" there is no greater power between us and the nearest Super Nova!!! Holy Cow!

We took a lunch break. The grounds were setup for the Family Day’s activities with several food trucks and a live band. I had to go look and make sure The Lab had not hired The Eagles - they were an "on the money" (voices, guitar parts, sounds, etc.) Eagles cover band - most excellent.

The HEAF - High Explosives Application Facility was super cool. Here they compound and experiment with all kinds of explosives. Currently focusing on improvised ordinance for armed services & NSA protection. They have several room sized metal spheres where they set off the bombs & take scientific readings, etc.

These containers are essentially giant split hollow metal globes - the moving half is mounted on large hydraulic arms that lower & close the device. The closure is setup like a monster pressure cooker. Once the arms close the gap, the lid is rotated so it locks solid.

Then they splode things inside and take scientific "readings". These crazy folk were the happiest scientists/technicians on campus. They love to blow things up! (Yes!, it might be a very cool job).

Now, to get results from these experiments (and to do things impossible elsewhere) you need the planet’s most serious computing power - B453 Simulation Facility. This is where #1 Son works. He loves it. He can’t tell me much about what’s going on but I did get to tour the actual installation.

NOTE: All the photos & links here are public release - on visiting days they allowed no cameras, no photos of any kind and nothing on your person that would make a spark. Also no visitor was allowed anywhere without a staff member present.

Here’s Sequioa. I was in the rooms both above - where the processors are lines up in rows of big cabinets - and below - where the air conditioning is maintained. The entire building is an air conditioner with the cool stuff circulating in through the floor from the bottom and then up over the inner wall with its heat load and pulled back downstairs between the inner & outer walls to be cooled again.

Serious Laboratory - world class experiments, barely believable advancing technology. I was totally fascinated.

Interesting side-line: "Silicon Valley" is right there in the neighborhood. Being a federal institution, the Lab cannot offer the huge suite of amenities that companies like Yahoo, Netscape, Microsoft, Seagate, Google, etc. offer their new employees. So as a result a lot of the "New Talent" is being snatched up.

The Lab is hiring if you are interested. Hmmmmmmmm.

I dreamt that night a mixture of remembered flashes, alien machines, chrome visions of pipes and colored hoses - happy bombers, & scientists, and unique equipment at the very unique facility with The Eagles playing in the background. I am so very proud of Ben and his accomplishments.

Next - the longest mile & a half.

The Alcatraz Tour was next on our agenda. It started with a short (well timed) ride to the city - here’s the gawker’s video. We ate at a fancy place on the Bay street - The Embarcadero (the street they leave from) with a nifty bronze cowboy riding a fish sculpture outside.

The food was great - CA expensive (due to recently passed minimum wage rule for service workers, every beanery menu had an italic section at the bottom explaining the % price hike to cover this mandate - apparently proportionate to the general pricing of the particular establishment.)

We ate a good lunch & crossed the street to get on the tour boat. It was a perfect day for boating. I was cautioned to be ready for possible rough seas in the bay but the day was idyllic. Here’s a video of the boat ride over.

The institution had been around since before the Civil War. There’s all kinds of info on-line if you want to dig. My impression was first - it was an internationally famous place - there were lots of people from other countries there.


Next - it was an impressively built edifice old style stone industrial - meant to last. There were lots of sad or grim vibe impressions. Interestingly, the audio tour (free) in English was narrated by previous inmates so you got a human to human impression of some of the areas.

"Solitary Confinement" was eerie. The tape voice told of New Year’s Eve’s when the fog was just right they could hear laughter & party noises only a mile & a half away. Must have been crazier making. We wandered into the kitchen area but apparently it was off limits A guard came in and ushered us tourists out. Well, the door was open.


There was a lady author signing copies of her book. She had been a guard’s child & had grown up on the island. Interesting stuff - they took a boat to and from school daily and had a relatively normal life. Camille says the book "Al Capone Does my Shorts" is an excellent Alcatraz story. I haven’t got it yet.

The ride back to San Francisco at the end of the day was fair sailing too. What a tour!! When we made shore the plan was to visit the Comic Book Museum but after a whole lot of walking (my shoes & butt muscles were beginning to wear) we found the Fisherman’s Wharf address vacant.


We went across the street for dinner. Here are some photos of the boats, the street & the Sunset.

Rocket Fizz is a campy, pure tourist franchise shop on the wharf with EVERY flavor non-coke/pepsi soda there is. Also lotsa neat junky stuff like propeller beanies & Archie McPhee merch, bins & bins of taffy (Ben’s roommate Joe bought like a grocery bag full of assorted flavors) and gobs more.


The ride back to Livermore that evening was the relaxed buzz of a heck of a full day. The sky is usually clear but city lights are masking all but the brightest stars. Occasionally I think I see a planet but it is just another airplane coming straight in.

Another day of just hanging out with these four young gentlemen and then I’m in the air heading back to NC. The guys were great friends with each other - two of them brothers - Louie & Joe. Then Ben & Josh - previous roommates in grad school and myself as the old guy.

We played a lot of board games. I’m guessing rules & systems have a lot of appeal to computer guys (all of them - Joe works at The Lab with Ben). I had a lot of fun doing somethings I haven’t done in years. The last day we decided to play some poker (Texas Hold ‘em) and took the card table from it’s flat against the wall position and set it up in the living room.

Apparently momma spider had birthed a brood and the table was covered with tiny 8 leggers.

We rescued every last one (@50 of ‘em) and put them outside. I admit they were not as safe out there but we did not squash them and the intentions were stellar. Point being - the gang members were all gentle kind-to-critters folk. My kind of guys.

A word about Joe, Ben’s current roommate & co-worker. He is a great guy and has an extraordinary sharp friendly light in his eyes. He took almost parental care of his little brother Louie and is one of the kindest people I’ve met. My old buddy CrowDog (94yrs when I met him) would have said about Joe "He got the big Jesus Light in his eye".

I couldn’t ask for better company for my firstborn grown man. Ben turned 40 the week after I left.

To avoid traffic, we got to the airport a bit early. One more series of "sky boat" rides and i'm home again. Here's a video of the takeoff from Oakland.

I'm still dazzled from the trip. California, the lab, Alcatrtaz, Ben & the Crew were fantastic. Thanx to all !!!

Big Love