Happy Birthday Liam

It's Liam's 8th birthday today. We'll have a party in a couple of weeks but for today he chose to go eat at the Peninsula Creamery. Liam's been here before but this was the first time that I had ever been to this Palo Alto institution (since 1923).

NASCAR

About this time last year I won tickets in a bike race to see a NASCAR race. NASCAR, or stock car racing, is the most popular form of auto racing in this country being way more popular than Formula 1. Liam and I drove up to the Infineon raceway for the day. This course is a little different for most of the NASCAR drivers because they actually have to turn both left and right where typically they just race on ovals (left turn only!).

The main race of the day was 64 laps of a 2 mile circuit. It started with an "invocation" (read prayer, no separation of church and sport in the south) and of course the national anthem. The race itself was loud, lots of minor crashes, and really not that exciting (I imagine how most other people think when watching bike racing). The biggest problem was that with all the crashes they spent maybe a quarter of the race, under a yellow flag, driving around at 35mph. Still, it was an experience, and definitely worth doing once.

More photos here.

Violin Recital

Liam had his end of year violin recital today. He played Schumann's "Happy Farmer" - used in the opening scene of the Wizard of Oz. Yes, real music. I think he played really well.

White Belt

Liam started going to Kung Fu classes again a couple of months back. Today he was presented with his white belt.

Road Trip

Last weekend we headed up to the Sierra Valley, just north of Lake Tahoe, for the District / State Time Trial championship. We left Saturday morning and drove to Sacramento where we went to the Train Museum. We spent the night in Auburn (the last town before heading up to altitude) and then woke up early Sunday morning to drive the 90 mins to the race start at Sattley (population 60).

The race was hard in large part due to nasty gusty winds; I managed to finish 4th in my age group which I am pretty hard with, though it leaves room for improvement for next year!

After the race we took the scenic route home, driving down through the mountains on Highway 49. We stopped for lunch in the nice little town of Nevada City, before visiting Empire Mill State Park which was the largest gold mine in California. Finally on the way home we stopped in Walnut Creek and ate Japanese at Sushi Groove (have to say that my Udon was not very good though).

I think we all enjoyed being out of town for the weekend, even if it was centered around me, me, me!

A bunch more photos here.

Child Risk, perception v reality

BBC article on how children are being raised in fear of the world
Analysis: Rearing children in captivity

Triathlon

The Silicon Valley Kids Triathlon took place yesterday and Liam and a few of his friends took part. He had fun and finished in the middle of his field of 7-8 year olds; in the process finishing in front of his friends :-) He tells me that he was fast on the bike; put it in his biggest gear and passed a bunch of people.

It was all very well organized, with about 750 kids across all the age groups. People traveled from as far away as Carlsbad south of LA. Some (parents of) 8 year olds take this real seriously it seems.

Unfortunately I didn't get to watch the race myself because at exactly the same time I was lining up for the start of my own race (or was that Quasimodo?) about 100 miles away in Davis.

Photos from the race here.