This past weekend was the annual Berkeley Kite Festival! It's always fun to go out watch all of the giant Octopuses (there were 12 this year) swimming through the air, and participate in a Rok Battle. This year I brought along Matt, who is very quickly getting addicted to kites, along with my KAP rig. I got a pretty good panorama from directly above the Octopile as it is called, you can check it out by clicking the panorama link above. As I mentioned before, the other fun even I always try to take part in is the rok battle. During one of these, everyone has a single line, 6 sided kite and the goal is to be the last man standing. You can either knock another's kite out of the sky or cut their line with yours using the friction between the two. I wasn't too lucky and managed to get my line cut pretty early, but despite it being his first time, Matt managed to cut someone else down before getting knocked out himself. The important thing is that was a lot of fun and as always I took a lot of pictures.

For more photos, click the link below:

Earlier in July was our annual Minnesota trip. We've decided that summers tend to make more sense; you get to go out on the boat and drink Caribou Coolers. Two weeks later and I've finally finished going through all the photos I took. As you'll see, the trip primarily consisted of going out on the lake, whether to Caribou in Wayzata, Bayside in Excelsior, or just to play cards and go swimming. We had a good time, but are happy to be back in our mild Bay Area weather.

Click the picture for many more images from the trip:

It may have involved me flying out to Minnesota and bribing Jordan with a bottle of grappa, but the end result is that I now have a photoblog up and running. I'll try to update Melephant's Eye on a semi regular basis, most likely weekly, so add it to your news aggregate or check it out regularly to see a few of my more interesting photos. Click the link at the top of the page to be taken to the new site!

On another note, I've returned from our annual Minnesota trip now, and am working my way through over 300 photos. With any luck I'll have those posted in the next few days.

Cheers,
Stevo

Last week Amy had some vacation time and we decided to just hang out in the area rather than take off. So we headed up the coast to Bodega Bay for the day. In town we stopped at a fried seafood shack that wasn't too bad and a kite shop that a suprisingly decent selection of kites. Any town with fried seafood and kites is good in my book. We were initially trying to find the pygmy forest in Sonoma State Park, but when we got to the park it turned out to be quite a hike inland. Far too much energy required when all we wanted to do was wander around a bit. So we headed back down to Goat Rock Beach where we went for a stroll. On a side note, the stretch of highway 1 up there doesn't have bike lanes, it has cow lanes. When we first saw the cow warning signs we thought it was pretty silly, but after we saw the cows just wandering down the road we thought it was hilarious. Don't know where they thought they were going, but I suppose they don't know either. Once the sun started heading down we went back to Berkeley for dinner at Skates on the Bay. We made it just in time for a gorgeous fog free sunset and had some very tasty food. Check out the trip below by clicking the photo.

The fourth of July came and went, and once again Amy managed to keep me from trying to make my own fireworks. So instead we invited our Canadian friend Pepe over, and grilled up some chicken. Afterwards Pepe and I headed down to the marina to watch Berkeley's fireworks display. We only made it as far as the highway overpass before deciding there was enough of a crowd there and we'd have a nice enough view. Berkeley's fireworks are mediocre, but they're really the only nearby option. Last year I went to Oakland's which were much better, but sadly Oakland cancelled theirs this year so they could have more police hunting down people setting off their own fireworks, I kid you not. They were even coordinating with police helicopters to locate the biggest culprits. Kind of overkill if you ask me. Maybe one of these years I'll make it into San Francisco, but it seems like like an awful lot of trouble for 30 minutes of entertainment. Meanwhile here is a bit of what I saw, click the pic for more.

It may have taken 2 weeks after we were told it'd be three days, but we finally have a new driveway. We're not quite sure what was wrong with our old driveway, but we got a warning 5 days ahead of the event's beginning that we better get a parking permit (we were reimbursed) fast, because we'd be parking on the street for a few days. So for several days we woke up early and the cat hid in the closet. The majority of the work all the way up to laying the concrete was done in 3 days, but then the contractors simply left the area a mess and didn't return for well over a week to finish up...I guess that's standard practice in the business. Click the image to see the whole process.