Kayaking in Monterey bay

A few weeks before we hit Lemony Snicketts in this house, there was a nice trip to Monterey Bay to Kayak in the open ocean for a few hours.

It was during Daddy's dedication to Yoga getting in the way of taking the kids out on weekends.. what with doing double classes on Saturday you see..

So one afternoon the kids go "Daddy, you have to take us somewhere today!" So off we went to Monterey, after being inspired by our friends who took their little one through this adventure just a few weeks prior.

It was 63 F out there and the water was cold, but we had a light breeze going and didn't get too wet and had a ton of fun.

Our tour guide was a student who had immigrated from Russia and she really loved the water and the creatures in the sea.

After giving us a crash course on Kayaking, we went on the water in three teams of two. The little one insisted on doing everything herself and she did an outstanding job! There were times when I was just sitting there letting her kayak me out.. it was fun.

We saw Seals, Sea otters playing..

We got to handle starfish and also learned that nothing sticks well to the top surface of the starfish because it has a bunch of hooks that are active. We put the starfish on our head and it gripped on to our hair (in my case whatever was left of it!)

There was one small mishap! We were advised not to bring a camera on the trip as there was a high probability of getting it wet. Having taken cameras safely through other adventures, parasailing included, I decided to take the camera in a small pocket in my life jacket. The camera survived a safe return to the beach without getting wet.

In my eagerness to tip our guide before leaving, I put the life jacket, which happened to have the camera in the pocket on the life jacket rack and went towards the car. The cleanup crew quickly came, dunked each jacket in a bucket of cold water and put it on another rack to drip dry! I almost cried when I realized what had happened.

Luckily the camera started working again after drying it out at home with a hair dryer over time. It still works but has a white balance issue. Maybe more drying will fix it. For now it has become an art camera!

Next time.. special ziplock bag for camera going on such trips and curbing the enthusiasm for tipping good tour guides.

Would strongly recommend Kayaking on Monterey bay as a family outing.

Adventures in tweenlandia

Jr., all of ten years old went to science camp last week!

She left on tuesday morning and came back friday afternoon. For the first time in her life, she spent close to three full days away from her beloved.....

iPad, iPhone, iMac.. We were not really worried about her missing her parents or her sister. The WiTHDRAWAL symptoms was what worried us. She managed fine, thanks to her wonderful teacher who acted as surrogate iPad and her friends who made up for the iPhone and the few creatures she encountered in the trails she hiked in Santa Cruz like a newt, banana slug etc. rounded off the entertainment.

After she came home she summarized the entire events of 3 plus days in one hour during our bedtime story telling and that got me to a few startling revelations.

They all got up at 6:30 AM because there was "flag".. "flag hoisting". It takes me 15 mintues to get her rear end out of bed starting at 7:30 AM on a normal day and twice that long on a weekend. So, I am planning to put a flag pole in my backyard and make her go do "flag" every morning.

No Flag? No breakfast! That should work..

Second, my darling now has an identity! As the narration was going on..

Jr. : We had these cabins which had like 10 people in each cabin and you know most of us desis were in one cabin and on and on and on..

Me : (did I just hear her call herself a DESI?!) Who were all in your cabin?

Jr.: Me, kid1, kid2, kid3,... and rattled off a list which included kids who had at least one Indian parent..

This is the first time I have heard her call herself a Desi !! So much for science camp. My daughter goes away for three days and comes back accepting her Indian-ness?

Last but not least, she took some really good pictures. Unfortunately she was not in a single one of the pictures. Guess she takes after dad for that one. We are waiting for her friends to share pictures of her.

Needless to say.. the first thing she did after coming into the house?

Look for the iPad!

Another wonder that happened? The little one admitted she did indeed miss her sister.. a little bit.. during afternoon playtime!

ps. San tells me that she looked for the iPad only after she had recited the one hour story after coming into the house.. we need more science camps!

Turning a new leaf

The new electric blue Leaf is a joy to drive!

Will post a detailed video review of the whole Leaf experience this weekend.

Bascially it works like this from a money perspective.

The fully loaded vehicle costs ~36-37k (expected to drop another 3k next year)

You pay 3k (including a down pay, license, registration including first month lease payment)

You get ~10k in instant rebates (Federal etc.)

You also get a 2.5k rebate from the state.

Given the fact that this is still new technology that is rapidly improving, (used a friends advice on this) it was better to lease for 3 years with a max restriction of 12k miles / year and if you exceed you pay 15 cents/ mile to the dealer (unless you buy the car at the end of the 3 years.

The residual works out to be 17k.

12k miles/year is 1k miles/month and assuming 20 weekdays per month translates to 50 miles a day.

This car is fully electric and takes 21 hours to fully charge with 110 V or ~4 hrs to charge using a 220V outlet (which will be installed in your house if you go through an elaborate qualification process through the city and some agencies), but it can be done!

Here are the highlights and a few lowlights

Highlights :

Driving limits: You get to go 110 miles total in a charge if you average 45 mph. If you hit 60 for like 20 minutes it drops the mileage by a good extra 10 miles like when we had to drive it back from the dealership on the freeway.

I drive 27 miles round trip to work and back everyday in local freeways or expressways where the top speed is 55 mph for brief seconds when I get to press the gas pedal (errr. accelerator!). Also drive ~9 miles round trip to Yoga every day. Local trips like taking kids to Kumon or other classes, visits to Indian Grocery store, Target etc. is around 4-6 miles round trip which happens every alternate day.

In total ~40 miles during a weekday and maybe 20 miles on weekends for local trips which works out within the 12k/year limit. Anything longer like going to SFO, Livermore etc. we can take the other vehicle.

Comfort :

This car is quiet. Real quiet. Quieter than a Prius if you can believe it! The seats are amazing and have heating.. the kids call it "butt warmers" and work for all seats. The steering wheel can be heated. So if you dont want to heat the entire vehicle to save energy you heat your butt and steering wheel and can drive warm! Turning on the AC to heat or cool cuts down 10 miles out of the total 110 mile range (~ 10%) given our local Temperature differences in Cupertino.

Music system is out of the world. It has radio AM/FM, XM radio, CD, MP3, Aux port to connect devices and has bluetooth so you can just play your iPhone through the speakers.. dont have the song on your iPhone playlist? No problem. Search on youtube, play and the sound goes to the system wirelessly! The kids are loving it. Next they want the video to play in the info panel so they can watch as well ! (Nissan please take note). There is also a USB port. Have all your songs as MP3 or WMV ? No problem. Just take an 8GB pen drive, shove all your songs into folders and it just plays it! There is one downside though that I detected yesterday. Only MP3 plays. MP4 does not. So I had to go download a free utility to downgrade my MP4's to MP3's.

Navigation:

This thing comes with a nice navigation system. For a car that can only go a max of 110 miles (55 miles roundtrip) the Navigation seems like an oxymoron. But there is a good reason for it. The car tells you if you can make it back before you start anywhere and also puts nearest charging stations on the map. Given you cannot just go refill instantly, this does come in handy.

Gizmos galore :

There are fine adjustments to everything comfort related which is totally cool.The whole charging cable fits in a cute backpack which is anchored to the trunk. You can track all car stuff online as the car communicates everything to a website. It even has a name. We aptly named it PARNA ! 

The little one understood the meaning and the pun immediately!

At the end of the day a great ride and given my Sienna was averaging just below 20 miles a gallon for the same ~12 miles a year.. we save 600 gallons in gas which is ~2500$. This is a wash with what we pay for the car. Electricity will be ~30 bucks a month and with rebates can be as low as 10$/month.

For starters this experiment is working out great. Will keep posting updates on how this goes every few months. Thanks to all my friends who recommended this during the Xmas break! We should have a Leaf party soon..