Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

Author: ryan

Snow and Birds

Posted from North of Fairbanks, Alaska at 7:29 pm, February 14th, 2026

It was mostly clear last night, but there was zero solar activity so the lights didn’t make an appearance. We can’t complain given the three clear nights with Auroras that we’ve gotten, but during our visit we’ve also had two clear nights with minimal activity and two cloudy nights with high activity. The Aurora app just fired again to let us know that current solar activity is the strongest yet during our trip, as snow continues to fall and thick clouds cover the sky; there’s a chance of “partly cloudy” weather around midnight, so we’ll keep an eye on things to see if we get lucky and have one final show.

Given the snow today we hunkered down in our log cabin, with a brief foray outside to visit the birds. We’re off early tomorrow morning to get back to Fairbanks and hop on a plane home, but it’s been a successful trip – I was hoping for at least one good night of lights and we got that, and we also got a chance to run with reindeer, ride snow machines, and soak in hot springs, so all-in-all not a bad way to spend a week in the Far North.

Common Redpoll

Common redpoll. I’m chilly while bundled up in Arctic rated gear, meanwhile these tiny birds are living their lives in below-zero temperatures and snowstorms.

Northern Lights from Cleary Summit

Northern Lights display from five nights ago; it was a good night.

Snow Machines and Chickadees

Posted from North of Fairbanks, Alaska at 7:21 pm, February 13th, 2026

One of Audrey’s only requests for the trip was that we ride snowmobiles snow machines (as the Alaskans call them), something that I was more than willing to do, but not excited about. It turns out that in this case, I was very, very wrong to not be excited – snow machines are incredibly fun. We were in a group with a guide and three other very tentative riders, but luckily Audrey and I were at the back of the group so we could lag behind and then gun the engines to catch back up; we discovered that our machines maxed out at 50mph. The trip lasted an hour and went through forests and along groomed trails, ending back at Rod’s Alaskan Guide Service where six teams of enthusiastic sled dogs were excitedly waiting for their next tours – we didn’t sign up for a dog sledding tour, but it was surprising seeing how much the dogs obviously LOVED pulling the sleds.

Last night, as expected the Northern Lights were hidden behind clouds, but the forecast for tonight is for clear skies so we’ll give it another try. A big storm is supposed to roll in late tonight and dump snow for the next two days, which should make our return drive to the airport more interesting. Thankfully our route back to Fairbanks is mainly along the start of the Haul Road, which is the road that semis take 500 miles up to the oil fields in Prudhoe Bay, so even if the plows aren’t running I’m told that the trucks mostly pack down the snow and keep the roads drivable.

Finally, in lieu of more Aurora photos, today’s pictures are of the fearless black-capped chickadees that are constantly at the feeder in front of our cabin.

Black-Capped Chickadee

Black-capped chickadee in the snow. I don’t understand how these little birds survive naked in this weather.

Black-Capped Chickadee

Black-capped chickadee close-up. They are very focused on the feeder in front of the cabin, and could care less about me taking photos.

Running with Reindeer

Posted from North of Fairbanks, Alaska at 9:26 pm, February 12th, 2026

We had our second best night of Aurora viewing last night, and finally crawled into bed very tired but very happy around 1am when clouds started moving in. Sadly we had to check out of the Aurora Borealis Lodge today, but we now have an old trapper cabin for three nights. The cabin lacks the vast views of the horizon that we enjoyed at our last lodging, but makes up for it with the massive logs used in its construction and a bird feeder in the front that is apparently the favorite spot for every chickadee that remained in the state for winter.

Now that temperatures are near or even slightly above zero we’ve added more activities to the schedule. Today’s adventure was a trip to Running Reindeer Ranch, where you roam around in the snow while an incredibly fired up herd of ten reindeer run all around you, digging in the snow, weaving through the people, and occasionally walking up for a pat. Much to Audrey’s delight, not only was hugging reindeer not discouraged, it was actually encouraged, and thus today’s reindeer hugging session may go down as her trip highlight. My main takeaway from the afternoon was that a) reindeer can get the zoomies and b) reindeer with the zoomies are REALLY amusing.

Weather forecasts are calling for clouds the next three nights, but if it is clear we’ve got our Arctic gear and cameras at the ready.

Northern Lights and the Aurora Borealis Lodge

This was our home for five nights – our room was on the corner of the second floor of the Cedar Cabin.

Aurora Borealis Lodge

It’s not all Northern Lights on this trip, sometimes we also hug reindeer.

Freezing Hot Springs

Posted from Cleary Summit, Alaska at 6:54 pm, February 11th, 2026

As predicted, clouds hid the Northern Lights from us last night, but I was actually grateful to be able to get some sleep after several late nights. In lieu of new photos, the picture below is the second of two rocket launches from Monday night. The rockets launched thirty seconds apart and were designed to do things that the very smart people at NASA can explain far better than I can, so read this article if you’re interested in what Earth observation scientists are doing these days.

Today temperatures rose nearly thirty degrees to an almost-comfortable 10F, so we hopped in the car and made the 90 minute one-way trip out to Chena Hot Springs. There’s something very soothing about unleashing your inner Japanese snow monkey and relaxing in a hot spring surrounded by snow and ice, with steam pouring off of the water and freezing almost instantly thereafter. While not a problem for me, the visitors who still had hair on their head all had frozen strands as the steam condensed and turned to wispy ice. Final verdict: not a bad way to spend a few hours.

Clouds are threatening again tonight, although at the moment the sky is more than half clear so we’re not sure how the evening will go. It’s sadly our last night at the Aurora Borealis Lodge, but we still have three nights remaining in the trip that we’ll be spending at an old trapper cabin that is only a few miles away as the crow flies, but 45 minutes away as the Alaskan roads run.

Aurora Borealis from Cleary Summit

The second of two rockets launched as part of the GNEISS mission to study the Auroras.

Poker Flat Rockets

Posted from Cleary Summit, Alaska at 7:12 pm, February 10th, 2026

Last night the skies were perfectly clear, but there was literally no Aurora activity – the “solar power output” graph on the Aurora app that we’ve been using had dropped straight down to essentially zero. We still kept a watch out from our room, but I finally dozed off around midnight, and Audrey was in bed a short time later. Then at 1am the voice of Mok, the lodge’s owner, crackled over the room’s walkie talkie to say that there were lights visible in the west. Half awake, I stumbled to the window, and apparently the solar forecast had changed because the most intense band of Auroras that we’ve yet seen was dancing quickly across the sky. I woke Audrey up, grabbed my camera, threw on my Arctic gear, and then spent the next hour braving -20F to photograph the best Northern Lights display that we’ve seen so far.

Adding to the magic, the universe apparently has me confused for someone with a surplus of good karma, and thus enhanced the cosmic wonders by launching two rockets from the nearby Poker Flats Research Range. I was looking away when the first one shot into the air and didn’t catch a photo, but it was a neat sight seeing Auroras with a rocket streaking through them, followed a few seconds later by a massive roar of sound.

Tonight the Aurora forecast is for high activity, but unfortunately the sky is entirely covered by clouds, so our odds of seeing anything seem low. Nonetheless, as last night proved, anything can happen, so we’ll be up watching the skies again this evening.

Aurora Borealis Lodge

The main lodge. After a night without lights, suddenly at 1am things went bananas and we rushed outside to catch the show.

Aurora Borealis from Cleary Summit

A vivid band of lights passed overhead and lit up everything before settling to the north and giving us a night to remember.

Everything is Frozen

Posted from Cleary Summit, Alaska at 7:09 pm, February 9th, 2026

Seeing the Northern Lights requires two things: solar activity and clear skies. We’ve been lucky on the clear skies so far – one of the advantages of visiting in February is that there are more clear nights – but a downside of clear skies is that a lack of clouds leads to MUCH colder nights; tomorrow will be our third straight day where temps are around -20F. Solar activity hasn’t been particularly high, but there is still enough that the lights are visible in the evenings, with occasional bursts that light up the horizon for thirty minutes at a time.

Aside from late night light shows we didn’t do much today given the cold. Once it had warmed up to a still-deadly -10F we hopped in the car and took a drive to see the snow-covered landscape, the F-35s at Eilsen Air Force Base, the art and taxidermy at the Knotty Shop, Santa’s Workshop in North Pole (which ironically is south of us), and then we resupplied in Fairbanks before returning to our warm room for another evening of Aurora photography.

Aurora Borealis from Cleary Summit

Around midnight last night the lights were getting good, so I strapped on all of my Arctic gear and trekked into the woods, camera frozen to my hand, to snap some photos.

Aurora Borealis from Cleary Summit

I fell asleep around 1am, but luckily Audrey stayed awake and got me out of bed when the lights brightened again at 1:30.

Aurora Borealis from Cleary Summit

Audrey made a timelapse during our last trip in 2018 and I was jealous, so it was my turn to try one on this trip. If you look closely you’ll see the stars move along with the lights.

Far Below Zero

Posted from Cleary Summit, Alaska at 8:54 pm, February 8th, 2026

In January 2018 we visited Fairbanks to see the Northern Lights, with decent results. We’re back to see if we can do even better in February 2026, and it’s currently night two in the Aurora Borealis Lodge on Cleary Summit. While the lights made sporadic appearances last night, they were faint enough that we chose to photograph them from our warm room instead of venturing out into the much-below-freezing temperatures outside (it bottomed out around -20F overnight). We’re in Alaska for eight nights, so with any luck the universe will give us at least one evening of bright lights and no clouds.

Today’s daytime activities were limited to a short hike in the balmy -10F midday temps, and a drive back to the main highway where an incredibly cold Thai lady had set up a trailer with a kitchen in it and was serving up giant plates of pad thai and pineapple fried rice, both very welcome warm dishes in the freezing temps.

Self-portrait below zero

I once heard that “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only improper clothing”, so for this trip we rented Arctic gear. And yes, that’s my frozen breath on the face cover. Photo by Audrey.

2026 Predictions

Posted from Culver City, California at 8:46 pm, January 20th, 2026

After a disastrous showing in the annual predictions for 2025, the success rate can only improve in 2026, right? This year’s list starts off with a couple of election predictions, so ignore the first two if you want to skip the controversial stuff and head straight to science, movie and sports predictions.

  1. Democrats will hold 235-245 seats after the midterm elections.

    At the time of writing Republicans hold the House by a 218-213 margin, and Democrats lead in “generic ballot” polling averages by about 5%. With Trump fully out of his honeymoon period and even some Republicans starting to push back on his actions, the political environment points to Democrats having a good election in ten months.
  2. Democrats will pick up 3-4 seats in the Senate.

    2026 isn’t a year in which Democrats have a lot of likely pickup opportunities in the Senate, and a few of the states they are defending could be tough for them to hold. That said, it seems like it’s going to be a bad year for Republicans, so it’s not unreasonable to think that Democrats will hold all of the seats they currently control, and make at least three additional gains in states like North Carolina, Maine, Alaska, Iowa or Ohio.
  3. Rivian’s new R2 will win car of the year and be well on its way to becoming the best-selling electric vehicle in America.

    Tesla’s Model Y was the best selling car in the world in 2023 because there are a lot of people who want both a small SUV and an electric vehicle. With Tesla now focused on self-driving and robots rather than building cars, and a CEO who cosplays as a supervillain, there is a pent-up demand for a great small SUV, and it seems like Rivian is poised to fill that void. As a three-time Subaru owner, I’ve got my eye on the R2 when the current Forester gets to the end of its usable life.
  4. Avengers: Doomsday will be on its way to becoming one of Marvel’s biggest box office successes

    As a fan of superhero movies I’m rooting for Marvel to get back on track, and the marketing so far for Avengers: Doomsday seems to show a film focused on characters over spectacle. If Marvel can deliver an interesting storyline and compelling character arcs, even with everyone waiting for streaming these days audiences will likely show up in the theaters to see it.
  5. While there won’t be any eureka moments, by the end of 2026 there will have been at least one history-changing breakthrough driven by AI in an area like exoplanet discovery, earthquake detection, weather prediction, cancer diagnosis, or some other critical area.

    AI is going to dramatically change many industries, just as the internet did 30 years ago. While most of these changes will happen incrementally and thus won’t be events that alter people’s lives suddenly, there will be at least one breakthrough in 2026 attributed to AI that will profoundly impact everyone on the planet. That development may be related to preventing cancer, fusion, or some other area, but I’m calling 2026 as the first year that the potential of AI makes a historic impact on humanity.
  6. The Browns will win at least eight games in 2026.

    I should know by now that making predictions about the Browns causes the universe to immediately smite them, so I’m sorry in advance for the inevitable 1-16 season that I have just caused. But if the universe overlooks this breach of the jinxing protocol, the Browns defense was really good, they had several close games in 2025 that could have gone either way, and with injured players returning and a lot of high draft picks incoming it’s hard to imagine that the offense won’t improve from “horrendous” to merely “bad”. A non-horrendous offense combined with an elite defense should make for a team that can go at least 8-9, right?
  7. Someone is going to come up with a way to attend major concerts and sporting events using VR.

    I’m actually guessing this development may still be a few years away, but in thinking about the Apple Vision Pro and similar headsets, it’s tough to come up with a compelling use case for buying them, but if there were VR cameras set up in the front row of a concert, fans would pay handsomely to be able to virtually attend. Or imagine if VR cameras were on the field during the Super Bowl and you could attend the game live OR view it later from field level? I did a Google search to see if this type of thing already exists and I couldn’t find anything, but I imagine all sorts of people would rent/buy a VR headset and pay a lot of money if it allowed them to virtually attend the Eras Tour in the front row or see the NBA playoffs from a courtside seat.
  8. 2026 will see the world dramatically retaliate against Trump’s policies

    Over the past year Trump has reneged on trade agreements, threatened allies, and turned the US into an unreliable partner. The rest of the world has mostly responded with targeted tariffs and other small measures, but especially after capturing the president of Venezuela and threatening to invade Greenland, 2026 will be the year that other countries stop holding back. It’s not hard to imagine exorbitant taxes on American tech companies, regulations that lock out American banks, tariffs that make US cars and planes unaffordable, visa restrictions on American travelers, etc. If the US can’t be trusted to honor its agreements then there is no point for other countries in spending time negotiating, and thus this year could be the year that they decide enough is enough.
  9. There will be four successful launches and landings of Jeff Bezos’ New Glenn rocket

    SpaceX has revolutionized the launch industry and led to a massive reduction in the cost to send payloads to orbit, but Jeff Bezos’ enormous New Glenn rocket also had two successful missions in 2025, including a successful landing. They have four missions on their 2026 manifest, including one to send a massive lander to the moon, and given their track record I think all four will be successful, and all four will also see the first stage stick the landing. It’s a great time to be a space nerd.
  10. Apple will debut a foldable phone, but its sales will be underwhelming.

    All sorts of rumors point to Apple debuting a foldable phone in 2026, but I’m deeply skeptical about this device. Tons of users have purchased an iPad as their tablet device, and the iPhone is obviously the most popular phone, but a foldable iPhone seems to give you the worst of the two; it’s too big for a phone, but too small for a tablet, and costs way more than either. I’m probably wrong, but from the leadership team that gave us the Apple Vision Pro but then forgot to make the argument about why anyone needs one, I’m not sure they’ve figured out why anyone would want this device before they debut it.
  11. Tesla’s stock will crash from its current price of $420 (as of 20-January) by at least fifty percent.

    A lot of people have lost a lot of money shorting Tesla stock, so odds of this being wrong are high, but Tesla’s valuation has always been based on the promise of growth, and their car sales are declining, they are no longer making major engineering innovations, their promise of self-driving vehicles has been “1-2 years away” for more than a decade, and their plan for a cheap robot in every house is nowhere close to reality. I’m almost certainly going to be wrong, but as far as I can tell Tesla is now not much different from most other mid-tier automakers.
  12. 2026 will see Paramount+ and/or Peacock subsumed by another streaming provider.

    Paramount+ and Peacock are two major streaming services that seem to be on the outside looking in, and 2026 might be the year that they get gobbled up by another streaming service. While Universal or Paramount may not sell their streaming platforms, they may instead make a co-branding deal that puts their content on another service like Disney, Netflix or Amazon. Eventually we may live in a world where Amazon Prime subscribers use whatever Amazon offers, while Disney+ and Netflix are the only other two major players.
  13. With Jared Isaacman now in charge at NASA, several private partnerships will be announced including a mission to extend the life of the Hubble space telescope.

    With the space shuttle long retired, any mission to the Hubble Space Telescope would need to be on a non-government vehicle, and NASA rejected that proposal in 2024. However, the new NASA administrator is an entrepreneur who has himself flown on two private space missions, and he’s the type that will support using private vehicles to extend the life of one of the world’s most valuable scientific instruments. Hubble is in dire need of repairs and likely only has five or so years left of limited capabilities without a servicing mission, and with new space telescopes taking a decade or more to build it seems like there should be strong support for fixing the one we’ve got.
  14. With college athletes now getting salaries in the millions of dollars, at least one state will pursue revoking non-profit status for college athletics departments.

    College athletics has been a big-money business for a long time, but with players and coaches now getting million dollar salaries more people are asking what these teams have to do with education. Senator Maria Cantwell has been investigating why this industry is given non-profit status, and while nothing will change at the federal level, 2026 could be the year where at least one state decides that its big athletic departments either need to be reined in or start being treated like normal for-profit enterprises.
  15. At least one state will see gig workers unionize.

    Gig workers like Uber and Lyft drivers operate in a world with no guarantees and no one watching out for their best interests. While the allure of setting your own schedule makes it worthwhile for some people, these companies seem to continually squeeze them for longer hours and lower wages while pushing riders to make up the difference in tips, which is an unsustainable path forward. Particularly given new laws passed in California, I’ll guess that 2026 is the year that sees gig workers in at least one state unionize to negotiate better terms for its workers.

Eighteen years of these predictions makes it clear that I’m really, really bad at this game, but it remains an extraordinarily interesting annual exercise. Everyone should look forward to returning in twelve months when Tesla stock is over $1000 a share and Avengers Doomsday is bombing in the theatres to revisit this yearly prognostication.

2025 Prediction Results: Not Good Mav

Posted from Culver City, California at 7:43 pm, January 6th, 2026

Year 17 of my annual tradition of making predictions about the coming year is now complete, with the usual horrendous result. I took some big swings and struck out over and over again. For reference, here are the original predictions.

  1. SpaceX will have 10-15 launches of its new Starship rocket by the end of the year, with at least one ship re-used.

    WRONG. After three straight first stage explosions and a test stand explosion that limited their ability to do static fires, SpaceX ended the year with just five launches of their giant new rocket in 2025. I’ve been really disappointed in Elon Musk since his purchase of Twitter and his decision to pivot Tesla’s mission, but I still give him a lot of credit for starting a company that has revolutionized the space industry and given hope that we might achieve the future envisioned in 2001: A Space Odyssey during my lifetime.

  2. The Browns will trade back from the #2 overall pick in the 2025 NFL draft and won’t draft a quarterback with their first selection.

    CORRECT. The 2025 NFL Draft was the best in memory for the Browns. They picked up several players who look like future stars, grabbed an extra first round pick by fleecing the Jaguars in a trade for the #2 pick, and waited until late in the draft to pick a quarterback.

  3. The Fantastic Four: First Steps will be a return to form for Marvel, and will gross over $1.2 billion worldwide and over $600 million domestically.

    WRONG. Fantastic Four grossed $275 million domestically and another $247 million globally. I waited to watch it on streaming, and somehow Marvel made a group of superheroes that they are supposedly deeply proud of into a beautiful but totally forgettable movie.

  4. A bubble in commercial real estate will seriously threaten the financial sector by the end of the year.

    WRONG. While the commercial real estate market isn’t strong by any measure, there also doesn’t seem to be an imminent danger of collapse. At some point all of the AI companies are going to have to show how they can turn their giant new data centers into profits, but at least for now there isn’t an obvious threat to the wider financial sector.

  5. Most of Trump’s cabinet nominees, including controversial picks like Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel, will be confirmed, but Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr will both be forced to withdraw.

    WRONG. He got everyone he wanted including Gabbard and RFK. RFK in particular has been horrifying to me, but it takes a while for the impacts of poor leadership to become apparent, and I worry that it might be a decade or more before his attacks on health science will show up in future epidemics and a limited ability to fight them.

  6. While industrywide electric vehicle sales numbers will continue to climb, Tesla’s sales will fall both globally and domestically by at least 10-15% in 2025.

    WRONG. I overestimated the damage that’s been done to Tesla’s standing as their deliveries fell by 8.6% in 2025. That’s a huge fall, especially when industry-wide electric car sales were up over 20% globally, but it’s short of the predicted 10-15% fall.

  7. The number of active users on Bluesky will surpass Facebook’s Threads by the end of the year, but won’t (quite) overtake Twitter X.

    WRONG. Bluesky ended the year with about 40 million users, and while it’s tougher to estimate the number of Threads users with the way the Facebook combines its services, the number is definitely higher than Bluesky.

  8. 2025 will see the elimination of the debt ceiling.

    WRONG. I really thought that Trump might do something I support and push to get rid of the debt ceiling since it forces Republicans to cast votes for something that they have spent their careers describing as an irresponsible evil, but instead they just increased it by a massive $5 trillion while cutting taxes as part of their One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

  9. Boeing will sell or spin off its space division.

    WRONG. While their new CEO has made some solid moves to get the company back on track, the troubled space division wasn’t up for sale in 2025 despite failures to compete with SpaceX or to fulfill their Starliner commitments for sending crew to the ISS.

  10. The new Superman movie will underperform, with earnings similar to the 2017 Justice League movie.

    CORRECT. The new Superman movie earned $354 million domestically and another $262 internationally, about $50 million less than the $661 million that Justic League made. While neither of those numbers are small, they weren’t the massive hits that the studio was hoping for given the giant budgets and character appeal of each film.

  11. The high-speed train between LA-ish and Las Vegas will start major construction and actually gain support from Republicans.

    WRONG. Construction of the Las Vegas station is underway, but aside from that there isn’t a lot of activity on the new Brightline West line, and politicians have been mostly silent about the project.

  12. Lebron James will announce that he will retire after the 2025-2026 NBA season.

    WRONG. At the time of writing Lebron is averaging the lowest points and rebounds per game since his rookie year, but there’s been no announcement that he’s planning to retire. I am forever grateful that he went back to Cleveland and won a championship there, but I’d like to see him go out as a still-great player rather than hanging on a little too long.

  13. The NASA Space Launch System (SLS) will be on the chopping block by the end of the year.

    WRONG. After a spat between Trump and Elon NASA went without an administrator for most of 2025, so there hasn’t been any change in the status of SLS.

  14. American men will break the national records in the 800m, 1500m, 5000m and 10,000m.

    WRONG. While they had the talent to break a lot of records in 2025, the stars didn’t align. The national records in the 5,000 meters and the marathon were both broken, but setting records in all five distance events was an admittedly tall order.

  15. The trend of billionaires buying media companies will continue with at least one huge purchase.

    WRONG. After buying Paramount, and with it CBS, Larry Ellison’s son tried to get Warner Brothers, and with it CNN, in 2025, but at least for now it looks like Netflix will be the winner in that acquisition.

Final score: 2/15. I think that’s the worst ever, but just wait for the 2026 predictions to set a new low. Looking back, none of the predictions seem too outlandish, so at least I can feel like I was totally wrong but with style.

Home Again

Posted from Culver City, California at 8:30 pm, September 11th, 2025

After twelve nights away the trip has ended, but here’s a recap of the last three days. On Tuesday we set off for Elkhorn Slough, an area thirty minutes north of Monterey that is normally a hotspot for sea otters. On this visit, however, construction equipment and a “closed” sign blocked the parking lot; they are apparently doing some habitat restoration, so future visits should be even better, but we were stymied in our otter quest this time. But (spoiler alert) there were a ton of otters down the coast; the cute little buggers are doing much better than back in the early 1900s when they were feared to have been hunted to extinction.

On Wednesday we made a third quick visit to the aquarium and then headed south via the 17 Mile Drive along the coast and through Pebble Beach. It’s a touristy thing to do, but it’s a really pretty part of the planet so I didn’t mind paying $12 and sharing the road with a bunch of other tourists. From there we continued south to the town of Los Alamos. I’d picked it since it’s close to Vandenberg Air Force Base, the west coast’s spaceport, and I was hoping to catch a rocket launch, but unfortunately nothing was blasting off while we were there, so we’ll have to try again in the future.

Our lodging for the night was the Victorian Mansion, a building that was originally built in 1864 and later moved to Los Alamos in 1980. As if staying in a 160 year old mansion wasn’t enough of a draw, they have also themed each room. We stayed in the French room, with hand painted scenes of Paris on the walls and a spiral staircase leading up to our loft bed, but other rooms included a gypsy room, an Egyptian room, a pirate room, and their Hobbit Hole will be opening soon.

The town of Los Alamos is a tiny place with numerous buildings that date back a hundred years, and while it’s supposedly crowded from Thursday through Sunday, on a Wednesday night it was almost completely empty and Audrey accurately remarked that it felt like we were in a Twilight Zone episode as we walked a mostly-empty street with a cowboy saloon on one side and an old railroad depot on the other. We ended up in an ancient mercantile that is now the Pico Restaurant, and I placed my standard cocktail order, asking the server to bring me the girliest, most embarrassing drink they could come up with. In twenty years of making that order, this one was the best: they actually brought me two drinks, one a purple and pink margarita, and the second was a brown and white tropical drink with an entire garden of fruit, mint, flowers, and whatever else they could find decorating the top. I went to bed a very, very happy, and quite tipsy, man.

Today we enjoyed breakfast on our balcony, made a stop in the weird Danish town of Solvang, then returned home after a 2.5 hour drive. All in all it’s been a nice little tour around California.

Ground Squirrel, Big Sur

In one of the world’s greatest marine sanctuaries, home of countless ocean creatures and innumerable beautiful vistas, my favorite photo of the day was a squirrel taking in the view from a rock.

Catching Up

Posted from Monterey, California at 8:12 pm, September 8th, 2025

It’s been a few days since the last journal entry ended with me annoying a very large bull elk during a hike through the fog in Point Reyes. The day after that adventure I met up with Ma & Pa Holliday in Bodega Bay where we enjoyed some crab, took a nice hike on Bodega Head, and then headed inland fifteen miles to an Airbnb in the tiny town of Freestone. I’ve developed a liking for weird lodging, and this one fit the bill: a 100 year old redwood cabin decorated in a Bohemian style, including a ten foot tall stone urn from the 1923 World’s Fair that watched over us from the pond behind the cabin. The cabin was also a short walk from the amazing Wildflour Bakery, and much delicious bread was consumed during our stay.

Day two with Ma & Pa took us back to Point Reyes to visit the scenic lighthouse and find some elk for my dad to photograph; luckily the elk were obliging and the Skipper returned home with a treasure trove of photos and videos. Once back my mom was strangely excited by the ping pong table at the cabin, so the Hollidays made an embarrassing demonstration of their lack of coordination to close out the day.

The following morning we took my dad to do his favorite thing: eat. After that I’d stumbled upon mentions of “junk art” along Florence Ave in the nearby town of Sebastopol. The artist’s name is Patrick Amiot, and he has made hundreds of humorous statues out of random discarded metal items that are displayed in his neighbor’s yards and throughout town. My mom was tickled pink as she went from house to house taking photos of metal witches and six foot tall cats. After bidding farewell to the parents I was off to San Jose to pick up Audrey, where I met her at the airport holding a “Welcome back Audrey!!! Congrats on your parole!!!” sign, much to her bemusement. A short drive later and we settled in for three nights in Monterey.

Today we renewed our membership at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and spent the morning with the fishies, then we headed over to the surprisingly-deserted Fisherman’s Wharf; apparently it’s much less crowded on weekdays after Labor Day. The highlight was watching a paddle boarder have seals repeatedly leap onto the back of her board to relax, although we did also get to see everything from a massive bull sea lion to rays to jellyfish to seagulls who were so used to people that they just stared at us while we passed by six inches away from them. Dinner was chowder and cookies, because grownups get to eat whatever they want, and tomorrow is likely to be filled with sea otters and possibly another visit with the fishies at the aquarium.

Sea Otter, Monterey Bay

The plan for tomorrow is to search for sea otters in Elkhorn Slough, but this guy swam by while we were at Fisherman’s Wharf and ended up as my favorite photo of the day.

Fog and Tomales

Posted from Point Reyes National Seashore, California at 7:41 pm, September 4th, 2025

Point Reyes was a foggy place with limited visibility at 7am, but the birds and rabbits were all waiting for me when I got to the Abbott’s Lagoon trail, and the short out-and-back to the ocean was a good appetizer for the rest of the day. Quail were all over, sparrows were hopping at my feet, and the least-afraid/least-annoyed great blue heron I’ve ever met posed for pictures on a bridge for at least five minutes.

The main hike for the day was the nine-mile round trip to Tomales Point at the park’s northernmost end. I started off in the fog with tule elk bugling all around me, and enjoyed a druid-esque walk through the landscape with just deer and the elk as companions. The scenery on this trail is supposed to be extraordinary, but with visibility limited I was excited to have an elk or deer pop up fifty feet from me every few minutes. On the way back the fog lifted somewhat, and while the scenery was great, the animals remained the stars of the show, including a massive bull elk who was grazing ten feet off the trail on a portion that bordered a cliff, and who was none-too-pleased when I timidly walked by, all the while calmly telling him not to mind me and to continue eating.

Dinner tonight was at the Hog Island Oyster Cafe, and while they didn’t quite top the oysters in Tasmania, barbecued oysters and homemade sourdough bread while sitting at a picnic table next to the ocean wasn’t a bad way to wrap up the day.

Great Blue Heron, Point Reyes

The world’s least afraid great blue heron, with the most impressive neck feathers, in Point Reyes.

Song Sparrow, Point Reyes

We all see sparrows every day, but I liked the plant this guy was perched on.

Schmerg

Posted from Olema, California at 8:17 pm, September 3rd, 2025

Days three, four and five of this trip are now in the books. For unexplainable reasons I woke up at 4:30am on Labor Day, and needing to arrive in Truckee by 11:30 decided to get on the road. Scenic Mono Lake unfortunately passed by in the dark, but eventually the sunrise lit up the Sierras, and three-and-a-half hours later I pulled into my brother’s driveway. Delicious meals, a few hikes, some last minute fantasy football magic, a plunge into Donner Lake, and an utterly massive slice of apple pie at Donner Ski Ranch were but a few of the adventures during our two days together.

This morning I bid adieu to the younger Holliday and headed to the coast. After clicking the “avoid freeways” button in Google Maps, the route led past Folsom Lake and along remote mountain roads. Eventually Lake Berryessa appeared, a giant reservoir that is most famous for the unique spillway at its dam. The Lake Berryessa Morning Glory Spillway is a 72 foot diameter circular opening that normally juts above the water’s surface like an enormous bath tub drain, but when the reservoir is full it creates a mind-blowing circular waterfall. It wasn’t overflowing today, and I couldn’t do justice trying to describe what it looks like anyhow, but there’s a YouTube video that’s definitely worth a watch.

After geeking out over engineering I headed towards Muir Woods, since it would be crazy to visit this part of the state and not take a walk in perhaps the world’s most beautiful redwood grove. For anyone who hasn’t visited Muir Woods, it can be infuriatingly crowded on summer weekends, but on a random Wednesday in September there were parking spots available and a relatively small number of visitors, so I actually got to enjoy the silence under the giant, thousand year old trees. In addition to the boardwalk trail I headed up the Fern Creek trail, and learned that not only were the granite foundations at the top of the trail part of the now-burned-down Muir Woods Inn, but that there also used to be a railroad that brought early visitors to the grove.

This evening I’m spending the first of two nights at the romantic Olema House near Point Reyes; I have a long history of making solo visits to romantic bed and breakfasts, much to Audrey’s chagrin. Dinner was fish tacos and a plate of local oysters that were mighty tasty, although Get Shucked in Tasmania still easily retains its crown as my favorite oyster stop. Tomorrow I’m going to do some hiking in Point Reyes, then Ma & Pa Holliday will be meeting me in Sebastopol for a couple of days of eating crab and exploring the very pretty Northern California coast.

Muir Woods

Looking up, at Muir Woods.

Vacation 2025

Posted from Mammoth, California at 10:00 pm, August 31st, 2025

It’s been nearly fifteen months since the end of the Great Australia / New Zealand Adventure, which is far too long to go between vacations. This year’s escape is shorter and less ambitious than trips in the past, with a few stops planned in California over a two week period.

The trip started yesterday with a drive up Highway 395 through the Eastern Sierra. It’s one of my favorite routes in the state, but not one I’ve done many times in summer months. Temperatures were in the high 90s on the way up, but this surprisingly made it easy to find the elusive herds of Tule elk that inhabit the area. Harking back to the days when our parents set up sprinklers during hot weather so that we could cool off, the elk had similar ideas and had apparently found every farm field with irrigation, and were clustered under the spraying water. After spotting one herd, it was almost a certain thing that there would be another a few miles up the road at the next irrigated field.

Today’s adventure was hiking in Devils Postpile National Monument. Despite living in California for nearly thirty years, this monument has eluded my attempts to visit it due to its short open season; with the park road reaching up to 9,000 feet elevation it’s covered in snow most of the year and may only be accessible from late July until early October. Entry for me was by shuttle bus, but the park is in the heart of the Pacific Crest and John Muir trails, so I encountered a fair share of people in the midst of multi-week or multi-month hikes; it’s a humbling experience to feel like a badass for hiking ten miles through the High Sierra only to then meet a half dozen people who are on day 120 of a 200 day journey.

Humble pie aside, the park is a great place to hike. The Devils Postpile is an intriguing series of basalt columns that forms a cliff next to a river, while further downstream the impressive Rainbow Falls tumbles a hundred feet straight down over similar volcanic rocks. I also made a visit to Sotcher Lake, and any time spent at a high mountain lake surrounded by granite domes is time well spent. The day wrapped up with a hamburger at Reds Meadow, an old camp in the mountains used by through-hikers to resupply. I’m told the taste of the burgers improves dramatically depending on how long you’ve been hiking, so while I thoroughly enjoyed mine I can only imagine what the folks who had been trekking for months must have thought.

Rainbow Falls, Devils Postpile National Monument

Rainbow Falls, Devils Postpile National Monument.

Predictions for 2025

Posted from Culver City, California at 8:37 pm, January 11th, 2025

Below is the 17th entry in my yearly tradition of making (bad) predictions. While a smarter man would have admitted defeat long ago, it’s an exercise I enjoy despite being horrendous at it. So without further ado, here are some thoughts about the coming year.

  1. SpaceX will have 10-15 launches of its new Starship rocket by the end of the year, with at least one ship re-used.

    SpaceX launched four test flights in 2024, and at this point the first stage has already landed successfully once, while the second stage is getting close. They have stated that they want to launch 25 flights in 2025, but 15 would still be an amazing accomplishment and is probably more within the realm of reality. It’s a great time to be alive if you’re a fan of space.
  2. The Browns will trade back from the #2 overall pick in the 2025 NFL draft and won’t draft a quarterback with their first selection.

    In my perfect world, Deion Sanders announces that his son won’t play for Cleveland, a bidding war breaks out between the Giants, Jets and Raiders for the #2 pick, and Cleveland ends up with Las Vegas’ #6 overall, their second and third rounders, and a 2026 second round pick. The Browns then draft a manimal with their first pick and take Jaxson Dart with one of their two second-rounders. He sits behind Kirk Cousins for a year, and we all live happily ever after. But it’s the Browns, so there’s an equally good chance that they draft a QB #2 and he goes on to easily break the rookie record by throwing more than 28 interceptions in his first season.
  3. The Fantastic Four: First Steps will be a return to form for Marvel, and will gross over $1.2 billion worldwide and over $600 million domestically.

    The folks at Marvel have been excited to do a Fantastic Four movie since forever, so they should be highly motivated not to screw this one up. In the past five years their movies have been a mess of too many characters, not enough focus on compelling stories, and a lack of cohesion between movies. With this movie set in the 1960s they won’t be tempted to pull in other characters, so the film should be focused on just the Fantastic Four and will tell a story that is worth going to a theater for.
  4. A bubble in commercial real estate will seriously threaten the financial sector by the end of the year.

    Since COVID, office buildings are operating at low occupancy rates, and with leases coming up for renewal companies are going to walk away, and some developers will then choose to default on their loans. Much like the subprime mortgage crisis in 2010, since the defaulted properties won’t have demand the banks will be left with properties worth less than the original loan amount, and there will be serious impacts on balance sheets.
  5. Most of Trump’s cabinet nominees, including controversial picks like Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel, will be confirmed, but Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr will both be forced to withdraw.

    As the Matt Gaetz nomination showed, Republican Senators aren’t going to support nominees that they have strong objections to, but they also don’t want to go on record against Trump, so if there really is resistance to Gabbard and RFK then their nominations will be delayed, allowing time for information like RFK’s fringe views on vaccines and diets, and Gabbard’s sympathetic views of Russia, to weaken their support.
  6. While industrywide electric vehicle sales numbers will continue to climb, Tesla’s sales will fall both globally and domestically by at least 10-15% in 2025.

    Tesla has pioneered a revolution in automobiles, demonstrating that electric cars are a superior solution to gasoline vehicles. However, in the last five years the Cybertruck design has been hugely divisive, Elon has made an annual unfulfilled promise that the cars will drive themselves by the end of the year, they have put a weird focus on humanoid robots, and meanwhile their car designs are getting long in the tooth. At the same time, the CEO’s newfound enthusiasm for a President-elect who calls climate change a hoax and chants “drill baby drill” at his rallies is not a good way to increase brand loyalty for a company whose mission is still supposedly to “advance the world’s transition to sustainable energy”. Tesla’s sales in 2024 disappointed despite lots of year-end incentives and a rush of people trying to take advantage of federal EV tax breaks, and 2025 may be another slow year for Tesla’s automotive division.
  7. The number of active users on Bluesky will surpass Facebook’s Threads by the end of the year, but won’t (quite) overtake Twitter X.

    I used the pre-Elon Twitter as a way to get insights from authors, engineers, political scientists and others. Additionally, it was an amazing source of immediate news coverage – an obscure USGS scientist was always online if an earthquake occurred or a volcano erupted, and a former astronaut always weighed in when there was notable space news. Post-Elon most of the people I followed left Twitter, but in the past couple of months they are starting to show up on Bluesky and seem likely to bring their former Twitter followers with them.
  8. 2025 will see the elimination of the debt ceiling.

    I’m not confident in this prediction, but here’s my thinking: the debt ceiling has to be raised while Trump is President since the US isn’t going to cut a trillion dollars from the annual budget. There are a number of House Republicans who don’t ever want their names attached to a debt ceiling vote, so raising it has to be done with help from Democrats. That gives the Democrats leverage, and since Trump already floated the idea of getting rid of the debt ceiling altogether, Democrats will finally have an opportunity to remove a time bomb from the budget process.
  9. Boeing will sell or spin off its space division.

    Starliner was delayed several years and then had thruster issues that left two astronauts stranded on the space station for six months. SpaceX is getting the bulk of all launch contracts, and Jeff Bezos’ New Glenn rocket will be operational soon. It’s not clear what Boeing’s sales pitch for space is anymore, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see their new CEO exit the business by selling off their space division to focus on airplanes and defense.
  10. The new Superman movie will underperform, with earnings similar to the 2017 Justice League movie.

    James Gunn seems to have his heart in the right place, but DC keeps prioritizing spectacle over story, and unless you’re James Cameron that isn’t a recipe for successful movies. The trailer for the new film seemed like it had a dozen different heroes and villains in it, which portends a movie aimed at setting up future films instead of telling a coherent story. The original Christopher Reeve film wasn’t beloved because of spectacle, it was beloved because it inspired us to imagine our world with Superman in it, but DC doesn’t seem to understand that fact. Hopefully I’m wrong about the new movie, because it would be great to be inspired by the Man of Steel once again.
  11. The high-speed train between LA-ish and Las Vegas will start major construction and actually gain support from Republicans.

    Brightline West is a private company planning to build a high-speed train from the outskirts of LA along the I-15 median for 218 miles to Las Vegas. They have received $3 billion in federal grants, and claim the project can be completed for less than $20 billion and be operational by 2028. The cost will be higher and the opening date will be missed, but given Republican support for private businesses, Trump’s love of building stuff, and the fact that this train mostly runs through red districts, I’m betting we’ll be hearing a lot about it in the coming years.
  12. Lebron James will announce that he will retire after the 2025-2026 NBA season.

    At 40 Lebron is still one of the best players in the NBA, but he’s also aware that he can’t play at a high level forever, and I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t want to go out with a whimper. If the Lakers somehow won the championship this year he’d probably retire after this season, but otherwise his current contract is through 2026, and he’ll likely want to announce his plans in advance so he can go out in front of sold-out arenas cheering for one of the top four players ever to play the game. And yeah, top four: Jordan #1, Wilt #2, Russell #3, Lebron #4.
  13. The NASA Space Launch System (SLS) will be on the chopping block by the end of the year.

    The first flight of NASA’s SLS rocket launched in 2022, but the second flight that will carry humans around the moon has been pushed back to 2026. With Elon Musk playing an outsized role in the Trump administration, a space entrepreneur nominated to head NASA, and Richard Shelby having retired in 2023, this very expensive and slow moving program will be at serious risk of cancellation by the end of the year.
  14. American men will break the national records in the 800m, 1500m, 5000m and 10,000m.

    Breaking four national records in one year is a tall ask, but what’s the fun in making safe predictions? Grant Fischer is the reigning record holder in the 5,000m and 10,000m and just won bronze medals in both events in Paris. Bryce Hoppel is the reigning 800m indoor world champion and American record holder. The 1500m record is likely the toughest of the four, but Americans won the bronze and gold medals in Paris with times that were only a fraction of a second from the record, so this year could very well see all four records rewritten.
  15. The trend of billionaires buying media companies will continue with at least one huge purchase.

    Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, and Jeff Bezos took over the Washington Post for $250 million in 2013. Warner Brothers, and thus CNN, may soon be up for sale, and Elon Musk has suggested he would buy MSNBC, so with billionaires more and more interested in shaping media narratives, and with Trump likely to make it a difficult four years for journalists, this year may see another big sale.

And there they are, fifteen predictions about the new year. These took a shockingly long time to come up with, and they will almost certainly be embarrassingly wrong when revisited twelve months from now, but it’s a game I enjoy, and also a good annual affirmation that my talents are that of an engineer who focuses on solving immediate problems rather than trying to figure out what lies in the distant future.