When I was doing my PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, I had a group of close friends who were all expatriates from Epsilon Theta Fraternity at MIT. I had the opportunity to spend a weekend at the beginning of March with six of them, all married couples: Ekrem & Leanne, Greg & Kim, and Ken & Jen. (Epsilon Theta is co-educational and felicitously facilitated such nuptials!) All were invited to my wedding last June, but only Ekrem could attend due to the tribulations of parenthood (each couple has two young children).
Ekrem and Leanne now live in Boston, where I get to see them on a regular basis because I travel there often for work. I have not been back to Berkeley since I left seven years ago, though. The six expatriates coordinated a joint vacation to Fort Myers, Florida this past March. Catching wind of the plan, I (somewhat brazenly, perhaps, for someone without the requisite two children) asked if Katie and I might join them for the weekend. We did just that and had a wonderful time. It was great seeing Kim & Greg, and Jen & Ken after such a long hiatus!
I would normally have taken lots of pictures, but I am a mere tyro compared to Greg, who is a masterful photographer (and who has much more impressive equipment to boot). I've stolen lots of his photos.
Here's a group photo of everyone, except one of the children, who was sleeping:
Greg also took a portrait of just Katie and me:
Here's a picture from later on in the week with the group demonstrating its "one child per person" quota.
My favorite part of the trip was hanging out with everyone on the beach on Sunday, the group's first full day in their rental house and (sadly) our last day to spend with everyone. There had been a massive thunderstorm the night before, and this had the interesting effect of stirring up what usually sits at the bottom of the ocean. The tides then deposited tons of this on the beach. Included in this was lots of wildlife. Here's a colorful crab:
I found the small octopuses especially fascinating:
One caution to any who find themselves in a similar situation: octopuses can be poisonous! The octopus above slowly slithered across my hand and then bit my finger! For a while, we were collecting what garbage washed ashore with all the wildlife, including lots of aluminum cans. Then we discovered that nearly every can contained a mother octopus with eggs:
After that, I tried to rescue the octopus from each can, throwing the octopus into the ocean and throwing the can into the trash. It was a daunting task, though, and many octopuses certainly perished. Such are the vicissitudes of life in a turbulent ecosystem.
Greg was showing off a bit, perhaps, when he took this photo of some feeding pelicans, but I am still awed:
Other favorite photos from Greg's set:
Ekrem and Leanne now live in Boston, where I get to see them on a regular basis because I travel there often for work. I have not been back to Berkeley since I left seven years ago, though. The six expatriates coordinated a joint vacation to Fort Myers, Florida this past March. Catching wind of the plan, I (somewhat brazenly, perhaps, for someone without the requisite two children) asked if Katie and I might join them for the weekend. We did just that and had a wonderful time. It was great seeing Kim & Greg, and Jen & Ken after such a long hiatus!
I would normally have taken lots of pictures, but I am a mere tyro compared to Greg, who is a masterful photographer (and who has much more impressive equipment to boot). I've stolen lots of his photos.
Here's a group photo of everyone, except one of the children, who was sleeping:
Greg also took a portrait of just Katie and me:
Here's a picture from later on in the week with the group demonstrating its "one child per person" quota.
My favorite part of the trip was hanging out with everyone on the beach on Sunday, the group's first full day in their rental house and (sadly) our last day to spend with everyone. There had been a massive thunderstorm the night before, and this had the interesting effect of stirring up what usually sits at the bottom of the ocean. The tides then deposited tons of this on the beach. Included in this was lots of wildlife. Here's a colorful crab:
I found the small octopuses especially fascinating:
One caution to any who find themselves in a similar situation: octopuses can be poisonous! The octopus above slowly slithered across my hand and then bit my finger! For a while, we were collecting what garbage washed ashore with all the wildlife, including lots of aluminum cans. Then we discovered that nearly every can contained a mother octopus with eggs:
After that, I tried to rescue the octopus from each can, throwing the octopus into the ocean and throwing the can into the trash. It was a daunting task, though, and many octopuses certainly perished. Such are the vicissitudes of life in a turbulent ecosystem.Greg was showing off a bit, perhaps, when he took this photo of some feeding pelicans, but I am still awed:
Other favorite photos from Greg's set:
Gosh, had I known I would have visited the 'rents at the same time. Was that Ft. Myers Beach or Sanibel Island?
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah, the octopodes were probably sheltering from predators by lurking in the cans.
ReplyDeleteHi Jan! We were in Fort Myers Beach. Is that where your parents are?
ReplyDeleteThat's funny about one-child-per-person. I hadn't even noticed that about that picture until you mentioned it.
I was looking up "octopodes" (a nice alternative plural, along with the more common "octopuses" and "octopi") and discovered that small octopuses don't even live a year, killed by reproduction: males dies shortly after, and females die after the eggs hatch. Throwing the octopodes back didn't do much, probably, other than feed a hungry fish.
ReplyDeleteDarn that software and its hard line break insertion, the actual url is Octopodes, the promulgation of that plural being Grant's fault.
ReplyDeleteAdditional interesting tidbit from Greg: "Incidentally, that shot with the 2 pelicans diving in the water shows something interesting that I didnt appreciate at first: when the pelicans dive they fold their necks into a Z shape like a coiled spring. Just as they are about to enter the water they rapidly straighten their necks, adding to the speed with which they pierece the surface and catch their fish. The photo happens to show this at different stages in the 2 birds."
ReplyDelete