Craig Bonsignore

Instructions: Drive about 15 minutes from the Pleasanton Home Base, down Calavaras Road to Geary, and into the Sunol Regional Wilderness. Pay $5 if somebody happens to be collecting money. Park at the Green Barn. Drink the first of three bottles of water. Put the second in your back pocket. Walk down the path, cross the foot bridge over Alameda Creek, and follow the signs for Canyon View Trail. The first mile has some steep uphill climbs; it isn’t too bad once you’re past the squeaky cattle gate. A cool spring day is the bast time for this gig: the hills are green, and carpeted with yellow, orange, and purple wildflowers. At some point, you may need to take a detour around some cattle. Within 45 minutes or so, you’ll hear the rushing waters of “Little Yosemite” below. The clear waters of Calaveras Creek run through a series of waterfalls, between rocks, and around swimming dogs. Sit on a rock, and drink the bottle of water in your back pocket. From here, its a level walk of about 30-45 minutes down Camp Ohlone Road back to the valley floor, the Green Barn, and that last bottle of water. A two hour, three mile hike, 2.5 hours door to door, and back to the Home Base in time for Evan to wake up from his nap.  More photos on Flickr.

In December, I began work on an epic project. Seeking to recreate one of the greatest accomplishments of my life, and share the experience with my young son, I began inserting cloves into an otherwise perfectly serviceable orange. I had completed one such clove orange in my youth, and for many years, this strange smelling object hung in a closet by a twisted strand of wire. Now, I would recreate the grandeur of this most monumental accomplishment, one small, sharp, aromatic, dried flower bud at a time. Evan found this interesting for approximately four seconds. Undeterred, in the course of several days, with the help of an unlatched safety pin, and the support and/or ambivalence of my family, Phase I of The Clove Orange Project was complete.

While the Insertion phase was rewarding on its own accord, the acute result was somewhat unsatisfying relative to my youthful remembrances. I recalled my childhood cloven orange to be rather more dense than this specimen, and was left to wonder if modern cloves had somehow evolved stronger repulsive forces, or if I had gotten somewhat lazier or less diligent about packing density in the years that have passed. Then I recalled the Shriveling Effect. Over time, the perforated orange would shed its Precious Bodily Fluids, concentrating its cloven-citrus essence as its diameter and density shrinks. This motivated somewhat obsessive compulsive data collection, measuring the mass of this curious Object at regular intervals for three months. Again, this activity would not have been possible without the support and/or ambivalence of my lovely wife and son.

I am now proud to present, for the first time ever on the Internets, definitive data on the mass of a clove orange as a function of time, while sitting in on a countertop in a suburan residential kitchen in Northern California. To help put this important dataset in perspective, I have helpfully prepared a chart comparing Clove Orange Mass with the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, normalized to be equal to the 227 gram mass of the Clove Orange on December 8th, 2009. The accompanying chart bears a hopeful and optimistic message: While the world economy and US equity markets seem to have been deteriorating at an exponential rate in the past three months, an investment in the Dow 30 would have performed significantly better than an investment in the water molecules contained within this particular cloven orange during the same period. So things really aren’t that bad, even if they do smell a bit strange.

Relaxation can be dangerous.  I avoided it completely from September 2007 through the end of 2008. In those fifteen months, my wife and I both left years of corporate servitude behind, started consulting and freelance businesses, and I joined with some former colleagues to re-startup a divested division of my former company. Our toddler son had the only stable gig in our family, working the nine-to-five daycare shift. I’m glad to say that my time was his on weekday evenings before bedtime, and all weekend between naps (his and/or mine), and for this I have no regrets. He’s way cool. But the balance of all other waking hours melted into work. Usually this was the fun and engaging type of work, but it wouldn’t ever be confused with relaxation. When I got away from it for a few days here and there, it would stay on my mind; the gears were always turning; the laptop, iPhone, or VPN never far from reach. Until this week.

We packed up our operation and headed for Florida to hang out with my parents for the week between Christmas and the New Year. Great weather, beach, pool, grandma and grandpa, and all that good stuff. Everything was rosy. Then I got an idea: let’s cash in a babysitting coupon, so my wife and I could escape for a micro-vacation — like grown-ups! I booked the Ritz up the road in Sarasota, dinner at a great restaurant in town, spa and massages, the works. It was so very excellent. By the time our 24 hour escape had concluded, I felt something I don’t recall experiencing for years: complete and total relaxation. The sound of gears not turning. Mental energy dissipated. Worries forgotten. Brain idle.

Then, in an instant, this state of placid harmony was shattered. And I blame the blogosphere. Because it was about at that moment that I came across a BoingBoing post about some 250 earthquakes at Yellowstone in the last few days. Not long thereafter, a similar post appeared on Slashdot. Thus both of my trustworthy sources for important information about the world had independently confirmed that a super-volcanic apocalypse was imminent. It should be noted that I didn’t actually read either of the posts or any of the details; just the headlines. And I vaguely recall having seen a Discovery Channel special about the Yellowstone caldera blowing out half of North America, plunging the Earth into a volcanic winter, and exterminating mankind (or something like that). But I became increasingly paralyzed with anxiety about the untimely arrival of the end of days. Suddenly, fundamentalist terrorism, the threat of nuclear conflict on the Asian subcontinent, and various client deadlines seemed like rather trivial matters. 

I had to explain my anxiety to my wife, who promised to stock up on canned goods and large bags of rice, just in case. And after pondering my suddenly emergent state of mental instability, the root cause hit me like a chunk of boiling magma: I was relaxed. Nature is completely intolerant of a vacuum, so the Volcanic Apocalypse rushed in to fill the void.

I’ve been working on purging this virus, with the help of some Wii Bowling, reading, and music. The gears are going to have to start turning again by Monday, so I think I should be safe for a while. But I’m hoping the present blog provides another outlet to diversify my mental energy in the months to come. If it gets quiet for too long, I’ve probably either reverted to my old ways, or perhaps we’re all just buried under several feet of ash.