It was Saturday during the day and the sun was shining brightly and with a brisk breeze which is nominal in Berkeley, CA. At just past noon I decided to leave the house on a bike ride into the Berkeley east hills and through the higher hills of Tilden Regional Park, which is the country's first regional park.
I embarked towards UC Berkeley campus first to check on a chemical reaction I had set up yesterday evening. My sole goal and plan was to take a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrum of the reaction in order to see if it worked. Upon my arrival I was informed that my vacuum pump connected to my newly assembled AirFree Glass Manifold (Schlenk line) had started gurgling and smoking and that my refluxing reaction had to be cooled down and exposed to air. It turned out the rubber vacuum hose connecting my line to the pump was old and had cracked open. Therefore, I replaced the line with new rubber hose and the crisis was overted. However, after taking an NMR of the reaction I am somewhat discouraged at the resulting unknown signals indicating my ignorance and aloofness with the result of the experiment. Thus, I should work up the reaction soon (wash with brine, extract with ether, remove solvents) and retake the NMR, if things look good then I can try to clean up the crude reaction product mixture with a chromatography column. The concepts and skills of chemistry I have obviously not yet mastered. So I left the lab to go enjoy the day.
The Berkeley hills turned out to be steep, in some areas out-of-shape lungs and hearts cause one to pussy out. I had to get off the bike and walk for the long and steep portions of the climb. Regardless, the summit rewarded me with multiple new adventures. I visited the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens. I might volunteer to work there if I have enough time and energy. These gardens have plants from all over the world and commuting uphill to volunteer would be brutally healthy. I grabbed a brochure about volunteer opportunities and an on-site Chinese medicinal garden. I will learn quite a bit from even the most amateur of gardeners let alone a botanical garden staff, even if I am just pulling weeds.
The Lawrence Hall of Science was a mile or so up the hill from the already very lofty botanical gardens. I arrived late while staff was preparing for a wedding inside the Science Hall. I chatted with a staff member and grabbed another brochure. The courtyard was a beautiful site of one entire 140 degree panorama of the San Francisco bay area and Berkeley, included were things like the bay bridge, golden gate bridge, wizard island, Mount Tampalpais (which is taller and beefier than Tilden Regional Park), Berkeley Harbor, and Bay estuaries. I was in a mood of exploration and self-fulfillment so I continued upward and onward towards the park's native plant Botanic Garden and Inspiration Point where I grabbed another brochure, ate an apple, a banana, drank some water, and biked down a rocky hiking trail open to bicycles on my Schwinn Varsity 10-speed.
I wanted to experience new areas and people on my Saturday while getting enough exercise and stimuli to feel satisfied. I stopped by the Botanic Garden entrance which was being guarded by a friendly staff member. Her name I'll leave undisclosed, she recently moved to the bay area like me. I mentioned I might volunteer at the garden and she quickly piped up about when the best time would be, how to contact her supervisor, etc. "Weekends are too busy, we'll be totally swamped, so thats a bad time to come." she said, "I work during the week so the weekends are the best time for me." I said. "Well, I don't want to turn you away, I mean other volunteers usually help with pulling weeds, sweeping sidewalks, and even then they need supervision so they dont pull out an endangered species or something." I chuckled, "I guess I'll come when I can and I can contact your supervisor about the paperwork." We ran in circles conversationally for a bit and then she talked about her job in 88' and mentioned it was attached to a head shop. She said that in 88' the people in Berkeley would come into her work thinking the city was still the same as it was in 68'. "There's a stigma in Berkeley." she said. "They would demand I try some new herb they found somewhere and I'd say, Ha! where did you find this crap." I chuckled again, knowing she was talking about the freely flowing marijuana in Berkeley. I said, "Well, I just moved here too from Portland, OR this week so I don't have a whole lot of friends to hang out with yet, I just needed to get out and do something." "You'll make friends in Berkeley, its real friendly, and its full of all kinds, very eclectic." she said. "Well, I hope so." I replied, "I know its been friendly so far." We said our goodbyes and I left to arrive at Little Farm.
Enjoy experiences by sharing them even if alone.
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