My Review of Zamberlan Vioz GT Hiking Boots - Men's

Originally submitted at REI

With legendary Italian quality and comfort, the Zamberlan Vioz GT boots offer waterproof protection and burly construction to handle everything from easy day hikes to backcountry adventures.

Zamberlan Vioz GT Hiking Boots - Men's

Outstanding Boots!

By ManAlive from Monterey on 10/8/2010

 

5out of 5

Sizing: Feels true to size

Width: True to size

Pros: Good Arch Support, Water Resistant, Great Traction, Ankle Support, Warm, No Break-in, Comfortable, Sturdy/Durable

Best Uses: Long-Distance Hiking, Wet Conditions, Cold Weather

Describe Yourself: Avid Adventurer

Arch Type: Low Arch

Was this a gift?: No

I wore this boot for a couple of weekend trips to Big Sur before using them hiking in East Greenland during the thaw. I have never been so excited about a pair of boots! I averaged 30 km per day with one day at 53 km. My legs and feet were not tired... I had to stop because I was too sleepy! No trails in East Greenland and lots of bouldering and rivers to ford. My feet never got wet (I was also wearing good gaiters) and I never got a hot spot, let alone a blister. I don't know why other people are writing that these boots are heavy? They are actually quite light for this sort of boot.

200 miles and still in good shape (East Greenland)

Tags: Picture of Product, Using Product

(legalese)

Monterey Bay Dolphin Patrol

Coastal Bottlenose Dolphins
Originally uploaded by Henrik Kibæk

Whenever I get the chance, which is usually twice a week, I take the five minute drive from my office to Marina State Beach to eat my lunch. It's the hangliding beach for the Monterey Bay so it's usually not a great place to picnic with the family. There is always blowing sand. But there is also always something going on in the water.

For example, there appears to be a pair of resident Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). Each time I was there this summer they came lazily cruising by. When recent CSUMB graduate Todd Endris was hit by a white shark while surfing here a few weeks ago the dolphins appeared to try to help him. In an interview on MSNBC Endris describes the dolphins as forming "some kind of barrier" between him and the shark, foiling subsequent attacks. Meanwhile Endris was helped to shore by his very brave buddies. An unusually "close to the scene" account of the attack is at the Surfline website. And you can watch Todd Endris being interviewed a couple of months later on MSNBC.

The first news accounts were typically overblown claiming a "twenty foot white shark" had made the attack etc., But if a 20 foot white shark had hit him there would be absolutely nothing left. I have watched a 14 foot white shark cut a female elephant seal in half in the blink of an eye. She was three times my diameter.

White sharks begin their lives eating fish and only graduate to marine mammals at puberty... which is when they are about 12-14 feet. It is my hypothesis that many of the humans that are hit by white sharks are victims of this transitional period, when their prey search image is fuzzy. By the time they are larger they stop mistaking bony humans for blubber rich marine mammals.

If you really want to convince yourself that there are two dolphins in this photo, click on it, choose "all sizes" and then click "original" to see the full size photo.

Turtles and Tarantulas

This past Saturday, September 8th, 2007, I had the good fortune to be driving on Arroyo Seco Road at about 8am... when sunlight is still enriched in morning spectra. Even though I was a bit late for my destination, I had to stop and shoo a Tarantula (Aphonopelma spp.) off the road. It's Fall and they start that bad "out on the road" action, just like the mule deer. Ever since I heard about the one at the San Diego Natural History Museum that lived to be 30 years in captivity, I have a hard time with seeing them squashed on the asphalt.

Later I also spotted Western Pond Turtles (I prefer the name Pacific Pond Turtle) Clemmys marmorata which is both a Federal and a California Species of Special Concern. They also live a long time... 40 years. Flicker Photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kibak/1358860592/


I gave up trying to upload a six second clip of the tarantula to YouTube, so here it is on Google Videos instead video.google.com/Henrik_Kibak_Tarantula

The quality really degrades on these sites, but you get the idea...

Ariolimax

IMG_2521
Originally uploaded by Henrik Kibæk.

Distribution of Mimicry

Here's a question that has probably been answered in some dusty Master's thesis sitting at a university library...

Do Bay Laurel and yellow forms of Ariolimax overlap? Or, better yet, are there yellow forms of Ariolimax outside the range of the Bay Laurel?

Flickr Banana Slug photoset http://www.flickr.com/photos/kibak/sets/72057594120636206/

Old Bobcat at Wilder State Park

bobcat31
Originally uploaded by Henrik Kibæk.

This old bobcat that hangs out near the bridge by the corral at Wilder State Park is my favorite. It's also the only one of my bobcat friends that is photographically cooperative. Wilder is a great California State Park on the coast at the northern end of the Monterey Bay and an example of a new trend in park management in the western US (The BLM spearheaded this approach in the 1970's in the California Mojave Desert led by Senator Alan Cranston). Instead of trying to make all types of visitors happy everywhere in the park (and failing to make anyone happy), they try to accomodate specific activities at specific locations or even at specific parks. Wilder State Park is part Childrens Petting Zoo, Historical Park, Horse Ranch, and Mountain Biker Paradise. While some impressive distance runners train there in the hills most of the trail occupants are bicyclists. Horses have the right of way, and bikers must yield and pass sensitively, but there are relatively few horses to cope with. Hikers are few and far between. And there is lots of wildlife. Coyotes, bobcats, and lots of mule deer. Once I almost collided with a six point buck bounding across the trail. There are even rattlesnakes. My son and I spotted a 15 cm rattler a couple of weeks ago that was less than a year old.

I have been meaning to put together a decent website on Wilder for years, but have only managed to assemble a time-lapse photo tour of one of the main bike routes I follow. http://kibak.com/WilderRicoh/index.htm The first photos are climbing the hill at UCSC as the map indicates.
It's also interesting to view this ride as a quick slideshow at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kibak/sets/72057594127107482/ October

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kibak/sets/72057594130673567/ May

The photos were taken at 3 minute intervals, so setting the slide show speed to 1.8 seconds will give you a 1:100 time compression.

Many animals remain in place most of the year and then suddenly get up and move around in mini-migrations. Today it was the harvestmen... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvestman. The bike trail up through the Great Meadow at UCSC is where I notice the "migrations," mostly because I am moving so slowly that I actually see things. Along some segments of the trail there was one of these Opiliones stumbling across the path every meter or so. In the Fall I have noticed Thysanurids (Silverfish) on the trail in large numbers around sunset on warm days and Jerusalem Crickets after the first rains. And last summer I counted seven Alligator Lizards on one bike ride... when usually I see none.

Monterey Bay, California

These are links I use concerning Monterey Bay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monterey_Bay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz%2C_CA
http://www.mbnms-simon.org/other/gen/imaps.php
http://www.californiacoastline.org/
http://library.ucsc.edu/maps/
http://ceres.ca.gov/
http://home.csumb.edu/k/kibakhenrik/world/links.html

<-- Monterey Bay Location by Satellite

Fort Ord Ticks

FtOrdTicks
Originally uploaded by Henrik Kibæk.

I've been thinking of photographing lurking (a.k.a. "questing") ticks for a while now, and today I finally got around to it. As far as I can tell, they love dead Lotus. I think these four are all Pacific Coast Ticks (Dermacentor occidentalis), three females and a male (without the pale shield). While the Western Black Legged Tick (Ixodes pacificus) is the main vector here of the Lyme Disease spirochete (Borrelia burgdorferi), 3 percent of Pacific Coast Ticks at Camp Pendelton (San Diego County) tested positive for spirochete! This is the most abundant and common tick in the Monterey Bay area in my experience. These photos were taken between the CSUMB campus and Marina on the blocked off part of 6th Avenue between the 8th street cutoff and Imjin Road. In 2004 I shared blood with a tick for the better part of a day... see http://www.flickr.com/photos/kibak/143810783/

http://maps.google.com/?ll=36.658436,-121.792417&spn=0.016766,0.028925&om=1

http://www.americanarachnology.org/HiResGallery/Acari_m_Dermacentor_occidentalis.html

http://members.utech.net/users/10766/003.txt

Dead Young Gray Whale

RIMG0004
Originally uploaded by Henrik Kibæk.

This young Gray Whale (Eschrichtius robustus) washed ashore March 15, 2006, at the Salinas River State Beach near the Monterey Dunes Colony.

Although my first thought was that it had been raked by a propeller, the whale was also disemboweled... which pointed to Orcas. As you can see from the photos, it would have had to be a very slow moving propeller... Just curious why the Orcas did not eat more of the whale.

http://maps.google.com/?om=1&ll=36.776017,-121.795464&spn=0.066961,0.1157

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kibak/sets/72057594122902948/

Later I found this video coverage of orcas feeding on grey whales in the Monterey Bay.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12516476/from/RSS/

The web as personal archival tool... Part II

The concept of taking notes from anywhere and accessing them again from anywhere was an early internet concept. Telnet, unix, and vi or emacs has allowed me to do that since 1984. But adding photos and using same tool to upload and view came about ten years later.

I wrote my first web log in January 1996... only sporadic blogging since then. Why? Here are my thoughts.

• The three type of web logs I write are (1)to-do lists, (2)reference notes and ideas, (3)natural history with photos.
• I don't want my web logs password protected but I also don't want them indexed by search engines. It's a hassle to code the nofollow each time you post a note.
• I do want to be able to search within my blogs and I want them organized by year/month.
• I want to be able to access and edit blog from anywhere using any platform.
• I want to be able to back up the entire set of web logs and photos locally with one click of the mouse.
• I want to keep on a server that is fast and always up. This morning I tried using blogspot and couldn't access it. I want my blogs to reside on my own account in a professional environment such as Web Hosting by ICDSoft.
  
• I want to be able to easily upload photos and write about them. I would also like to be able to get hard copies of the photos and let others do the same (easily).
• I want to be able to distinguish by media type.
  
  

The closest I can get to that ideal is to work from Flickr using the "Blog This" feature with photos archived on that site. The blogs are then automatically posted here with a small version of the photo.

Laboratory of David Epel in 1995

EL-3
Originally uploaded by Henrik Kibæk.

The Epel Lab at Hopkins Marine Station in the Spring of 1995

From left David Epel, Barbara Toomey, Henrik Kibak, Beth Shomer, Melissa Kaufman, Yuzuru Ikeda, Barney Rees, and Chris Patton.

I loved working in this lab. Dave is a biologist's biologist. The range of projects was so exciting. I had come from the Taiz Lab at UC Santa Cruz, where I was practically the only US citizen, to this lab where only Yuzuru was from overseas. Yet one could not have assembled a more diverse group of people! No one had anything in common, except uniformly good humor and a love (tolerance?) of the same radio station - KPIG!

This photo was the one used on that first lab website, taken just outside the lab. Yes, that's the Monterey Bay in the background, and those are just clouds... not a chain of snowcapped volcanic peaks :-)

Bumble Bees and Lupines

bumblebee_lupine
Originally uploaded by Henrik Kibæk.

I am trying to put together a unit on pollination... and one "kernel object" will be insect transport.

Every April and May, Fort Ord is carpeted with these beautiful little sky lupines (Lupinus nanus)(1)(2)(3) and bicolor lupines (Lupinus bicolor). But by mid June there is often not even a trace of them... all withered in typical drought-avoider fashion.

Several Bumblebees (Bombus) (4pdf)(5)visit them and I should really take the time to get to know them. Because of the frequent cool sea breezes and abundant rodent burrows this is good bumblebee territory. This photo was taken about 2 miles inland from Marina State Beach.

Also thinking about possibly involving capstone students in this project (LeBuhn, San Francisco State University).