Mike Ball

The day after our trip up Table Rock was also clear and sunny, so we looked for another place to explore. My left ankle was very stiff, so it would have to be mostly driving, but we really wanted to get out somewhere. The Umpqua is the next major river north of the Rogue, and the [...]

Last Friday we had the first nice weather in several weeks, so we decided to go take a look at one of the local landmarks, Table Rock. It’s one of a pair of mesas just North of Medford. We decided to tackle upper table rock. The trail was steep in places, and filled with rocks and [...]

Yreka (Why-ree-ka) is a small town about 25 miles South of the Oregon border. The name is said to come from the local native language and means “great white mountain”. The picture shows why.

We really don’t know much about the town, though we expect to learn more, but just driving by makes it look interesting. As [...]

Who would have thought that retirement would be so busy? I somehow thought that I’d have lots of time and would be looking for new projects. The trouble is; I’ve been saving up things to do and things to read, and there just always seems to be more to do. Reading in particular is taking a lot of time. With the “ripening” cataracts, reading had gotten downright painful. Now one eye is fixed, and the other isn’t really so bad, so I can read again. I’m picking up all of the books that I didn’t finish and working my way through them. And that doesn’t mention the stack of journals and papers sitting by my desk.

But back to Ashland. One thing we are doing is looking for a place to enjoy our retirement, and Silicon Valley is not it. The Valley is a great place for work, partly because it’s full of smart, active, people. Note that “full of people”. Though there’s a lot going on here, getting to where it’s happening is almost always a long and difficult journey. I don’t want to travel to Berkeley to see a play! So we’ve decided that Ashland is a good compromise, having enough smart, active people to be interesting, but not enough to cause problems. This last week we took a trip there to look for a house and check out the winter weather.
Continue reading Checking out Ashland

Just a quick note.

We are in Ashland this week, checking out the weather and looking at real estate. The internet connection I have is painfully slow, so I’ll write about it when I [...]

The Fourth turns out to be a big deal in Ashland. If we had known just how big a deal, we’d have skipped the play for that day and just enjoyed the Fourth.

It started with a parade that lasted for about an hour and a half, then everyone moved to the park for booths and the [...]

I haven’t put together the picture show yet, but I thought I’d talk a bit more about Ashland and the Shakespeare Festival.

Ashland is a relatively small town, in a lovely setting, with a drama festival that runs most of the year. It also has a college and is sort of an art center. In fact, it’s a lot like Sarasota in many ways. It’s only about 5 hours from the Bay Area, so it’s not difficult to visit, and this visit was pretty much on the spur of the moment.
Continue reading Ashland and Drama

The Supercomputing convention was in Tampa this year, so Flo and I took the opportunity to visit Family and the Roseate. The convention was huge, but exceedingly unexciting, while downtown Tampa was as unappealing as ever. I knocked off a bit early one afternoon to drive out to the Gulf.Unfortunately, the coast has been covered so thoroughly with condominiums that we seldom got to see the Gulf, much less enjoy a walk along it. The Florida I grew up in is long gone, at least around the cities. Continue reading A Trip to Florida

Today we took a drive over to the Pacific Coast side of the Peninsula. The trip over went through the hills and redwood forests, but that’s not what I’m writing about. It is a lovely trip, and we enjoyed it, but we wanted to get to the ocean before the winter weather hits. We hadn’t seen [...]