My Home and Backyard As Seen from the Orbit

This is how my home and backyard look from up above.

Photo twitted from orbit by Chris Hadfield

Isn't the Bay Area stunningly beautiful? And it only gets better the closer you look.

10 Tips on Protecting a Bike from Theft

I had already two bikes stolen in San Francisco (one from the street, one from a locked room at work) and I'm determined to protect my new third bike from bike thieves for as long as possible. Therefore, I'm always on the quest to find new better bike locks and to find new tips on how to better protect my bike from being stolen.

The truth is that there is no way to make any bike 100%-theft proof (even Lance Armstrong's bike got stolen in California...), but it is definitely worth trying to make it as difficult to steal as possible.

Here are 10 tips on how to do it (sorry for stating the obvious):

1. If possible, do not leave your bike locked on the street, especially during the evening/night. Try to find a secure indoor location for it (e.g. you might have a locked bike room at your work). But even there, as well as at your own home, keep your bike properly locked.
2. If you have to leave your bike locked on the street, choose a place that is well-lit and where there is lots of pedestrian traffic.
3. Lock your bicycle to an unbreakable and immovable object. Make sure that the bike rack or pole you chose can not be easily cut or detached from the ground. If you chain your bike to a parking meter, make sure that it can not be slipped off over the top of the pole.
4. Never leave your bicycle locked in one place for long periods such as overnight, and do not leave it secured in a predictable fashion, e.g. in the same bicycle rack every day. If you do, you give thieves a chance to come back prepared to steal it.
5. Make your bike more difficult to steal than the other bikes around it. Select a location where there are other bikes. The chances are that there will be a bike with a less secure lock, or even without a lock, and thieves will go for such bikes first.
6. When you lock your bike, make sure to lock the bike's frame and both of its wheels. Most bikes are equipped with quick-release wheels, so if you forget to lock one of them, you might find your bike without it. Or worse, if you do not lock the frame, but just the wheels, you might be surprised to find your whole bike gone.
   
   The most effective way of locking a bike is to remove its front wheel, align it with the back wheel and have the U-lock go through both of them, as well as the bike's frame and the bike rack. The less space thieves have to get their tools into position, the better.
   
   If you do not feel comfortable detaching your front wheel, have the U-lock go through the bike's frame, back wheel and bike rack, and secure the front wheel separately.
7. Use as good lock as possible. E.g. Lightweight cable or chain locks are easy to cut and offer little protection. U-locks usually offer better protection, even though they are heavier to carry. A tight fitting lock will make it even more difficult for thieves to get their tools into position and to attempt a break. (The smaller the U-lock, the better.)
   
   Use more than one lock, and even better use two different lock types. Redundancy is the best way to deter thieves. They might have the tools to defeat one type of lock, but not several.
   
   Examples of good locks:
   
   • OnGuard Beast Chain Lock
     
   • OnGuard Brute STD U-Lock
     
   • Kryptonite New York Fahgettaboudit U-Lock
     
   • Kryptonite New York Chain Lock
   For more info on bike lock go here.
8. Take with you any easily-removable accessories and components such as lights, pumps, cycle computers, seat bags, quick-release seat, etc. Consider purchasing locking quick releases to safeguard your wheels, such as security skewers, which require a unique key that only comes with the skewers.
9. Record your bike's serial number. The majority of serial numbers are located under the bottom bracket where the two pedal cranks meet. Consider registering your bike with National Bike Registry. Having the bike's serial number in the registry might help you recover it if it gets stolen.
10. Identify your bike. Making your bike unique, will make it less appealing to bike thieves.

My New Bike

The very first bike that I bought in San Francisco got stolen less than three months after I bought it. It was a disappointing experience, but also a good lesson for me on how to protect my bike from theft.

The second bike that I bought (exactly the same model as the first one) stayed with me for four years and only recently it "disappeared" from the locked bike room at my work.

This second loss affected me even less than the first one, as I consider four years to be a reasonable lifespan for a bike in a such city like San Francisco. Though it is somewhat disappointing to know that one of the people who work in the same building as I, stole it...

Two weeks ago I bought myself a bike number three, as I need a bike for my commute to work. All my bikes I bought at Valencia Cyclery, which I just can not recommend highly enough. It is the best bike shop in San Francisco: the staff there is super-nice and super-knowledgeable, and they take time to help you make the right choice. I was always more than satisfied with their services, so if you need a bike, go and buy it from them!

My first two bikes were hybrids (crosses between road and mountain bikes) as I thought I would be biking more often on dirt roads. This time around I decided to buy a proper road bike as I realized that I hardly ever go off-road. The benefit of a road bike is that it is lighter and faster than a mountain or cross bike. With the help of the Valencia Cyclery staff, I chose a super-light carbon fiber Trek Madone 4.5 WSD bike, which looks more or less like this:

It is not black, but is as fast as light and I absolutely love biking on it. I also love how light it is and how easy it is to carry it e.g. up the stairs. So far I only used it in the city and I can not wait to try it out on a longer road trip. But before that happens I need to convince my husband to buy a bike for himself. It would be much more fun to go biking together with him.

Wish me many happy trips and luck in keeping it safe from bike thieves for as long as possible.

Supperclub = Super Lame

I so wanted to like Supperclub. I think that the idea is pretty cool: chilling in comfy beds while eating delicious food and watching an interesting show. Sadly, San Francisco's Supperclub executes so poorly on this idea that we just could not like it. The beds were not comfy, the food was not up to San Francisco's standards, the show was terrible and the people working at the club seemed stressed. How do you expect your guests to have fun if you don't? Also, to call 3 four-minute one-person performances "a show" is a definite overstatement.

Anil and I were bored and barely survived the 2.5 hours that it took to get through the meal and "show". As soon as we were done with food, we asked for the check and left. Actually, the food portions were so small that after arriving back home we ate another dinner. In conclusion, if you have several hundred dollars to spare better do it elsewhere.


The bar at the entrance to the club:

The ambiance of the club:

The best one of the three short performances that we saw in the club:

Views from Twin Peaks

When Bartek and Gary visited me in San Francisco, I took them to the top of Twin Peaks. We went there around sundown, which is the best time to take pictures of the city from this viewpoint. Sadly, there was a lot of haze that day over San Francisco downtown, so the pictures did not come out as well as I would have wished for.

Bartek and Gary at top of Twin Peaks:

Bartek, the photographer:

San Francisco's downtown and the Bay Bridge:

Cable Cars in San Francisco

Finally, after four and a half years of living in San Francisco, I found time to ride one of its famous cable cars. I would have probably stay a cable care virgin for many more years, if it weren't for Bartek and Gary. During their last June's visit to San Francisco they convince me to join them on a cable car trip. We took the most touristy Powell-Hyde line from Market St to Fisherman's Wharf that passes through Union Square, Nob and Russian Hills, the top of famous Lombard Street and Ghiradelli Square.

It was fun to ride it, though not as much fun as you would figure from the movies featuring the cable cars. E.g. it is not allowed to jump on and off a cable car once it is in motion. On the positive note, it is allowed to lean out of the car for the purpose of taking cool pictures.

The cable car:

Views from the top of Lombard Street:

Bartek and Gary in the cable car:

Chinatown in San Francisco

A few pictures from Chinatown in San Francisco:

My Very First Art Show

My very first, and hopefully not last, art show took place at the beginning of May at Mission Bay Campus of UCSF. Three years ago UCSF started a tradition of annual art shows displaying artworks by its employees. The two previous years the show was located on the ground floor of the building in which I work, but this year it took place in the atrium of the Bakar Gym. I believe it was a huge mistake.

The organizers probably hoped that hosting the show near the gym entrance will ignite more interest in it, but I do not think that was the case. People who come to the gym are usually in workout-oriented mindset and are not particularly interested in looking at art. Secondly, there are often IT/biotech/pharma exhibits and conferences happening there, so likely, with time, most gym members learned to ignore anything that happens in the gym's atrium. Thirdly and most importantly, the light in the atrium was simply terrible! It was so dark there that enjoying any artwork would not be possible.

The old location, on the ground floor of the Genentech Hall, was much better. There is much more light there and also there were more people interested in taking a break from work and enjoying the art. Hopefully, the organizes made the same observations as I did and will revert to the old location next year.

Despite these setbacks, the art show was a good learning experience for me. I learned the importance of the proper display of art, and I learned that I should make my art more visible by making it bigger :) As I planned to display six pieces, I decided to keep them relatively small (each piece was only 11 inches by 14, including the frame). However, after I submitted my artwork to the organizers, they told me that there is a limit of three pieces per artist. Needless to say, that rule was not communicated to me before. I found it tough to drop half of the series, and I was also not happy that I had to stick with the small photo sizes... I'm sure that my photos would have attracted much more attention, had they been larger.

On the positive side, despite all the things that went wrong, there was a considerable number of people who seemed to be interested in my art pieces:

"Colors of Namibia" - the six pieces series I wanted to display:


Poster-invitation for the show:

Magic Bus

In the middle of May we went with our friends Aldona and Witek on the Magic Bus tour through the San Francisco's '50s, '60s and '70s.

The tour was interesting, even though it was very different from what I had expected it to be. I thought that the Magic Bus would be a hippie bus from the '60s on which we would relive the "summer of love" be listening to and singing along the songs from that era. However, that was only a small part of the tour. It seemed to me that every single time that we started relaxing and getting into the good mood stimulated by the songs of the '60s and '70s, the screens on the bus' windows would remind us about the dark side of those times: war in Vietnam, assassinations of the Kennedys, King, Moscone, Milk and John Lennon. If you ask me, I would enjoy the tour much more if the gloomy events were given less prominence, and if we were allowed to sing more.

Still, I thought the tour was pretty good and well done. As you can see in the photos below, on the bus the audience/passengers sit facing side windows, which can be converted into the projection screens. As the bus rolled over various neighborhoods of San Francisco (Chinatown, North Beach, Financial District, Haight-Ashbury, and Golden Gate Park), the projection screens would roll up to reveal the beauty of the city and to let us have a look at the places that were just mentioned on the documentary. A pretty cool concept!


The Magic Bus:

Inside the bus:

Summer of Love:

If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair:

Aldonka and Witek in front of the bus:

And in front of the heart of San Francisco:

Big Wheel Race 2011

Every year on Easter Sunday my street hosts "Big Wheel" race, during which adults (and very few kids) wear costumes and race each other on tiny tricycles. Evey year this event attracts both more participants and more spectators. In fact there were so many spectators that I did not manage to get into a front row to take good pictures!

Even though I watched Big Wheel Race twice before, I still enjoyed it a lot this year. This event just never gets boring and is a great reminder why San Francisco is a such fantastic place to live.

Here are photos and videos from Big Wheel Race that I took in the previous years:
photos from 2010, photos from 2009, videos from 2009.

Golden Gate Bridge By Night

One hour at Hawk Hill: