Yellowish Rock Agama

2018 Annual Report: Jim and Linda[0]

Whatever!
Linda and Jim by a Big Croc in Australia
Sigh!

Living the Urban Lifestyle [1]

As reported in last year's report, we have moved to San Francisco, where we are living in the "in-law" suite of a two-unit condo. Claire, Ron, Scarlet and Nico live upstairs in the larger unit. Typically, the two grandchildren show up in our unit in the morning first thing, especially Nico. We are supplying Granny-Nanny service, which mostly involves taking the kids to school or picking them up when necessary. We also fix dinner from time to time.

The good features of this location are many. The building has been renovated recently. Indeed, the Google Street View, taken in 2015, shows scaffolding up on our building. You can see it in the photo by rotating the image. Across the street is a nice, dog-friendly, park with a children's playground.

See Dweebish trivia that Linda made me move to the end. If you are interested in that kind of stuff.

The one big downside of the building is the driveway, a steep, narrow, precipitous plunge into a cavernous garage. The latter holds our three vehicles easily and could probably handle one more Prius-sized car. I am still trying to master the backing out onto the street maneuver. Scarlet lets me know how many times in a row I have done it successfully. The current record is 4.

We still manage to get in some exercise besides walking uphill. Jim has found a group of old guys to play tennis with. Two members are 90 years old! He plays at the one of the Bay Clubs, in San Francisco, a short drive from the condo, with many indoor courts. Linda swims and does aquafit at the Bakar Fitness & Recreation Center at UCSF Mission Bay. We hope that planned renovation of the tennis facility will add a pool there so we can go to the same place.

We do have several good restaurants within walking distance. Indeed, our walk score is 85, even though "all" of it is uphill. Although mathematically, any closed path has as much uphill as downhill, that doesn't seem to apply to San Francisco. Jim's rule: "San Francisco is all uphill."

Linda took photos of the house for those interested in the interior.

Exploring the World

Another Big Tree, in Sri Lanka
Linda and Jim by Big Termite Mound in Australia

Yes, we kept traveling. Not sure how much longer we can keep up this pace. This year we had three big trips and a quick one with the Baker Weekend Bunch.

  • First, we went to Southwest India, an area known at the Western Ghats. [3]The ecology and wildlife is quite different from other parts of India. Some photos.
  • As long as we'd come halfway around the world, we bopped over to Sri Lanka and spent another two weeks or so checking out the endemic species of the island. Our local guide promised we'd see all of them, and he delivered. [4] More Photos
  • Every year a group of Rice alums, most from our class and many from Baker College have a mini-reunion somewhere. We attend when our schedule works out. We go birding while they play golf. This year, the location was the Washington, DC area, where Kent and Dale Morrison put up and up with a bunch of us. We went birding at Pawtuxent NWR. [5] Got so excited we forgot to take many photos, but here are a few.
  • Finally, we ended the year touring part of Australia that we had not visited, the Top End and Red Center. Lots of fun stuff. Many nice photos.

Planned trips

We have three birding trips planned:

  • Israel: We are going for the spring migration, which we hope will be as spectacular as we have heard. We actually considered skipping this trip after reading about some missles lobbed from the Gaza strip into Southern Israel, where we will be spending our time. After a reassuring report from the fall trip, we decided to go ahead.
  • Northern Europe: This trip will take us from the forests of Estonia and Finland into the northern reaches of Sweden.
  • Malawi:This is a new itinerary developed by Dion Hobcroft, one of our favorite guides. We have supported a Rice University program devoted to developing medical equipment for resource challenged areas for several years and are going to see the maternity hospital where much of the work is used. We planned that trip first, then asked, "Any good birds there?" Dion, who led both the Southern India and Australia tours told us about the new tour and we jumped at the chance. This should be interesting ecologically as Malawi, and Lake Malawi in particular, lie at the southern end of the Great Rift Valley that stretcnes north all the way to Ethiopia and the Red Sea.


On to 2019

Best wishes for 2019.

Visitors are welcome Chez Hargrove. We have a high tech wallbed in the second bedroom that has to be seen to be believed.

Stay in touch. You can always reach us using the contact form on this website. You can also find Jim, and now Linda, on Facebook. Jim is on Twitter also, as @Neoscona.

You can always find us by Googling "the other Jim Hargrove" (with the quotes).

[0]: Ignore all the footnotes as usual, even this one. Go Back ↩

[1]: We have reused some of the story of our new digs in last year's Annual Report. Go Back ↩

[3]:This is an area that suffered extensive flooding this year, fortunately for us, after we had left. Go Back ↩

[4]: In case you are wondering, we are not responsible for the religious rioting that occurred after we left. Go Back ↩

We used a web site, birdingpal.org, to connect with a local birder who took us to the Patuxent NWR. Wow! We had planned to meet the rest of the group for lunch. Instead, we called to let them know we were tied up. Many gorgeous spring migrants, the ones we seldom see because they stick to the East Coast. Go Back ↩

Dweebish Trivia

The building is a Condo, not just a plain ol' two unit building, which will make sense if you are familiar with San Francisco law. We try to exploit that to the max. Already, we have arranged for the HOA to provide internet access and trash pickup, for example.

After we used WebPass for six months, the service got around to sending us a bill. The cost was way more than we expected. We negotiated a discount while we made other arrangements. Fortunately, Sonic, a fiber optic connection, hooked us up with an even better deal for about $75/month. After a few early glitches, we eliminated the ethernet ports, which were problematical, in favor of wireless coverage for the entire building. This is good enough that we in the lower unit opted to "cut the cord." Now, we get all our TV using a collection of streaming services. Linda prefers the simplicity of the old setup, relying on the cable company. Jim likes the challenge of getting everything in other ways.

Some Birding Related Trivia: For those of you interested in birding trivia: we did reach Jim's goal of seeing half the species of birds in the world, at least on the Clements taxonomy. The more extensive IOC taxonomy has quite a few more species thanks to a rash of spliting. We may reach 50% on that list this year.

Go Back ↩