Day 2

Scot
Scot is a friend from Aerospace Engineering classes in college. He works at TRW (an aerospace company), and usually can't tell me what he's working on, because it's secret. Scot has developed a useful habit. He always answers the phone, "hey dude...", and thus is never embarrassed by failing to recognize anyone's voice -- male or female. Scot is about as laid back as they come, which may be due to the fact that his family has been in California for generations.

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Nancy -- Scot's Mom.
A wonderful lady, and a true beach bum at heart. She does things like organize an annual cleanup of King Harbor, were lots of office workers, SCUBA divers, and tug boats get together to pick up garbage that is discarded to the sea floor around docking areas. In recent years they've hauled out such things as bicycles, marine batteries, and washing machines.


Pat
Pat is another friend from Aerospace Engineering. It just so happens that Pat used to be housemates with Beth, who I used to date. (Yes, she's also an old aerospace buddy, but not the same Beth as pictured below.) Pat designs satellites, and since I last saw him, Pat has become hitched to...


Ronnie
Ronnie teaches junior high students. I know that's an interesting bunch because I used to substitute teach for 7-9 graders, and I don't envy her. She also has an interesting accent -- one of those that only shows up on certain words, so you do a double-take, but you're still not sure if she has an accent, or if you just heard the word wrong. I should have talked to her more to find out where the accent came from.

These people were also there, whom I met for the first time:

Brad
Brad is an aerospace guy from the same school that I went to, but a couple of years later. Brad had been to the gym earlier that day, and probably goes regularly. I didn't really get to talk to Brad that much.


Phil
Phil is not an aerospace guy. Instead, he's into computer networking at a place called Bay Networks, located in the San Francisco Bay area. When I met him, he was talking to Sid(below) about an old tape player that his brother was trying to install into a car. However, when they tried to insert a tape, it just wouldn't go. They opened up the little flap and looked inside to find a rolled-up $20 bill. They got something to fish it out, and it turned out to be a roll of several bills -- not just 20's, but some 50's and 100's as well. All totalled, they found $1400 stuffed into that old tape player. No one really knows where it came from, and Phil's dad got the tape player from a salvage yard, so they will probably never know -- but it's fun to speculate.


Beth
Beth and Phil drove down together from San Francisco. I overheard Beth talking about hockey, and it turns out that she plays in an ice hockey league in San Jose. She had also tried roller hockey, so I took the opportunity to ask her about the difference between ice hockey and roller hockey. She really much preferred ice hockey over roller hockey, citing the more frictionless movement of the puck, and some skating moves such as power stops that just couldn't be duplicated on roller blades. I like to play roller hockey with friends from work, but perhaps I should try ice hockey sometime to learn what she's talking about. However, she did mention that it was very expensive to pay for time in the ice rink.


Stephanie
Stephanie has a boyfriend that surfs and therefore chose to bring thresher shark to grill at the barbecue. She planned to "eat the shark before he eats my boyfriend". She also likes to ride horses, and contended that riding is even more expensive than ice hockey.


Sid
Both Phil and Sid know Scot from their Phi Delt fraternity in college. Somehow Sid got on the subject of unusual daquiris, including a chili daquiri and a Meow Mix daquiri. He claims someone actually drank the Meow Mix daquiri. (Meow Mix is a cat food.)

Afterwards we all went to Mr. Pockets to play pool. We broke up to play games on two separate tables. A motorcycle race in Spain appeared on the TV screens that were scattered around the place, and distracted us guys from time to time.

Brad claimed that the racing motorcycles were around 600cc and had about 200 horsepower. I thought that was pretty amazing, since my motorcycle is 1200cc and has only 150 horsepower. Scot, Brad and I speculated on what they could have done to increased power while decreasing engine size, and came up with the following possibilities:

• higher redline for the RPM's on smaller engines
• stiffer valve springs -- at the expense of engine life
• higher compression engines