On Vacations.

      Finally I took some days on vacations. I did not remember when I took more than two follow weeks to pleasure. I always work and take some days to rest. Since my wife has decided not to travel together this year I started to plan this trip to do the things that we can't do together, and I did.

      Two days before, a friend made a comment: it sounds like so alone, yes it is but I manage it well. I recognized that it was so difficult to me kept me so far from to my job. At the first days I continued to answering emails and reading the reports, thanks God I gave up and started to live some days just for me.

      The first stop was at the Clear Lake, near to Houston. It is a huge and flat city. Extremely organized, clean, with tall buildings on down town. I imagine they have serious troubles with the rain, because they have built a lot of small, and also big spaces to drains the water. There are a lot of freeways and the local TV stations share the attention with the traffic and the forecast. Most of homes are wood made and in front of there is a nice garden. The hotel where I stayed has a brief taking landscape, the sun rises over the lake and draws a nice picture, but it is not the reason of my choice, the NASA was. I spent three days to know the Johnson's Space Center. It is really fantastic. Of course I have thousands things to talk about it, but to resume in one phrase, I'm going to repeat one that I did not shoot but it is near to the first Skylab: To live at moon = building materials + energy + support to life + knowledge. Maybe I will write late about the NASA.

      I took the planes and arrived in San Francisco. My first impression wasn’t so good. I can say the architecture is singular; it mixed some different styles and just in the financial area there are big buildings. Although it is at the sea level, there are huge tops that they do something to make it useful and nice, as the Lombard Street. There are 8 severes curves to fall near to a hundred meters with 45 degrees of inclination, and then they plant some gardens to make it, as a phrase that I have been hearing frequently: colorful. But it did not convince me. The most crowded place is the Fisherman's Warf and the pier 39. There are a lot of stores, restaurants and art galleries. It is not beautified but the people likes. The stores remember me the nearest the city count market. About 8 pm the places are crowded but 11 pm it is empty. I should say: sometimes the smell is not so good, but as for all the American standard big cities the things are organized, and there are a lot of attractions.

      The sign of degradations appears at the entire small market dominated by the asian people and there are a lot homeless and jobless sleeping on the streets. Although the bad things, the ocean fixes everything. I was a really impressed with to contradictories things, there are a lot of bars and pubs and many people like running and cycling. The second one justified my trip. I biked the Mount Tamalpais. It is about 40 km far from San Francisco and is about 780m higher where it is possible to have a nice view of the entire bay. I was really prepared and did it well, although the bike I rented was not the best option to do that. I followed the recommendation of the rent store and they do it for beginners so I had a slow and heavy bike. Thousands bikers have passed to me as a fly and my competitive instinct fought against myself. Although the quality of the bike I got it because failure is not an option.

      So, I can say: I left a piece of my heart in San Francisco.

      As the teacher's day is coming, I want to say to all of them thank you so much for everything you did to me, because if I do everything I want I to do not it because I have a good health or good shape, but I have knowledge that I got with you.