It is always nice to start the day with a great morning sky. I caught this as I was headed out the door for work. Having been on the road for most of last week I will be looking at a busy week to get all caught up.

I stayed in a hotel adjacent to LAX last night which is only 15 minutes from Venice Beach where I enjoyed breakfast this morning. I had about an hour to walk around before returning to the airport for my flight back to Boston.

I am not scheduled to fly back to Boston until Sunday leaving me the day to enjoy California. My original plans to kayak the Scorpion Anchorage of Santa Cruz Island, a part of the Channel Islands National Park, fell through because the outfitter did not have enough people signed up. Instead I opted to hike the island. During the one hour catamaran transit we were fortunate to spot a pod of five grey whales swimming south to their breeding grounds in Mexico.

The park encompasses five of the eight California Channel Islands (Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel, and Santa Barbara) and their ocean environment including nearly 2,500 miles of coast line. The Channel Islands are home to over 2,000 plant and animal species, of which 145 are found nowhere else in the world. Like the Galapagos Islands of South America, isolation has allowed evolution to proceed independently on the islands.

I was extremely fortunate to come across a pair of island foxes which are the smallest North American canids and occur only on the Channel Islands. The average weight for an adult male is 5-6 pounds, about the size of a house cat. Its small size is a result of insular dwarfism, an adaptation to the limited resources available in the island environment. The foxes are believed to have “rafted” to the northern islands between 10,400 and 16,000 years ago. Because the island fox is geographically isolated, it has no immunity to parasites and diseases brought in from the mainland. In addition, predation by the golden eagle and human activities devastated fox numbers on several of the Channel Islands in the 1990s. Four island fox subspecies were federally protected as an endangered species in 2004, and efforts to rebuild fox populations and restore the ecosystems of the Channel Islands are underway.

In total I spent about 6 hours hiking on Santa Cruz enjoying the perfect weather and the beautiful scenery. I am determined to return with Jeanine and explore the other islands in the park.

The drive from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo where one of iRobot’s development sites is located took three hours. Parts of the drive are rather nondescript, others are quite beautiful. I broke up the monotony by stopping briefly when I saw opportunities for nice photos.

It has been a year since I last visited our office here and it was nice to meet with the team again. I took everyone out for lunch which could not have come earlier as I had skipped breakfast. I always enjoy the feedback I get from our team here which invariably focuses me on key issues that need to be worked back at headquarters.

Two more hours of driving this evening stand between me and Ventura, my destination for the evening. Although it does not look as good scaled down, the picture below of a grape vineyard at sunset is perhaps my favorite of the day.

iRobot recently acquired a company based in Pasadena, CA called Evolution Robotics. I was here last year conducting technical due diligence for the deal but was not able to visit the facility because the negotiations were being kept under wraps. This morning I flew in from Las Vegas to visit our new team and to tour the facility. Located 12 minutes from the office is the Griffith Observatory with a nice view of the famous Hollywood sign. A quick detour en route from the airport allowed me to photograph both.

With only a single day to see one of the largest trade shows in the world, I got an early start. I spent the morning searching for and checking out the competition. Fortunately, there were not many companies showing autonomous floor care products and of those, I was not impressed with any of them. By noon, I had completed my mission and spent the afternoon wandering about the massive show. Naturally, it did not take long before I found myself visiting the major photography vendors. At the Sigma booth, visitors were invited to use one of their high-end cameras to photograph a professional model. At the end of the show, a winning photo is selected and the person who took it receives a high-end lens. I have little chance of winning but did enjoy the experience of photographing a professional model if only for three minutes.

Because I stay pretty current on the latest photography gear it did not take long before I had seen everything of interest to me. I did see a new lens from Canon that I have on my radar (200-400mm f/4 zoom) but it was inside a glass case and no one could tell me when production would begin. With another hour or two to kill before the meeting I am here to attend begins, I check out the remaining halls for anything of interest. Not clear to me why Audi was at the show with a race car inside the biggest light box I have ever seen but it made for a nice photo and they were handing out really cool Audi flashlights which charge from your cigarette lighter.

After a full day in the office, I flew to Las Vegas this evening to attend the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) where an important iRobot meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. I arrived at my hotel shortly after 3 AM EST and had little energy for photography. I have decided to travel light on this trip and have a new compact camera with me. It weighs less than 1.5 pounds and sports a fast f/2.8 25-600mm zoom lens. An equivalent setup on my DSLR would weigh more than ten times as much. I will be traveling on the west coast for the next few days and will put it through its paces. As a backup, I have my half-pound pocket camera which I used for this handheld photo.

Maya managed to obtain an extended scalp massage by moving back and forth between her parents who were happy to give her ten minutes at a time. The result of this attention was one very relaxed young lady and one very big head of hair.

It is usually about this time each year that I change up my lens collection. In this case it was motivated by a desire to acquire Canon’s latest zoom lens, a 24-70mm f/2.8L II, which is reportedly one of the sharpest zoom lenses ever designed. Given that I already have 3 lenses which cover the 24mm focal length I have decided to replace two of them to justify the purchase of the new optic. When I posted the lens for sale on Craig’s list I was completely flabbergasted when the only reply was from someone interested in trading for the very lens I was after. The chances of this happening are astronomically low and I was quick to secure the transaction.

Kyle returned to Santa Clara this afternoon and we are going to miss having him around. Jeanine borrowed several movies featuring India from the library and we watched Outsourced with Maya this evening. It was a nice comedy that left her up and dancing in Indian style at the end of the movie.

There is nothing more in the world that Nala enjoys than going on long walks. This afternoon Jeanine and I took her out for a good romp in the fields adjacent to our house. Left off leash she would extend her outdoor playtime to several hours and she is far too fast to catch if she is not of a mind to be caught. In the presence of other dogs, however, we can briefly drop the leash because she is so distracted by her playmates that we can easily reacquire her without engaging in a marathon sprint.

Shortly after dinner I took Maya to her indoor soccer game. Her intensity of play has now entered what I describe as the “meat eater” realm. It is that point where a player’s internal voice transitions from “it would be nice to score a goal” to “I am going to score a goal and no one is going to stop me.” That focus translated into three goals for Maya with some of her prettiest play to date.

On the home front, Kyle hung out with Hannah for the last time before both return to college and Jeanine had an impromptu Downton Abbey party (a review of the season two DVD in preparation for the beginning of season three) with her friends Irene and Maria.

It has been some time since we had an official family night. Joining us this evening were cousin Johnie and Nico’s friend Taylor (not yet acclimated to the pressure of daily Calabria blog photos or the posing challenges of a 1/4 second, ambient light exposure). Nicolai, on the other hand, takes advantage of the long exposure to light his index finger on fire.

After dinner we retired to the living room where the men battled the women in a game of Guesstures. The women were leading until Jeanine suggested that the winning team would have first dibs on her freshly baked pumpkin pie. Led by Kyle, the men came from behind for the decisive victory. Jeanine is seen here working clues for the word “middle”. Enlarging the image will provide insight into Jeanine’s competitive intensity.

For some time now Maya has been volunteering in a soccer program offered for mentally challenged athletes. She coaches, provides motivation, and plays in scrimmages. This evening Kyle and I dropped in on the program and it did not take long before Kyle was recruited into the action. Here he helps his sister prepare for a scrimmage.

An interesting combination of patterns that caught my eye.

Inspired by the new year, I spent the majority of the day organizing my photography and camping equipment. From Jeanine’s perspective this translates to “cleaning up our bedroom (which looks like the inside of an REI store) and my study”. In addition to organizing, I have decided to sell some of my least used equipment. Followers of this blog understand my obsession with tripods and it is with some deep reservations that I have put up for sale my last Gitzo. This model is extremely versatile and especially useful for macro photography. Alas, I use it very infrequently and it deserves to find an owner who will put it to better use. I am very pleased with the way this product photo turned out which is remarkable since I used three lights and nailed the exposure and lighting angles in just one take. I am either getting good at this stuff or just got lucky.

Meanwhile, Kyle, just back from a couple of days visiting with friends in New York City, is off with other friends for a few days of snowboarding in Vermont. He is just now fully recovering from the injuries he sustained the last time he went snowboarding some three years ago. Jeanine and I are more than a little nervous and hope he will take fewer risks this time out.