Havalina

The last couple days have been fairly long. After camping up at Calaveras Big Trees State Park for a few days with my parents and a couple siblings and their families, we drove back just in time to get ready for Matriculation Day at University of the Pacific's Dental School. I highly recommend camping there for anybody. It's a really nice campground with a few towns just minutes away. There are great facilities, and lots of big trees (they should use that in their name). I've seen the Mariposa Sequoia grove in Yosemite and I remember going to Sequoia National Park as a kid. This one is just as impressive (if not more) without nearly the crowds. Lake Alpine about 20 miles up the road (and 4000 feet further up the mountains) is really nice, too. Beautiful quiet lake. The tree line is not far above the lake and you feel like you're at the top of the world. Swimming was nice and we rented a canoe for the afternoon. No waterskiing is allowed, so the lake is really calm and quiet.

On Friday, I took two other students to our first day at UOP. We parked at the church just a half-mile from the school and prayed it wouldn't get towed. It was a long day of talking, introductions, and organizing our $13000 dental kits into our Pre-Clinical Simulation Lab stations. Got the drills and pieces and everything now. This week, we start working on plastic teeth while also starting the science classes. I'm actually pretty excited about the classes: anatomy, biochemistry, etc.

On Saturday we had the Computer Orientation where they gave us our school laptops and walked us through the set up for various school registrations and websites. The computers are Dell Latitude D630's. Nothing special, but nice and new.

There was also a family orientation where the dean and other faculty/staff spoke to parents and families of the new students. I caught up with Emily and Grace just after lunch and right before they started the tour of the school.

That afternoon, my parents, Hans, Kirsten, and her kids, made it to our place to visit before driving back to Camarillo on their way down from the Sierras. We hung out for a bit and went to Mel's Drive-In on Geary St. a few miles away.

Afterwards we went to the Sports Basement in the Presidio. It is inside what used to be the Commissary and the large signs for the various food departments are still there. It's a really neat sports store, but they're seriously lacking in surf equipment. I bought my supertough Kryptonite Evolution Series 4 LS bike lock ("level 9 security").

That night I went for a bike ride before it got dark. Rode to the school and back and then around the Presidio exploring a bit. Took about an hour and the sun was just setting as I got back to our place. It was a fun ride. I'll give my review of my new bike in the next post. Here's the route I took as seen from Google Earth.

I even found a website that lets you figure out the elevation profile of a route in Google Maps. Here's that.
Wow, I even tipped below sea-level on that ride. How's that for EXTREME RIDING!!?? It was a fun ride anyway and can see how so many people just ride around the Presidio for hours at a time. My ride was just 10.5 miles with some good climbs and good hills.

At church, in our ward there are 7 first-year dental students. We've also met a couple living in UOP's housing (they don't have kids) who are in the Bay Ward (in the same church building). There's another couple we know of living in San Rafael, and a couple single guys all starting their first year at UOP. The 7 of us are here in the Baker Beach apartments. There's also a handful of 2nd and 3rd year students in the ward, too.

Our dental class is 143 students. 51% male, 49% female. 35 students came from UOP in Stockton. Other large feeder schools are UC Davis, BYU, UC Berkley, and a few others. 67% of our class is from California.