Donal Mountain

Braden and I went to Japan to give a talk, do some work, and experience something of a new country. Leaving two weeks later we wondered why we’d ever panicked about surviving in a country where we knew no language and in a culture whose norms we were unfamiliar with. Japan is just about the friendliest country I’ve ever been to and I know I’ll be back again.
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Above: The clouds above Dublin Airport as I waited to take off on my big move to California, four years ago.

Today Braden, Alex and I were lucky enough to join a tour of the new Bay Bridge construction site.

My brother got married today in Schönecken!

• Finding the penguins
• Talking with strangers
• Shrieking from the back of a scooter
• Holding on tight
• Making plans
• Making mistakes
• Making up
• Growing up
• Doing a 1080º on the 101

Lake Sonoma for a second weekend, but this time at canoe pace. We swam to submerged trees, cooked smores on a fire we lit with no matches and slept under shooting stars, keeping guard for the wild boars!

• My photos on Flickr

• How it’s difficult not to get nostalgic when doing something for  the very last time, and how it’s difficult not to regret doing something for the last time without realizing that it would be the last time you do it.
• Not noticing that I’m listening to an amazing album for the first time in mono because of a wonky headphone socket. Jiggling the socket and getting to listen to it for a second time in beautiful glorious stereo.
• Wishing that I had a pair of glasses that somehow showed me the world in mirror image, so everything was familiar yet novel all at once.
• Driving across the Bay Bridge with friends, watching the main suspension cable fall and rise again, with the foggy SF skyline behind.
• That whenever I flick my camera to movie mode, magic seems to happen: swans, whitewater, ropeswings, tubes
• Realizing that just because I put it on a to do list doesn’t mean it’s done (’star-and-forget)
• Writing a best-man’s speech in German (I got a D in German language in school)
• Thinking way too hard about how to organize bookmarks
• Listening to the radio really carefully, hearing the edits
• Planning a shopping trip to Amsterdam with my sister
• Getting a mowhawk from Dave Young
• Not getting too comfortable
• The Google androids
• Internalizing the cosmos
• All the pretty girls
• Reconnecting

Photos on Flickr

Ropeswing video on Flickr

Tubing video on Vimeo