Time is slipping away

This photograph is of my girls in front of an Andy Goldworthy installation. He is an UK artist known for his environmental art, which my wife uses often as inspiration in her job as a primary school teacher. We were extremely lucky that he has just done this work in the Presidio (an ex military base in San Francisco). This is made of 37 Cyprus Pines that were all about to die, as they had reached the end of their natural life of 125 years. When this forest was first planted, it was done on mass to protect against wind, but as it was all done at the same time, the entire forest is now dying at the same time. The park forester is now working to stagger the growth of the forest so it can self sustain.

We are really starting to get close to the end of this assignment, with a little over a month before my family and I get on a plane to head back to Australia.  Ironically we are really starting to just get truly settled into the routine. My wife, Deb, and I were discussing today how we had really built a mini life here, with a regular Monday night japanese, where we are now know by name (and we don't even need to tell them 90% of the order).  We know our way around the city and have begun to understand how everything flows. Bottom line the city is now far more inviting than intimidating - which it definitely was (in parts) when we first got here.

That said we are definitely excited about getting back closer to family, video talking on skype is great, but it is no substitute for being in the same space.

As a result of up coming end of the assignment we are really pushing to fit as many experiences in as possible before we go back. On the weekend we trouped up to Napa Valley, which is the San Francisco equivalent to Margaret River, just on a much larger scale - think of nearly all of the wineries being on the scale of Palandri or Voyager. Wonderful place and we had great weather again.

these two photos are of the family and I in a cable car going up to Stirling Winery, which is the only way for the public to reach it. This is because the operations of the winery are gravity fed, so it is built on top of a hill to make this process more efficient. Fortunately for Deb and I it was about 3am Perth time, which made it OK for us to test the wines (even though in Napa it was 10am in the morning....).

We all really enjoyed it and finished the weekend at a great little restaurant called Redds. you can see what Millie thought of her dessert - Redds were really lucky to get the plate back undamaged! 

Similarly there is an urgency in the office where I am working to meet as many people as I can before I finish up. It is such a large organisation and complex structure that it has taken much more time that I expected to work my way through all of the functions.

Over the coming weeks I am spending some time with the team responsible for NCNU's relocation to a new head office. The RAC team are helping to put together an information pack, to share all that we learned from our own move. I will also be getting out to Sacramento (which I only learnt was the capital of California once I got here) to meet with the lobbying team and also to visit one of NCNUs Car Care Plus sites (think AutoServices).

Lots more excitement to come!