We made our annual visit to Ted in California last week. Let me start with a story about not judging people. On the flight home I developed one of my instant dislikes (some might say this is my default reaction to people - but I'm not quite that bad) for the guy in the seat in front of me. This guy was probably about 6' 3", and was carrying a gut large enough that it should have had its own seat. He was wearing an Arlington County Fire Department t-shirt, though honestly, I think the only way this guy could have contributed to putting out a fire was by smothering it with his belly.
Why did I take a disliking to him? First, every time he sat down in his seat he caused the seat, and with it my tray table, to rock at the level of severe turbulence. Second, when it was time to "de-plane", apparently he had a bag in the overhead bin two rows back and he just shoved his way through everyone to get back to his bag - including nearly tackling me - without so much as an "excuse me".
Anyway, after the flight we're all at the baggage claim. I was standing right where the conveyor belt burps up bags onto the baggage carousel. My bag came out right after another, and so was stacked above the preceding bag, which made it impossible for me to grab, particularly from my position at the end of the carousel. Fortunately, another passenger who saw me struggling reached out and helped me wrestle my bag free. What a good Samaritan. And yup, it was gut man from the seat in front of me. I am so ashamed of my misanthropic tendencies.
Anyway, California was, as always, warm, sunny, expensive, and required a lot of driving.
Another anecdote: I drink only decaf coffee, and the only decaf my son had in the house was the remnants of the bag I had bought when we visited a year ago. So, when upon arrival we went to the supermarket to buy a few things I started to pick up a bag of coffee but he assured me that we could get much, much better coffee at this cool coffee place in Palo Alto. Sure enough, the Blue Bottle Coffee in Palo Alto is very cool - co-located with a co-working space in a converted old movie theater with Moorish architecture. But my bag of coffee rang up for $23. I noted today that the very same Blue Bottle coffee was on sale at Target for $13 per bag, which is still more than I usually pay for coffee, but within the bounds of reason. It just goes to show you, Silicon Valley people have too much money and not enough sense - no matter what the price, if it's cool (or whatever word the kids use today to mean "cool"), there's no limit to what they'll pay for it.
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| Moorish courtyard at the Blue Bottle in Palo Alto |
Anyway, we did a lot of fun activities while we were there:
- On Tuesday we arrived, got ramen at the fabulous
Ramen Nagi, got ice cream at
Salt and Straw, which has "I'll pay through the nose because it's cool" Silicon-Valley-cool flavors like Smoked Mac and Cheese, and Pear and Blue Cheese (I've got to admit, their ice cream is really good). We also took Ted's lizard Sierra for a walk in her special bubble backpack.
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| Walking Sierra the lizard |
- On Wednesday Valerie and I tried pickleball. I will mention that in Arlington, pickleball courts are a rare and highly utilized commodity; they do not go empty, even for a minute. At Stanford, however, Ted was easily able to book us court time. Valerie actually took a fall running for a ball and wound up sitting a bunch of the session out. I showed myself to be not too embarrassing for a total novice. After recovering from the exertion, in the evening we sat on the sidelines and watched Ted play ultimate Frisbee.
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| Pickleball with Ted |
- Thursday I started my day with a run (cool mornings! no humidity!), then we went out to Pleasanton California, a not-surprisingly pleasant little town with cute shops. Ted got us to eat at Zachary's, a Chicago-style pizza place. Let me just say, Chicago-style goopy cheesy casserole is
not pizza (Jon Stewart
agrees with me on this one), but it was still good. Ted and I also took time to find an underground geocache while Valerie (the most sane of us, at least when it comes to crawling through tunnels for fun) waited nearby. And, we got soft-serve at some famous place where again, people line up to get ice cream. Fortunately, mid-day on a weekday there was no line, which was good, because the ice cream wasn't anything special. This was the second of a total of three ice cream desserts I got during the week - which is insane compared with my normal eating habits, but oh, well.
As if pickleball and Pleasanton weren't enough (and sufficiently alliterative), that evening Ted and his housemates hosted a paint night. An art teacher Frisbee friend of Ted's led us all through painting a night-time scene. To feed and lubricate the attendees we supplied a weird selection of stuff from Total Wine (Sunny-D coolers, Manischevitz) and got Indian pizza, a weird cross-breed consisting of pizza with Indian toppings.
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| My run took me past Levi's Stadium, site of next year's Superbowl |
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| Awaiting our cheesy, gooey casserole |
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| Geocaching |
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| Paint Night results |
- Friday Ted and I started the day with an eBike ride on local trails, then the three of us went out for coffee and pastries and yet another impossibly hip Silicon Valley place (The Midwife and the Baker). We played another round of pickleball on again shockingly uncrowded public courts in Mountain View, and in the evening Ted treated us to homemade hot pot. I liked it; Valerie was lukewarm on the hot pot.
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| Bike trail |
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| Cyclist selfie |
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| Cool pastries |
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| Hot pot |
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| There's a lot of property crime in the area - note two signs warning you about car break-ins. |
- Saturday and Sunday we made a little overnight trip up north. Saturday, after stopping in Berkeley to have coffee at the very first Peet's Coffee (and eating lunch at an outdoor table while a mentally ill man screamed at us through the whole meal - typical Berkeley, apparently), we headed north for the Cotati Accordion Festival, an event which has been on my bucket list since I discovered its existence. Multiple stages of accordion music! A dedicated polka tent! Accordion merch! It was almost too good to be true.
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| At the original Peet's Coffee |
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| At the accordion festival |
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| Zydeco dancing |
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Open air accordion market. Perhaps this is the kind of thing Donald Trump means
when he says San Francisco is "not livable"
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After a Mexican dinner we retired to a hotel in Petaluma, an unusually cool Hampton Inn housed in a vintage silk mill building.
- Sunday we got up and made the twisty, winding drive (Valerie wasn't happy) to Muir Woods, where we marveled at the giant redwoods. On the way back to Ted's place he insisted on taking us to eat at a burrito joint in the Mission District. He felt that the Mexican place where we had eaten in Cotati wasn't
real Mexican and he wanted us to experience the genuine article (non-Latino Virginian transplant Ted feeling that he is an arbiter of true Mexican food reminded me of
Street Eats). Getting to this place and then waiting in their foolishly long line took a bunch of time, and the burrito wasn't really anything special. I must admit that my opinion may be influenced by the fact that they had given me the wrong burrito, and I couldn't go back and fix the order since we had gotten the food to go. Where did we eat our burrites? Well, there was no nearby park or anything so we wound up getting sodas at a McDonald's - a branch of the chain which, like everything in the immediate area, was dominated by the mentally ill and unhoused! - and eating our burritos on the sly there.
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| At Muir Woods |
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| Muir Woods |
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| Muir Woods |
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Some big trees!
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- Then, Monday morning we headed home on the flight with fireman big-gut, about whom I've already written.
A fun and action-packed visit. Always great to spend time with Ted!
