Brian's visit in all its glory (day 2)
FRIDAY:
-We got up bright and early so that we could go running around Stanford's famed "Dish" loop, but once we started running, Brian started complaining about his bum knee that he got while playing basketball, so we had to stop.
-We had time to kill before my class though so we just kept walking the loop because I wanted to show him the sights. At the very start of the loop there is a massive uphill section, and even while we were walking it Brian was gimping out, and like 3/4 of the way up it he started walking with a horrendously pronounced limp that I couldn't stop cracking up over. I suppose it was kind of mean to be laughing at him and his injury, but it was seriously so funny to watch him have to build up the momentum to swing his bum leg forward with each step. I hope he is feeling better now, but at the time I couldn't stop laughing. Every uphill we walked that weekend he started doing it too, so I had a bunch of good laughs at his expense.
-Back on campus, we went to my two classes for the day, which Brian found to be pretty boring. Surprise, surprise! Fortunately, Brian and I tag-teamed the school newspaper crossword puzzle for most of the time so that helped ease the boredom. It was actually pretty sweet because I can usually only get like 75% done with a crossword puzzle on any given day, but with Brian and I handing off the crossword puzzle to each other every five minutes or so, we managed to finish off everything except for like two letters, which we made educated guesses on. Sadly, this was on Friday and there is no Saturday paper but the crossword puzzle feed has a Saturday puzzle, so I never got to see the answers for our masterpiece. Too bad.
-After my grueling classes, I showed Brian around the main quad of campus, which I must say is really beautiful. All the rest of you should come out just to see the glorious campus.
-In one of the campus buildings, I had heard that there was this really great Thai cafe so Brian and I checked it out. One of the great stories I had heard about the place was that the lady running it was called the Thai Nazi, because she apparently acted almost exactly like the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. I must admit I was skeptical at first, but after experiencing it, I totally agree. The line was like 15-20 people long, but they were just zooming through by the constant "next!" of the Thai Nazi, and by the time I even found the menu on the wall there were only like five people left in line so I started getting nervous. Brian, too, didn't really know what he wanted, but it was already our turn and so, fearing the wrath, I just blurted out that I wanted some chicken dish. In any other situation, I would have asked what ingredients were in it, and I would have left some of them out most likely, but I seriously was afraid, so I held back. Brian couldn't decide between the chicken dish and the veggie dish for like one second, and you could see the impatience building in the lady. Right as I thought she was going to say: "NO THAI FOR YOU!" Brian made a clutch move and said he would take the veggie dish. Humiliation narrowly averted.
-After lunch, we went to the top of Hoover Tower, which is probably like 30 stories high or so and got an awesome 360 degree view of Stanford and the surrounding area. It was truly a magnificent sight and I am thankful that Brian was there so that I could experience it. I had tried to go up there twice before when my brother was here with me, but the first time it was closed for repairs, and the second time it was closed for the day.
-With the scheduled campus activities completed, we headed on up to San Francisco, where we had a little parking debacle again before we were able to take the trolley out to the fisherman's wharf area. I had already been on the trolley a few times before, but I think it was Brian's first time, so I hope he had fun. It was sweet because it was Friday, so it wasn't packed and we didn't need to wait in line to get on it like every other time I have done it (on the weekends).
-While walking down the wharfs, Brian told me to take a picture of a pirate statue that he claimed was identical to one he saw while on his Europe vacation. Denny, you be the judge:
-While perusing the various fish mongers, we happened upon one that was messing with a live crab that was on its back. The dude put a lemon wedge in the crab's open claw and the crab immediately clamped down on it really hard, going nearly straight through it while also causing some of the juice to squeeze out. When the juice landed on the crab's stomach, it started going all nuts and flailing all of its arms and legs back and forth really fast. When it finally calmed down and let go of the lemon, the dude would just put the lemon back between his claw and the crab would do the exact same thing all over again. Brian and I were pretty amused at the crab going all nuts for like the first three times, but we eventually left.
-We went to this pretty weird and seemingly misplaced arcade style place on one of the piers even though I warned Brian against it because I had already been once before. Immediately we were greeted by this huge mechanical girl that was laughing over and over again really loudly and obnoxiously. I felt extremely uncomfortable standing anywhere near it, but I was also strangely curious to find out when and if it stopped laughing. At any rate, I think that allowed Brian to fully understand the strangeness of the place.
-Brian didn't want to leave though and insisted we waste our quarters on lame games and other machines that seriously seemed like they were from the early 1800's. I paid 25 or 50 cents to watch a small metal dude get his head cut off by a guillotine in like 1 second. Sadly, Brian and I couldn't stop laughing at the lameness of the entire thing, making it well worth the small amount of money we paid just for the laughs.
-Another machine we used was this antique arm wrestling thing that Brian challenged. You got two tries for a quarter, and the machine claimed that everyone should start at the intro difficulty because it was tough, but Brian was having none of it, and went for the fourth difficulty out of 6 on his first try. He had a little struggle, but was eventually victorious. For his second try, he went straight for the highest difficulty, and seemingly put up a fight initially only to get completely destroyed. As Brian and I were walking away from the machine, Brian exclaimed: "That thing almost tore my arm off!" to which I started cracking up hysterically. That was the definitely the best line of the entire weekend because I totally wasn't expecting it and Brian delivered it with total seriousness. As I recalled the event in order to write about it right now, I found myself laughing again for a good while. So hilarious.
-Look at all the sea lions!:
-"ARR ARR ARR ARR ARR!":
-So I had previously purchased tickets to visit Alcatraz because they always sell out beforehand, and I surprised Brian with the adventure as we approached the applicable pier. I had heard stories from people about a midnight tour of Alcatraz, but I searched online for a long while trying to find info about it and my conclusion is that it is just another urban legend. At any rate, I was able to buy tickets for the night tour, which starts during daylight, and then concludes after the sun has set.
-On the ferry out there, Brian started talking about the movie "The Rock" and tried to get me to do my best Sean Connery impression. I wasn't having any of it, but that didn't stop him from sharing his best one-liners.
-Upon arriving at the island, Brian thought it would be sweet if a tour guide said "Welcome to the Rock!" in a Sean Connery voice, but of course, no one did that as we walked off the boat and onto the island. Once we had a tour guide assigned to us, though, Brian rekindled the thought and wanted to ask the lady to say it. I told him to just do it, and so right before we began the tour Brian said he had a question first, and then proceeded to ask if the woman would say the line in her best Sean Connery impersonation. Some of the crowd started laughing and the girl was caught off guard and was pretty embarrassed, and just said that she couldn't do it. She almost gave it a go after she thought about it for a another second, but then didn't. Brian asking her to do it though was pretty awesome.
-The tour up to the prison was pretty interesting, but the guided audio tour of the actual prison was awesome. I knew very little about the history of the island and the prison in general before this, so I ended up learning a huge amount of fascinating information. The best information was probably that the United States originally used the island as a fortification to protect the west coast from enemies. Because you know, Alcatraz is like the lifeblood of the US. If we were to lose it in the early stages of war, what could we possible do to recover. Yeah, Brian and I both didn't really understand that, but as a result we found it quite humorous. Go US government!
-Oh no, don't lock up Brian for questioning the US government's actions!:
-Going into the tour, I had always been a firm believer that those people that tried to escape Alcatraz and were never found definitely escaped, but now I think they died in the water between the mainland and the island. First off, I had never really considered the water temperature and how beastly cold it is. Secondly, though the island seems close, that is a really long distance to have to swim. Thirdly, I would think that if they actually did escape, they would have wrote something in their wills such that when they died they would release the information to the public that they had escaped and had been living free and clear for all these years, just to shove it in everyone's face. I am not really sure how old they would be right now if they were still alive, but its getting to be quite some time now, and thus I am not too optimistic. Learning about how detailed their plan was and how successful it was (up until having to swim to shore that is) really impressed me, as did all of the other famed stories from the Rock.
-One of the really sweet things about the night tour was that the guided audio section got done right as the sun was going down, so we got to see the sun setting behind the Golden Gate Bridge: Beautiful:
-While we were observing this beautiful sight, Brian was tracking the sun's descent below the horizon, and was determined to watch until the sun had completely set. So we ended up waiting there and watching for about five minutes or so, as the sun slowly progressed out of sight. With the last few bits of the sun remaining, Brian started a countdown: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...and gone. Right when Brian got to the end of the countdown and I mean exactly simultaneously, this girl runs up to the area yelling: "I need to see the Golden State Bridge before the sun sets!" So Brian says: "Oh, too bad" in a hilariously mocking sympathetic voice as we walked away.
-San Francisco as night fell:
-We got to hear some more stuff and walk around the island some more on our own after the formal tour, but we ended up foolishly following around this stupid dude who was supposed to tell us more about the escape attempts at Alcatraz, but ended up glossing over all the major and cool ones, and instead focusing ad nauseam on really stupid ones. The best one (in terms of being ridiculously stupid) was the one where some dude decided to escape through this steam pipe, and so he goes in there and starts walking down it. After a while, it starts getting pretty steamy and hot, and also the pipe narrows down so that he can't fit through it anymore. So the dude is forced to go back, and that's the end.
-And then we said goodbye to Alcatraz Island:
-Arriving back in San Francisco, we were both hungry so we decided to go eat dinner but first we got sidetracked by some lame street performer who was going to jump onto broken glass and do some other things. It was pretty lame because he spent most of the time just trying to hype himself to the crowd, but it was pretty hilarious because he pulled some random hottie out of the crowd and got her to swing her hips around and look all sexy for one of his bits, even though it was obvious she didn't want to be doing it. Also, he did do one cool thing where he spit fire out of his mouth in order to light a torch that was a few feet away.
-If you know anything about San Francisco and how ridiculously hilly it is in some parts, and then think back to what I said about Brian being a gimp earlier, and you can only imagine how hilarious/sad it was to be walking with him back to downtown San Francisco (where our car was parked) from the piers. If you know nothing about the hilliness of San Francisco, consider yourself lucky for not having to contemplate why anyone in their right mind would ever decide to build a city on such ridiculous terrain. Honesty, it's such a joke.
-On the way, we stopped at a random restaurant in Chinatown for some quality food, and overall had a satisfying experience. However, my dish had these random pieces of intense nast in it, and it took me like half way through my meal to realize that the sickness was coming from definable pieces in my meal that I could pick out, and not just some spice that was intermixed. So the second half of my dining experience was much better.
-When we got the check, there was charge on it for $2 that neither Brian nor I could explain, but we didn't really want to question it because the owner didn't speak English too well and it was only $2 anyway. At the time, we talked about asking Denny or someone later if they knew what the charge was, but we decided that it must have just been a $2 non-Asian charge. Wah wah.
End Friday
Sneak peak of Saturday: Highway 1, the amazingly unbelievable petrified forest, wine country, Brian the player
-We got up bright and early so that we could go running around Stanford's famed "Dish" loop, but once we started running, Brian started complaining about his bum knee that he got while playing basketball, so we had to stop.
-We had time to kill before my class though so we just kept walking the loop because I wanted to show him the sights. At the very start of the loop there is a massive uphill section, and even while we were walking it Brian was gimping out, and like 3/4 of the way up it he started walking with a horrendously pronounced limp that I couldn't stop cracking up over. I suppose it was kind of mean to be laughing at him and his injury, but it was seriously so funny to watch him have to build up the momentum to swing his bum leg forward with each step. I hope he is feeling better now, but at the time I couldn't stop laughing. Every uphill we walked that weekend he started doing it too, so I had a bunch of good laughs at his expense.
-Back on campus, we went to my two classes for the day, which Brian found to be pretty boring. Surprise, surprise! Fortunately, Brian and I tag-teamed the school newspaper crossword puzzle for most of the time so that helped ease the boredom. It was actually pretty sweet because I can usually only get like 75% done with a crossword puzzle on any given day, but with Brian and I handing off the crossword puzzle to each other every five minutes or so, we managed to finish off everything except for like two letters, which we made educated guesses on. Sadly, this was on Friday and there is no Saturday paper but the crossword puzzle feed has a Saturday puzzle, so I never got to see the answers for our masterpiece. Too bad.
-After my grueling classes, I showed Brian around the main quad of campus, which I must say is really beautiful. All the rest of you should come out just to see the glorious campus.
-In one of the campus buildings, I had heard that there was this really great Thai cafe so Brian and I checked it out. One of the great stories I had heard about the place was that the lady running it was called the Thai Nazi, because she apparently acted almost exactly like the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. I must admit I was skeptical at first, but after experiencing it, I totally agree. The line was like 15-20 people long, but they were just zooming through by the constant "next!" of the Thai Nazi, and by the time I even found the menu on the wall there were only like five people left in line so I started getting nervous. Brian, too, didn't really know what he wanted, but it was already our turn and so, fearing the wrath, I just blurted out that I wanted some chicken dish. In any other situation, I would have asked what ingredients were in it, and I would have left some of them out most likely, but I seriously was afraid, so I held back. Brian couldn't decide between the chicken dish and the veggie dish for like one second, and you could see the impatience building in the lady. Right as I thought she was going to say: "NO THAI FOR YOU!" Brian made a clutch move and said he would take the veggie dish. Humiliation narrowly averted.
-After lunch, we went to the top of Hoover Tower, which is probably like 30 stories high or so and got an awesome 360 degree view of Stanford and the surrounding area. It was truly a magnificent sight and I am thankful that Brian was there so that I could experience it. I had tried to go up there twice before when my brother was here with me, but the first time it was closed for repairs, and the second time it was closed for the day.
-With the scheduled campus activities completed, we headed on up to San Francisco, where we had a little parking debacle again before we were able to take the trolley out to the fisherman's wharf area. I had already been on the trolley a few times before, but I think it was Brian's first time, so I hope he had fun. It was sweet because it was Friday, so it wasn't packed and we didn't need to wait in line to get on it like every other time I have done it (on the weekends).
-While walking down the wharfs, Brian told me to take a picture of a pirate statue that he claimed was identical to one he saw while on his Europe vacation. Denny, you be the judge:
-While perusing the various fish mongers, we happened upon one that was messing with a live crab that was on its back. The dude put a lemon wedge in the crab's open claw and the crab immediately clamped down on it really hard, going nearly straight through it while also causing some of the juice to squeeze out. When the juice landed on the crab's stomach, it started going all nuts and flailing all of its arms and legs back and forth really fast. When it finally calmed down and let go of the lemon, the dude would just put the lemon back between his claw and the crab would do the exact same thing all over again. Brian and I were pretty amused at the crab going all nuts for like the first three times, but we eventually left.
-We went to this pretty weird and seemingly misplaced arcade style place on one of the piers even though I warned Brian against it because I had already been once before. Immediately we were greeted by this huge mechanical girl that was laughing over and over again really loudly and obnoxiously. I felt extremely uncomfortable standing anywhere near it, but I was also strangely curious to find out when and if it stopped laughing. At any rate, I think that allowed Brian to fully understand the strangeness of the place.
-Brian didn't want to leave though and insisted we waste our quarters on lame games and other machines that seriously seemed like they were from the early 1800's. I paid 25 or 50 cents to watch a small metal dude get his head cut off by a guillotine in like 1 second. Sadly, Brian and I couldn't stop laughing at the lameness of the entire thing, making it well worth the small amount of money we paid just for the laughs.
-Another machine we used was this antique arm wrestling thing that Brian challenged. You got two tries for a quarter, and the machine claimed that everyone should start at the intro difficulty because it was tough, but Brian was having none of it, and went for the fourth difficulty out of 6 on his first try. He had a little struggle, but was eventually victorious. For his second try, he went straight for the highest difficulty, and seemingly put up a fight initially only to get completely destroyed. As Brian and I were walking away from the machine, Brian exclaimed: "That thing almost tore my arm off!" to which I started cracking up hysterically. That was the definitely the best line of the entire weekend because I totally wasn't expecting it and Brian delivered it with total seriousness. As I recalled the event in order to write about it right now, I found myself laughing again for a good while. So hilarious.
-Look at all the sea lions!:
-"ARR ARR ARR ARR ARR!":
-So I had previously purchased tickets to visit Alcatraz because they always sell out beforehand, and I surprised Brian with the adventure as we approached the applicable pier. I had heard stories from people about a midnight tour of Alcatraz, but I searched online for a long while trying to find info about it and my conclusion is that it is just another urban legend. At any rate, I was able to buy tickets for the night tour, which starts during daylight, and then concludes after the sun has set.
-On the ferry out there, Brian started talking about the movie "The Rock" and tried to get me to do my best Sean Connery impression. I wasn't having any of it, but that didn't stop him from sharing his best one-liners.
-Upon arriving at the island, Brian thought it would be sweet if a tour guide said "Welcome to the Rock!" in a Sean Connery voice, but of course, no one did that as we walked off the boat and onto the island. Once we had a tour guide assigned to us, though, Brian rekindled the thought and wanted to ask the lady to say it. I told him to just do it, and so right before we began the tour Brian said he had a question first, and then proceeded to ask if the woman would say the line in her best Sean Connery impersonation. Some of the crowd started laughing and the girl was caught off guard and was pretty embarrassed, and just said that she couldn't do it. She almost gave it a go after she thought about it for a another second, but then didn't. Brian asking her to do it though was pretty awesome.
-The tour up to the prison was pretty interesting, but the guided audio tour of the actual prison was awesome. I knew very little about the history of the island and the prison in general before this, so I ended up learning a huge amount of fascinating information. The best information was probably that the United States originally used the island as a fortification to protect the west coast from enemies. Because you know, Alcatraz is like the lifeblood of the US. If we were to lose it in the early stages of war, what could we possible do to recover. Yeah, Brian and I both didn't really understand that, but as a result we found it quite humorous. Go US government!
-Oh no, don't lock up Brian for questioning the US government's actions!:
-Going into the tour, I had always been a firm believer that those people that tried to escape Alcatraz and were never found definitely escaped, but now I think they died in the water between the mainland and the island. First off, I had never really considered the water temperature and how beastly cold it is. Secondly, though the island seems close, that is a really long distance to have to swim. Thirdly, I would think that if they actually did escape, they would have wrote something in their wills such that when they died they would release the information to the public that they had escaped and had been living free and clear for all these years, just to shove it in everyone's face. I am not really sure how old they would be right now if they were still alive, but its getting to be quite some time now, and thus I am not too optimistic. Learning about how detailed their plan was and how successful it was (up until having to swim to shore that is) really impressed me, as did all of the other famed stories from the Rock.
-One of the really sweet things about the night tour was that the guided audio section got done right as the sun was going down, so we got to see the sun setting behind the Golden Gate Bridge: Beautiful:
-While we were observing this beautiful sight, Brian was tracking the sun's descent below the horizon, and was determined to watch until the sun had completely set. So we ended up waiting there and watching for about five minutes or so, as the sun slowly progressed out of sight. With the last few bits of the sun remaining, Brian started a countdown: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...and gone. Right when Brian got to the end of the countdown and I mean exactly simultaneously, this girl runs up to the area yelling: "I need to see the Golden State Bridge before the sun sets!" So Brian says: "Oh, too bad" in a hilariously mocking sympathetic voice as we walked away.
-San Francisco as night fell:
-We got to hear some more stuff and walk around the island some more on our own after the formal tour, but we ended up foolishly following around this stupid dude who was supposed to tell us more about the escape attempts at Alcatraz, but ended up glossing over all the major and cool ones, and instead focusing ad nauseam on really stupid ones. The best one (in terms of being ridiculously stupid) was the one where some dude decided to escape through this steam pipe, and so he goes in there and starts walking down it. After a while, it starts getting pretty steamy and hot, and also the pipe narrows down so that he can't fit through it anymore. So the dude is forced to go back, and that's the end.
-And then we said goodbye to Alcatraz Island:
-Arriving back in San Francisco, we were both hungry so we decided to go eat dinner but first we got sidetracked by some lame street performer who was going to jump onto broken glass and do some other things. It was pretty lame because he spent most of the time just trying to hype himself to the crowd, but it was pretty hilarious because he pulled some random hottie out of the crowd and got her to swing her hips around and look all sexy for one of his bits, even though it was obvious she didn't want to be doing it. Also, he did do one cool thing where he spit fire out of his mouth in order to light a torch that was a few feet away.
-If you know anything about San Francisco and how ridiculously hilly it is in some parts, and then think back to what I said about Brian being a gimp earlier, and you can only imagine how hilarious/sad it was to be walking with him back to downtown San Francisco (where our car was parked) from the piers. If you know nothing about the hilliness of San Francisco, consider yourself lucky for not having to contemplate why anyone in their right mind would ever decide to build a city on such ridiculous terrain. Honesty, it's such a joke.
-On the way, we stopped at a random restaurant in Chinatown for some quality food, and overall had a satisfying experience. However, my dish had these random pieces of intense nast in it, and it took me like half way through my meal to realize that the sickness was coming from definable pieces in my meal that I could pick out, and not just some spice that was intermixed. So the second half of my dining experience was much better.
-When we got the check, there was charge on it for $2 that neither Brian nor I could explain, but we didn't really want to question it because the owner didn't speak English too well and it was only $2 anyway. At the time, we talked about asking Denny or someone later if they knew what the charge was, but we decided that it must have just been a $2 non-Asian charge. Wah wah.
End Friday
Sneak peak of Saturday: Highway 1, the amazingly unbelievable petrified forest, wine country, Brian the player