Travels, the extended version
So Thursday, I got to SFO, figured out the BART, and arrived at Liv's place pretty late at night. Chicken, it seems, grew since the last time I saw her. Which sort of makes sense given that she was 8 weeks old the last time I saw her. She's now about 19 weeks old. She was overjoyed to see me. I was soon to become "the fun aunt."
Liv and Chicken and I chatted for awhile, but I had to meet friends for drinks shortly afterwards. One of my friends was leaving for the weekend, and this would be the only time I'd get to meet up with him while I was in town. I hadn't seen him since I was in San Francisco the last time. Another friend joined us, and we ended up closing down a bar. I got back to Liv's apartment and found her fast asleep. Chicken showed me where my pillows were and she and I cuddled up and fell asleep.
On Friday, Chicken and I slept in. I'm not quite sure how long, until when we slept, because my clock never was right. Liv was gone when we woke up the second time, and I decided that young puppies probably need to go on walks soon after they wake up. Chicken showed me around her neighborhood, and she even introduced me to one of her friends, a junkie that hangs out in the vicinity. I wasn't sure if the junkie and Chicken were aquainted, but she essentially launched herself into his arms, and he knew her name. They spent a couple of minutes admiring one another, and then he said something about her going back to her mama. I corrected him that I wasn't a mama, just an aunt, and Chicken's friend asked me if Liv and I were twins.
Liv got back from the gym shortly after our walk, and we managed to get ourselves semi-organized and in the rental car, a minivan!, by around twoish. We were slightly worried that it'd take forever to get there, but Santa Cruz isn't even 100 miles from San Francisco. We took the long route, on Highway 1 along the coast, which was fun. I spent a lot of time pointing out places that timur_i_lang had taken me: Half Moon Bay for a whale watching expedition with willagurl, some random beach for tide pooling, Ano Nuevo State Reserve. We pulled off to get fruit and vegetables (artichokes!) at a produce stand on the side of the road and managed to devour a whole pint of cherry tomatoes before we even cleared the parking lot. At some point along the drive, I recommended that we stop for a minute, and Liv pulled off at Bean Hollow State Beach.
Chicken, when walking in the city, tends to stop to sniff. A lot. Getting around the block can take upwards of half an hour if Chicken is in a mood. But Chicken loved the adventure of going on a small hike. We didnt' really go that far, because we found a beach entrance and decided to give Chicken her first introduction to the beach. Oh, how she loved the beach! She ran around as fast as she could (and as far as the leash would let her) and took immense pleasure in the sand underneath her paws. She ran up to the Ocean and decided that the waves weren't something she wanted to get involved with (though she did bark at them a few times, just to be sure), and then she decided that we needed to go tide pooling.
There's a big photograph of the beach here. Liv, Chicken and I scrambled the rocks in the middle jut in the picture for awhile, and Chicken even explored a tide pool with her paws. We were really impressed that such a small dog was so able to figure out how to scramble over uneven rocks. She'd figure out her route and be faster than either me or Liv in going up or going down. She thought it was great.
We spent maybe half an hour at the beach, and we couldn't wait to hit some more in Santa Cruz. We drove on.
Santa Cruz, though, turned out to be not as friendly as we thought it would be. We headed first to the Wharf, where we figured we'd find a place to eat and sit outside with Chicken. As soon as we got halfway on the wharf, though, we saw the "No Dogs Allowed" sign. We turned around and headed for the Boardwalk, finding, again, "No Dogs Allowed". Daunted, we drove on to Watsonville and checked into our hotel. We asked the clerk if there were any pet-friendly places in Santa Cruz to eat, and we were told by the clerk and the woman behind us in line that Santa Cruz didn't have any places for dogs.
Chicken opted to stay in that night, and Liv and I went back to the Wharf to dine on calamari, mussels, and a clam/mushroom/lemon/garlic pasta that was to die for. We were back in the hotel by tenish, and after some moments with the hot glue gun for my costume, Chicken and I played and helped Liv get some work done.
The next morning, we were lazy for a bit, and we took our time getting organized. We were bound for Castroville to the annual Artichoke festival. The brochure warned that pets were not welcome, but we wanted to see the Agro-art. We got there around noon, and we found, true to the brochure's admonition, pets were not welcome, so Liv went in first and looked around for fifteen minutes while Chicken and I explored a church garden. I went in next and took the exact same photographs as Liv did. On the way out, though, I saw the food court and I picked up some artichoke quesadillas and an artichoke/crab/shrimp concoction that was out of this world good.
On our way out of town, heading North, we bought some artichokes.
Our next stop was a bakery we'd read about in Capitola. Followed by a health food store in Santa Cruz for cheese, olives, salami and toubouleh. And cookies. Followed by a detour at the Bonny Doon Vineyard for a quick wine tasting and a $25 case of their Bouteille Call port. I left the case with Liv. I'm hoping that I can try a bottle when I go back in August.
We pulled off at a vista overlooking the ocean for our picnic, but it was too windy and cold, so we decied to head back to Bean Hollow. The parking lot was full when we got there, so we went up a little futher up the road and found a pullout to park in and a bluff to sit on and watch the seals sleeping while we had our picnic. Chicken was disappointed in the fare, though I found it quite tasty. After lunch, Liv had some work to do, so Chicken and I went on a small hike while Liv worked. The hike was about as much fun as the beach. I wasn't in any hurry, so Chicken could sniff to her heart's content. She'd occassionally go to the edge of the cliffs to see if she could make it down to the water. Then she'd forage ahead, following the trail beautifully. We walked about half/three quarters of a mile until we came across another beach, and Chicken met a 16 week old puppy named Luna who decided to play for a little while. Luna's owner and I agreed that their wrestling was one of the cutest things we'd seen in a long, long while.
Eventually, Chicken and I decided to hike back to Liv. We're told that we looked quite good bounding across the trail. Chicken demonstrated her newfound hiking skills to her mama and declared that this was the best day EVER.
She promptly fell asleep in Liv's arms when we got back in the car.
North. Driving through San Fransisco, we called the willas with a rough ETA, though we needed to stop at Urban Ore so Liv could take a look at coffee tables for her apartment. She found an absolutely perfect one.
We arrived at the willas wonderful house and got the tour of the place. I was green with envy when I first heard about it, and I loved it even more when I saw it. A fantastic house in the neighborhood I've loved living in the most (and I absolutely adore my current neighborhood). Their puppies were waiting outside with breathless anticipation, and Chicken decided to meet them. Two big dogs at once was too much for Chicken at first, so she started off playing with just the Lab/Great Dane mix whose face looks just like Holden's. He's just a little older than she is, but he's about, oh, 8 or so times her size. They ran around the back yard, while the rest of us watched. She used her lack of height to her advantage, going under furniture and bushes when she thought she'd get caught. At some point, she picked up some sort of frenzied momentum and ran in tight circles around the furniture. He, like the rest of us, watched in dumbfounded amazement. When they paused for water, she wouldn't let him drink.
Having conquored him, she moved on to the pit bull. He was smaller, maybe 6 times her size, but he loves to play. He tried to get her to figure out his tug of war game, but in her universe, balls are for chasing, not for pulling on. Eventually, they opted for wrestling. He got down on his haunches to her level, and they wrestled. Every now and then she'd launch herself onto his face, and he seemed to love it. At some point, all three dogs got back together again, and everyone played and played and played. All three dog owners were happy to see that it was very likely that they'd have exhausted puppies on their hands that night.
We all went back inside and got some take out Indian food from our (at least my and Liv's, I think also the willas) favorite Indian restaurant in the area while the dogs continued to wrestle. At some point, all three of them passed out. I gave willagurl my tutu and directions to Liv's house and we were off for the night.
Sunday morning, I woke up ridiculously early to get my ensemble together. Chicken and I went on a walk, and we ran into the willas, who found the trip across the bay not to be as bad as everyone thought it would be. willagurl had done an awesome job decorating a tank top with flowers, and misterbz was in a clever man-with-backpack costume. I had a blue tutu, my blue scarf, and my tanktop covered with flowers on. We also had parasols, which later would become quite important. Liv was kind enough to give us a ride downtown on her way to return the rental car, and we hopped out of the car a few blocks into the race. People were still running when we got there, so we watched for a few minutes to get a lay of the land. Most people were in costume of some sort. Dick in a boxes. Lots of group costumes. Lots of people pushing shopping carts and other things that roll. We got some coffee and breakfast, and when it looked like more people were walking than running, eventually joined the crowd. willagurl was nearly run down by a stark naked man right as she joined in to start walking.
I spent the first hour or so mainly looking around me. There were thousands upon thousands of people. Open container laws, public decency laws, mass congregation laws, were totally thrown out the window. I think still, though my memory of everything is a little overwhelmed/fuzzy, that my favorite costumes were these women in their fifites and sixties in black old-fashioned bathing suits and pink swim caps. They had a whole synchronized swimming routine worked out as they walked forward and every now and then they'd stop, form a circle, and do a performance. They were awesome.
When we hit Hayes Valley at around 9:30, we peeled off to meet my friend Katie and the group she was with at a friend's house. Katie was another tutu/flower/parasol girl. Katie has a collection of tutus that she'd brought with her, and I believe that all five were well used. It took a little while to get organized/mimosaed up, but by tenish, we were back in the fray. I thought we'd seen the last of the synchronized swimmers, but they must have also paused, because they were some of the first people we came across. There were storm troopers, pirates, smurfs, elvises, care bears, strawberry shortcakes, lots of tutus (though none as cool as ours), sailors, naked people, a group of never nudes, a mobile ping pong table, a golf group, some mariachis, lots of afros. And waves and waves of people. The hill was nothing but people. The parasols came in useful for finding each other. There were four of them in the air, and we could keep an eye out for where our friends were by looking for the parasol. Every now and then there'd be a bottle neck, and at some point the entire crowd was singing some 80s tune. The entire crowd. I think it was Don't Stop Believing, but it may have been something else.
Every now and then, I'd get a call from a friend that I'd had drinks with on Thursday to hook up, but we'd either be an hour ahead or an hour behind each other. We never hooked up.
At some point on the panhandle of the park, we stopped at a friend of a friend's house to pee. It was one of the nicest houses I'd ever seen. In front of the house was a van blasting music, and we all climbed on top of it and danced for awhile, watching the crowd go by. Taking pictures and having our pictures taken in return.
Our next stop was a liquor store. Up until this point, I was remarkably sober. A few mimosas, a sip or two from someone's camelbak full of margaritas, a sip or two of vodka fruit punch. The liquor store may have been a tactical error, if only in the volume of vodka purchased and mixed with cranberry. It was more like cranberry flavored vodka than anything else.
We rejoined the crowd, getting closer and closer to the park. There was a giant Southwest Airlines inflatable plane at the park entrance, and we spent some time jumping on it and meeting new people and sitting on a hill.
We ended up peeling off somewhere in the park, well before the end of the "race" to get food, and the willas and I caught a cab back to Liv's house. I think it was probably two o'clock when I got there, though I'm not entirely sure on timing. I took a shower, packed my stuff, and took a nap until it was time for me to meander to the airport.
I made it home last night around midnight, and though I'm really tired, I'm already thinking of the things we should do for next year.
Liv and Chicken and I chatted for awhile, but I had to meet friends for drinks shortly afterwards. One of my friends was leaving for the weekend, and this would be the only time I'd get to meet up with him while I was in town. I hadn't seen him since I was in San Francisco the last time. Another friend joined us, and we ended up closing down a bar. I got back to Liv's apartment and found her fast asleep. Chicken showed me where my pillows were and she and I cuddled up and fell asleep.
On Friday, Chicken and I slept in. I'm not quite sure how long, until when we slept, because my clock never was right. Liv was gone when we woke up the second time, and I decided that young puppies probably need to go on walks soon after they wake up. Chicken showed me around her neighborhood, and she even introduced me to one of her friends, a junkie that hangs out in the vicinity. I wasn't sure if the junkie and Chicken were aquainted, but she essentially launched herself into his arms, and he knew her name. They spent a couple of minutes admiring one another, and then he said something about her going back to her mama. I corrected him that I wasn't a mama, just an aunt, and Chicken's friend asked me if Liv and I were twins.
Liv got back from the gym shortly after our walk, and we managed to get ourselves semi-organized and in the rental car, a minivan!, by around twoish. We were slightly worried that it'd take forever to get there, but Santa Cruz isn't even 100 miles from San Francisco. We took the long route, on Highway 1 along the coast, which was fun. I spent a lot of time pointing out places that timur_i_lang had taken me: Half Moon Bay for a whale watching expedition with willagurl, some random beach for tide pooling, Ano Nuevo State Reserve. We pulled off to get fruit and vegetables (artichokes!) at a produce stand on the side of the road and managed to devour a whole pint of cherry tomatoes before we even cleared the parking lot. At some point along the drive, I recommended that we stop for a minute, and Liv pulled off at Bean Hollow State Beach.
Chicken, when walking in the city, tends to stop to sniff. A lot. Getting around the block can take upwards of half an hour if Chicken is in a mood. But Chicken loved the adventure of going on a small hike. We didnt' really go that far, because we found a beach entrance and decided to give Chicken her first introduction to the beach. Oh, how she loved the beach! She ran around as fast as she could (and as far as the leash would let her) and took immense pleasure in the sand underneath her paws. She ran up to the Ocean and decided that the waves weren't something she wanted to get involved with (though she did bark at them a few times, just to be sure), and then she decided that we needed to go tide pooling.
There's a big photograph of the beach here. Liv, Chicken and I scrambled the rocks in the middle jut in the picture for awhile, and Chicken even explored a tide pool with her paws. We were really impressed that such a small dog was so able to figure out how to scramble over uneven rocks. She'd figure out her route and be faster than either me or Liv in going up or going down. She thought it was great.
We spent maybe half an hour at the beach, and we couldn't wait to hit some more in Santa Cruz. We drove on.
Santa Cruz, though, turned out to be not as friendly as we thought it would be. We headed first to the Wharf, where we figured we'd find a place to eat and sit outside with Chicken. As soon as we got halfway on the wharf, though, we saw the "No Dogs Allowed" sign. We turned around and headed for the Boardwalk, finding, again, "No Dogs Allowed". Daunted, we drove on to Watsonville and checked into our hotel. We asked the clerk if there were any pet-friendly places in Santa Cruz to eat, and we were told by the clerk and the woman behind us in line that Santa Cruz didn't have any places for dogs.
Chicken opted to stay in that night, and Liv and I went back to the Wharf to dine on calamari, mussels, and a clam/mushroom/lemon/garlic pasta that was to die for. We were back in the hotel by tenish, and after some moments with the hot glue gun for my costume, Chicken and I played and helped Liv get some work done.
The next morning, we were lazy for a bit, and we took our time getting organized. We were bound for Castroville to the annual Artichoke festival. The brochure warned that pets were not welcome, but we wanted to see the Agro-art. We got there around noon, and we found, true to the brochure's admonition, pets were not welcome, so Liv went in first and looked around for fifteen minutes while Chicken and I explored a church garden. I went in next and took the exact same photographs as Liv did. On the way out, though, I saw the food court and I picked up some artichoke quesadillas and an artichoke/crab/shrimp concoction that was out of this world good.
On our way out of town, heading North, we bought some artichokes.
Our next stop was a bakery we'd read about in Capitola. Followed by a health food store in Santa Cruz for cheese, olives, salami and toubouleh. And cookies. Followed by a detour at the Bonny Doon Vineyard for a quick wine tasting and a $25 case of their Bouteille Call port. I left the case with Liv. I'm hoping that I can try a bottle when I go back in August.
We pulled off at a vista overlooking the ocean for our picnic, but it was too windy and cold, so we decied to head back to Bean Hollow. The parking lot was full when we got there, so we went up a little futher up the road and found a pullout to park in and a bluff to sit on and watch the seals sleeping while we had our picnic. Chicken was disappointed in the fare, though I found it quite tasty. After lunch, Liv had some work to do, so Chicken and I went on a small hike while Liv worked. The hike was about as much fun as the beach. I wasn't in any hurry, so Chicken could sniff to her heart's content. She'd occassionally go to the edge of the cliffs to see if she could make it down to the water. Then she'd forage ahead, following the trail beautifully. We walked about half/three quarters of a mile until we came across another beach, and Chicken met a 16 week old puppy named Luna who decided to play for a little while. Luna's owner and I agreed that their wrestling was one of the cutest things we'd seen in a long, long while.
Eventually, Chicken and I decided to hike back to Liv. We're told that we looked quite good bounding across the trail. Chicken demonstrated her newfound hiking skills to her mama and declared that this was the best day EVER.
She promptly fell asleep in Liv's arms when we got back in the car.
North. Driving through San Fransisco, we called the willas with a rough ETA, though we needed to stop at Urban Ore so Liv could take a look at coffee tables for her apartment. She found an absolutely perfect one.
We arrived at the willas wonderful house and got the tour of the place. I was green with envy when I first heard about it, and I loved it even more when I saw it. A fantastic house in the neighborhood I've loved living in the most (and I absolutely adore my current neighborhood). Their puppies were waiting outside with breathless anticipation, and Chicken decided to meet them. Two big dogs at once was too much for Chicken at first, so she started off playing with just the Lab/Great Dane mix whose face looks just like Holden's. He's just a little older than she is, but he's about, oh, 8 or so times her size. They ran around the back yard, while the rest of us watched. She used her lack of height to her advantage, going under furniture and bushes when she thought she'd get caught. At some point, she picked up some sort of frenzied momentum and ran in tight circles around the furniture. He, like the rest of us, watched in dumbfounded amazement. When they paused for water, she wouldn't let him drink.
Having conquored him, she moved on to the pit bull. He was smaller, maybe 6 times her size, but he loves to play. He tried to get her to figure out his tug of war game, but in her universe, balls are for chasing, not for pulling on. Eventually, they opted for wrestling. He got down on his haunches to her level, and they wrestled. Every now and then she'd launch herself onto his face, and he seemed to love it. At some point, all three dogs got back together again, and everyone played and played and played. All three dog owners were happy to see that it was very likely that they'd have exhausted puppies on their hands that night.
We all went back inside and got some take out Indian food from our (at least my and Liv's, I think also the willas) favorite Indian restaurant in the area while the dogs continued to wrestle. At some point, all three of them passed out. I gave willagurl my tutu and directions to Liv's house and we were off for the night.
Sunday morning, I woke up ridiculously early to get my ensemble together. Chicken and I went on a walk, and we ran into the willas, who found the trip across the bay not to be as bad as everyone thought it would be. willagurl had done an awesome job decorating a tank top with flowers, and misterbz was in a clever man-with-backpack costume. I had a blue tutu, my blue scarf, and my tanktop covered with flowers on. We also had parasols, which later would become quite important. Liv was kind enough to give us a ride downtown on her way to return the rental car, and we hopped out of the car a few blocks into the race. People were still running when we got there, so we watched for a few minutes to get a lay of the land. Most people were in costume of some sort. Dick in a boxes. Lots of group costumes. Lots of people pushing shopping carts and other things that roll. We got some coffee and breakfast, and when it looked like more people were walking than running, eventually joined the crowd. willagurl was nearly run down by a stark naked man right as she joined in to start walking.
I spent the first hour or so mainly looking around me. There were thousands upon thousands of people. Open container laws, public decency laws, mass congregation laws, were totally thrown out the window. I think still, though my memory of everything is a little overwhelmed/fuzzy, that my favorite costumes were these women in their fifites and sixties in black old-fashioned bathing suits and pink swim caps. They had a whole synchronized swimming routine worked out as they walked forward and every now and then they'd stop, form a circle, and do a performance. They were awesome.
When we hit Hayes Valley at around 9:30, we peeled off to meet my friend Katie and the group she was with at a friend's house. Katie was another tutu/flower/parasol girl. Katie has a collection of tutus that she'd brought with her, and I believe that all five were well used. It took a little while to get organized/mimosaed up, but by tenish, we were back in the fray. I thought we'd seen the last of the synchronized swimmers, but they must have also paused, because they were some of the first people we came across. There were storm troopers, pirates, smurfs, elvises, care bears, strawberry shortcakes, lots of tutus (though none as cool as ours), sailors, naked people, a group of never nudes, a mobile ping pong table, a golf group, some mariachis, lots of afros. And waves and waves of people. The hill was nothing but people. The parasols came in useful for finding each other. There were four of them in the air, and we could keep an eye out for where our friends were by looking for the parasol. Every now and then there'd be a bottle neck, and at some point the entire crowd was singing some 80s tune. The entire crowd. I think it was Don't Stop Believing, but it may have been something else.
Every now and then, I'd get a call from a friend that I'd had drinks with on Thursday to hook up, but we'd either be an hour ahead or an hour behind each other. We never hooked up.
At some point on the panhandle of the park, we stopped at a friend of a friend's house to pee. It was one of the nicest houses I'd ever seen. In front of the house was a van blasting music, and we all climbed on top of it and danced for awhile, watching the crowd go by. Taking pictures and having our pictures taken in return.
Our next stop was a liquor store. Up until this point, I was remarkably sober. A few mimosas, a sip or two from someone's camelbak full of margaritas, a sip or two of vodka fruit punch. The liquor store may have been a tactical error, if only in the volume of vodka purchased and mixed with cranberry. It was more like cranberry flavored vodka than anything else.
We rejoined the crowd, getting closer and closer to the park. There was a giant Southwest Airlines inflatable plane at the park entrance, and we spent some time jumping on it and meeting new people and sitting on a hill.
We ended up peeling off somewhere in the park, well before the end of the "race" to get food, and the willas and I caught a cab back to Liv's house. I think it was probably two o'clock when I got there, though I'm not entirely sure on timing. I took a shower, packed my stuff, and took a nap until it was time for me to meander to the airport.
I made it home last night around midnight, and though I'm really tired, I'm already thinking of the things we should do for next year.