California
So this is gonna be a long post. Just thought I'd warn ya. :) I'm just getting back from 10 days off from work, and being here is kinda like a slow form of torture. Working in a basement is awful. >.< But my vacation/road trip was INCREDIBLE. I had such an amazing time.
Anyway. I'm gonna break this up into days. It might make it easier to read. And definitely for me to transcribe to my lj. :-P
Monday: Monday was not actually part of the trip. But it was my first day of vacation. I got to sleep in late, til about 11 or so. Then I went over to campus to meet up with Meredith. We sat at Park Ave Cafe and drank coffee and chatted. I gave her the key to my place so she could check on my kitties throughout the week. Was pretty fantastic sitting in the sun and relaxing. After that I headed back to my side of town to start getting things ready for the day. Neal and I cleaned up our places a bit, went grocery shopping and kinda collected our stuff to get it ready for the morning. Then that evening we went to Kelly's Olympian for a show. This chick, Tonya that we know through some friends from Station Zero is in a band called "Those Bottomfeeders." Well, they were playing there and we decided to check it out. It was a pretty fun show.
Tuesday: So the night before, I set my alarm for 6:15. I wanted to get out the door around 7:30. Well, I ended up waking up before my alarm at about 5:45. (too excited to sleep LOL) I got up, let Neal sleep a little longer, and started getting stuff ready. We'd inflated the air mattress the night before, so I stuck that in the back of the truck. I threw in the blankets taht weren't on the bed. Started loading up the cooler and got the truck pretty much loaded before Neal was even awake. :-P At about 6:30, he finally rolled out of bed and was like, "wait, you got the truck loaded already? I feel so lazy!" I told him taht I was too anxious to wait for him to get up and I didn't mind doing so it wasn't a big deal.
At 7:33, we were driving out of the parking lot of my complex. We stopped and checked the tires on the truck and filled up the tank. Before heading down to cali, we stopped in Silverton to visit with my mom for a bit. We chatted with her for about an hour. She showed us all the recent house-remodel-changes. She talked our ears off, as expected. (not a bad thing, just my mom hehe) My dad was on a business trip so we didn't get to visit with him. But I got to see the pups.
Finally about 9:45, we left my parents place and headed toward Salem to hop back on I-5. We stopped in Salem to pee and grab disposable cameras, and get some grub from a fast-food joint for breakfast and then headed down to california around 10:15. I ended up driving most of the way. (my choice) Neal was tired and I wanted to drive. It was a gorgeous drive. It was perfect weather the whole way. His little 4 cylinder truck had a bit of a hard time gettin up some of the hills. We ended up naming his truck Betsy.
Anyway, we got into sonoma about 8:30. It was a trip to drive through there. I drove us past one of the houses we lived in. (in Esta Madera. Its a little neighborhood on the east side of town) We drove past my elementary school. And then we headed over to Jenna's house.
We got there and she'd ordered Mary's Pizza. Mary's is a local pizza place that has been around longer than I've been alive. Its amazing. She ordered some of their AMAZING breadsticks, 2 of their pretty much unmatchable salads, and 2 pizzas. The bill came to over 80 bucks though. I was kind of shocked. It has gotten wayyyy too expensive. Anyway, I got to spend some time with my godson, Jackson. He is adorable and probably one of the happiest babies ever. Paul got home about a half hour after we got there. We all ate dinner, had a beer. Jenna and I hid out in the bedroom for a bit and caught up and talked a bit while the boys talked in the living room. And then we were out by like 12. Long day, sleep felt good.
Wednesday: So Wednesday was mostly spent wandering around sonoma. We went out to to my grandmas house. (grandma that lives in florida now) My grandpa's mother, kids, and grandkids live tehre now. I haven't seen my great-grandma Collins since I was a toddler. (I don't know her first name, I think its Ida. But I know her as grandma collins) I'd never met Edie, my step-great-aunt. Or her kids. so that was cool. The creek I used to play in is kinda dry now, which makes me sad. But almost everything else was the same.
We headed back into town and drove past the two other houses we lived in when I was a kid. Then parked down on the square to find a place to go wine tasting. We walked around the entire square, went to the Cheese Factory to taste some cheese. (it is SOOOO different than when I was a kid). And then we went to a little wine shop and tasted a bunch of different wines. After that we headed over to my aunt Cheri's house. She made a huge dinner and fed us lots of wine. Then we settled in and drank a couple vodka sodas. :)
At one point, I was telling her about how I had been looking for the articles from the car accident. She said she had them, but seemed very apprehensive to let me see them. I told her that I'd eventually see them, and that hte only reason I wasn't allowed to when I was younger was becasue I was 15. So we went back into her room where she had a box of stuff. She pulled out all the articles and let me see them. Then told me about the day that the accident happened. She was about 2 miles down the road and had seen the REACH helicopter and decided to go to the scene of the crash (because of another accident that happened around the same area a week before that her friend had helped at). She saw the car, called my dad to see where we were, and realized it was us.
Anyway, the picture of the car is crazy. The picture is taken from the front. And you can see that the whole passenger side of the car is pushed in. But you can't see the roof of the car because it was peeled back so the paramedics could get in. There were about 6 paramedics all kinda of sticking out of the car, looking inside to make sure no one else was in there. You could also see the doctor that was on the scene. So I mentioned before that htere was a doctor in the car behind us. Well, this doctor was a pediatric pulmonologist who was on vacation in the wine country, with his medical bag int he trunk of his rental. Someone was watching out for me, eh?
Neal came into the room and read the articles. When he came in I was crying. Not really because of the accident. But because there was a part of the article that talked about me coming home and having a bunch of poems from a sophomore english class that they had written for me the day after the accident. I don't remember that. There was also a picture of me when I was home and doing a little better. I don't even look like me. My hair was all short, and shaved in some places. I was wearing glasses, old ones that make me look like I'm about 9. My eye was severely turned in; for some reason the brain trauma caused my lazy eye to get worse. My paralysis was super bad right after the accident too. And you can just tell that I'm out of it. Talking to Erin, another aunt of mine, she said I was really out of it. That I didn't really have much concept of where I was. She wanted to brush my hair and I was trying to tell her where my brush was. Well, I sent her on a wild goose chase around the ICU before she realized I was telling her where in my bedroom at home my brush was.
Moving on. So we stayed at Cheri's house that night. Two nights in a row with a warm place to sleep. Rockin. And breakfast and coffee promised for the morning.
Thursday: So Thursday we got up around 9ish. Sucked down some coffee, showered and got back on the road. Cheri's boyfriend gave us a map of the bay area, which was awesome. We had one of SF already. But figured that one of the whole are would be helpful. So we set out for sf. We came over the hill to the golden gate and it was gorgeous. We couldn't see the top of the bridge because of the fog, but the bridge itself was visible. We drove down to the Marina and parked. (for free! All day!) We walked up to Fort Mason Hill Park. It was beautiful. This was the view of the marina/golden gate from the park. Then we walked along the water over to Fisherman's Wharf. We wandered through the area in front of the Maritime Museum and out onto the pier with a bunch of really cool old ships. We then went over to the cable car station and bought day passes for the muni. (muni is like trimet, the company that runs all teh pub trans in sf)
We took the bus up columbus which runs through North Beach. We got off in search of City Lights Books. Its kinda like Powell's but on a smaller scale. We stopped at a bar to go pee and grab a drink. The beer selection was decent, the pour was weak on the vodka. But we sat outside in the sun and people watched before heading over to City Lights.
After wandering around tehre for a bit, we left and started walking toward the financial district. We ended up at 101 California, which is the building my dad used to work. Across the street was the TransAmerica Building. I remember seeing it as a kid; its still as huge as it was then. :) After that, I wanted to head over the Haight. We hopped on a bus and got off on Van Ness. We walked pretty much the entire way down to Haight. We turned on Haight and walked about 4 blocks before deciding to hop on a bus because its all pretty much uphill. A fairly steep hill. And about 40 blocks to where we wanted to end up. We got off the bus at Ashbury and I had to take a pic of the Haight-Ashbury street signs. The T-shirt shop at the corner has a clock outside that they've stuck permanently at 4:20.
We were gonna go to Golden Gate park, so we jumped on another bus. It was about a 10 minute bus ride and it was getting cold so we didn't wanna walk. We got on the super crowded bus, and the driver was kind of a dick. He wouldn't let people come on the bus even though he stopped and opened the door for them. So we got off at the next stop and headed back to the car. We were starting to get hungry, so we drove over to Pier 39 to eat. We at the The Crab House and it was AMAZING. It wasn't terribly overpriced either, which is awesome. I got crab alfredo and Neal got mussels and shrimp.
When we were done eating our delicious food, we drove out to my friend Anthony's house to pick him up to go drink with him. He lives a just north-west of the Haight in a really pretty nice neighborhood. Nothing ritzy or anthing. But he lives tehre with his two roommates in a flat. Teh flat costs 2500 bucks a month! Guh, no thank you. He pays more for his portion of a flat than Neal pays for his HOUSE.
So we headed out to the bar he works at, Place Pigalle, and Anthony just kept the beer coming all night. We didn't expect to not have to pay for anything, but he wouldn't let us. The bar itself was super cool, it actually reminded me of seomthing you might find in Portland. The people there weren't as hipster, they were more like, I dunno, clean cut and sf-y. :-P But they were nice. We went a couple doors down to the gay bar, Marlena, where Anthony was friends with the bartender. Where we didn't pay for drinks. LOL it was kind of awesome.
Around 2 we decided to head out. Our original plan was to sleep in the back of the truck. It was ready to go. But for some reason decided to get a hotel room instead. So we drove a little further than South San Francisco and got a room in the Super 8 there.
This was pretty much the only time that Neal and I had any sort of disagreement. It wasn't a fight really. But he was a little tipsy and I didn't want him to drive. He got a little upset but handed the keys over to me. It wasn't too big of a deal, so that's good. I found us a hotel and we stopped and slept for the night.
Friday: Friday morning, I woke up and could barely move my left shoulder. Every time I tried to roll over, my whole back would pull at the muscle behind my left shoulder blade. It hurt so bad. I don't have any idea what I did to it. On top of that, we both woke up with a decent hangover. But we were out of tehre right before check out at 11:00. We drove down to Santa Cruz. Again, gorgeous weather. Driving over 17 it was really beautiful. We got into Santa Cruz and drove down past the University Inn where I used to live. It was an old Holiday Inn that UCSC bought back in 2000 and converted 2/3's of it to campus housing. We parked the truck up at Natural Bridges so we could walk down to the boardwalk. We stopped at The Dream Inn to go to the bathroom before heading down to the beach. We walked down to the sand, took off our shoes and walked in the water. When we got over by the boardwalk itself, we decided to ride the Sky Glider. It was pretty windy and actually kinda scary. But still cool. We also decided to ride a roller coaster. I really wanted to ride the Giant Dipper, its been there FOREVER. But Neal was a bit apprehensive about the old wooden rollercoaster so we rode the hurricane instead. It was still fun. Then we went into Neptune's Kingdom, the huge arcade and played some weird airhockey game that big paddles on either end of the table that can spin 360 degrees to protect the goal. We also did the photo booth before heading out.
We started getting hungry so we went back up to the truck and drove down to Pacific Ave. Its kinda the main event downtown. A bunch of little shops and restaurants and bars. Its also where the bus mall is located. Anyway, we went to Saturn Cafe and ate soem DELICIOUS food. This was one of my favorite places to eat when I lived there. It was more about the atmosphere than the food. Don't get me wrong; the food is good, just not like a crazy good cuisine. After that we wandered to Streetlight Records, looked around and then decided to get a drink. (I needed to charge my phone so I plugged in while we enjoyed a tasty cocktail)
The sun was starting to drop a little and I wanted to get on the road to Monterey before it went down. So we got on the road and got to Seaside where my aunt, Erin, works. She works at a pub right off the csumb campus. (at least I think its somewhat close) So we had a beer while she finished up, and then we joined her and 5 of her friends she works with at a summer camp for disabled children and adults. We went back to her house, drank a few more beers, watched a few people play Just Dance on the Wii, and listened to the Brits banter back and forth. (thats how Erin refers to them: The Brits) It was a lot of fun.
About 11:30 or 12, we went to bed. They all stayed up drinking and watching youtube videos and playing the Wii till about 2 I think. I dunno, I couldn't hear them, I was passed the fuck out. Since my shoulder was killing me, Erin gave me a pain med she was prescribed for blood clots she had in her leg. (scary stuff, but she is doing better)
Saturday: Saturday morning we got up around 9ish. It was soooo good to have a good nights sleep. Not on a pull out, or really drunk, or an air mattress. But a super comfortable bed. And a full 9 or 10 hours of sleep. Amazing even. But we got up, got our stuff together, and had some coffee. We chatted with Erin a bit. Wandered out to the truck. Chatted some more. (our family likes to talk LOL) And then finally hit the road about 10:30. The drive was a bit longer this time. But not too bad. Neal drove most of it. He insisted becuase I drove most of the way down. I drove for about 45 minutes while he napped and then started getting sleepy so we pulled over and switched. We got to Oregon about 7:00ish, I can't really remember what time it was. I think the pain pill that Erin had given me was still kinda making me drowsy. But we got back into Portland about 11:30.
Overall the vacation was amazing. Neal kept commenting on how pretty everything was. He really liked sonoma. Wine tasting was super fun. We had an amazing time in san fran. He seemed to really fall in love with Santa Cruz. We didn't really spend any time in Marina/Monterey, so we didn't get to see it at all. But the entire week the weather was perfect. Nice and sunny, not too hot. Didn't get too cold at night. It really was an amazing vacation. It sounds like Neal wants to take a 3 day weekend in the next couple months and go back down to San Francisco. We'll see how that goes.
And now I'm back at work. :-P bored, as usual. This post has gotten really really fuckin long, so I'm gonna wrap it up. If you read this whole thing, you are awesome.
<3
glo
Anyway. I'm gonna break this up into days. It might make it easier to read. And definitely for me to transcribe to my lj. :-P
Monday: Monday was not actually part of the trip. But it was my first day of vacation. I got to sleep in late, til about 11 or so. Then I went over to campus to meet up with Meredith. We sat at Park Ave Cafe and drank coffee and chatted. I gave her the key to my place so she could check on my kitties throughout the week. Was pretty fantastic sitting in the sun and relaxing. After that I headed back to my side of town to start getting things ready for the day. Neal and I cleaned up our places a bit, went grocery shopping and kinda collected our stuff to get it ready for the morning. Then that evening we went to Kelly's Olympian for a show. This chick, Tonya that we know through some friends from Station Zero is in a band called "Those Bottomfeeders." Well, they were playing there and we decided to check it out. It was a pretty fun show.
Tuesday: So the night before, I set my alarm for 6:15. I wanted to get out the door around 7:30. Well, I ended up waking up before my alarm at about 5:45. (too excited to sleep LOL) I got up, let Neal sleep a little longer, and started getting stuff ready. We'd inflated the air mattress the night before, so I stuck that in the back of the truck. I threw in the blankets taht weren't on the bed. Started loading up the cooler and got the truck pretty much loaded before Neal was even awake. :-P At about 6:30, he finally rolled out of bed and was like, "wait, you got the truck loaded already? I feel so lazy!" I told him taht I was too anxious to wait for him to get up and I didn't mind doing so it wasn't a big deal.
At 7:33, we were driving out of the parking lot of my complex. We stopped and checked the tires on the truck and filled up the tank. Before heading down to cali, we stopped in Silverton to visit with my mom for a bit. We chatted with her for about an hour. She showed us all the recent house-remodel-changes. She talked our ears off, as expected. (not a bad thing, just my mom hehe) My dad was on a business trip so we didn't get to visit with him. But I got to see the pups.
Finally about 9:45, we left my parents place and headed toward Salem to hop back on I-5. We stopped in Salem to pee and grab disposable cameras, and get some grub from a fast-food joint for breakfast and then headed down to california around 10:15. I ended up driving most of the way. (my choice) Neal was tired and I wanted to drive. It was a gorgeous drive. It was perfect weather the whole way. His little 4 cylinder truck had a bit of a hard time gettin up some of the hills. We ended up naming his truck Betsy.
Anyway, we got into sonoma about 8:30. It was a trip to drive through there. I drove us past one of the houses we lived in. (in Esta Madera. Its a little neighborhood on the east side of town) We drove past my elementary school. And then we headed over to Jenna's house.
We got there and she'd ordered Mary's Pizza. Mary's is a local pizza place that has been around longer than I've been alive. Its amazing. She ordered some of their AMAZING breadsticks, 2 of their pretty much unmatchable salads, and 2 pizzas. The bill came to over 80 bucks though. I was kind of shocked. It has gotten wayyyy too expensive. Anyway, I got to spend some time with my godson, Jackson. He is adorable and probably one of the happiest babies ever. Paul got home about a half hour after we got there. We all ate dinner, had a beer. Jenna and I hid out in the bedroom for a bit and caught up and talked a bit while the boys talked in the living room. And then we were out by like 12. Long day, sleep felt good.
Wednesday: So Wednesday was mostly spent wandering around sonoma. We went out to to my grandmas house. (grandma that lives in florida now) My grandpa's mother, kids, and grandkids live tehre now. I haven't seen my great-grandma Collins since I was a toddler. (I don't know her first name, I think its Ida. But I know her as grandma collins) I'd never met Edie, my step-great-aunt. Or her kids. so that was cool. The creek I used to play in is kinda dry now, which makes me sad. But almost everything else was the same.
We headed back into town and drove past the two other houses we lived in when I was a kid. Then parked down on the square to find a place to go wine tasting. We walked around the entire square, went to the Cheese Factory to taste some cheese. (it is SOOOO different than when I was a kid). And then we went to a little wine shop and tasted a bunch of different wines. After that we headed over to my aunt Cheri's house. She made a huge dinner and fed us lots of wine. Then we settled in and drank a couple vodka sodas. :)
At one point, I was telling her about how I had been looking for the articles from the car accident. She said she had them, but seemed very apprehensive to let me see them. I told her that I'd eventually see them, and that hte only reason I wasn't allowed to when I was younger was becasue I was 15. So we went back into her room where she had a box of stuff. She pulled out all the articles and let me see them. Then told me about the day that the accident happened. She was about 2 miles down the road and had seen the REACH helicopter and decided to go to the scene of the crash (because of another accident that happened around the same area a week before that her friend had helped at). She saw the car, called my dad to see where we were, and realized it was us.
Anyway, the picture of the car is crazy. The picture is taken from the front. And you can see that the whole passenger side of the car is pushed in. But you can't see the roof of the car because it was peeled back so the paramedics could get in. There were about 6 paramedics all kinda of sticking out of the car, looking inside to make sure no one else was in there. You could also see the doctor that was on the scene. So I mentioned before that htere was a doctor in the car behind us. Well, this doctor was a pediatric pulmonologist who was on vacation in the wine country, with his medical bag int he trunk of his rental. Someone was watching out for me, eh?
Neal came into the room and read the articles. When he came in I was crying. Not really because of the accident. But because there was a part of the article that talked about me coming home and having a bunch of poems from a sophomore english class that they had written for me the day after the accident. I don't remember that. There was also a picture of me when I was home and doing a little better. I don't even look like me. My hair was all short, and shaved in some places. I was wearing glasses, old ones that make me look like I'm about 9. My eye was severely turned in; for some reason the brain trauma caused my lazy eye to get worse. My paralysis was super bad right after the accident too. And you can just tell that I'm out of it. Talking to Erin, another aunt of mine, she said I was really out of it. That I didn't really have much concept of where I was. She wanted to brush my hair and I was trying to tell her where my brush was. Well, I sent her on a wild goose chase around the ICU before she realized I was telling her where in my bedroom at home my brush was.
Moving on. So we stayed at Cheri's house that night. Two nights in a row with a warm place to sleep. Rockin. And breakfast and coffee promised for the morning.
Thursday: So Thursday we got up around 9ish. Sucked down some coffee, showered and got back on the road. Cheri's boyfriend gave us a map of the bay area, which was awesome. We had one of SF already. But figured that one of the whole are would be helpful. So we set out for sf. We came over the hill to the golden gate and it was gorgeous. We couldn't see the top of the bridge because of the fog, but the bridge itself was visible. We drove down to the Marina and parked. (for free! All day!) We walked up to Fort Mason Hill Park. It was beautiful. This was the view of the marina/golden gate from the park. Then we walked along the water over to Fisherman's Wharf. We wandered through the area in front of the Maritime Museum and out onto the pier with a bunch of really cool old ships. We then went over to the cable car station and bought day passes for the muni. (muni is like trimet, the company that runs all teh pub trans in sf)
We took the bus up columbus which runs through North Beach. We got off in search of City Lights Books. Its kinda like Powell's but on a smaller scale. We stopped at a bar to go pee and grab a drink. The beer selection was decent, the pour was weak on the vodka. But we sat outside in the sun and people watched before heading over to City Lights.
After wandering around tehre for a bit, we left and started walking toward the financial district. We ended up at 101 California, which is the building my dad used to work. Across the street was the TransAmerica Building. I remember seeing it as a kid; its still as huge as it was then. :) After that, I wanted to head over the Haight. We hopped on a bus and got off on Van Ness. We walked pretty much the entire way down to Haight. We turned on Haight and walked about 4 blocks before deciding to hop on a bus because its all pretty much uphill. A fairly steep hill. And about 40 blocks to where we wanted to end up. We got off the bus at Ashbury and I had to take a pic of the Haight-Ashbury street signs. The T-shirt shop at the corner has a clock outside that they've stuck permanently at 4:20.
We were gonna go to Golden Gate park, so we jumped on another bus. It was about a 10 minute bus ride and it was getting cold so we didn't wanna walk. We got on the super crowded bus, and the driver was kind of a dick. He wouldn't let people come on the bus even though he stopped and opened the door for them. So we got off at the next stop and headed back to the car. We were starting to get hungry, so we drove over to Pier 39 to eat. We at the The Crab House and it was AMAZING. It wasn't terribly overpriced either, which is awesome. I got crab alfredo and Neal got mussels and shrimp.
When we were done eating our delicious food, we drove out to my friend Anthony's house to pick him up to go drink with him. He lives a just north-west of the Haight in a really pretty nice neighborhood. Nothing ritzy or anthing. But he lives tehre with his two roommates in a flat. Teh flat costs 2500 bucks a month! Guh, no thank you. He pays more for his portion of a flat than Neal pays for his HOUSE.
So we headed out to the bar he works at, Place Pigalle, and Anthony just kept the beer coming all night. We didn't expect to not have to pay for anything, but he wouldn't let us. The bar itself was super cool, it actually reminded me of seomthing you might find in Portland. The people there weren't as hipster, they were more like, I dunno, clean cut and sf-y. :-P But they were nice. We went a couple doors down to the gay bar, Marlena, where Anthony was friends with the bartender. Where we didn't pay for drinks. LOL it was kind of awesome.
Around 2 we decided to head out. Our original plan was to sleep in the back of the truck. It was ready to go. But for some reason decided to get a hotel room instead. So we drove a little further than South San Francisco and got a room in the Super 8 there.
This was pretty much the only time that Neal and I had any sort of disagreement. It wasn't a fight really. But he was a little tipsy and I didn't want him to drive. He got a little upset but handed the keys over to me. It wasn't too big of a deal, so that's good. I found us a hotel and we stopped and slept for the night.
Friday: Friday morning, I woke up and could barely move my left shoulder. Every time I tried to roll over, my whole back would pull at the muscle behind my left shoulder blade. It hurt so bad. I don't have any idea what I did to it. On top of that, we both woke up with a decent hangover. But we were out of tehre right before check out at 11:00. We drove down to Santa Cruz. Again, gorgeous weather. Driving over 17 it was really beautiful. We got into Santa Cruz and drove down past the University Inn where I used to live. It was an old Holiday Inn that UCSC bought back in 2000 and converted 2/3's of it to campus housing. We parked the truck up at Natural Bridges so we could walk down to the boardwalk. We stopped at The Dream Inn to go to the bathroom before heading down to the beach. We walked down to the sand, took off our shoes and walked in the water. When we got over by the boardwalk itself, we decided to ride the Sky Glider. It was pretty windy and actually kinda scary. But still cool. We also decided to ride a roller coaster. I really wanted to ride the Giant Dipper, its been there FOREVER. But Neal was a bit apprehensive about the old wooden rollercoaster so we rode the hurricane instead. It was still fun. Then we went into Neptune's Kingdom, the huge arcade and played some weird airhockey game that big paddles on either end of the table that can spin 360 degrees to protect the goal. We also did the photo booth before heading out.
We started getting hungry so we went back up to the truck and drove down to Pacific Ave. Its kinda the main event downtown. A bunch of little shops and restaurants and bars. Its also where the bus mall is located. Anyway, we went to Saturn Cafe and ate soem DELICIOUS food. This was one of my favorite places to eat when I lived there. It was more about the atmosphere than the food. Don't get me wrong; the food is good, just not like a crazy good cuisine. After that we wandered to Streetlight Records, looked around and then decided to get a drink. (I needed to charge my phone so I plugged in while we enjoyed a tasty cocktail)
The sun was starting to drop a little and I wanted to get on the road to Monterey before it went down. So we got on the road and got to Seaside where my aunt, Erin, works. She works at a pub right off the csumb campus. (at least I think its somewhat close) So we had a beer while she finished up, and then we joined her and 5 of her friends she works with at a summer camp for disabled children and adults. We went back to her house, drank a few more beers, watched a few people play Just Dance on the Wii, and listened to the Brits banter back and forth. (thats how Erin refers to them: The Brits) It was a lot of fun.
About 11:30 or 12, we went to bed. They all stayed up drinking and watching youtube videos and playing the Wii till about 2 I think. I dunno, I couldn't hear them, I was passed the fuck out. Since my shoulder was killing me, Erin gave me a pain med she was prescribed for blood clots she had in her leg. (scary stuff, but she is doing better)
Saturday: Saturday morning we got up around 9ish. It was soooo good to have a good nights sleep. Not on a pull out, or really drunk, or an air mattress. But a super comfortable bed. And a full 9 or 10 hours of sleep. Amazing even. But we got up, got our stuff together, and had some coffee. We chatted with Erin a bit. Wandered out to the truck. Chatted some more. (our family likes to talk LOL) And then finally hit the road about 10:30. The drive was a bit longer this time. But not too bad. Neal drove most of it. He insisted becuase I drove most of the way down. I drove for about 45 minutes while he napped and then started getting sleepy so we pulled over and switched. We got to Oregon about 7:00ish, I can't really remember what time it was. I think the pain pill that Erin had given me was still kinda making me drowsy. But we got back into Portland about 11:30.
Overall the vacation was amazing. Neal kept commenting on how pretty everything was. He really liked sonoma. Wine tasting was super fun. We had an amazing time in san fran. He seemed to really fall in love with Santa Cruz. We didn't really spend any time in Marina/Monterey, so we didn't get to see it at all. But the entire week the weather was perfect. Nice and sunny, not too hot. Didn't get too cold at night. It really was an amazing vacation. It sounds like Neal wants to take a 3 day weekend in the next couple months and go back down to San Francisco. We'll see how that goes.
And now I'm back at work. :-P bored, as usual. This post has gotten really really fuckin long, so I'm gonna wrap it up. If you read this whole thing, you are awesome.
<3
glo