The Middle Ages....OF THE FUTURE!
Oct. 23rd, 2008 02:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariSunday, August 10th - San Francisco, Day Two
Sunday was going to be a slow day for us - we'd go to see a few friends, check out some sites in Oakland, and then head back to Casa Smith to pack up for the next leg of the journey.
First up, a visit to go see![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hurricane_amy an old old friend from High School living in Danville. We got a quick tour of the split level house her family is living in now, and it's really a nice location. Very close to the freeway, yet overlooking a beautiful meadow on a steep hill. I hope they never build anything else on it, because it reminds me of the house my parents have now - back when they got it, we had nothing but fields and nature. Now it's all tract housing.
From there we headed to a Marie Calender's for brunch and we just spent about two hours catching up. I'd just seen Amy a few months earlier, but to be honest, before that, we hadn't seen each other since at least 1996.
Sadly, I'd forgotten to get her the Big Red we'd bought for her. :(
After dinner we headed into Oakland for a long overdue get together withjennconspiracy, who could possibly be one of the very first people I ever met online. We caught up with her canning everything and anything she could get her hands on. Jellis, jams, chutneys, pickles, the works.
Turns out she and her neighborhood had gotten together to make preserves and such from everyone's little victory gardens in the neighborhood. We sat and talked about many eco-vegan-things, many of which I'm noticing are in force up here. They weren't kidding that the west coast is REALLY into it's ecology.
Armed with several pictures (Jenn's an accomplished photographer) and jars of tastiness, we headed out a few hours later so Emily could tour some of Oakland's street trackage, where we got to see Amtrack rip a nice deep gouge on the tracks as it passed by.
On our way home, we'd gotten it into our heads that We Wanted Slurpees. We searched All Over Oakland for a 7-11 that had (1) A slurpee machine and (2) public restrooms. One thing about the West Coast, I'm noticing - NO ONE HAS PUBLIC RESTROOMS ANYWHERE. Not sure what the deal is, but, my god, people....
Anyways, we found an ICEE place instead of a Slurpee place, so we stopped there instead. I filled up our ICEE jars and managed to spill a little bit of it as I was taking it off the "tray." Suddenly, the cashier was stomping towards me complaining about "you people spill so much ICEE! DO you know how much that costs me?" and then continued his little tirade for waht seemed liket wo or three minutes. I just kinda stood there and thought. "Water, sugar. They're not THAT expensive." Eventually I paid up and as I left, he muttered under his breath how much "you people spill ICEE!"
Yeah.
We slowly made our wat back to Casa Smith where we packed up and got ready to go, including a quick run of laundry. While I was in the garage, I took the time to snap a few shots of Little Car, Gwen's automotive pride and joy. And for a car with almost 50 years on it, it's only got half of my trucks mileage. :)
After a little more Second Life, a goodbye was said to Gwen (she'd be gone well before we woke up), and a goodnight to Bon (we'd be leaving when she did). We were showered, clean and ready to go on to our second-to-last-stop, Eugene Oregon.
Sunday was going to be a slow day for us - we'd go to see a few friends, check out some sites in Oakland, and then head back to Casa Smith to pack up for the next leg of the journey.
First up, a visit to go see
hurricane_amy an old old friend from High School living in Danville. We got a quick tour of the split level house her family is living in now, and it's really a nice location. Very close to the freeway, yet overlooking a beautiful meadow on a steep hill. I hope they never build anything else on it, because it reminds me of the house my parents have now - back when they got it, we had nothing but fields and nature. Now it's all tract housing.From there we headed to a Marie Calender's for brunch and we just spent about two hours catching up. I'd just seen Amy a few months earlier, but to be honest, before that, we hadn't seen each other since at least 1996.
Sadly, I'd forgotten to get her the Big Red we'd bought for her. :(
After dinner we headed into Oakland for a long overdue get together with
jennconspiracy, who could possibly be one of the very first people I ever met online. We caught up with her canning everything and anything she could get her hands on. Jellis, jams, chutneys, pickles, the works.Turns out she and her neighborhood had gotten together to make preserves and such from everyone's little victory gardens in the neighborhood. We sat and talked about many eco-vegan-things, many of which I'm noticing are in force up here. They weren't kidding that the west coast is REALLY into it's ecology.
Armed with several pictures (Jenn's an accomplished photographer) and jars of tastiness, we headed out a few hours later so Emily could tour some of Oakland's street trackage, where we got to see Amtrack rip a nice deep gouge on the tracks as it passed by.
On our way home, we'd gotten it into our heads that We Wanted Slurpees. We searched All Over Oakland for a 7-11 that had (1) A slurpee machine and (2) public restrooms. One thing about the West Coast, I'm noticing - NO ONE HAS PUBLIC RESTROOMS ANYWHERE. Not sure what the deal is, but, my god, people....
Anyways, we found an ICEE place instead of a Slurpee place, so we stopped there instead. I filled up our ICEE jars and managed to spill a little bit of it as I was taking it off the "tray." Suddenly, the cashier was stomping towards me complaining about "you people spill so much ICEE! DO you know how much that costs me?" and then continued his little tirade for waht seemed liket wo or three minutes. I just kinda stood there and thought. "Water, sugar. They're not THAT expensive." Eventually I paid up and as I left, he muttered under his breath how much "you people spill ICEE!"
Yeah.
We slowly made our wat back to Casa Smith where we packed up and got ready to go, including a quick run of laundry. While I was in the garage, I took the time to snap a few shots of Little Car, Gwen's automotive pride and joy. And for a car with almost 50 years on it, it's only got half of my trucks mileage. :)
After a little more Second Life, a goodbye was said to Gwen (she'd be gone well before we woke up), and a goodnight to Bon (we'd be leaving when she did). We were showered, clean and ready to go on to our second-to-last-stop, Eugene Oregon.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-23 04:00 pm (UTC)The odometer read 135,200 as of last night. :-)
Oh, and we don't have any public bathrooms because we all naturall recycle our wastes naturally, sort of like Moltar.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-24 01:30 am (UTC)Just to clarify - the fruit doesn't come from anyone's victory garden - people just plant fruit trees around here like mad and then get tired of the fruit by the time the tree is mature and producing 10x more than they really want to eat. I just find the people with mature trees who desperately need help cleaning up so they don't have mucky, rotten fruit all over the ground in their yard... and make stuff. :)