Memoirs of a CPUNERD

Another year, another picnic day in Davis. This time, it so happened that the weather was wonderful. Many of us participated in the parade, and those who didn’t enjoyed it from the side. There was one small hitch, the parade was quite late and took too long. We ended up missing most of the things we wanted to see, but that’s a lesson from which we’ll learn in preparation next year. I will say that even with missing so many events, it was still a blast. Once the evening hit, we started seeing people get thrown into the drunk tank and getting arrested downtown. An interesting site, but not something I’d look to to be involved with in any way.

The big day! On Monday, my paper was finally due, and thus John would actually take a look at it and give me some advice. I woke up and got ready for the gym, but read some comments from John and Shubho before leaving. I felt like crap after racquetball, not sure why. I came home and worked until 2215, and I managed to do laundry while at it. Once my paper was finally submitted, I went over to Shakeh’s. She ate dinner, then we went to Ben & Jerrys for frozen yogurt. After we got done, I dropped her off, went home, and did nothing for the first time in ages.

Racquetball on Tuesday was fine. Tennis, not so much. Don’t even ask about frisbee, it was wiiiiiiiiiiiiindy. I talked with Martyn at the MU for a bit, then went to Cafe Mediterannee for lunch with Shakeh. Come early afternoon, Martyn and I headed to SF after a car wash and fill-up on petrol. A good seventy-five minutes later, we parked near the Fillmore, then proceeded to walk to find a Moroccan place that turned out to be Ethiopian. Luckily for me I’d never had either and was excited to try both. The food turned out to be really, really good. I found it similar to Middle-Eastern food, but the bread, called injera, was different. In my mind, if one took a crepe recipe, added water to increase the sponginess, then made the sheets much thicker, injera would be the result. Oh, did I mention no utensils? After a spectacular dinner, we walked back to the Fillmore. The two opening bands were 12 Stones and Red. Neither of which I’d ever heard before. I didn’t pay any attention to 12 Stones. Red was alright, but they seemed confused about their identity. I equate them to a metal band doing a power ballad. They had the potential, but there were times when they tried to switch genres and it just didn’t work. Of course, the band of the hour was 3 Doors Down. They were spectular in quality live. Their stage show was nothing special, and they didn’t work up the crowd (not that they needed to). I think I heard every song I hoped for, and of course a few extras they threw in there. Martyn and I took an excessive amount of time because we were making out in the car I-80 was closed right before the bridge. It took us half an hour to go half a mile, thanks to traffic. I dropped him off at 0045, then got home after saying a brief goodnight to Shakeh at 0100. A long day ahead of me…

On Wednesday I climbed up the ladder in racquetball, but was feeling really weak come time for the tennis class. I think it was from the cold I had. I sat for the last ten or fifteen minutes because I just couldn’t do anything after that. I started doing forward rolls in tumbling now, my arm seemed to be okay. I found out quickly I still couldn’t do anything else though, not even a cartwheel. I ate at the MU with Shakeh for lunch, then went to a meeting with John to talk about research ideas. Immediately after that I went to the group meeting, then headed back to my place. I scrubbed the yellow pages for some apartment listings, then went to Fuzio for dinner with Shakeh. After dinner, we went to see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. The movie was very good. It actually felt like a movie from the forties at first, which was a bit weird I must admit. Once the movie was over, I dropped Shakeh off and went right to sleep. Man was I tired.

I finally had a good day in tennis again on Thursday. After trying one out, I’m thinking of switching to a non-oversized racquet. Racquetball also went well, as did frisbee. I got called “the buff guy” in frisbee. Shakeh was sick with a fever so I went over and tended to her while working and calling apartments. I picked up Chipotle for dinner. Shakeh was feeling better by that time. Around 1915, I went to our first outdoor football match. I actually scored! Yes, that is more an indication of the other team than me.

I had a dentist appointment early on Friday. Afterwards, I scampied over to Jamba Juice, then headed to the Bay Area with Falcon. We looked around at places for a bit, then headed to Google to have lunch with Chrisco. After lunch, we checked out the rest of the places we had in mind at Mountain View, then began the two and a half hour trek to Davis (stupid freaking traffic). When I got back, I joined Shakeh at the F Street theatres and we went to see The Forbidden Kingdom. I must say, that even in Davis, I had never seen such a high ratio of Asian people to non Asian people. After the movie, we went over to Pluto’s for dinner. I was really surprised at the number of people there. They must have all just exited the movies.

Saturday was Picnic Day! We had to get up at 0615 so Shakeh could make it to SISS on time. Of course, even when we woke up that early, she still got there ten minutes late. Once there though, we helped blow up balloons. After an hour, we headed to the parade grounds and had some fun with flags for quite some time. The parade was delayed almost an hour, so we ended up not getting started until 1100. Once it got started though, it was a lof fun. The walking took about an hour and a half. After we finished at 3rd and A, we met up with everyone and grabbed some food at the quad. Sean and Ciderman stopped by for a few minutes, but then went to sushi with Verena and Lee. After eating, a bunch of went to the Pavilion for the dachsund races, then saw Martin Yan (can cook) at the food sciences building. We were going to stay and get free ice cream, but there was a huge line. Instead, we headed to the Micro-mouse competition. Unfortunately, and this would be a common theme, we got there at 1430 and it closed at 1400. We made our way to the liquid-nitrogen ice cream, but we were again too late. So next we tried to get into the laser maze. However, it was already 1500, there was a long line, and it closed at 1600. We didn’t think we would get in, so we just left. Shakeh and I headed to get funnel cake while everyone else wandered off to go watch the dog-and-frisbee tricks. Once Shakeh and I had our wonderful funnel cake, we met up with everyone and headed to the battle of the bands. We stayed there until 1745 or so, then went home and dropped off the bikes. Right after that we met up with Sean and Ciderman at Sophia’s. The place was totally packed though, so we went to Chipotle instead. Javi and Gina joined us not long after that. Once we finished dinner, we went to get gelato at Ice Krimski Cafe, then Shakeh and I headed home and passed out immediately. I think we fell asleep before 2100.

Sundary morning we got up and headed to Napa Valley right away. Our first stop was the Mondavi winery and their tour. After that, we went to Rubicon. Shakeh really liked the grounds and the museum they had there. The wine was getting to Shakeh, so we went to the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. The food was superb as usual. Once we were done there, we hit up Beringer. We skipped the regular tasting room and went to the reserve-wine tasting room. We actually were able to try a few for free. The sauvignon blanc was really good, but we ended up skipping it. After Beringer, we went to Louis Martini. There was some crazy Japanese guy that was talking to Shakeh and trying to hit on her. The workers there were obviously annoyed, and they all breathed a sigh of relief when he left. Once we were done there, we headed to the V Sattui winery. We actually didn’t try any wine there, we instead just got a bunch of cheese and crackers. It’d been almost a year and a half since I’d had Piave, and I was excited to get to eat it again. Our last stop was at Rutherford Grove. We were going to go to Beaulieu, but we both just wanted to go home. For dinner, we went to Thai Nakorn and then saw Smart People at G street. It was really good! I liked it a lot, especially the character played by Thomas Hayden Church.

Antoine is only here for three more days! We decided to take the silly french-man wine tasting in Napa Valley. The original plan was for Steve, Antoine, Anna, Jeff, Ananya, and I to go. As it turns out (probably for the best), two people couldn’t make it due to spur-of-the-moment responsibilities put on by their advisor. That meant that we could take just one car, hence the “probably for the best” part.

We arrived in Napa around 1:00 PM and went to the Beaulieu winery first. The place was alright, it had a really good dessert wine. I bought three bottles of it, and then we proceeded to the reserve tasting room. Steve apparently is more of a Cabernet fan, and the initial tasting didn’t have any cabs. The reserve room was nice, but nothing special. Steve tried a few different wines, and then we took off.

We headed to Rubicon, the Coppola winery and vineyard, on foot. What happens when we get there you ask? We find out that there’s a twenty-five dollar fee to just enter the place. We said screw it and just headed back to the car. Considering that Jeff and I weren’t even going to drink, and I’ve already seen the place, I had no desire to pay to go in.

The next place we went to was the Mondavi winery and vineyard. The place itself was very nice, nicer than Beaulieu, and different than Rubicon. Rubicon has a large chateau for visitors, where as Mondavi has an “interesting” complex set up in front of the vineyard. The group of us did an initial tasting, then headed over to the reserve room to try their cab and dessert wines. After the reserve tastings, we went to check out the rest of the complex, which included a private party room (hey, no one was in it, so we were the party).

We wandered around the room and explored the place a little while Antoine played the piano. We didn’t have time to stay for too long, as we wanted to visit one more place. We stuck around for another song or two from Antoine, then headed out.

We didn’t really have a place in mind, so we ended up stopping at the V. Sattui winery and cheese store. We first had their cheese tasting (free, much more low-key than the wine-tasting). Surprisingly enough, I actually liked a lot of the cheeses (not the duck liver though…). This summer definitely seems to have broadened by palette.

After the cheese tasting we tried the wine. Antoine and I had the complimentary wine (Jeff had a sip or two), while Steve bought the “extra tastings” for ten bucks. He definitely got his money’s worth, the server kept pushing more and more wine on him, it was awesome.

One of the more interesting wines we had was this mix of wine and brandy. I had the thick taste of butter in my mouth afterwards. I also enjoyed the Vin Santo, but not so much the Moscat.

Once we were done with the tastings, we gave Steve a chance to sober up a little, then headed over to the CIA. It was a nice day, so we sat outside and enjoyed some wonderful food and wine in the beautiful backdrop of St. Helena.

After we got home from Wine Tasting, I went to Sophia’s to meet Dan. I met four of the five girls from Mexico City that Conny and Dan had mentioned. I also saw a bunch of other international students there, including the Spanish Dan. He invited me to come play soccer Saturday at 6:00 PM.

I stuck around, talking to Monica (one of the girls from Mexico City) for quite some time, actually much later than I had planned (school starts tomorrow!). Dan was both slightly enebriated and carless, so Francesca and Anita gave us a ride to my place, and then I gave Dan a ride home. I talked with Conny and Dan for awhile, then finally got home and in bed around 1:00 AM.

Carl and I got up early and headed to Mountain View to meet up with the Shreiners. We rolled in around 10:05 AM (a few minutes late… woops), packed up the Shreiner’s Outback, then headed north. We made a quick detour to the hills just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The Shreiner’s showed us the old military installations that were on the hills. Shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, experts in the U.S. wanted to bolster the west coast military presence and thus made numerous bunkers and missile silos in the hills north of San Francisco.

We made it to Healdsburg around 12:45 and grabbed a quick bite to eat at a local deli/grocery store. While there, I picked up some additional supplies (mmm…. salt and pepper chips…). We also got some more water since it was going to be a bit (but not excessively like last time) warm in the valley.

We hit up three wineries that day. Two were in Healdsburg, one of which was Dave’s favorite. The last one we went to was actually just a winery with a tasting spot in the Sonoma town square. I found that their port wine was actually decent if you had it with dark chocolate.

After the tastings, we walked around the square, then went into the Cheese Factory (not Cheesecake, Cheese) where I bought some very delicious pepper jack cheese. I also got some crackers with which to have the cheese, since eating cheese by the wedge doesn’t sound quite so tempting.

After Sonoma, we went to North Beach and had an absolutely awesome dinner at an Italian restaurant (I really want to say Ristorante Franchesco, but I honestly can’t remember). The antipasti was awesome, and the Veal Parmigiana was even better. We ended the night with a cup of gelato at a local shop, then headed back to Mountain View.

Woke up at 7:00 AM today, and our apartment was freaking hot (and it’s supposedly only going to get worse). I wanted to go back to sleep, but the heat prevented me from doing such. I got up, showered, and surfed the net until 8:45, where I promptly went to Carl’s to make sure everyone was there. As it turns out, we were missing all but one person… Ray. This was a bit of a problem, being as Ray was going to drive some of the people around.

9:00 AM rolled around, and Ray wasn’t there. Then another predicament arose, Chris Thayer showed up. I had talked to him the previous night, and he said he was going to get his friend from SF to stay in Santa Clara, and thus open up another spot in the car. That would have left Sean and his two friends in one car, me, Sam, and Roop in my car, and then Ray, Carl, and Lee in Ray’s car. While we were trying to rearrange people, Ray showed up. Chris also mentioned that two of his friends in Palo Alto needed rides, so we had Ray take Chris, his two friends, and Lee. Therefore Ray and Chris split immediately to pick up the PA guys. Carl was the only one who knew where Craig lived (in San Carlos), and he only knew the directions by sight, so whoever he rode with was picking up Craig. I thought my car might be kinda packed with Sam, Roop, Craig, and Carl in there (and me driving), so Roop and Sam had to split up, with Sam going in Sean’s car. That left Roop, Carl, and I to go pick up Craig.

With the plans set and Ray already on the way, we headed out. Carl told me that Craig lived in San Carlos, which is near PoW. To me, that meant take 101 north. After fifteen minutes of driving, Carl asked when I was going to cut over to the 280… WTF?! Apparently he thought I was just taking 101 north to a point where it was closer to 280. That wasn’t the case. I exited in Sunnyvale and started heading west. We caught the 85 first, so I took that North, and then Carl noticed a sign for southbound traffic saying that it merged with 280. I took the hint, got off the freeway, then got back on 85 going south, until we finally hit 280.

I forgot how nice 280 looks. 101 is all industrial and heavily travelled, where as 280 is foresty, but still heavily travelled. We eventually made our way to Craig’s place, where he was printing coupons for a few vineyards. None of us really had an opinion on where to go, and Craig wanted to go to Sonoma, so we decided to go there. While they were still printing coupons, I took leave and went to pet one of Craig’s roommate’s cats. A few minutes later, we got on our way and headed up to Sonoma.
Before we even got out of San Francisco, we caught Carl sleeping.

That’s okay though, he had a long night, and only got an hour of sleep. We made it through SF traffic on 19th Avenue, and then headed over the Golden Gate Bridge. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever actually been on the bridge. Roop was kind enough to take a few pictures of the bridge for me.

Sean was the first to hit Sonoma, since he didn’t have anywhere else to stop. We were next, but we decided to stop at a gas station first. Sean had actually begun the trek into Sonoma, so he turned around to meet us at the gas station. After calling everyone in Ray’s car about ten times telling them to go different directions, they finally made it to the gas station as well.

Once we were all together, we went to the closest vineyard, which was called Schug. It had a really nice view, and the tasting room was empty on arrival. We fixed that situation immediately. I decided not to partake at this place, primarily because I hate wine in all of its insiduous forms. Everyone else gave it a try though.

Nobody bothered paying for the more expensive tasting at Schug, since the first four wines are free, and none of them were spectacular.

After Schug, we actually made the trek to Sonoma (Schug is on the edge of Sonoma), but got lost very quickly. The map that Craig printed was apparently crap, being as it had turns where no turns existed and vice versa. After making several U-turns, wrong turns, and perhaps some illegal maneuvers, Craig finally got upset enough to toss the map and just go off of memory. We pulled over so Craig could let Sean and Ray what was going on, and Carl fell asleep again.

It was already 12:45 PM when we hit the center of Sonoma, so we parked and got some food. We ate at some place called Maya, which was a mexican restaurant. I had, get this, the Really Good Nachos. They couldn’t just call them nachos and say they were really good, apparently they insisted that people realize how good they were by titling them appropriately. Our food took a while to get out to us, so we enjoyed each others company. We finally got our food, scarfed it down because we were so hungry, then headed out around 2:15 PM.

Our next stop was a vineyard called Ravenwood. The place was tucked away along one of Sonoma’s back roads, but there were plenty of signs up to guide us. We all decided to try the tasting, and the hostess didn’t even card us. Little did we realize until later that it was because they charged even for their introductory tasting. Oh well. I didn’t like any of the wines, and I told the hostess that. She suggested to just keep on trying, which I fully intended to do. Eventually, she pulled out a bottle of muscat for people to taste. I was shocked, both Roop and I really liked it, primarly because it tasted very much like fruit juice and not so much like wine. After the first tasting, several people bought the muscat, and then a few people from our group decided to have a tasting of the darker wines. Once they finished their tasting, we headed back out to the heat and off to the next place.

The next place we decided to go was called Moon Mountain. We were going there entirely for the name. On the way there, we passed a sign that said M-F by appointment only. That made us all a little nervous, and Craig swear a little, since we didn’t know if that meant Saturday and Sunday were open for general admission, or if the place was just closed on the weekends. Regardless, the place was way the heck up this long and winding road that was a pain to drive, though it did provide us a good oppurtunity for beautiful landscape pictures. Oh, and did I mention that Carl fell asleep in the car again?

After the Moon Mountain debacle, we headed down one of the main roads in Sonoma to find some more open vineyards (it was already past 4:00 PM). The next one we found was called Valley of the Moon. I just had a water while everyone else tried the wine.

We took off from the tasting, and headed to the Mayo (like the clinic) winery. There was a huge sign to the left of the road with an arrow pointing left, I figured that meant there was a hill on the left side of the street on which to drive, so I took a left. Right away though, I saw that there was no hill, and that the sign meant to turn left at the next intersection… that was a fun experience.

We got into Mayo and were greeted by a hostess. I decided not to try any of the tastings, since this one was going to cost five bucks each. Luckily for us, a small Shi-Tzu came running out, half drunk from chewing on a wet bar rag. I was kinda bored, and he was cute, so I played with him for a while. Sean’s friends also were playing with him while Sam and Roop were sitting quietly on a table off to the side. People finished up their tasting, and then we headed out for the next place.

Holy crap is this post getting long!

After Mayo, we headed back to a vineyard owned by the manager of the Doobie Brothers, B. R. Cohn. By that time, many people were done with wine, and it just so happened that this place had olive oil tasting as well. A bunch of us decided to do that while other tasted the wine. After Sean and Ray got done tasting, they pulled out their DSes, which prompted an immediate (and well deserved) reaction from Craig. After we were all done, Sean had to split, so we gobbled up Sam, and then decided to go to Sausolito for dinner on the water front (thanks to Carl for the suggestion).

 
Along the way to Sausolito, Carl and Craig both fell asleep… Thanks to Roop for all the snoozing pictures.

 

Once in Sausolito, we drove all the way through downtown, then eventually found a place to park on a hill right on the south side of the downtown area. We got some nice pictures by the water, then headed to a place called Horizons. We put in a reservation for the ten of us, walked around the area for forty-five minutes, then came back and ate. This post is already ridiculously long, so I’ll end it with this: We ate, the waitress was an air-head but the food was good. We headed back to Santa Clara, and I was the only one who didn’t fall asleep in the car (Sam firmly denies she did, so I guess I’ll concede that, but here eyes were closed!