Still Here
I am sure some of you have been worrying that I have fallen off of the planet. Fear not. I have just been moving across the country and starting work. This has left no time for updating my journal. I even feel guilty about updating it now. I know I have to get up early tomorrow, but I really felt compelled to get something written down about the trip out here and what I have been up to since then.
The Trip
Sarah is wonderful. I know this is supposed to be all about the trip, but that was so incredibly secondary to just getting to spend time with Sarah. Okay, no more mushy stuff for like at least another couple of paragraphs. We followed this route, pretty much to a tee.
Gaffney, SC (05/11/07)
Sarah and I got away from Cary a little before 4PM EDT on Friday night and made it to Pam's house in time to have some desert and snacks with my Grandfather, Step-Grandmother, Father, Mother, Step-Mother, 2 Sisters, Brother, Aunt, Uncle, Cousin, 6 dogs, and a cat. It was great to see so much of my family together. We got to tell stories and play cards and generally catch up on lives. This doubled as a Pepper going-away and Stephanie turning 20 party. Much fun was had by all.
Asheville, NC (05/12/07)
Dad, Sarah, and I drove up to Asheville to have lunch and pick up the rental car. We got to AVL in good time. At this point, I said a fond farewell to the 1995 Honda Civic with no air conditioning (a.k.a the "Meg Barnhouse, Pepper Jobe, Good Karma Car") and hopped into the Dooke Blue Chevrolet Impala with my baby at my side. The Chevy blows. Never buy American Cars! We got the car with absolutely no hassle from the rental car agents, and got on our way to Memphis.
Memphis, TN (05/12/07)
The drive through Tennessee really is pretty nice. The landscape is very much like the foothills of North Carolina for most of the drive down to Memphis. We got to Memphis at about 9PM CDT on Saturday night. This was a relief for us. We had forgotten that we were crossing into the Central timezone. It was nice that we weren't really eating dinner at 10PM. We went to Rendezvous which is down a little alley beside the Holiday Inn Select. This was only slightly bothersome.
The bothersome part was that we had asked the Holiday Inn reservation specialist to book us in something like a Holiday Inn Express or nicer as close to Beale St. as possible. Well, she had booked us in the Holiday Inn Express about 2 miles north of the Holiday Inn Select which was RIGHT BESIDE the restaurant in which we were planning to have dinner. Oh, well. Quick thoughts on Rendezvous: over-rated, but very tasty ribs.
Beale Street was like a noisy, shiny, beer festival except the local females were all wearing really whoriffic clothing. It was a pretty high-energy situation, but neither Sarah nor I really felt inspired, so we called it a night.
Oklahoma City, OK (05/13/07)
We got to sleep in! This was awesome. But, then we hit the road again. There was a slight detour in Parkin, AK to see the Parkin Archeological State Park. It might not seem like a very interesting place when you read the website, but it was actually slightly more interesting to walk around and observe. Basically, it is just a big grassy area where they found a bunch of artifacts from an Indian village. But, since they didn't really have any of those artifacts sitting out in displays, we kind of had to take the word of the little information posts that said, "We found some things indicating that you are now standing at the entrance to the village." There were two great things about this stop. First, I got to walk around outside on a beautiful day with a beautiful girl. Second, we ate at Big Daddy's BBQ, and the food and the music were great. Big Daddy's is definitely one of those kind of cheap looking, but great tasting shed's by the side of the road. I think there were more employees or family members of employees in the place than there were customers. The music was a set of CD's from the 50's and 60's, and I couldn't help but sing along happily as I was eating some great BBQ and flashing smiles at the aforementioned beautiful girl. That is happiness, folks.
We got to Oklahoma City before sundown. I wanna say it was roughly 7:15PM CDT, when we got there. We drove around the City a little bit, and I was really impressed with how clean and well-organized the City was. I got the impression that it wasn't quite organic enough for Sarah's tastes, but I think she was really glad we went anyway. We got to see one of those mailboxes painted like R2-D2. I couldn't help myself, so I posed like C-3P0. The Oklahoma City National Memorial is really well designed. I think we both liked this somber stop a lot. We also asked a passing Security Officer where he would go for a really good steak, and he suggested the Cattleman's Restaurant. I had been dreaming about some Midwestern steak, and I was not disappointed. My Fillet was very good, but Sarah's steak was phenomenal. It was a little more expensive because it was made from some sort of "Extra Prime" grade steak. Something like 2% of beef is given this grade. It is a must. The place really kind of looked like a little bit run down, but, the food was remarkable.
Sunday night, we decided to do some more driving, so that we wouldn't have quite as far to go on Monday before hitting Albuquerque. We ended up staying in Sayre, OK. We stayed in a nice hotel with a whirlpool jacuzzi.
Albuquerque, NM (05/14/07)
Albuquerque was a pretty easy drive, although, we did end up arriving right around rush-hour. We stayed in a very beautiful Bed and Breakfast in Old Town, Albuquerque. The shops in Old Town are very nice and Sarah and I got to stand under the gazebo in the middle of Old Town just like we did in Charleston, SC. Dinner was at a very well-decorated restaurant. If you are every running a restaurant and a customer comments after the meal that your restaurant is "well-decorated" is not actually a complement. It is like saying to an actor after a play, "The lighting was very nice." The food and the service at High Noon were both quite lacking. Other than that though, Old Town Albuquerque was a perfectly lovely stop.
The next morning before we headed out to Grand Canyon, AZ, we took a little walk through the petroglyph national monument. This stop made for a great hike and several nice photo opportunities, but I would suggest that the pictures on the website probably show much better detail than you are going to be able to see out on the hike. We also got lunch and my haircut in Gallup, NM.
Grand Canyon, AZ (05/15/07)
This was certainly THE stop on the trip. We got to the South Rim of "the great big hole in the ground" just before sunset on Tuesday night. Dashing out of the car and running across the parking lot with the exuberant Sarah Lebeck, breaking through the tree-line and out onto Mather's Point is one of those moments I hope to look back on at age 125 and think, "Ah, those were the days." The Grand Canyon really is one of those things you have to see. All of the documentation on the Canyon is great. And the pictures of it are very beautiful. You can probably imagine how large it is. If you have a very vivid imagination, you can probably form a pretty accurate picture of what it might look like from standing on the rim. But, you still really need to do it.
Tehachapi, CA (05/16/07)
We stayed Tuesday night in a lodge in Grand Canyon Village and then woke up at 4:30AM MST, to catch the sunrise. It was pretty awesome getting down to the rim in time to be alone at the particular lookout we chose for the first couple of minutes of the day. We went back to the room and crashed after breakfast. Then, we got up and hiked for about three hours on one of the steeper trails. We were really impressed that neither of us really got terribly winded or exhausted. At our furthest destination into the Canyon, we came across a squirrel who was determined to find out what food we had in the back pack. He was hilarious. Pictures will be added later. I will just say that if you had asked me, "Can a squirrel work a zipper?" two weeks ago, I would have answered differently than I would answer today.
For dinner, we stopped at Delgadillo's Snow Cap in Seligman, AZ on Historic Route 66. We wished that we had been able to see more of Route 66, but it just wasn't in the cards this trip. After dinner, we drove all the way to Tehachapi, CA.
Santa Clara, CA (05/17/07)
The next morning, we slept in very well and had brunch at Kelcy's Restaurant. The waitress has got to be one of the best waitresses doing the job. She very quickly realized that she could poke fun at me and that Sarah and I would have a better brunch for it. She got nearly a 50% tip as a result.
The rest of the day was devoted to getting to the corporate housing in Santa Calara, CA. We were able to get checked in around 4:15PM PDT, and we made it to dinner at an Afghan restaurant on El Camino Real. We thought we would also be able to catch a production of Into The Woods, but we didn't realize in time that the answering machine at the Sunnyvale players administrative offices was a week out of date. So, we walked around a pond with some ducks in it, and looked at a nice oak tree and then I drove Sarah up to Google to see where I was going to be working.
To Be Continued ...
Well, that ought to be enough to whet your whistle for now. I am going to go to bed so that I can be on time to work tomorrow. I figure this is a good stopping point in the story because it gets us from North Carolina to California, and we are now in the mindset of, "Well, that was a nice vacation, now, let's figure out how Silicon Valley really works." The next post will pick up with what Sarah and I did on Friday the 18th of May, and hopefully get you all caught up on the excitement that comes with a new job.
The Trip
Sarah is wonderful. I know this is supposed to be all about the trip, but that was so incredibly secondary to just getting to spend time with Sarah. Okay, no more mushy stuff for like at least another couple of paragraphs. We followed this route, pretty much to a tee.
Gaffney, SC (05/11/07)
Sarah and I got away from Cary a little before 4PM EDT on Friday night and made it to Pam's house in time to have some desert and snacks with my Grandfather, Step-Grandmother, Father, Mother, Step-Mother, 2 Sisters, Brother, Aunt, Uncle, Cousin, 6 dogs, and a cat. It was great to see so much of my family together. We got to tell stories and play cards and generally catch up on lives. This doubled as a Pepper going-away and Stephanie turning 20 party. Much fun was had by all.
Asheville, NC (05/12/07)
Dad, Sarah, and I drove up to Asheville to have lunch and pick up the rental car. We got to AVL in good time. At this point, I said a fond farewell to the 1995 Honda Civic with no air conditioning (a.k.a the "Meg Barnhouse, Pepper Jobe, Good Karma Car") and hopped into the Dooke Blue Chevrolet Impala with my baby at my side. The Chevy blows. Never buy American Cars! We got the car with absolutely no hassle from the rental car agents, and got on our way to Memphis.
Memphis, TN (05/12/07)
The drive through Tennessee really is pretty nice. The landscape is very much like the foothills of North Carolina for most of the drive down to Memphis. We got to Memphis at about 9PM CDT on Saturday night. This was a relief for us. We had forgotten that we were crossing into the Central timezone. It was nice that we weren't really eating dinner at 10PM. We went to Rendezvous which is down a little alley beside the Holiday Inn Select. This was only slightly bothersome.
The bothersome part was that we had asked the Holiday Inn reservation specialist to book us in something like a Holiday Inn Express or nicer as close to Beale St. as possible. Well, she had booked us in the Holiday Inn Express about 2 miles north of the Holiday Inn Select which was RIGHT BESIDE the restaurant in which we were planning to have dinner. Oh, well. Quick thoughts on Rendezvous: over-rated, but very tasty ribs.
Beale Street was like a noisy, shiny, beer festival except the local females were all wearing really whoriffic clothing. It was a pretty high-energy situation, but neither Sarah nor I really felt inspired, so we called it a night.
Oklahoma City, OK (05/13/07)
We got to sleep in! This was awesome. But, then we hit the road again. There was a slight detour in Parkin, AK to see the Parkin Archeological State Park. It might not seem like a very interesting place when you read the website, but it was actually slightly more interesting to walk around and observe. Basically, it is just a big grassy area where they found a bunch of artifacts from an Indian village. But, since they didn't really have any of those artifacts sitting out in displays, we kind of had to take the word of the little information posts that said, "We found some things indicating that you are now standing at the entrance to the village." There were two great things about this stop. First, I got to walk around outside on a beautiful day with a beautiful girl. Second, we ate at Big Daddy's BBQ, and the food and the music were great. Big Daddy's is definitely one of those kind of cheap looking, but great tasting shed's by the side of the road. I think there were more employees or family members of employees in the place than there were customers. The music was a set of CD's from the 50's and 60's, and I couldn't help but sing along happily as I was eating some great BBQ and flashing smiles at the aforementioned beautiful girl. That is happiness, folks.
We got to Oklahoma City before sundown. I wanna say it was roughly 7:15PM CDT, when we got there. We drove around the City a little bit, and I was really impressed with how clean and well-organized the City was. I got the impression that it wasn't quite organic enough for Sarah's tastes, but I think she was really glad we went anyway. We got to see one of those mailboxes painted like R2-D2. I couldn't help myself, so I posed like C-3P0. The Oklahoma City National Memorial is really well designed. I think we both liked this somber stop a lot. We also asked a passing Security Officer where he would go for a really good steak, and he suggested the Cattleman's Restaurant. I had been dreaming about some Midwestern steak, and I was not disappointed. My Fillet was very good, but Sarah's steak was phenomenal. It was a little more expensive because it was made from some sort of "Extra Prime" grade steak. Something like 2% of beef is given this grade. It is a must. The place really kind of looked like a little bit run down, but, the food was remarkable.
Sunday night, we decided to do some more driving, so that we wouldn't have quite as far to go on Monday before hitting Albuquerque. We ended up staying in Sayre, OK. We stayed in a nice hotel with a whirlpool jacuzzi.
Albuquerque, NM (05/14/07)
Albuquerque was a pretty easy drive, although, we did end up arriving right around rush-hour. We stayed in a very beautiful Bed and Breakfast in Old Town, Albuquerque. The shops in Old Town are very nice and Sarah and I got to stand under the gazebo in the middle of Old Town just like we did in Charleston, SC. Dinner was at a very well-decorated restaurant. If you are every running a restaurant and a customer comments after the meal that your restaurant is "well-decorated" is not actually a complement. It is like saying to an actor after a play, "The lighting was very nice." The food and the service at High Noon were both quite lacking. Other than that though, Old Town Albuquerque was a perfectly lovely stop.
The next morning before we headed out to Grand Canyon, AZ, we took a little walk through the petroglyph national monument. This stop made for a great hike and several nice photo opportunities, but I would suggest that the pictures on the website probably show much better detail than you are going to be able to see out on the hike. We also got lunch and my haircut in Gallup, NM.
Grand Canyon, AZ (05/15/07)
This was certainly THE stop on the trip. We got to the South Rim of "the great big hole in the ground" just before sunset on Tuesday night. Dashing out of the car and running across the parking lot with the exuberant Sarah Lebeck, breaking through the tree-line and out onto Mather's Point is one of those moments I hope to look back on at age 125 and think, "Ah, those were the days." The Grand Canyon really is one of those things you have to see. All of the documentation on the Canyon is great. And the pictures of it are very beautiful. You can probably imagine how large it is. If you have a very vivid imagination, you can probably form a pretty accurate picture of what it might look like from standing on the rim. But, you still really need to do it.
Tehachapi, CA (05/16/07)
We stayed Tuesday night in a lodge in Grand Canyon Village and then woke up at 4:30AM MST, to catch the sunrise. It was pretty awesome getting down to the rim in time to be alone at the particular lookout we chose for the first couple of minutes of the day. We went back to the room and crashed after breakfast. Then, we got up and hiked for about three hours on one of the steeper trails. We were really impressed that neither of us really got terribly winded or exhausted. At our furthest destination into the Canyon, we came across a squirrel who was determined to find out what food we had in the back pack. He was hilarious. Pictures will be added later. I will just say that if you had asked me, "Can a squirrel work a zipper?" two weeks ago, I would have answered differently than I would answer today.
For dinner, we stopped at Delgadillo's Snow Cap in Seligman, AZ on Historic Route 66. We wished that we had been able to see more of Route 66, but it just wasn't in the cards this trip. After dinner, we drove all the way to Tehachapi, CA.
Santa Clara, CA (05/17/07)
The next morning, we slept in very well and had brunch at Kelcy's Restaurant. The waitress has got to be one of the best waitresses doing the job. She very quickly realized that she could poke fun at me and that Sarah and I would have a better brunch for it. She got nearly a 50% tip as a result.
The rest of the day was devoted to getting to the corporate housing in Santa Calara, CA. We were able to get checked in around 4:15PM PDT, and we made it to dinner at an Afghan restaurant on El Camino Real. We thought we would also be able to catch a production of Into The Woods, but we didn't realize in time that the answering machine at the Sunnyvale players administrative offices was a week out of date. So, we walked around a pond with some ducks in it, and looked at a nice oak tree and then I drove Sarah up to Google to see where I was going to be working.
To Be Continued ...
Well, that ought to be enough to whet your whistle for now. I am going to go to bed so that I can be on time to work tomorrow. I figure this is a good stopping point in the story because it gets us from North Carolina to California, and we are now in the mindset of, "Well, that was a nice vacation, now, let's figure out how Silicon Valley really works." The next post will pick up with what Sarah and I did on Friday the 18th of May, and hopefully get you all caught up on the excitement that comes with a new job.