(no subject)
This weekend, an
old friend got married. My family has known the A family since I was about 6 months old. Karin and Krista are my oldest friends, and were almost like family growing up. Our families have been having Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas dinners together forever. There are four of us "kids" (including my brother Keith), and Karin is the first of us to get married (we range in age from 32 to 36, and she's the oldest). So, yeah, this last weekend she
got married. All my family
took separate little trips up to
Arcata, CA
for the wedding. My folks left LA on Tuesday, Cj and I left on Wednesday, and Keith and his girlfriend Nancy left on Thursday.
Wednesday - I left work around noon, and Cj and I finally got out of the house around 2pm. We drove straight through to Nipomo, where we spent the night with aunt Demi and uncle Steve, the "hippie parents", as Cj calls them. In the 60's, they found drugs, then they found each other, then they found God and got cleaned up. Since then, they've mellowed into mostly normal, laid back folks. Steve is a serious surfer, bordering on guru, as he's taught quite a few other folks in that area to surf. Their house is a weird mix of 70's decore and inherited grandmother nic-nacs, which strangely work well together and make for a very nice, comfortable place. They are among my favorite relatives. Anyway, we got in around 5:30, and after a little visiting, went for Italian food at Rosa's. Cj and I split a great chiopino (seafood soup with lots of pieces from lots of tasty marine life) and (as we did for all people who put us up on this trip) we paid for dinner. After dinner, we drove around Pismo Beach and saw the pier, and then looked down from a cliff to see Steve's favorite surfing spot via moonlight.
Thursday - We slept in till 8, and then Demi & Steve took us to breakfast at The Mayor's Place. Since we didn't have too far to go this day, we didn't leave Nipomo until after noon. After breakfast, we hung out and visited for awhile, and then Steve took Cj for a ride on his new motorcycle. Cj really wants a motorcycle, and became very excited, and insisted that Steve give me a ride as well. So I went for, as best I can recall, my first ride ever on a motorcycle. Quite fun, but just not my thing.
Anyway, we said "goodbye", and headed north. We stopped in San Luis Obispo to visit Captain Nemo's Comics and Cheap Thrills Records (two old shops that have moved numerous times and followed eachother around the downtown area and have finally merged into one shop; next time you're in SLO, check it out!), then got some ice cream for lunch and moved on. We arrived in Mountain View around 5:30, and found Ian & Missy's house (Ian was my senior suite-mate at Mudd). They've just bought a new house, and are expecting their first kid at the end of the month. We had Chinese food, followed by a gelato hot fudge sundae, in downtown Mountain View. Afterwards, we went back to their place to watch The Daily Show and South Park, and I helped Ian properly 3-edge-color his origami dodecahedron.
Friday - We got up at 5:30 and got out by 6:15 so that we could make it to Aunt Adele's in time for breakfast (Adele is my father's twin sister). But we did stop in downtown SF to pay a brief visit to the sea lions on Fisherman's Wharf. We got to Healdsburg around 9:30am, and found my brother and his girlfriend at my aunt's house, where they'd spent Thursday night on their way up. She took us all out to breakfast, and afterwards, we stopped by her bookstore. We also went to my cousin Aaron's house, and I gave his son Emile a few more Magic cards I'd found lying around (he got most of my collection a few months ago after I found out he and Aaron were really into it). After a little more visiting, we said goodbyes and continued north. We stopped at the Real Goods Solar Living Institute off Hwy 101, a sort of model for sustainable living and farming. The rest of the drive to Arcata was mostly uneventful, although very pretty, as Hwy 101 south of Eureka goes through the Humboldt Redwoods State Park. We got to Arcata a little before 5, and went into town to find some food. We ended up with a sandwich from The Hole in the Wall, and took it back to the motel room to eat. After a brief nap, we went over to Karin's house for a "everybody important gets to meet eachother" reception thingie the night before the wedding. It was pretty unremarkable, though I did get to catch up with an old aquaintance I hadn't seen since high school. Afterwards, we just went back to the motel and crashed.
Arcata - As an aside for those who've never been to Arcata.... Arcata is a tiny town in northern California full of old hippies and drop-outs. There seems, in my estimation, something more pure about these hippies than the ones in Santa Cruz or Berkeley, as they've totally escaped, and are living out in the middle of nowhere amongst the trees (no offense intended to their urban hippy counterparts). There are lots of drifters and homeless folks, and lots of artists, and bookstores, and piercings, and healthfood, and all the usual "tree-huggin' hippie crap"... I love it there. There's a town square with several bars, new age shops, galleries, and bookstores around it, and if you walk the perimeter of it, you will most likely smell pot in the air somewhere. On Friday evening, there was (I assume) some sort of performance art going on in the square. About half a dozen middle-aged women, dressed mostly in black, were just standing along the sides of the walk and all staring motionless out towards the southeast. We never found out why. Karin is not a hardcore hippie, but her work for the forest service as an archeologist has landed her in Arcata, and she seems happy and at home there. For some local Arcata color, check this out (and be sure to follow the "lost" and "found" links on the page).
Saturday - I got up at 7am, since I'd been given the task of making the parking and "here we are" signs to post around the wedding site, and I needed to finish those up. This is what happens when you're the "artist" in the family, and, being the "artist", I wasted too much time making the stupid things look pretty. Anyway, we headed over to the wedding site (a privately owned park in the woods that seemed to be used for such gatherings... it had a baseball diamond and picnic tables and a little hut for cooking and such... it stood among some redwoods and near a stream, and was the prettiest site of all the weddings I have been to). Cj and I were put to work putting up my signs on the road to turn in to the park, and also to point towards parking. While the wedding party went home to change, Cj and I just hung out at the park. When guests started arriving, I was left directing parking so that everyone had plenty of room and could still get out. (I did a great job, if I may say so, and several people suggested that I may have a bring future as a parking attendant.)
The wedding was at noon, and for reasons that none of us ever quite understood, Karin had asked my father to officiate the cerimony. He's not minister or anything... just a lawyer who got a temporary hitchin' license for the occasion. I mean, he did a great job, and Karin has known him all her life, and we're just about their closest family friends and all, and since they're not particularly religious there was no need to get a real minister... we just never figured out why, exactly, they chose him. But, as I said, he did a great job. The ceremony was simple, completely symmetric and gender neutral (all vows were joint and followed by "we do"), and utterly devoid of any mention of God or similar higher powers (although I think my dad may have gone off-script when he concluded with "Karin, you may kiss your husband" :-). There were no tossings of boquets or garters, and the whole thing had a very earthly, simple, non-traditional feel to it.
After the ceremony, there were smoked oysters aplenty, and lots of chatting and milling around typical of such affairs. Music was provided by the Compost Mountain Boys, and BBQ and oysters were catered by Smokin' Moses. Instead of wedding gifts, Karin & Steve asked only that local guests bring food to the potluck that followed. As a result, there were way too many yummy dishes to choose from... every time I'd pass up one tasty-looking thing to save room on my plate, I'd spot two more that I just had to try. As a result, my plate ended up being way too full. The dishes were mostly vegetarian, but I must admit that the elk meatballs were the tastiest. And there were 5 or 6 cakes, each a different flavor! The bride's father's "toast" was more of an introduction of most of the people in attendance, with some attempts at humor and personal notes thrown in, and it was llooooooonnnnnnggggg. Most of the bride's family seemed rather embarrassed by the whole thing, thought most of the other guests didn't seem to mind (although were perhaps simply being polite). In any case, the other toasts were mercifully brief. And that's about all I can remember that seems worth writing down.
Cj and I left the wedding around 4:30, and went to wander around the town square in Arcata. We looked at furniture, books, beads, crafts, new age-y stuff, and various other local things. After a nap back at the motel, we joined my folks and Keith and Nancy for dinner at the Moonstone Grill in Trinidad (about 10 miles north, where my folks were staying). It was a vary nice seafood place overlooking the ocean, but not having fully recovered from the wedding feast, I just had a seafood chowder. The evening's entertainment consisted of watching two SUVs enjoy the ocean. Or not. It seems that cars are allowed on beach down below the restaurant, and some folks took their SUVs down by the shoreline. Well, the tide was coming in, and by the time it occurred to someone to move the vehicles, it was too late... I guess the sand under the tires had gotten too wet and slick. At least, that's what we assumed was going on... it was a little ways down the beach, and we never got any first-hand reports from the scene. Anyway, we watched for over an hour as the water level rose higher and higher around these two vehicles, and had almost covered their hoods as the last light of evening faded, and we were leaving. Our waiter said that this happened every now and then on this beach. We couldn't decide if the whole scene was sad or funny. Since they were SUVs, which are big and stupid, I'm going with funny.
Sunday - We got up early and were out of our motel by 7am. We had planned on having breakfast at the Samoa Cookhouse. This is a real old lumber camp cookhouse, and there is no menu... you sit down on a bench next to strangers and are served whatever they're cooking that day. Unfortunately, Sunday morning's breakfast was french toast, and Cj doesn't like french toast, so she just bought her folks a nicnac from the gift shop, and we headed down the coast. This time, we actually got off and drove along the Avenue of the Giants (which runs parallel to Hwy 101). This gives more of a forest-floor-level view of the redwoods, and we made several sight-seeing stops along the way, including at a visitor's center where we saw the Travel Log.
At Leggett, we took Hwy 1 where it splits off the 101 and followed it's slow, winding path over to the ocean. We stopped in Fort Bragg to go to Glass Beach. Not only did we collect a few pieces of beachglass, but we also enjoyed the wild blackberries that were growing all along the trail down to the beach. After this, it was about lunch time, so we drove down into Mendocino, a cute victorian town on one of the most beautiful stretches of the california coast. I've really enjoyed the area in the past, and even though the town is a little too cute, I like the scenery and the galleries, and the funky architechture. But this may be because I've never had to find and pay for a meal there. We wandered around for over half an hour (and saw most of the town in the process, as it's pretty small), and checked out half a dozen restaurants, all of which were overpriced and silly. We couldn't find anything like a local dive or a coffee shop or a sandwich shop. So we settled for the mediocre $8 burgers. At least the view was nice. We did some more sight-seeing after lunch, but were still kinda put off by the failed search for interesting food, so we didn't stay too long.
From Mendocino, we took Hwy 128 back to the 101, crossed the Golden Gate, and then took the 1 through the city and down through Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz, where we spent the night with Alicia, a friend of Cj's from High School. I wasn't feeling real hot after the long drive, so Cj and Alicia went out for dinner and I took a nap. After they got back, though, we all went to Chocolat, a cafe downtown specializing in chocolate and Bush-bashing. I had myself another gelato hot fudge sundae (BTW, these are probably the only two gelato hot fudge sundaes I've had in my life). (Conveniently, Alicia's place is a 5 minute walk from downtown.)
Monday - We had breakfast with Alicia at a cafe in downtown Santa Cruz, and then wandered around downtown after she went to work. The best part of this was, of course, the Atlantis Fantasy World comic book store. We spent a bunch of time in there, and I picked up Birth of a Nation by Aaron Mcgruder and Kyle Baker. I may even read it someday! After we were done in downtown, we packed up and left. And drove more or less straight home, with only one real stop (dinner in Santa Barbara).
And that's it. And that may be my last post for awhile, as I can't see anything else post-worthy on my horizon.
Wednesday - I left work around noon, and Cj and I finally got out of the house around 2pm. We drove straight through to Nipomo, where we spent the night with aunt Demi and uncle Steve, the "hippie parents", as Cj calls them. In the 60's, they found drugs, then they found each other, then they found God and got cleaned up. Since then, they've mellowed into mostly normal, laid back folks. Steve is a serious surfer, bordering on guru, as he's taught quite a few other folks in that area to surf. Their house is a weird mix of 70's decore and inherited grandmother nic-nacs, which strangely work well together and make for a very nice, comfortable place. They are among my favorite relatives. Anyway, we got in around 5:30, and after a little visiting, went for Italian food at Rosa's. Cj and I split a great chiopino (seafood soup with lots of pieces from lots of tasty marine life) and (as we did for all people who put us up on this trip) we paid for dinner. After dinner, we drove around Pismo Beach and saw the pier, and then looked down from a cliff to see Steve's favorite surfing spot via moonlight.
Thursday - We slept in till 8, and then Demi & Steve took us to breakfast at The Mayor's Place. Since we didn't have too far to go this day, we didn't leave Nipomo until after noon. After breakfast, we hung out and visited for awhile, and then Steve took Cj for a ride on his new motorcycle. Cj really wants a motorcycle, and became very excited, and insisted that Steve give me a ride as well. So I went for, as best I can recall, my first ride ever on a motorcycle. Quite fun, but just not my thing.
Anyway, we said "goodbye", and headed north. We stopped in San Luis Obispo to visit Captain Nemo's Comics and Cheap Thrills Records (two old shops that have moved numerous times and followed eachother around the downtown area and have finally merged into one shop; next time you're in SLO, check it out!), then got some ice cream for lunch and moved on. We arrived in Mountain View around 5:30, and found Ian & Missy's house (Ian was my senior suite-mate at Mudd). They've just bought a new house, and are expecting their first kid at the end of the month. We had Chinese food, followed by a gelato hot fudge sundae, in downtown Mountain View. Afterwards, we went back to their place to watch The Daily Show and South Park, and I helped Ian properly 3-edge-color his origami dodecahedron.
Friday - We got up at 5:30 and got out by 6:15 so that we could make it to Aunt Adele's in time for breakfast (Adele is my father's twin sister). But we did stop in downtown SF to pay a brief visit to the sea lions on Fisherman's Wharf. We got to Healdsburg around 9:30am, and found my brother and his girlfriend at my aunt's house, where they'd spent Thursday night on their way up. She took us all out to breakfast, and afterwards, we stopped by her bookstore. We also went to my cousin Aaron's house, and I gave his son Emile a few more Magic cards I'd found lying around (he got most of my collection a few months ago after I found out he and Aaron were really into it). After a little more visiting, we said goodbyes and continued north. We stopped at the Real Goods Solar Living Institute off Hwy 101, a sort of model for sustainable living and farming. The rest of the drive to Arcata was mostly uneventful, although very pretty, as Hwy 101 south of Eureka goes through the Humboldt Redwoods State Park. We got to Arcata a little before 5, and went into town to find some food. We ended up with a sandwich from The Hole in the Wall, and took it back to the motel room to eat. After a brief nap, we went over to Karin's house for a "everybody important gets to meet eachother" reception thingie the night before the wedding. It was pretty unremarkable, though I did get to catch up with an old aquaintance I hadn't seen since high school. Afterwards, we just went back to the motel and crashed.
Arcata - As an aside for those who've never been to Arcata.... Arcata is a tiny town in northern California full of old hippies and drop-outs. There seems, in my estimation, something more pure about these hippies than the ones in Santa Cruz or Berkeley, as they've totally escaped, and are living out in the middle of nowhere amongst the trees (no offense intended to their urban hippy counterparts). There are lots of drifters and homeless folks, and lots of artists, and bookstores, and piercings, and healthfood, and all the usual "tree-huggin' hippie crap"... I love it there. There's a town square with several bars, new age shops, galleries, and bookstores around it, and if you walk the perimeter of it, you will most likely smell pot in the air somewhere. On Friday evening, there was (I assume) some sort of performance art going on in the square. About half a dozen middle-aged women, dressed mostly in black, were just standing along the sides of the walk and all staring motionless out towards the southeast. We never found out why. Karin is not a hardcore hippie, but her work for the forest service as an archeologist has landed her in Arcata, and she seems happy and at home there. For some local Arcata color, check this out (and be sure to follow the "lost" and "found" links on the page).
Saturday - I got up at 7am, since I'd been given the task of making the parking and "here we are" signs to post around the wedding site, and I needed to finish those up. This is what happens when you're the "artist" in the family, and, being the "artist", I wasted too much time making the stupid things look pretty. Anyway, we headed over to the wedding site (a privately owned park in the woods that seemed to be used for such gatherings... it had a baseball diamond and picnic tables and a little hut for cooking and such... it stood among some redwoods and near a stream, and was the prettiest site of all the weddings I have been to). Cj and I were put to work putting up my signs on the road to turn in to the park, and also to point towards parking. While the wedding party went home to change, Cj and I just hung out at the park. When guests started arriving, I was left directing parking so that everyone had plenty of room and could still get out. (I did a great job, if I may say so, and several people suggested that I may have a bring future as a parking attendant.)
The wedding was at noon, and for reasons that none of us ever quite understood, Karin had asked my father to officiate the cerimony. He's not minister or anything... just a lawyer who got a temporary hitchin' license for the occasion. I mean, he did a great job, and Karin has known him all her life, and we're just about their closest family friends and all, and since they're not particularly religious there was no need to get a real minister... we just never figured out why, exactly, they chose him. But, as I said, he did a great job. The ceremony was simple, completely symmetric and gender neutral (all vows were joint and followed by "we do"), and utterly devoid of any mention of God or similar higher powers (although I think my dad may have gone off-script when he concluded with "Karin, you may kiss your husband" :-). There were no tossings of boquets or garters, and the whole thing had a very earthly, simple, non-traditional feel to it.
After the ceremony, there were smoked oysters aplenty, and lots of chatting and milling around typical of such affairs. Music was provided by the Compost Mountain Boys, and BBQ and oysters were catered by Smokin' Moses. Instead of wedding gifts, Karin & Steve asked only that local guests bring food to the potluck that followed. As a result, there were way too many yummy dishes to choose from... every time I'd pass up one tasty-looking thing to save room on my plate, I'd spot two more that I just had to try. As a result, my plate ended up being way too full. The dishes were mostly vegetarian, but I must admit that the elk meatballs were the tastiest. And there were 5 or 6 cakes, each a different flavor! The bride's father's "toast" was more of an introduction of most of the people in attendance, with some attempts at humor and personal notes thrown in, and it was llooooooonnnnnnggggg. Most of the bride's family seemed rather embarrassed by the whole thing, thought most of the other guests didn't seem to mind (although were perhaps simply being polite). In any case, the other toasts were mercifully brief. And that's about all I can remember that seems worth writing down.
Cj and I left the wedding around 4:30, and went to wander around the town square in Arcata. We looked at furniture, books, beads, crafts, new age-y stuff, and various other local things. After a nap back at the motel, we joined my folks and Keith and Nancy for dinner at the Moonstone Grill in Trinidad (about 10 miles north, where my folks were staying). It was a vary nice seafood place overlooking the ocean, but not having fully recovered from the wedding feast, I just had a seafood chowder. The evening's entertainment consisted of watching two SUVs enjoy the ocean. Or not. It seems that cars are allowed on beach down below the restaurant, and some folks took their SUVs down by the shoreline. Well, the tide was coming in, and by the time it occurred to someone to move the vehicles, it was too late... I guess the sand under the tires had gotten too wet and slick. At least, that's what we assumed was going on... it was a little ways down the beach, and we never got any first-hand reports from the scene. Anyway, we watched for over an hour as the water level rose higher and higher around these two vehicles, and had almost covered their hoods as the last light of evening faded, and we were leaving. Our waiter said that this happened every now and then on this beach. We couldn't decide if the whole scene was sad or funny. Since they were SUVs, which are big and stupid, I'm going with funny.
Sunday - We got up early and were out of our motel by 7am. We had planned on having breakfast at the Samoa Cookhouse. This is a real old lumber camp cookhouse, and there is no menu... you sit down on a bench next to strangers and are served whatever they're cooking that day. Unfortunately, Sunday morning's breakfast was french toast, and Cj doesn't like french toast, so she just bought her folks a nicnac from the gift shop, and we headed down the coast. This time, we actually got off and drove along the Avenue of the Giants (which runs parallel to Hwy 101). This gives more of a forest-floor-level view of the redwoods, and we made several sight-seeing stops along the way, including at a visitor's center where we saw the Travel Log.
At Leggett, we took Hwy 1 where it splits off the 101 and followed it's slow, winding path over to the ocean. We stopped in Fort Bragg to go to Glass Beach. Not only did we collect a few pieces of beachglass, but we also enjoyed the wild blackberries that were growing all along the trail down to the beach. After this, it was about lunch time, so we drove down into Mendocino, a cute victorian town on one of the most beautiful stretches of the california coast. I've really enjoyed the area in the past, and even though the town is a little too cute, I like the scenery and the galleries, and the funky architechture. But this may be because I've never had to find and pay for a meal there. We wandered around for over half an hour (and saw most of the town in the process, as it's pretty small), and checked out half a dozen restaurants, all of which were overpriced and silly. We couldn't find anything like a local dive or a coffee shop or a sandwich shop. So we settled for the mediocre $8 burgers. At least the view was nice. We did some more sight-seeing after lunch, but were still kinda put off by the failed search for interesting food, so we didn't stay too long.
From Mendocino, we took Hwy 128 back to the 101, crossed the Golden Gate, and then took the 1 through the city and down through Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz, where we spent the night with Alicia, a friend of Cj's from High School. I wasn't feeling real hot after the long drive, so Cj and Alicia went out for dinner and I took a nap. After they got back, though, we all went to Chocolat, a cafe downtown specializing in chocolate and Bush-bashing. I had myself another gelato hot fudge sundae (BTW, these are probably the only two gelato hot fudge sundaes I've had in my life). (Conveniently, Alicia's place is a 5 minute walk from downtown.)
Monday - We had breakfast with Alicia at a cafe in downtown Santa Cruz, and then wandered around downtown after she went to work. The best part of this was, of course, the Atlantis Fantasy World comic book store. We spent a bunch of time in there, and I picked up Birth of a Nation by Aaron Mcgruder and Kyle Baker. I may even read it someday! After we were done in downtown, we packed up and left. And drove more or less straight home, with only one real stop (dinner in Santa Barbara).
And that's it. And that may be my last post for awhile, as I can't see anything else post-worthy on my horizon.