Two Days in San Jose
Sep. 13th, 2023 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aTWO DAYS IN SAN JOSE
Two days in San Jose have passed in a blur.
Good meals all around. BLTs. Sausages and pancakes. Egg sandwiches. Shrimp (of course). The tomatoes in salads and on sandwiches are the absolute best, grown here. I can't think of the last time I had tomatoes so tasty.
Yesterday was surprisingly lazy. I've been up at 8am both days (5am Hawaii time!), but between breakfast and hanging out with goats and dogs in the back yard, and then a bit of lunch, it was 1pm before we did anything yesterday. Eventually my mom and I drove out to Mendoza Ranch and then walked up to Coyote Lake. Zeke and Joy were with us, of course, and they got to play in the Lake a bit before we came home, which was great fun for them.
(The Coyote Lake-Harvey Bear Ranch County Park is great with piles of interlinking trails along a rather considerable amount of land on the other side of the hills behind my mom and Bob's house. Hawaii parks don't tend to have the same density of trails, but I think that's because they're so quickly overgrown. It's wonderful to see them here.)
Today was our big planned outing. We went down to Monterey, picking up my brother Jason on the way. We had two ebikes for the four of us, so we rented two more down there. We did about a twenty mile ride.
I haven't been to Monterey in decades, so that was a treat. I'd never realized quite how close my folks' San Martin house was to it. We started out in Cannery Row, and passed by the Aquarium, so we enjoyed a bit of the Monterey ambiance. I'd definitely like to return on some other trip. But from there we were increasingly biking along the shoreline, and then along 17 Mile Drive (which was largely along the shoreline too).
It's so different from Hawaii shoreline. I mean, kind of cool and misting the whole time to start. But also huge rocky outcroppings everywhere and huge sand dunes. And seals and sea lions and a lot more shore birds. (Bird Rock was smelly. We didn't stop by Seal Rock.)
It was a great ride, and the ebikes definitely made it better. I iterated between no peddle assist and level 1 on the way out, but then between level 1 and 3 on the way back. I definitely wanted to take it easy with a flight tomorrow (but nonetheless kept my heart rate up in fat burning the whole time, I just never touched cardio).
One bit of home: occasionally there was what looked like a local walking in the bike lane even when there were seaside paths just a few feet over. Just a couple, but their looks of passive-aggressive belligerence reminded me of local attitudes toward tourists the world over.
Afterward we had lunch at a little chowder house off the main thoroughfare, and so slightly less touristy. I had a tasty shrimp salad sandwich. Definitely nice!
And that was it for today's event.
We've also played some games while I was out here. Just like last year I brought games for play here, and then will haul them all the way to Europe and back. Cascadia was the main event this time. We played twice. Yesterday my mom won with a really good score of 100, but today I topped that with a game winning 102 today. I've got Cascadia on my list of games to bring back this Christmas, along with Azul and Tichu.
Things have been going less well at home. Kimberly had some problems pilling Lucy yesterday night and this morning: Lucy was so belligerent that Kimberly could have been a tourist! And Lucy has really dropped off in eating her wet food. However, she looks like she might be eating more dry food. Overall, it doesn't sound good to me, but the hope is that she's just had enough of the wet food and is now eating dry food to fill her stomach. We'll see how she does on her weigh-in on Friday. I think we're all expecting to see weight loss, but hoping it's not a *gross* weight loss.
Tomorrow I'll head off to SFO in the late morning, and then it's an 11-hour flight to Germany (after which I need to figure out the train system, continue on to Cologne, and then likely wait until my AirBnB is available later in the day).
Two days in San Jose have passed in a blur.
Good meals all around. BLTs. Sausages and pancakes. Egg sandwiches. Shrimp (of course). The tomatoes in salads and on sandwiches are the absolute best, grown here. I can't think of the last time I had tomatoes so tasty.
Yesterday was surprisingly lazy. I've been up at 8am both days (5am Hawaii time!), but between breakfast and hanging out with goats and dogs in the back yard, and then a bit of lunch, it was 1pm before we did anything yesterday. Eventually my mom and I drove out to Mendoza Ranch and then walked up to Coyote Lake. Zeke and Joy were with us, of course, and they got to play in the Lake a bit before we came home, which was great fun for them.
(The Coyote Lake-Harvey Bear Ranch County Park is great with piles of interlinking trails along a rather considerable amount of land on the other side of the hills behind my mom and Bob's house. Hawaii parks don't tend to have the same density of trails, but I think that's because they're so quickly overgrown. It's wonderful to see them here.)
Today was our big planned outing. We went down to Monterey, picking up my brother Jason on the way. We had two ebikes for the four of us, so we rented two more down there. We did about a twenty mile ride.
I haven't been to Monterey in decades, so that was a treat. I'd never realized quite how close my folks' San Martin house was to it. We started out in Cannery Row, and passed by the Aquarium, so we enjoyed a bit of the Monterey ambiance. I'd definitely like to return on some other trip. But from there we were increasingly biking along the shoreline, and then along 17 Mile Drive (which was largely along the shoreline too).
It's so different from Hawaii shoreline. I mean, kind of cool and misting the whole time to start. But also huge rocky outcroppings everywhere and huge sand dunes. And seals and sea lions and a lot more shore birds. (Bird Rock was smelly. We didn't stop by Seal Rock.)
It was a great ride, and the ebikes definitely made it better. I iterated between no peddle assist and level 1 on the way out, but then between level 1 and 3 on the way back. I definitely wanted to take it easy with a flight tomorrow (but nonetheless kept my heart rate up in fat burning the whole time, I just never touched cardio).
One bit of home: occasionally there was what looked like a local walking in the bike lane even when there were seaside paths just a few feet over. Just a couple, but their looks of passive-aggressive belligerence reminded me of local attitudes toward tourists the world over.
Afterward we had lunch at a little chowder house off the main thoroughfare, and so slightly less touristy. I had a tasty shrimp salad sandwich. Definitely nice!
And that was it for today's event.
We've also played some games while I was out here. Just like last year I brought games for play here, and then will haul them all the way to Europe and back. Cascadia was the main event this time. We played twice. Yesterday my mom won with a really good score of 100, but today I topped that with a game winning 102 today. I've got Cascadia on my list of games to bring back this Christmas, along with Azul and Tichu.
Things have been going less well at home. Kimberly had some problems pilling Lucy yesterday night and this morning: Lucy was so belligerent that Kimberly could have been a tourist! And Lucy has really dropped off in eating her wet food. However, she looks like she might be eating more dry food. Overall, it doesn't sound good to me, but the hope is that she's just had enough of the wet food and is now eating dry food to fill her stomach. We'll see how she does on her weigh-in on Friday. I think we're all expecting to see weight loss, but hoping it's not a *gross* weight loss.
Tomorrow I'll head off to SFO in the late morning, and then it's an 11-hour flight to Germany (after which I need to figure out the train system, continue on to Cologne, and then likely wait until my AirBnB is available later in the day).