These photos don’t really need much explanation. The view from the Marin headlands is .. great.
(To get here, go north over the bridge, take the first exist past the tourist parking thing, and make a left at the bottom of the ramp to go under the highway — go all the way up)
It’s been almost four months since I’ve been in a place where I could fall out my door and have hundreds of destinations in walking distance. Makes me miss new york a little bit.
Consulting the various beer resources I’ve used over the years, I found recommendations for what appeared to be the top beer snob destinations in SF. That list included Zeitgeist, Monk’s Kettle, 21st Amendment, Magnolia Pub, and some other places that I obviously didn’t go to. In fact, given that it was raining AGAIN, we only made it to the first two places on the list. Plus a wine bar called Cav for dinner.
I forgot to take pictures of Cav and Zeitgeist, and also the historic streetcar (which was incredibly cool, they run a number of different international, historic streetcars on many of the train lines). Cav was like a new york style wine bar with great wine and food (made me nostalgic for NY again); Zeitgeist was like a biker bar with bicycles instead of harleys and hipsters instead of hells angels. Zeitgeist had a fantastic beer selection — I had a few beers from Oregon that I’d never had before, making me very excited about my stint in Eugene and Portland coming up next week.
After all that was Monk’s Kettle, which is my new favorite place in norcal. Amazing beer selection, great atmosphere, etc. A bit crowded, but whatever. All of the pictures below are from there.
Magic and I spent the weekend in San Francisco. Figured in two months in the bay area, I should probably spend a little more time getting to know the city. It’s tough being well over an hour away, though, especially with the dog — so I found a pet friendly hotel (Hotel Monaco near Union Sq) and made a weekend of it.
It was interesting being back in a city — city dog was certainly back in his element for awhile and settled right back into the sidewalks and busy streets. I never quite understood the vibe of SF. Lots of people raved about it, but I never quite got it. I’m still not sure I get it, but it was definitely fun, and I need to check out more.
This first group of photos is mostly the area around Union Square, riding a cable car down to the Fisherman’s Wharf.
Hard to believe that the end of my Bay Area stint is already in sight. In two weeks I head north, stopping by TransferFlow in Chico, CA to have a larger fuel tank installed on the truck (the 300mi range is a disgrace), then to Eugene, OR for some minor airstream repairs, then to Portland to see a friend who I haven’t seen in 20 years, and finally Seattle for a few weeks.
It occurred to me today while I was driving that I’ve become totally used to driving the truck around with no load — going to be interesting hooking up again and having to pay attention to wide turns..
Going to do some touring in SF this weekend; hopefully more photos coming soon.
This is my backyard in Saratoga Springs. After a recent rainstorm, the northern creek somehow turned to chocolate milk. If I ever get a reasonable weekend, I’ll take some more photos of the area– it’s pretty amazing. I’ve always been a big fan of woods on the east coast, but the forests out here definitely give them a run for their money.
Down the road from Saratoga Springs are a number of redwood parks — Big Basin among them. Most of them aren’t dog friendly, but I pulled a list from bahiker.com of the few that are — luckily, one of them has a trailhead only 100 yards from here. Hopefully blackdog and I can wander around there this weekend.
I didn’t expect water issues to be the bane of my existence on this trip, but it’s definitely shaping up that way. The rains have started again, but with them brought a dead hot water heater.
I’ve spent most of the day with a bottle of contact cleaner, a voltmeter, and my leatherman, but no dice. The only culprit I can think of at this point is a bad circuit board, which seems unlikely, but I guess anything is possible.
Will be showering at work for a little while I guess..
- The F90BT nav is not intuitive. Garmin interface is way better.
- Diesel Kleen’s antigel additive seems to make quite a difference in cold weather starting, even though the for manual says it doesn’t need it
- The F90BT’s bluetooth adaptoid seems to work well, although the fact that you can’t adjust the volume with the volume knob is completely asinine. (it has to be adjusted with on-screen controls that are just too small)
I bought the HD Radio adapter for my F90BT, and it’s.. not very good.
If you install one of these, buy an antenna splitter and use BOTH antenna inputs. The HD radio unit has a terrible, terrible analog tuner.
Also, from what I can tell, the thing has a Seek but not Scan function, which is almost a dealbreaker. I love listening to the radio on Scan, but this is going to cause me to simulate Scan by constantly hitting Seek, which is annoying considering how far away the radio is from the driver’s seat.
