I have been meaning to write a counterbalance to my jaded end-of-train-ride post with something that captured the (more positive) sentiment I had earlier in the ride. Overall, it was a nice trip, and I’m glad I did it! I’d do it again even, but preferably with a sleeper car next time. The main train that got […]
For the most part, the coach seats are pretty quiet. People tend to chat in the sightseer’s lounge and the dining car. Otherwise, the coach car is effectively a bedroom just with many beds in it. Mostly people don’t sit next to each other, so there is one person to every pair of seats. Those […]
When I began planning this extended vacation in California, I saw that the Santa Clara Vanguard birthday dinner was last Sunday, so I anchored the end of my trip around that. I spent my last two nights in CA at my Vanguard buddy, Erik’s apartment in San Francisco. Someone said that our actions only make […]
I got let go from my new job two days before Em and I left for a trip to Las Vegas to see her family and then California to see my mom and grandma. We planned the vacation for a week, and Em had to return to work for the next Monday, but I had […]
I’m in southern California for this long weekend – primarily to attend the wedding of an old childhood friend I haven’t seen in several years. This short trip made it somewhat easy to pack light, but it wasn’t entirely without struggle. After a painful travel experience in which Em and I were both separated from […]
Ah, San Luis Obispo, the happiest place in the country, my old college town, and the last leg of our trip to CA. This place holds many memories. It’s where I first developed my enthusiasm for bicycling and where I grew to love the feel of a small, walkable town. It had been about 8 […]
My mom’s garden is immense. Em liked to come out here to sip her tea and bask in the sun in the morning before my mom woke up. There’s the most impressive rosemary bush I’ve ever seen. It’s constantly moving from the swarm of drunken bees rolling around in it. We estimated about 200 bees […]
My grandma doesn’t travel anymore at her impressive age of 96, so it had been a while since we saw her. We planned to meet up with her for lunch in her retirement community’s dining hall. We showed up right when we had planned to, and my mom barged into Grandma’s room. She was well-dressed […]
My mom recommended this place as well – the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway (I hesitate to include the link since their website makes it look more cheesy than it is, but so it goes). It’s an impressive feat of engineering – basically a cable-driven elevator that goes several thousand feet up a mountain to Mount […]
We saw a couple of things in Pasadena that remind me of my sister. Exhibit 1: a Hello Kitty store which was the pinkest store I have seen in recent memory. Exhibit 2: Fish Dish seafood restaurant. I once heard Kira recite the rhyme, “I wish for a fish on a dish.” Score one point […]