Embracing nor-cal
This past weekend, #1 and I set out to explore out new homeland; Nor-Cal. Saturday we took the jaunt of to San Fran to hang out with some of our Yalie friends. Geoff and Morgan were gracious and played culinary guides for us. We started out at a hole in the wall Indian food place, that was great, then found a coffee shop to chill in, but the true highlight was Bob’s… a doughnut shop. Apparently Geoff eats doughnuts often… We then caught the bus back to the hotel and thankfully caught the tail end of warm cookie and milk hour.
Sunday we started off with a healthy breakfast of crepes (yes, we do eat a lot) and then headed off to Golden Gate Park for a cross race. GGP is huge and is similar to Central Park and was packed with people on what the warmest day I have experienced in SF. The course layout was true west coast style, with narrow single track sections, a mt. bike feel, and lots of beer/ cash hand outs on the run up. Note to my east coast homies - there are some legit racers in the bay area and it would be sweet to see some UCI races held there to give the area cross scene some more exposure.
On Tuesday we went polar opposite from our visit to SF; we went redneck style and celebrated our manhood by chopping a tree down. Cass comes from a long line of loggers, while my family prefers to pillage the black gold from the earth. So we both have family ties to borrowing resources from mother nature, but it was our first experience felling a tree together… let me tell you, nothing strengthens a relationship like yelling timber at the top of your lungs in harmony and feeling the earth shake under foot as a 6′ white fir hits the deck.
Click on the picture of Cass (her glasses are courtesy of the boys at Smith Optics) with the saw to see highlights of our Christmas tree expedition.
There USED to be UCI races in SF and NorCal. A whole West Coast circuit if you included Portland and Seattle. But they decided it was better to make money off the races than keep them UCI. Hard to blame them, but who makes money putting on races anyway?