AAToC

Not to be confused with the Amgen Tour of California—which just today rode from San Francisco to Santa Cruz—the A (me) and A (boyfriend) Tour of California took place this past weekend, and took us from San Francisco to Santa Cruz... and back!¹

So early Saturday morning, A and I packed a few clothes and tools, an extra tire, and two extra tubes into our panniers, grabbed our fancy phones and wallets, donned our spandex, merino, and other fancy technical fabrics, and set out on our first tour on our two-weeks-old (to us! it's an '89 Santana) tandem bike. As we don't have a drag brake yet, we packed light and did a credit card tour, meaning we ate out and slept at a B&B instead of packing camping equipment and food.

Braving unseasonably chilly air, lack of sleep, and a mild hangover from a fancy dinner and show the night before, our intrepid travelers had eggs and coffee and hopped on the BART, as there's no other way to get a bike across the bay. From there, they used their fancy phone to rethink their route, as the BART map showed that the Colma stop clearly let off way closer to the coast than the South San Francisco stop they'd planned to go to.

So, at Daly City, we exited the train, only to realize as the doors closed that we'd left one stop too early. Oh well, this was close enough. We started out on John Daly Boulevard² and rode up to Skyline Drive, then to Skyline Blvd (the smaller residential road paralleling Skyline Drive until it veers off down a hill toward the ocean). We made the usual snarky comments about the houses all looking the same. The scene was made even more surreal by the crazy fog. Hello, San Francisco suburbs.

After some more riding through random residentia, we arrived back on Rte 1.³ On our way back down the first big hill, the rear of the bike started feeling a bit wobbly. We pulled into a turnout and discovered that the rear tire had pretty much disintegrated, probably due to not having been changed since 1989. There are some great pictures of this, all on A's computer. So I took some pictures while A changed the tire, and we were off again toward the (hopefully) sunny beaches of Santa Cruz.

It was a bit of a slog. We still felt less than awesome from the previous night's wine, and the fog had yet to lift. At least getting back down to about sea level, the fog became clouds and no longer interfered with our view of the road 30 feet ahead of us, but it just wasn't quite the California Coastal ride we'd imagined. We stopped and had Clif bars. We stopped and had some more Clif bars. We realized we wouldn't make it to Santa Cruz in time for lunch. We had some more Clif bars, figured we'd have to make it to Davenport before we found any lunch places anyway, and continued.

And then, the sun came out! All was not lost. We redoubled our efforts, thus doubling our speed, and figured we'd be in Santa Cruz in no time. But we also figured we had time to stop at the barn advertising pies and coffee. How could we not? And once we were full of not only Clif bar but strawberry and rhubarb pastries and fresh coffee, and our way was full of sunlight and blue sky, we decided that we could make it to Santa Cruz before the next meal.

We pulled into Santa Cruz around 2. After a nostalgic tour of A's college memories, we stopped at a bar/coffee shop for a beer. As students studied all around us, we chatted with a dude passing by who at 65 had taken up the piano, and now, at 85, was wandering around listening to recordings of his music. I'd never have guessed before he told us. And who knows, maybe it was all made up.

After the well-earned beer, we headed over to the boardwalk to do something A had never done as a college student: ride the roller coaster! America's 6th-oldest coaster, at 85 years, it was as smooth as rides one-tenth its age (and smoother than that one at Six Flags New England, that if it's called the Mind Eraser like I think I remember it, must be so named for its jiggling-your-brain-cells-to-mush capabilities). Not all that big, even compared to Phoenix or Cyclone, but a good ride nonetheless.

Finally, we went to A's favorite old taqueria and had the requisite Super Burritos. They were huge, and pretty damn hella.

Full to overflowing with burrito, we continued away from town and up toward campus. We could hear the drum circles in the distance as we toured the school that more closely resembles a woodsy summer camp than the brick-and-stone-and-one-main-quad New England schools I'm used to.

The sun had started making its way down toward setting as we began our final climb, which it turns out is a descent this ear in the OToC, but is nonetheless an intense hill. And as with any hill, when we reached the top (or at least our turnoff), we got to go back down.

From the back of the bike, the road was blocked by the pilot. It was like that scene in Star Wars with the hoverbikes in the woods. At least, until A pulled over. We could smell the brakes, and discovered the rims were hot to the touch.

A: We should probably stop a minute and let the rims cool do—
tire: psssssssssss

The tube was old anyway. Just as well we switch it out for a new one.

A: [changes tube and begins reinflating]
me: Do you hear that?
tire: pssssssssssss
us: shit.

Ok, we'll check for glass and put some electrical tape over the rim strip on the wheel. Maybe we melted the rim strip a bit.

A: [changes tube and begins reinflating]
me: [patches other tube]
tire: psssssssssss
us: shit.

Four patches and many curses later, we were out of light, tubes, and patience. We flagged down a passing van, owned by the wife of the co-inventor of some Specialized part, and big enough to fit the bike in (phew!) and got a ride to the B&B.

The two restaurants in town weren't all that exciting, so we went to the grocery store and stepped up to the deli counter.

us: Two 'treehugger' sandwiches please⁴ =D
counter lady: We're out of hummus, so I can't make you that.
us: Oh that's fine, just put on some mozzarella.
cl: Out of that too. You'll have to choose a meat sandwich.
us: Well what about some other cheese?
cl: You see, the hummus is supposed to take the place of the meat. Without that, the sandwich is no good.
us: What if we told you we ate pork for lunch?
cl: [satisfied that she wasn't about to help some vegetarians] Two pepper jack treehuggers, comin' right up!

And so our heroes settled down to a dinner of sandwiches and free B&B beer as they further investigated the tenaciously flatting wheel, eventually determining they needed to take it back to Santa Cruz to a bike shop in the morning. But that's a story for another day.

1. Ok, the other Tour of California is an 8-stage race, each day involving about 100 miles and 10,000 feet of climbing, and they do it way faster. But we had panniers and had to fix our own flats. But I'll get to that later.

2. Street? Avenue? You all live on the other side of the country and don't really care. It's a way to get to Skyline Drive.

3. As did the OToC, just this morning! (Other Tour of California)

4. The lunch burritos were so huge that despite the 2,000 feet of climbing we'd done since eating them, we still didn't want anything heavy for dinner.

Garden, round 2

So our initial garden has all but failed. All those little seedlings never became much more than the first pair of true leaves. We planted them, but most got eaten by slugs. The basils (the 4 that made it to the planting stage) refuse to grow and refuse to die.

Exception! The garlics, sent as a housewarming (gardenwarming?) gift by KPd, are doing fabulously. If you come visit, we can eat lots of garlic.

So anyway, we gave up and bought starter plants from OSH. Imagine it as something of a 30-times-the-cost head start. So now we have some baby lettuces, tomatoes, peppers, and pole beans. Oh, and a strawberry I got from work.

We've gotten more aggressive about slugs. There are eggshells and little mini-cups of beer all over the place. It looks like we didn't quite get the idea of compost and recycling. But something else must be eating everything too, and if they're not lured by beer and afraid of eggshells and coffee grounds, then we have no idea what to do.

The pole beans have already lost 3 of 5 new plants.

This at least is helping to cement our plans to move to SF when the lease is up. And if nothing else, we'll be swimming in garlic by harvest time.

Update!

We planted some plants!

This one holds garlic cloves and lettuce and spinach seeds:


Over here are some kales (if they haven't been completely eaten by snails by now), pole peas (poles to be installed later) and probably another clove or two of garlic.


In the back will be squash (one per 3 feet! We'll mix something else over there too), tomatoes and peppers, and probably some more garlic. In the front are more spinach and lettuce.


All the cardboard is a permaculture technique called 'lasagna gardening.' It's dirt (somewhat aerated, already in the garden), then compost, then cardboard, and finally mulch. The cardboard blocks the light so weeds don't invade. We had some tenacious weeds poke through our aging cardboard, so we uprooted them before planting. We kept one in a cup of water, just to see what happens. Then we made our own holes in the cardboard to plant our seeds and cloves and beans and seedlings. The garlics are already growing! So if nothing else, we'll at least have plenty of that this summer.

And here's a sunset, just for good measure:

The water is the SF bay. The Golden Gate bridge is off to the left, for reference. That's about a mile from our house.

Cottage

You've all been waiting for pictures of our new place, and I was finally home on a sunny day to take some!


Kitchen. Observe awesome 40s-era stove. It likes to set off the smoke detector.


Other side of the kitchen, featuring 50s-era ugly-in-an-awesome-way table and chairs.


Bathroom. Or at least the shower curtain part.


Storage closet. Check out all that storage action!


Living room.


Office, aka the other half of the living room.


Drilling air holes in the compost bin.

Somehow I forgot to get good ones of the yard. I guess you'll all just have to come visit and see it =D

California knows how to garden

So it turns out we pretty much kicked ass at finding a place and getting settled. We've already signed a lease, moved in, and furnished our cottage. It's this little in-law cottage next to the house the landlords live in. A far cry from show-up-on-trash-day, underpaid "supers" who don't actually know how to fix anything. An even farther cry from having to make seven phone calls to get the simplest thing fixed. The whole apartment hunt made me realize just how crazy NYC is when it comes to renting.

The cottage has a bedroom, kitchen, and living room, plus a pretty huge storage closet. The kitchen has this amazing 40's-era gas stove that is gorgeous. The living room will also be the study and Guest Room (hint hint). It already has a futon! We managed to take the U-Haul to a Good Will after moving our own stuff and got a whole bunch of great furniture. Even the kitchen table + chairs that looked way too brown in the store are way better now that they're not surrounded by all the other brown.

More importantly (and more new and shiny for anyone coming from NYC), we have a BACK YARD! This is what attracted us to the East Bay rather than the more familiar urban environment of the city.* We share the back yard with our landlords, but they are entirely amenable to us growing vegetables and chickens in it. It even has a hot tub. We've already taken advantage of the hot tub and probably will again when I finish this post. Seeing as it's always hot, we figure it's more efficient to jump in there and warm up than to turn on the heat in the cottage.

I haven't taken pictures yet, but I have the plan we made this afternoon for the garden:



We're not sure where the chickens will go yet, but this plan is only for half the yard anyway.

* 'the city' means San Francisco here. Weird!

Leavin' on a... train.

As you must already know (unless you're a robot here to post spam in my comments), my boyfriend and I recently moved to California. As you may not know, we took the train all the way from Boston (well, two trains). Following are some of the more memorable parts of the trip.

Getting carded
Along the first leg, we stopped in Albany so that the train coming from NYC could get tacked onto the back of our Boston-originating train. We decided to use the hour and a half or so to stretch our legs and find a sandwich. This, of course, began at the bar. The bartender, not recognizing us as one of his regulars, immediately carded us. Makes sense—college town (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). The surprising part was when my 28-year-old boyfriend was asked for a second ID, to match his bearded self. As soon as we explained that we were in on the train with time to kill, the bartender lightened up considerably. Then he and his regular customer watched hunting shows. Rock on, upstate NY.

Getting proselytized
After changing trains in Chicago (featuring a 4-hour layover that afforded us the time to have brunch with friends and wander around the city) and getting settled in our sleeper room (oooh bunk beds), we checked out the lounge car. With comfy seats facing huge windows, this is the place to spend the trip. We'd also brought some cards and poker chips (well, rolls of coins) and booze hoping to make friends. The first person we meet is, of course, Creepy Christian Dude. We're not that into talking about Jesus, and CCD wasn't that into talking about anything else, but we managed to play an awkward game of cards for a couple hours as the sun set over the snowy midwestern flats.

Getting contact-high
Included in the price of our sleeper car ticket were three meals a day in the diner car. The food was, for the most part, way better than airplane food. They even had made-to-order steak on the menu. But the diner car booths were made for 4, so at each meal we made some new friends. There were the typical Berkeley rich liberals, the Southern Republican father and probably-gay-but-maybe-hasn't-admitted-it-to-himself son, the annoyingly douchey Concordians... And then there was another father-son pair. The father was a pot grower from North of SF; the son, as far as I could tell, was just a little embarrassed by his father. It took a while to put it together—for a while I just thought the father was batshit crazy—but as soon as he mentioned that the only way to do these train trips was to make yourself a giant pot brownie, it all made sense.

Getting bored
Nope, didn't happen. The scenery was gorgeous. Everything was timed so that we went through the mountains during the day. We had too many books, it turned out, because staring out the windows occupied a surprising number of hours.

Getting home
We arrived in Emeryville, California, after four days and three nights on the two trains. We retrieved our damp, collapsed checked baggage (grr) and fortunately fit all of them in one taxi to our interim apartment. And so now I live in The Golden State (wait, really, Wikipedia? That's the state's nickname? Seems kinda corny). But that's best left for another post.

Spam

I deleted a post. I didn't want to, but I couldn't find a way to get rid of the spam comments on it. I will fix this once I work for Google (if I remember)... and by fix, I mean file a bug so that somebody else fixes it, most likely.

Merry Christmas! I'll see you all in California, and post more from there I promise.