Bay Area Adventures!

After a quick stop in Groton, MA, it was on to California to determine where we should live when our travels are over. We took car to commuter rail, commuter rail to the T, the T to the silver line (an underground bus that Boston likes to pretend is a train), silver line to airplane, airplane to airport shuttle in SFO, shuttle to BART, and BART to my brother’s apartment!

Chris very nicely let us borrow his car, so our first day in San Francisco, we decided to explore the East Bay (Berkley, Oakland, etc). We looked up a couple apartment listings on Craigslist and entered them into Dan’s GPS navigator. However, we kept ending up in “not so nice” parts of town, so instead, Dan came up with the idea of looking for interesting neighborhoods online and then using Google Earth to locate which streets looked like main drags. After driving down the main drag, if it looked like someplace we’d consider living, we would park and take a closer look. If we still liked what we saw, we’d also check out the nearby residential area. We found that looking at the cars in the neighborhood was a good way to determine if it is in our price range. Check out Dan’s blog to see a very thorough analysis of what we thought of the bay area.

In addition, to researching the Bay Area, we managed to squeeze in some entertainment as well. On Thursday we visited my Grandpa in Lafayette. He is 94, but still lives in the same house my Mom grew up in and is doing very well. He has a magic peach tree that grows 2 varieties of plums (he actually grafted the plum branches onto the tree). Thursday evening Chris’ friends, Sam and Katie, showed us around Oakland and Berkley. The highlight of the evening was going to this amazing dive bar tucked away in the back of a strip mall in El Cerrito. In addition to surprisingly cheap drinks, they had old fashioned décor with velvet wall paper!

Friday we explored San Jose and the Peninsula (south of San Francisco). In addition to exploring neihborhoods (see Dan’s blog), we decided to check out three of our favorite investments; Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), and Spongecell (privately held). We knew we were at Apple headquarters when everyone we saw were nerds, wearing jeans, either listening to their iPods and/or playing with their iPhones. We drove around Infinite Loop (name of the street) and then went to their visitor center. We asked for a tour and they very nicely told us that if we don’t have an appointment, we must leave. We asked if they had a museum of old Apple products and they said they had closed it because they needed the space, but that they had a visitor store that we were welcome to check out. We skipped the store and headed for Google.

After walking past the beach volley ball court and a security guard on a Segway, we made our way to Google’s visitor center. We told them we were investors and that we would like a tour. They also very nicely told us that unless we had an appointment, we must leave immediately, but unlike Apple, they gave us free juice on our way out! Next we headed to Spongecell’s headquarters, where they not only gave us a full tour, but they also gave us free pizza and booze!

On Saturday my brother hosted a BBQ. His backyard has a nice big deck and we lucked out and had amazingly sunny day. Chris bought several pounds of sausage from Costco and we made super fresh screwdrivers from oranges we squeezed ourselves (the vodka was store bought). That evening we met up with Dan’s friend Scott and his wife Jen, and we went to another party. The apartment was on a hill overlooking the city and as the fog thinned out towards the end of the party, we had a perfect view of Alcatraz.

Sunday we were back to work investigating the Bay Area, this time touring San Francisco on foot with my brother. San Francisco is extremely hilly, which made for a perfect opportunity to test out my new hiking boots for the hike to Machu Picchu. They definitely need some more breaking in. Sunday evening we went to a jazz club in Oakland called Yoshi’s. We happened to catch the last night of the Pete Escovedo Orchestra. They’re from Oakland and had a lot of friends and family there that night, so they really let loose! In addition to his usual group Pete brought up 2 sons and a daughter and in addition to ragging on each other, they played some great Latin jazz.

Monday evening my brother’s company, Spongecell, took everyone to the Giants game. We all wore Spongecell T-shirts, and it was Irsh heritage day so we also got free hats! AT&T Park has an amazing view and our upper deck seats had a very nice view of the field. However, the $8 beers and lack of beer vendors were a little disappointing. It just so happened that Barry Bonds had recently tied for most career home runs, and he could potentially have broken the record at that game. Everyone has very excited! However, after several failed at bats, they took Barry out. Despite the tie score, at least half the fans left! I was very disappointed in the Giants fans. I was also disappointed to see Barry Bonds beat the home run record at the very next game! At least we got to see it on my parents fancy TV in Santa Barbara.

After nine innings the score was still tied, and all but 5 of the Spongecell group remained. Fortunately, the Giants managed to pull out a win after only a few additional innings! We went out to a bar to celebrate, and when we left, this random dude came up and asked if we wanted to
ride a tractor with him. I thought I had left behind all my tractor riding oppurtunites in the Midwest, so I was curious to find out what he meant. We followed him around the corner, and he told us he had noticed a construction site where they had left the keys in one of the machines! He got in, turned it on, and started moving the arm up and down. A night watchman came over and fairly quickly put his antics to an end. The next morning we woke up at 5:20 AM to take the train to Santa Barbara. I'll write more later, but for now I'm heading to the beach!