Day Trips

Kingdom of Dumplings

Steph and I went to a restaurant in outer sunset that is called Kingdom of Dumplings. They have 2 locations, one for the restaurant and one for the factory. They make all their own dumplings and all the ones we tried were delicious. They had a spicy orange sauce for the dumplings which was delicious. It was a small Asian twist on the burrito orange sauce, and I want to try my hand at making some kind of the orange deliciousness. It was about 4 blocks from bo’s old place so I was hoping we could meet up with him there, but he had moved. We ate at the restaurant then walked down to the factory to pick up some of the frozen dumplings. We got to see them make a few for us while we were there, which was pretty neat.

February 10, 2014 0

Escape the Room: Time Travelers Lab

Dan set up a great experience of puzzle solving and stories. This was a fully interactive puzzle, where you had to get out of the room in one hour. The game was lots of fun, and we were out of time with about 5 minutes of things left to sort out. It was a little frustrating to get so close and not figure it out. I was a little slow on the first puzzle I was trying to solve, so I could have done that better. I don’t want to write too much more here for spoiler reasons, but safe to say it was a great time.

Link

February 10, 2014 0

Working with Bill

I went up to the city on Friday to work with Bill and Steven at Steven’s place. They are doing well and Preet stopped by for a visit as well. I’ll probably go down to visit them from time to time.

October 19, 2013 0

SF Indie Game Jam

This past weekend I spent the entire weekend making games at the SF Indie Game Jam. It was a ton of fun, and I really enjoyed the people I was working with. I hope they thought I was as good to work with as I thought they were. I was especially impressed with Frank, one of the developers on the team. To find out more about what went on at the game jam look at my post on caduo.com.

October 1, 2013 0

Sailing

We had a good trip aboard the Cat35. The seas were rather smooth and the wind was steady and strong. That led to the day being less seasick than the other trips , as well as less eventful. I had a good time as we did get to see a number of otters, dolphins, and birds. Riley did get sick, but only for the shortest period of time. Overall 9 of the 14 people we’ve taken out have gotten sick. in the first 2 trips we only had 1 person each trip that wasn’t getting seasick. We got much more lucky on this one, and the only person to get seasick only did so momentarily. Rong, Steph, Riley, Bo, and Yumi were there with me. Rong was the only one brave enough to take the wheel for any period of time. I was surprised when Bo wasn’t up for steering. There was a pod of maybe 6 dolphins about 1.5 miles from the entrance to the harbor, which we passed on the way out and back in, they weren’t doing anything fancy. They were also quite small dolphins.

August 3, 2013 0

Sailing

Today I went sailing with Jeremy B, Adam, Tina, Amit, Brian, Candice, and Steph. We went to pick up Brian and Candice and drove over the mountains with them. We got to the harbor and checked out the boat. It was hard to get the sail out, but we managed once the owner showed up and gave us tips on how to work it. The owner of the ship is a really nice guy in his 70’s. I hope he liked us, as we would like to take his ship out a lot more.

As we were preparing the ship an otter showed up in the bay hanging out around the fishing vessels. Probably picking up the scraps from the morning catch. Once we got out on the water the wind was really nice and steady. The whole time we were able to keep a speed of between 3 and 5 knots. The surge was a little big and the weather was a little cold and overcast, but all in all I had a great time sailing. Brian, Candice, Tina, Amit, and Jeremy were getting seasick, with Amit taking the worst of it.

While we were under way we had a good bit of guac and chips, with some really nice cider. Once we got back into the harbor we had lunch of salami, bread, cheese, and mustard that Adam brought. The mustard and salami were really good. We then went up to Java Junction and had some hot drinks to shake off the cold from the ocean. I realized that we were late to get to Nima’s recital when I noticed that it was in the East Bay. I feel really bad about missing it since it was a piece he composed and the first time he was performing with his Cello. I’ll have to find a way to make it up to him. The traffic to get over 17 was the worst I’ve ever seen it. It went on and on, to the point that we were in stop and go traffic before we even got over the summit. Brian and Candice were feeling the drowsy effects of the Dramamine, so they passed out in the back seat. I was feeling pretty sleepy myself, but the traffic wasn’t letting me relax for a second. We made it back to Brian and Candice’s place just fine.

June 9, 2013 0

First Sailing Outing

Today we took Cat 35 out for our first sailing outing on the big boats without an instructor and it went really well. We only stayed on the water for about 4 hours, but it was plenty for us. Nima and Caryn weren’t feeling too good, so 4 hours was about the limit. The winds were really strange, as there was about 2 miles of no wind before getting into the regular wind stream. It took us a long time to get out into the wind, and we were really far off the coast. I am glad we got some good wind after all, as it would have been a disappointing sailing outing without it. Julian was a lot of help around the boat as he had done a good bit of sailing with Lasers, so he knew the basics. Bri didn’t seem to be enjoying herself all that much, and was the only one not to take a turn at the wheel. Since we had to go 2 miles offshore to get wind, the waves were pretty big compared to what we had normally been dealing with. It made the adventure that much better, but also made the passengers that much sicker. When we were moving it wasn’t too bad for them from the sounds of it, but when we were hove to they were feeling really bad, especially Nima. We had lunch out on the water after we had hove to, and it was really tasty. Julian and Bri brought a tasty spinach and artichoke dip, along with some margarita. As we were heading in the racing had move to only a couple hundred yards from the mouth of the harbor, and we got a little in their way. They were far to close to shore, but there wasn’t any wind anywhere else within a few miles.

June 1, 2013 0

We were on a really nice ship today. It was the first time it had been taken out for a class. The ship was really nice to handle and had roller furling in the main sail in addition to the jib. the name of the boat was Cat’ 350 because it was a Catalina 350. Not very creative, but certainly clear. This is one of the ships that I’d like to take out cruising. We did some parking drills today, and Steph is certainly the best at it. I’m getting pretty good at points of sail, taking, and jibing. I really enjoy learning from Steve, but it is sad he won’t be able to teach us the last class and give us the test. Steph and I are going to try sailing around Shoreline Lake next weekend to practice the points of sail and parking. I wonder if the dock hands will be annoyed by us trying to practice parking. We did lots of man overboard drills. Steph lost her hat and we were able to do a man overboard drill to go pick it up, which was pretty impressive.

Also, we saw a baby sea otter!!!! it was sooooo cute!!!!

Class Link

The boat is not yet on the site.

April 28, 2013 0

Intermediate Coast Cruising Day 1

We got up at 8am to head over to Santa Cruz for the first half of a class on Intermediate Coastal Cruising from Pacific Yachting and Sailing aboard the Pacific Spirit. Our instructor was an old salty guy named Steve, and I really liked him. The instruction was very precise, he made sure everyone did every part of what was needed. He also gave us some really great pointers for a weekend trip from Santa Cruz to Monterey. He said that it is good to Monterey around 11, and that calling a week or so in advance to get a slip is a good plan. If you call in advance you can see where you are going to need to go in the harbor and not have to randomly sail around looking for the slip number. He had us plot a course for Monterey on one of the nautical charts they have as part of the class, which was rather nice. For coming back from Monterey it is good to get going by 10, and motor for the first hour out to where you can pick up the winds that are coming around the point. The winds there start picking up around 10:30 and it is good to have the whole morning to head back to Santa Cruz.

During the first half of the day we just talked about navigation and did some quick chart exercises. Afterwards we got lunch at the local minimart. After lunch we did one parking exercise each, and took the ship out onto the bay. Once we got underway it was a little much, and we did some heaving to exercises, during which we took in a reef of the main. We then did some precision sailing in figure 8’s around two ships at anchorage near the Santa Cruz Pier. We went out by the 1-mile buoy, did a “tactical jibe,” which is also known as the “chicken jibe.” This is a maneuver where you do a 270 degree tak, instead of trying a jibe in heavy winds. There was a ship that passed us near the 1-mile buoy that had a really pretty spinnaker out, as well as a kevlar main sail. I really enjoyed Steve as an instructor. We were joined by a woman named Ashley.