Brian, Brittany, and I took a morning at the Chocolate Garage, and Palo Alto farmers market. They got some good fruit and sourdough. We then went into Stanford, and took the grand tour. They were very impressed by the buildings and the space. We went through the Stanford Museum, and they really liked the art there. It is a surprisingly good eclectic collection. After that they dropped me off at home and they went to Ikea.
Brian and Brittany showed up Friday afternoon, and we decided to bike around SF. We got to the city and headed over to Golden Gate Park. We walked around the Japanese Garden, which was very nice.
We also got to go around the rest of the park and see the lakes, the windmill, the beach, and the bison.
After we were done biking around we went to Bo’s place and decided to grab dinner at a food truck area. The food was very good and we ate at several different places. Most of the others got ice cream tacos for dessert, but I got a Thai ice tea popsicle.
Once we got back to Bo’s place Brian and Brittany’s bikes were gone. They had the wire based locks and those wires had been cut. My bike was there, as I had a U-lock. We met at the train for the way back. This was complicated by the end of a Giants game. We managed to get a decent seat, but on the second train. Steph was nice enough to pick us up at the train station and take us home.
Brittany and Steph ended up making some of the candies that Steph likes and Brittany liked them too!
On the weekend of June 28 and 29 we went camping in Norther California at Ahjamawi lava springs state park. The park is only on one side of the lake, which is the opposite side from the entrance, so we kayaked to the camping site. Steph used an amazing folding kayak that you can see her in here
Most of the area around the campsite was forrest, but there were a few fields. Also as soon as you got away from the lake it turned into much more of a desert landscape. There was a group that got a little lost on the way to the campsite and ended showing up at 10pm after paddling for 3 hours. It only took us 1 hour 15 minutes going straight to the site, so they got way off track.
Steph and I decided to take a hike out on our own, and we learned it was a lot hotter and drier than the area near the lake made it seam. We got out to a lava tube, that was disappointingly small, and it took us nearly 3 hours to do the hike. On the way back we took a shortcut that went through a lot of poison oak patches, and we stripped down when we got to camp. There was a nice spring nearby that we went and washed in, which felt really good. The hike did have some interesting things to see like some pretty flowers and a tree that was completely destroyed by woodpeckers.
We decided to do a quick hike to a “historic mansion” that I expected meant run-down. I was more correct than expected, with the house not only run down, but terribly infested.
It was a pretty good time all in all
We went to the city to have a few drinks with Lisa before she leaves. The event was at an interesting bar, that was newspaper publication themed. There were a lot of people I didn’t know, and we talked to a few of them. We then went out to eat at a place called Asha, which had some amazing Thai food.
Steph and I met a lot of people at San Pedro Square Market for Brian’s 30th. We had dinner before going, so we only got an ice cream sandwich. It was very tasty. We talked with people when we could hear. A somewhat jazzy band was playing and had the speakers turned up way too loud. They weren’t particularly good, and I could hardly understand what the singer was saying. Her voice was good, but the diction was terrible. I ended up getting a headache from the music, but the 
rest of the evening was nice.
Iliya and I went to the Dance Libre performance that Tina was a part of. She did a great job in the dancing as did the rest of her group. The plot was very much separate, and related to the rest of the performance only slightly. The plot was vegetarian zombies turning into flesh eating zombies. The secret to keeping them vegetarian was the rutabaga. That said it did provide a decent amount of comic relief and segues. There were also lots of comic relief points in the dances, and I was most impressed with how well they were incorporated, while the dancers didn’t miss a beat. I was satiated at about an hour of the dancing, but the rest of the performance was still quite good. The thriller dance at the end was a nice finish to it.
We got up early and waited for Rose to come by. Rose is one of Stephanie’s teammates, and she is new to the school. She joined us on the ride up, and we grabbed coffee before hitting the road. We got there a little before the Filipino festival started. I was hoping to do some Filipino arts and crafts, but it was conspicuously absent. I sat down and watched the matches once everyone had shown up and gotten started. They were very fast, but there were quite a few of them. Stephanie only did two rounds:
Video of round1 , Video of round2
After the festival we went to a restaurant nearby and had a relaxing lunch. I drove back to Beachhead and we relaxed for a bit.
A group got together to go play games at an arcade that had 4D rides. The group was most of Beachhead house including Tina, Amit, Candice, David, Kevin, Steph, and I. The place was pretty small, and the rides had varying levels of complexity. The big one had a really nice, and silly, great wall experience. It had bubbles, and a moving roller coaster like car. They also had some basic games like ski-ball and pac man. We spent a couple hours there, then went to a burger and shake place for dinner. The shake was pretty good, as it was chocolate and butterfinger.
Stephanie and I went to her parents house for Lunch on Sunday, and the food was delicious. The Lees had prepared some fish taco makings, and some cantaloupe for dessert. I really enjoyed the time we spent with them, and they were great to talk to. After lunch we went on a walk at the reservoir, for about 3 miles total. I ended up getting a little sun burn, but it wasn’t that bad. We saw a gigantic fish sitting in a little cove off the reservoir and Mr. Lee wanted to go get his fishing gear.
It's an Exciting World 