Adam, Tina, Andrew, Leyan, Brian, and I went to St. George Distillery in Alameda. Alameda is an old Navy base and has a few mid-up scale neighborhoods on it. The distillery was interesting in that it has a lot of history, and funny history at that. The place smelled great, like fermentation and spices. They make a wide variety of liquors like absinthe, brandy, gin, and rum. The rum was different from pretty much any rum I’ve had before, but not bad. It just wasn’t something I had a place for. I didn’t try very much, but it all smelled good. The tour was great and hanging out with the others was fun.
Steph and I went to join Jeremy, Adam, Lindsay, Andrew, Brain, and Ilene at Jeremy’s place. We had a good time, and I really enjoyed singing a few of the songs. Du Hast is a really fun song even if I have no idea what is going on. I also like doing high falsetto in Take On Me. Ash sat in my lap while we were talking and it was really nice. He is very soft, but didn’t put up with much petting. He also started attacking his tail.
We took Brian and Brittany to the Cal Ave farmers market. They were surprised by the number of stalls and the variety. We grabbed some food and then continued on to Santa Cruz. We had a great time sailing as the wind was great. Brittany took the helm for a bit. There were also a number of sailboats out on the water, and we had a few close calls. We had a great time. We also met up with Jeremy and his Wife. They were from the Bro Divers group, and we had fun with them. Bo and Yumi also drove down from the city and joined us. After sailing we went right back to the house so that Brian and Brittany could get on the road.
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.



















