Search

It's an Exciting World

The life and times of David Geisert

Open Search
Category

Adventures

Diving the Sonoma Coast

Yesterday Steph and I got up super early to head to Northern California to dive for abalone on the Sonoma Coast.  We went up to a place called Salt Point State Park.  Along the way we ran into the same traffic that I hit coming back from the Beer and BBQ festival.  They had now closed the northbound lanes on 880, down to just 1 open lane.  This made us at least 40 minutes slower.  When we got the park we were a little late, but they were still getting set up.  We talked to some of the people there and met an interesting bunch of people.  After a safety briefing we got in the water around 11am.  We went out in groups of 5; 2 buddy pairs and 1 instructor.  Steph and I took about 15 dives each and ended up getting 3 abalone each for it.  We quickly figured out how to find them, and how to get them off the rocks.  I started cramping due to the long bike ride I took on Friday.  I got one that was about 9 inches, and will need to have some people over to share it.  There is a ton of meat to the 9 inch abalone.

When we got back in we tagged the abalone, and then got to learn how to prepare them for eating.  It is a tough process to cut them up when they are so slimy, but it was fun for being a challenge.  We had a nice picnic bbq there, and made some breaded and fried abalone steaks.

We then drove back, stopping by Stumptown Brewery on the way.  I just got a couple diet cokes, and Steph got one of the beers.  It was a relaxing time, and prepped me for the drive back.  We went to her parents house for dinner of soup and cheesy bread.  I showed them how to prepare the abalone on one, and Russell took over the other.  He was so happy to be getting some abalone it was cute.

We then went home to clean our gear and go to sleep, it was a full day.

I’d be up for doing it again, but not sure when I’ll be able to find the time.  I certainly don’t want to drive up to Northern California to do it.  It is such a long drive, and hard to do when tired after diving.

0

Russian River Beer Revival and BBQ Cookoff

I went to the 13th annual Russian River Beer Revival and BBQ Cookoff.

None of the pictures here are mine, since I wasn’t about to take a phone or camera to this event.

On the way there Nick and Fred came to pick me up.  Fred is the Box intern from last summer that is now full time at Box.  The drive there was longer than expected and Nick and Fred were mainly talking about Box and SF Living.  I dozed off for a bit, but joined in the conversation when it went back to other things.  We got to the campsite right at sunset.  I set my tent up wrong at first and had to get Brian and Andy to help so that I could get it set up.  We then ran by the grocery store to get food and beer.  We had a nice sit around the fire.  Andrew and Adam showed up later and they got the tent set up quickly.  I went to bed decently early, and had a really restful sleep due to the 4 beer.

The owner of Camp Outback in all his glory.  He does fire dancing at night for anyone who wants to watch.

Saturday morning we went into town for some coffee, and I just walked around the town a bit.  It is a nice little place.  There were a good number of real estate places in the town, and the surrounding area seems incredibly inexpensive when compared to SF or the Bay Area.  Shortly after the coffee run we started walking to the main event.  I had with me the holder for the small glass, and a cloth for wiping my hands on.  Nick, Brian, Candice, and I were VIP, so we got in a little earlier.  There was maybe a 5 minute lag between the VIP getting in and everyone else getting in, which wasn’t even close to the 1 hour that was promised.  I wasn’t too bothered by it but it was strange how quickly they let in the rest of the crowd.  I was a little upset at the first few places giving me so much of the beer, since I wanted to try a little bit of a lot of different beers.  The only bad part about the VIP is the larger cup that doesn’t fit the holder, and is far to much when filled up.  There was a really amazing ginger beer that I would like to find more of.  I’ll have to try some ginger beers to find something as tasty as this was.  At the ginger beer booth, one of the hosts offered me a towel and the small glass for the VIP cup.  I gladly took it.  Nick then went over and got a T-shirt and a small glass for his VIP cup.

I had soooo much BBQ of beef, pork, and chicken.  I didn’t even taste the sides this time.  All of it was tasty, and most of it was absolutely delicious.

After a little while I decided to get in the river.  It was trying to get down the slope to the river while as drunk as we were, but not too bad.  The water was colder than I would have liked, but incredibly refreshing for being as cool as it was.  I snuck off for a bit after that to take a nap behind the stage.  It was incredibly relaxing and I had such a good time.

As the festival was winding down we all started making our way to the upper deck.  We set out from there for the pizza place in Guerneville.  We got a good bit of pizza and I ate a ton of it.  It is quite surprising how much pizza one can eat after an all you can eat and drink beer and bbq festival.  It was really tasty pizza.

After the pizza place we went back to camp, and decided to play some open faced chinese poker.  It is an interesting game with all sorts of subtlety.  I think it would be fun to have poker at my place every so often and play this variant.  It has a lot more strategy to the game itself, whereas other forms of poker have more strategy to the meta game.  I took a bit of a nap once the light was too dim to continue poker.

Nick and I decided to leave that night, and Andrew decided to join us.  We watched the fire dancing, which was pretty good that night, then we left.  On the way back we ran into some crazy construction on 880 that took the highway down to 1 lane.  It took us around 45 minutes to clear that section, but that was the only delay.  I was dropped off first, since I’m just on the other side of the Dumbarton Bridge.

I really enjoyed the festival, but I don’t think I’ll be going again.  The over-drinking and over-eating are things that I will be doing without as much of.  I think Nick was feeling the same way about it.  I love the atmosphere and the festival, but it has run its course for me.

0

Squash with Nima

I played some intense games of squash with Nima, most of which were incredibly close.  He won the first one by the narrowest margin, and I won the second by an even closer amount.  It was hard fought the entire way on both games.  The third game he beat me out with some amazing ball placement.

Our game is collectively stepping up, and it is really fun now that it is closer.  I think I have a chance to beat him next week.

I saw Amy at the gym, rock climbing.  She is doing well, and I need to have her over to my new place.  I’m thinking Tuesday for house warming.

0

Moving Day

I rented a Uhaul yesterday and moved pretty much all my furniture to my new place.  I got all the major items set up there and it is feeling like a nice place to be.  I’m really liking my choice to move there, and am looking forward to having the automation system.  The x10 system will make it much nicer since I won’t need to turn each light on and off when walking in and going to bed.  The kitties got there and immediately got in trouble by getting back near the water heater.  I blocked that area off as well as I could and they haven’t gotten back there again so far.  I’m going to take the toilet training a little slower to let them get used to the new place, but so far they have been handling it perfectly.  They were playing and having a great time together, so I’m not worried about them adjusting well.  This upcoming weekend will be their first big test at being left alone for a whole day while I’m at the Beer and BBQ festival, but I think they will be just fine.  I’ll leave them a good bit extra so they won’t want for anything.

0

An End to the House Search

Today was my last day of looking at places.  The only place that I considered vs. the basement studio was a little house in Palo Alto on the North side of University.  It was in the back of a multiplex, but still rather nice.  Nick didn’t seem up for it, since it was decently small.  I ended up taking the basement studio in EPA thanks to the reviews from Nick and Bill.  I am going to try to spruce the place up tomorrow and move in mostly on Monday.  I need to still meet the woman that lives upstairs, and especially set up how we are going to work out the internet situation.  Comcast has the house registered as a single address, and apparently it would be a pain to split it (not to mention more expensive).

While on the search we stopped by the Chocolate Garage, which was packed.  Then we went to BackAYard and had a really tasty lunch.  It will be nice living so close to there and downtown Palo Alto.

I’ll be moving the kitties on Monday as well, so they will be back to the real toilet for toilet training instead of the cardboard setup I’m using now.  I’ll probably keep them on this sized hole for the next 2 weeks while they acclimate to the new house.

0

Rooster T Feathers Comedy Club

This evening I joined Steph, Nick, Tina, Amit, Candice, and Brian at Rooster T Feathers for a Comedy night.  The MC was pretty good, the first act (Sandy Stec) had great jokes and ok timing, and the main act (Sheng Wang) was really funny with only a few jokes that fell short.  I had a really good time and will probably be going back for more comedy shows.  They had a special for tonight, with $10 for 2 people, but you had to buy 2 items from the menu each as well.  I got 2 drinks, since afterwards we were going to Shah.  The food at Shah was a little bland, but I did really like the aloo naan (potato stuffed bread).

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.

0

Lunch at Google

I had lunch at Google today with Adam.  We talked over board games and how his first few weeks had been going.  We went to eat at a bbq place, and the food was really good.  I ate a little much, and had a lot of the really tasty drinks that they provided.

0

Diving Escapade

 

 

 

This morning Steph drove to Monterey so that we could go diving on the Escapade.  It was a good 2 dives, but all sorts of things went on.  We went out to stillwater cove in Carmel.  The boat tried to get us to Cathedrals, but the kelp and wind made it too difficult.  We ended up getting tangled in the kelp anyway, but the dive was nice.  I was buddied with Mai, and she was overweighted.  When we tried to surface she was too overweighted to make it up, so I had to drop her weights and help her to the surface.  Steph buddied with Jason, who had the exact opposite problem.  He had just enough weight to make it down, but when he was surfacing on both dives he popped right to the surface.  He also didn’t know how to position himself correctly to empty the BCD, so he was having issues from that as well.

 

IMG_0283

We ended up diving Erik’s Pinnacle as the second dive and it was really nice.  I would really like to go back there and dive it again.  Mai sat out the second dive after the weight issue and the kelp monster issue.  We got to see tons of fish, sea slugs, nudibranchs, and an octopus.  The octopus was sitting on a yellow sea star and trying to blend in by being yellow as well; it wasn’t working.  He was really cute, and we looked up the species afterwards as the red octopus.

After the dives we went and picked up Steph’s new hood at otter bay.  The cat ears look better, but not great still.  I drove back and took the fast way, going back over 17.  Along the way we stopped at one of the fresh produce stands and got all sorts of snack foods and fresh fruits.  I got 23 avocados, 20 tiny ones, and 3 massive ones of a different type.  I think we should take 17 back every time we go to Monterey, but we will just have to see whatever Waze says will be the fastest way when we are ready to head out.  It was pretty accurate on this trip.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑