It's an Exciting World

I organized an outing to Taco Bell for lunch, with the friends who appreciate the finer points of fast food.  We got a great pic of us chowing down:

It was really nice of them to join me.

I took a quick trip to Atlanta to see family and had a decent time.  I took my parents to dinner for Mother’s Day at Bar Bacoa.  It was a nice tapas restaurant that they both seemed to like.  It is in the restaurant area they frequent, so hopefully it will be added to their rotation.  I spent Friday evening with Jeff and we hung around his place, went on a nice walk and he tried out my vr game.  I hung out at Kim’s place most of the time, and got to see lots of creatures in her yard: frogs, deer, a fox.  We went to see Endgame together, which was my second time seeing it.  I still really enjoyed it.  We all got together on Sunday night and had a big family dinner, which was nice.

Adam and I had our third outing for the SF Bay Kayak trail.  This time we started in Westpoint Harbor and took out at Baywinds park.  This was a much more eventful journey than the previous ones.  We estimated 11 miles to this leg.

We started off in very calm waters, inside the protected sloughs near Redwood Creek.  We then made our way to Corkscrew Slough and through Bair Island.  We saw lots of harbor seals, and birds.  We even saw a group of goslings.  In the slough is a tidal overflow, which was against us at the time we got to it.  The flow wasn’t that strong so we tried to take it head on.  That didn’t work, and against better judgement, Adam tried to sneak around the edge.  Of course he got caught by the flow, twisted around, and flipped.  The water was pretty shallow so his toe took a beating.  We then portaged around the edge and got our first taste of mud for the day.  Adam’s phone also decided that being waterproof wasn’t really part of it’s job description.

Once we made it out of Corkscrew Slough it was only a little ways along Redwood Shores before reaching the ‘open’ bay.  I didn’t realize how shallow much of the bay is until we were paddling through it.  The draft on Adam’s kayak was a little too deep for some of the parts of the bay that we were paddling through.  Even when we were easily 500 yards off shore the paddles were scraping the bottom.  We ran across a sailboat that didn’t realize the bay was that shallow either.  It was named the Atrea, and based on the decomposition, and lack there of, it hadn’t been there very long.  We continued our journey up to the San Mateo Bridge and crossed under without incident.  However once under the bridge the wind and waves picked up tremendously.  We were at a low enough tide at this point that what usually were underwater sandbars were above water, and we had to portage across to keep going.  The water at this point was shallow enough it was making the paddling pretty difficult.  We made it to ‘shore’ but at the low tide it was actually a large mud flat.  There was about 50 yards of mud between us and the shore.  I was able to use my boat as a sled to get over it, but Adam had to slog through.  His boat wasn’t as good for the sledding motion.  He ended up getting up to his him in mud, but we both made it out alive.  We spent over an hour cleaning our gear with a pathetic little hose.  I have no idea what we would have done if there hadn’t been a hose there.  Baywinds park was gathering a bunch of kiteboarders, who we overheard complaining about the wind dying down and only being 18 knots.  We got a Lyft back to my place and ordered some pizza on our way.  I got everything cleaned up and before people came over for Game of Thrones Steph got back from her martial arts trip.

Adam and I set out from the last spot we took out, Palo Alto boat launch, at a little before 1pm.  The path we had plotted ran about 11 miles.  The winds were already pretty strong when we got in and they didn’t let up almost the entire day.  There was a short respite just before we got to the bridges.  At the bridges the winds and waves were turbulent, making it hard to stay straight and not flip as we went through.  We took a few breaks after the bridges, whenever we found shelter from the winds and waves.  Adam was having trouble with his kayak, as it was taking on water slowly.  He ended up bailing twice to deal with it.  I learned that for the next sections I’ll want a skirt for the kayak, as the bay only becomes choppier as we head towards its mouth.  The next paddle won’t be as bad, but the one after that will be a long way as we pass SFO.

We saw some nice wildlife on this round.  The bridges had sparrows nesting in them, and I saw the babies as we passed underneath.  We also got to see a large colony of harbor seals as we rounded the last point.  There were a number of pups still with white colorings among them.  They were on the shore and looked at us like we were crazy, then blorped into the water.

Adam and I met at the Alviso boat launch early on Sunday to catch the outgoing tide for our first leg of the SF Bay Kayak Trail.  We had everything go right, and the expected 5 hours turn to 3 hours for the 9 mile journey.  The only small hiccup in the trip was Adam taking a dip right as he got in, as he was just messing with his foot straps and lost balance.  The bay was glassy smooth until about 30 seconds before we got out and the wind picked up.  Adam rode the waves at the windfront into the dock.  We got to see many bird, an otter, a harbor seal, and a random white cat.  We have another few trips to plan before

Steph and I joined a few people for the Little Mermaid Ballet.  Steph got us great tickets at the front of the balcony.  I enjoyed most of it, and it wasn’t too hard to follow along with.  The parallel stories of the mermaid and the poet made it a bit harder at times, but it wasn’t too bad.

Adam invited us over for a nice dinner and games night.  I made some hard boiled eggs beforehand and gathered the small artichokes from the garden.  We had a great time cooking and eating together.  George and I made some deviled eggs and we tried many different things on top.  The best was probably the pickled garlic, which has turned out well.

We then played a round of Imperial Settlers where I got an absurd synergy, and ran away with the game.  The game ended up being pretty slow since most of us weren’t very familiar with the game.

George hosted the first episode of Game of Thrones, and had a small ceremony to inaugurate the final season.

I had organized a dead pool on the characters that had survived until the last season.  There were about 40 that we put on the list and people got to guess if they lived or died.  They could also guess what episode the character died in and get an extra point for getting that right.  The episode was great and getting to chat with everyone there was a treat.  I spent most of the day before that playing Feast for Odin with Tim and Adam.

Sunday morning Steph and I headed to the Game Kastle in Mountain View.  We met up with Chris, Brian, George, and Tina.  George and I headed to Milk Pail, while the others sold and bought some games at the flea market at Game Kastle.

Afterwards we went to George’s where he cooked some great carbonara.

We ended up playing three rounds of Gloomhaven and won all three.  We even pushed up the difficulty to 6 and won pretty nicely.  I took a few too many hits in one scenario, but it worked out.  We are all set up to do the final scenario next time everyone is together.