West Coast Part III -- Back to Seattle

So we pick up after saying goodbye to Knuckles in San Jose, and we're gonna try to get back to Seattle in two days to make it in time for our conference, which is actually the real reason we were out on the West Coast to begin with.  My lovely companion insisted that we dish out the extra dough for an extra driver...

...which means that it was my turn to ride shotgun and annoy the driver.

At first, it was subtle.

Then my level of annoyingness rapidly increased.

But we were both in a goofy mood.

Here we are passing through San Fran again.

And then we took USA 101 across the Golden Gate Bridge.  This was one of the things I was most looking forward to, and the previous day it was super clear, but the day we actually drive over the thing, it's foggy as heck.

"Oh well" says Ritika.

This is me trying to look majestic in front of the majestic bridge.  Utter failure...on both our parts.

The most interesting thing to photograph was the construction.

We left graffiti of a cliche nature.

Goodbye beautiful bay.  We shall miss you.

Alright, it seems that I took over driving at this point, but that's ok.  We got a new car the night before leaving and we had a choice of either getting cruise control or an auxiliary audio port so we could listen to our ipod.  We decided to go for the aux port because I was getting really sick of Enrico, Brittany, and LMFAO, etc., etc.  But then it turned out that there ACTUALLY WAS CRUISE CONTROL.  I was so frustrated, because I didn't notice it until about 5 hours into the trip since the rental guy said the car didn't have it.  Stupid.  Just plain stupid.

And then we hit the redwood forests, where the roads were so twisty and windy that it didn't make sense to use the cruise control.  Rrrgg.

The redwoods were awesome though.  Can't believe that these have been alive for hundreds of years...before cars had cruise control.  Even before cars existed at all.

For being an old guy, this tree actually smelled pretty good.  I'm officially a tree-hugger now.  And yeah, I didn't realize Ritika took this picture until much much later.

We hit a stretch of the coast around dusk, which made for some pretty cool colors and low lying fog.

I was going to go onto the beach, but apparently 4 or so people died here recently when a "creeper wave" swept them out to sea.

Mini-tsunamis? 

My turn.

There was also a cliff nearby where I tried to get a scenic shot.  Stupid red truck just sat there the whole time.

Slightly different angle...

...and you can see that somebody is already feeling attention deprived.

We spent the night in the redwoods, which was pretty sweet.  There wasn't a whole lot of wind since the trees are so high.

Ritika is small, but next to a redwood, she's like a bug.

And then Ritika drove us the rest of the way back.  Next time - a little look around Seattle.

West Coast Part II -- San Francisco

So we resume where we left off.  Ritika and i are in San Francisco, and after a late night Ghirardelli's run, we headed over to my good friend Dr. Nicolas's place in San Jose.  We crashed.  Then we woke up bright and early the following day to hit the city again.  On the way, we stopped by the insanely manicured lawns of Stanford University.

One thing I like about Stanford is that they didn't reject my application as an aspiring undergrad.  I didn't submit one, but at least they didn't reject me.

So that means we can get along, for now...

The sun was great.  Could definitely see myself ending up here someday.  But I'd have to risk applying in some sort of capacity.  Maybe not.

I had a pretty girl there with me at a pretty place, so it turned into photoshoot time.

That's a lucky fountain right there.

Too bad there wasn't a second sun shining from the left-hand side.

Yeah...It's not as good looking when Ritika's not in the picture.

Now for some leaning pics.

She's got a really good looking lean.

Where's the sunglasses?

Oh there they are.  Whew, thought we lost em.

Alright, so where did we go first thing when getting back to the city?

Yep.  You guessed it.  There's a security guard not shown that's desperately trying to keep Ritika away from the chocolate tub.

I'll admit, I was also pretty excited to see a huge vat full of liquid chocolate.

Mmmmmmmm.....

The rest of the time, we mainly went around eating.  Of course, when you're in San Fran, you gotta try out the chowder.

I'd highly recommend the bread bowl.  

We took a break to catch a drink before we headed back outside...

...to ride one of these puppies.  Cable cars are awesome, but they're also really scary.

The only think keeping you from coasting out of control down these steep San Fran hills is some guy with a lever that he pulls to put on the brakes.  Seems a bit low tech to me.

Here's a more creative way of getting us both in the same picture.

It turned out that the cable car dropped us off about 3 miles away from where we thought we'd end up, but we made the best of it by finding another great restaurant.

In all, I think we tried 4 or 5 different Thai places to test the quality of west coast Tom Yum soup.  (I think Mango Thai by the SeaTac airport is the best, for the record).

But this tom yum was pretty good too.  It made us happy.

This is me trying to entertain myself before it came.  

We started walking back to the car, and came across a 3-story forever 21.  Keeping the girlfriend out was pretty much impossible.  Anyways, after we finally figured out that it was too far to walk, so we hopped on a random bus, and thankfully it actually turned out to be the right one.  Back to our friend's place for a late night meal and a quick sleep before we headed out again in the morning.

Many thanks to knuckles for the place to stay.  Couldn't have done it without him.

Next time, back up to Seattle.