decidedlyodd

I admit it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, but I was busy traveling all over creation (that’s the bay area) with Jason, Sarah and other assorted characters.

I flew into San Jose on Wednesday night and was greeted by Jason, Sarah and Jeff T at the airport. We promptly had dinner at a tasty vegetarian Indian restaurant in or around Santa Clara somewhere. The next day, Sarah, Jason and I drove up to Napa County and did the wine tasting thing. It was a beautiful day for it, although we did get a bit of a late start. We hit up a couple places including Casa Nuestra (which Sara Lee took me to 4 years ago) and Mum’s (for Champagne).

On the way back, we stopped at Muir Beach in Marin County, although it was fairly fogged in.

That night we had dinner at a Thai place on Geary and 24th in the city with Jason and Sarah’s old friend Tessa. For such reasonable prices, the place was very fancy with uniformed waitstaff and even a shoe attendant.

We spent Friday afternoon (late start) in Berkeley seeing the campus and other nearby sights, making sure to stop for lunch at Zachary’s with Jeff T. Later, we met up with Jeff T, his roommate Sushant and Ajith (former UNC grad student) for some food and beer over at Jupiter. There I met up with Robert and we all (Jason, Sarah, Jeff T, Ajith, Robert and myself) went into the city to hit up the bars. Robert and I drove while the others took BART, so we stopped at a party a friend of a friend of a friend was throwing over in the Mission. I talked to a couple guys about swimming before we had to go meet up with the rest of the crowd for the bars.

We started out at Moby Dick’s which was pretty crowded. Amusingly, Jeff T got a free beer from the bartender who must have found him cute. I’ve never gotten a free beer at a bar in my life and he gets one his in his first visit to a gay bar. Beginner’s luck? (; From there, we continued on to the bar formerly known as Daddy’s. Apparentlty, it has a new name and somewhat altered clientelle which disappointed Robert somewhat (”There was only one guy getting blown in the corner!”). We didn’t stick around too long before heading over to Badlands for some sweaty dancing. I managed to get my ass grabbed by a couple guys who weren’t bad looking, which I admit boosted my self-esteem a little. But it was definitely a fun place to dance with a good amount of guys who were easy on the eyes.

At that point, Robert and I drove the rest of the gang back to Berkeley before continuing on to Concord. Unfortunately, Jason and Sarah’s rental car got broken into some time while we were gone and their backpacks (mostly containing nothing but clothes) were stolen. Robert and I went to the Hilton in Concord to meet up with some of his old friends, one of whom was getting married the next day. On the way back into the city, we stopped at Jack in the Box for dinner (neither of us had eaten a meal since lunch) which delayed our arrival at Chris’ (a friend of a friend of Robert’s whose place we crashed at) to some time around 3:30 or so.

The next morning, Chris, Robert and I got some good brunch at some restaurant (I forget the name) full of gay men on 16th and Market. Apparently, Chris’ swim team meets up there after their Saturday morning practice. Chris made sure to invite me to swim with them some time when I’m down in the future. Hopefully some time I’ll take him up on that offer. After that, Robert had to go back to Concord for the wedding and I met up with Jeff T, Jason and Sarah back in Berkeley. We headed up to the hills for a bit and checked out the Little Farm in Tilden Park. I had to take a nap after that because I was so tired from the night before. After that though, we grabbed dinner at Cha Am in the gormet ghetto and then went over to Castro Valley to play some mini-golf. At that point, Jeff and Sushant went back to Berkeley and I went with Jason and Sarah back to Jason’s place in Santa Clara.

This morning, we got up and did some browsing at Barnes and Noble. I found a couple of interesting books on swimming, which I need to look into some more. It seems like it would be nice to have a book on proper swimming technique for reference. There was also a cool book on weight training for swimming. I’ve been thinking about adding some weight training to my workout schedule to mix things up a bit. It might be nice to target that towards swimming. After that, we went to Jeremy’s place where he was having a BBQ. Good food, good friends and good conversation for sure.

Then it was time to go to the airport and return to Seattle. Whew, what a weekend!

The rest of the pictures are here.