Gone West-siyyde - SUNDAY

Emily put in a quick appearance at APA, so she could present her poster.



We spent the rest of the day hanging out with Leif, Sharilyn, and two of their friends, Aaron and Diane. We had dim sum in town, then cruised an hour south to the wild mountains of La Honda where redwoods abound. We relaxed our gorgeous Sunday away at some cool mountaintop bar called Apple Jacks. No pictures of the establishment, but here's some of the Drunken Battle for La Honda. Aaron's the kung fu kid, and Leif's the brawny brawler.



I like, in this one, how Aaron appears to be pulling Nature's concentrated energy out of the tree. Treeeeeeee!

Gone West-siyyde - SATURDAY

We went briefly to APA, to see Dr. Bandura, the guy on the left:



It's a poor picture, but apparently, he's famous for doing some psychological study with an inflatable Bobo doll. If you want to see what he looks like, Google him, for Christ's sake.

The highlight of the day was a show our friend got us tickets for. Leif (pronounced "life") works for Ticketmaster, and was able to score us some comp tickets for Rock the Bells (a sweet compilation tour goin' round). Here's us in the "Beer Garden" (which was more like a holding pen for beer drinkers).



I guess they had to keep us away from the minors, and so the concert planners thought the best way to do this was to fence us all in together, charge us $8 for plastic cups of Heineken (yuck), and keep us as far away from the port-o-potties as possible. Thanks, concert planners.

From the beer garden, we heard the last few songs in The Roots' set. Public Enemy came on next, playing "Bring the Noise" with the guitarist from Anthrax. Cypress Hill (awesome) followed them, and then Wu-Tang Clan. Finally, Rage Against the Machine was the headliner topping off the evening. And as you can imagine, all I could smell all day was the reefer. Mmmmm. Public reefer.

Gone West-siyyde - FRIDAY

One thing we wanted to do during our stay was a wine tour, so we rented a car and drove north across the Golden Gate.



Funny (not really), but because the Golden Gate is known for its suicides, Emily snapped a quick pic of one of the "Don't Do It!" phones.



We had no intentions of becoming statistics though, so we drove on toward California's wine Mecca. This is the only winery we stopped at in Sonoma...



Later, we wished we'd hung out more in Sonoma. True, there are more Napa wineries and they are closer together than the Sonoma sites, but some of the tasting rooms in Napa are by appointment only (snobby), and seemed less personal somehow.



Also, the road was a fucking mess most of the day. At one point, it took us 30 or so minutes to go a mile.



Because of the traffic, we never made it to the one winery Emily really wanted to see. We still tried some nice wines though. My favorites, for taste and feel, were Milat and Arger-Martucci.

When the tasting rooms started closing for the day, we drove back to San Francisco. Tthe Golden Gate...



...and Alcatraz...



...let us know we had arrived. Before we returned the car though, we had one more thing to do:





After a drive down Lombard Street, we met Leif and his fiancee Sharilyn (our gracious San Fran hosts) for drinks at a bar called Zeitgeist. I highly recommend this place for drinkers visiting San Francisco. If you can't find directions online, e-mail me and I can get you its street intersection.

Gone West-siyyde - THURSDAY

The first day of sight-seeing: Emily and I went to the Palace for the Arts.









At the Palace, there was somethang called the Exploratorium, which is one of those hands-on science education centers. We didn't take many pictures inside, because we were mesmerized by all the fun gadgets and stuff for learning about magnets, electricity, light, sound, etc. Cool shit everywhere. Far too much to explain here. One of my favorites though, for example, were these ear muff things shaped like deer ears so you could hear like a deer. They also had a pair with tubes that redirected sounds from your left side into your right ear and vice versa. Hearing in reverse messes with the brain.

Emily took this picture after a science dude put some of my cheek cells under the microscope at 1000x magnification.



After a pause at the snack bar (which Emily referred to as "the taste exhibit"), I took this picture of a piece of the interior. Everything there was cool.



Really, the only downside was the excess of impatient school kids interrupting while I was trying to use the darned gadgetry. Gosh! Frickin' idiots.

When the Exploratorium closed, we walked across the street to a beach overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Here's the bridge in my sunglass lens (not the broken one), and that's the Exploratorium behind me.



Here's the zimdog with bridge behind, an omen of the day to follow:

Gone West-siyyde - preSanFran

The day after the last day of summer class, I was on a plane for San Diego to do some work with a writer friend of mine. I don't have many pictures of San Diego--just this one, an answer to the iconic question, "Is there a Ralph's around here?"



There was. (And if I'm not mistaken, that red car looks like little Larry's new Corvette. He's probably still got "$960-970,000... depending on the options.")

Also in San Diego, I saw Sicko and got thoroughly pissed, sitting there in the theater with what felt like strep throat, pondering a trip to Tijuana for some antibiotics because my country's health care system is all about assholes at the top gettin' rich.

From San Diego, I flew to San Francisco to meet Emily for the annual APA (American Psychological Association) convention, which was crazy, because there were protesters out front all week, claiming APA has sent psychologists to Guantanamo Bay to aid in terrorist interrogations. Apparently, some folks associated with APA exacted methods of mental torture or something.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15

Emily and I didn't spend a whole lot of time at APA... not for moral reasons or anything. We just found San Francisco, the city, more interesting that San Francisco, the location of a convention. This little meditation spot was near the convention center.



It was the kind of place you only find in cities that truly care about their citizens. People sat scattered about, playing guitars or chatting with lovers, just enjoying the day.

World meditation

I came across this video on http://www.cosmopoetica.com/blog/ and I almost didn't watch it because I saw it was 4 minutes long. But then I had one of those moments where I told myself, Hey, Speedy McA-hole, why don't you take a few breaths there, buddy.

Care to do the same?

The New Mexico Place

Went to NM recently. I think its nickname is the Land of Enchantment. I don't see why though. I had a really good time. It wasn't at all like being stuck in a chant.

I drove around a lot and saw lots of stuff and things. Here's a pretty typical shot of the driving scenery:

Funny, but clouds love eating the mountains there. It has something to do with the cinnamon and paprika in the rocks.

This road sign picture is for those of you who know me, and think I'm obsessed with poop. Well, you're wrong. I just think poop is funny, and I see it everywhere:


Here's me driving:


I call it "Self-Portrait While Driving in New Mexico."

My first real stop was Cuba. Who knew? Who knew it was legal to drive to Cuba?


And why does Cuba support our troops? I thought we hated them, so that would make them hate us too, troops included. Right? Unless they're talking about THEIR troops, which would make sense, since they have their own communist troops, while our troops run on capitalism.

While I was in Cuba, I supported both their cigars and their superior health care... but not at the same time, of course.

Here's what it looks like from one of the highest points just outside Cuba:


To cleanse myself of communism after returning to New Mexico, I went to this place called the Soda Dam:


At first, I thought the water smelled funny, but then I realized it was the communism being washed from my skin. For safe measure, I hiked from Battleship Rock to these nearby warm springs for another swim, and sure enough, there was still some of that funky communist odor left on my white American skin.


Maybe you think I'm going too far, but really it was only like two miles, (a 45-min. hike). And the springs were really cool--I mean, warm. They could definitely make a ton of money though if they just built a cable car that went to them.

(Serious note: Soda Dam and Battleship Rock were both on NM 4, a scenic route running from San Ysidro to ~Santa Fe. I recommend driving it in your rental car--unless you drive your own car, in which case there will BE no need to rent a car.)

Probably the highlight of the trip was the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument. I took the Canyon Trail up to the top:




All pictures are mine, but you can use them on your desktop. I know they're all excellent. I'm the one who took them with a disposable camera.