Sunday, July 20, 2008

San Francisco Visit

Earlier in July, we all went to San Francisco for an old High School friend's wedding. I (Andy) had only been to the Bay Area once before, and that was ten years ago. My friend (Jeff) had just moved out to the area and was renting a flat above a liquor store in a very shitty part of Oakland. At the time, I wasn’t sure if it was safer to sleep on the floor of Jeff’s apartment or in the back seat of my 1975 Cadillac which I paid $500 for.

Fast forward ten years, Jeff has built up quite the resume’ working for all the major CGFX studios around the world. He’s now got a nice little place in Berkeley and ready to settle down with his lovely lady Bonnie. I figured it was finally time to make another visit rather than his standard annual visit to my place when he’s in town visiting family.

We arrived on Thursday morning and checked into our Bed and Breakfast up in the fancy-schmancy neighborhood of Tiburon. After unloading our luggage, we headed out to Berkeley and had dinner with Bonnie and Jeff. After dinner, Jeff and I broke out into one of typical hour long death metal / progressive / noise jam sessions. While it brought back all sorts of memories, the ladies weren’t impressed and we wrapped up it around 11PM.

While in the Bay area, we partook in all sorts of fun activities. We drove up to the top of Mt. Tamalpais, rode the ferry from Larkspur into the city, took one of the historic cable cars to the Fisherman’s Warf, ate lunch on Pier 39, visit the beach, and many more fun activities. All this while taking in Jeff and Bonnie’s beautiful commitment ceremony.

Becki and Andy at the Marin Headlands

Daddy and Maggie on the Ferry into the city

Mom and Maggie on Pier 39

Maggie enjoying the fresh air.

Maggie asking Mom and Dad "Can we PLEASE stay a little a longer? Mayne an hour or so?"

Sunday, July 06, 2008

July 4th weekend out on the boat!

For the first time in five years, I brought the boat back without breaking it!

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus… and I also own a working boat.

I took Becki and Maggie out to Lake St. Clair this past Saturday for my friend’s birthday. We started from the Clinton River (South River Launch to any / all the locals reading this), ran across the lake to the South Channel, and the up the St. Clair river to “Pepper Joe’s” in the town of St. Clair. After lunch, we ran back down the St. Clair river and into the Middle Channel and then down into Muscamoot Bay. Our six boats joined a raft of 12 other boats once we got to “The ‘Moot”. After a couple hours of rafting off, myself and two other boats made a run down to The Nautical Mile for dinner. We originally tried to grab a dock at Jack’s, but the place was p-a-c-k-e-d and the DJ was blaring music at stupid volumes. So, we kept moving down the channel and got dinner at the slightly more upscale Beach Grille. Once dinner was over, we made a nice and slow (~40 mph) twilight cruise back to the launch ramp. The trip back was very relaxing except for the last 1 or 2 miles driving through MASSIVE fish fly colonies. Nasty!


All of the boats lined up at Pepper Joe's in St. Clair Michigan.
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Maggie and Mom enjoying the sun and fresh air... even though I'm pretty sure Maggie was asleep in this picture.
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We bought Maggie a little blow up raft and led her around for a while. I seriously was expecting her to HATE the idea and was reluctant to even try it... but she surprisingly had a blast in her little boat / car. If anything, she didn’t want to get out!
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