Anniversary road trip: day 3

On the morning of the last day of our road trip, we went back to the old city to get brunch. Surprisingly, it wasn’t easy finding a place that was open that we also liked. We finally found Fat’s City.
Review: It’s fine.
We stopped by the Old Sacramento Historic Foundation. They have some nice exhibits with tools from the Gold Rush era and a souvenir store. Like any good souvenir store, they have some of those Chinese puzzles, and when I threw my hands in the air in victory after solving one, I nearly broke an antique chandelier. Had I done that, this would have been a really expensive road trip. But I didn’t.

Next, we went to the Train Museum. There’s a lot to see, and my favorite things were the section about model trains and a dining car that had menus from different eras.

We then drove to the Powerhouse Science Center. I like visiting other science museums. I enjoy seeing how they do things differently than we do at the Exploratorium, and sometimes I find exhibits that were built by us, or at least inspired by our exhibits. Also, I can get Julia and myslef into most of them for free.

Just as we got there, a show was starting in their little planetarium. It was a pretty generic presentation, but at some point the presenter said that although we refer to the bright cloud we see in the sky as the Milky Way, actually all the stars that we see with our naked eye are in our galaxy. It makes sense, but both Julia and I never thought about it. We were a little shocked.

The museum itself is small and is designed mostly for kids. There are a few physics exhibits and some exhibits about the nano scale.

The highlight, however, is the nature section. Bradley, the docent, was very friendly and knowledgeable, and he introduced us to all the animals. Most of them are rescued animals, like a lizard whose tail had been cut off by its shitty kid owner, and Bud the bullfrog, who was in the process of digesting a mouse.

We were done. We drove back home, with the presidential debate playing live on Julia’s phone. We are definitely living in the future.

I hope you enjoyed this short trip. We have some more coming up soon - there’s already a weekend in Hawaii all planned out, and we are starting to talk about another trip to China so stay tuned for the next installment of
Person
On
The
Roaaaad! (prrrriam, sta-ta-ta-tum).

Anniversary road trip: day 2

The hotel lobby was humming with Australian Air Force personnel. I bet it was just another day in the office for the receptionists at the inn. We checked out and started driving around the base, looking for something good to see. Soon enough we hit the runway, and got out of the car to look at the airplanes. Just as I was taking a picture of a big cargo plane, a vehicle pulled over, and a guy in uniform started asking us questions. Julia told him that she was in the Air Force, and we tried to give a general impression of "sorry, we'll be on our way". "Oh, you're good", he said. "Just show me an ID and I'll give you a tour, if you'd like"
.
Oh, we'd like. We hopped in the vehicle, and he drove to one of the C5 aircrafts. He was extremely nice. Classic G.I. Joe who answers every question with “yeppers”. He announced on his radio that he will be busy giving a couple of civilians “a lookie-loo”. He showed us the cargo deck, the upper deck and the cockpit, took us around the aircraft and explained tons of things in great length. If nothing else happened for the rest of the trip, we would still have had our fair share of adventures.
We drove on to Davis for brunch, because Julia wanted to go back to that dumpling place we ate at when we were there for my birthday roadtrip. It turned out there was a jazz festival taking place, so we hung out for a bit at the stages. We also wandered around town, and bought a copy of Gray’s “Anatomy”, the actual book, at a used book store, and way too much Japanese candy at a Japanese candy store.

Then we drove on to Sacramento and headed straight to the historic district. The reason we chose Sacramento in the first place is that my chiropractor went and told me that he had a great time in the historic district, and although he can be a little outrageous sometimes (“now take off your shirt and lie on your stomach. And it’s not even Friday!”), I generally trust him.

We got into a minor fight over a parking spot with another couple in a car. It’s funny - I really didn’t think it was worth it, I just wanted them not to be dicks. When I realized that wasn’t going to happen, I told them that it really doesn’t matter, and that I have no intention of continuing this fight over a parking spot - therefore, they’re welcome to have it. All of the sudden they backed off too and offered me the spot. At that point it was too late - a third car was blocking them from backing up, so that was that. I guess you can look at it through the New-Agey lens of “address confrontation with kindness and compassion”, which I sort of agree with, but I prefer “just don’t be a dick in the first place”.

The historic district is touristy but fun. We saw quite a few young Hispanic girls coming out of limos, all dressed up, followed by a posse of well dressed friends. This, we learned, was their Quinceañera, the Latin coming of age, celebrated at the age of 15 - three years more reasonable than the Jewish 12.

We then saw a man holding a sign that had something to do with Jesus. I was in the mood for a good fight, and in fact, I have been reading the Bible - yes, the New Testament, just for events like this. However,I wasn’t sure whether I should actually engage. It was then that I noticed his belt.

- “Where did you get that holster?” I asked.
- “Some army surplus store. Why are you asking?”
- “Did you know it’s from the Israeli army? You see this shape inside the circle? That’s a ‘Tsadik’. It means it’s Israeli army issue.”
- “I had no idea! So you’re Israeli? That means you’re Jewish! What kind of Jewish are you? Are you a Masonic Jew?” (Masonic Jews follow the Old Testament but believe in Christ. It’s pretty much choosing the worst of all worlds.)
- “No, I’m actually a secular Jew.”
- “Secular? Do you know what Matthew said about that?”

Nom nom nom……

- “I’m not a huge fan of Matthew. He made a lot of things up, you know.”

This went on for a while. The problem was that when he answered my questions, he was either wrong or just moved to something else, and I had to stop him, which made him mad at me for cutting him off, so he didn’t want to talk anymore. Between us, I probably lost him back when I said Matthew was full of shit.
We then drove to West Sacramento and settled in the Flamingo Motel. Here’s my review of the motel: it’s fine.

One of our favorite things to do on trips is to watch shitty TV, because we don’t do that at home. So we did that for a while - we watched the second half of “Bridesmaids”. Then we watched the first quarter of it (the movie was on repeat). Then we went out for dinner.

We ate a fancy dinner at the Grange. We had pumpkin soup and scallops and duck and two desserts. It was great. Then we walked over to the Torch Club, where Ian Moore was playing. We don’t know Ian Moore, but it seems like he has a small following in the southwest, and to be fair, he’s pretty good.

It was time to get some sleep, but as we were looking for the car, we were distracted by the local club scene. These things are new to me, like the nightlife of non-white youth in America, so I’m drawn to hang around and observe. Fine, it was me who was distracted. Julia just wanted to get some sleep.

Anniversary road trip: Day 1

Oh my, it looks like it has been a couple of years since I last posted here. Not that I haven't been on the road - Julia and I went to up to Eureka for a short trip; We went to Thailand for our honeymoon, and although we had plenty of adventures, I didn't want to blog during our honeymoon - it really takes a lot of time, you know; We also had a Venice and Tel Aviv trip, but that was really laid back and un-adventurous, if that's even a word.
But we just came back from a road trip to Sacramento, in which we celebrated our first anniversary. I forgot to bring my foldable keyboard, so I had to wait with blogging until we were back.
So here we are - we're back, and we had adventures! Welcome to a new installment of...
Person
On
The
Roaaad !!!
stuguduBaPum.

After work on Friday, we met at the Embarcadero station and took the BART to the car rental agency, to pick up the car that Julia reserved for us. Traffic was heavy, and by the time we passed Richmond, it was already getting dark. For us, city people, it's easy to forget, but if one plans to spend the night in smaller cities and town, it's really important to get off the road at about 7PM, and take care of sleeping accommodations and dinner.
We were cutting it close, So as we were trying to figure out where we should stop, Julia realized that we were getting close to Fairfield, which is home to Travis Air Force Base, and having served in the Air Force herself, she can get us a room at the inn. Yes, there are inns inside Air Force bases. I know! right?!

We stopped at the gate and gave our IDs to the guard.
- "Good evening, Captain" he said to Julia, then looked at my driver license and turned to me. "And are you the Uber driver?"
- "Close enough", I said. He was puzzled.
- "He's my husband", Julia came to the rescue.
- "Yeah, I know how it is." he said, and moved on to explain that Uber drivers need a special permit to drive into the base.

So we got a really nice room for only $60, and drove to the city.
We soon realized we made a mistake getting off the road so late - almost all the restaurants in Fairfield, of which there are about five, were closed or in the process of closing. Lucky for us, a really cheap yet very tasty Korean BBQ place was still open. We ordered, as we always do, way too much food, ate pretty much all of it, and drove to Lounge 707.

Lounge 707 is probably the shittiest bar I have ever been to, and I say this with great fondness. As shady as it is, it had a sign announcing that it will now open daily at 7:30am. I'm sure all of the shady people appreciate that they can now get a beer before having an early start on all of their shady doings.

We got a beer and a soda and took a seat at the tables outside. This is where we met Terrance.
My adventure hat, that sometimes draws attention and makes a good conversation starter, is temporarily decommissioned, so I wear my Giants cap, one of the most common clothing items in northern California. Still, Terrance walked over and started talking about my hat. There's no way around it. It's me.

Terrance and a friend

We, and by "we" I mean Terrance, talked about a lot of things. We talked about the Giants; about how we're both 40 and are fire dragons according to the Chinese Zodiac; about the moon landing and how Terrance thinks it's a hoax, because, as you know, once you’re over 3 miles up there, it gets really dangerous. We talked about other things too but he was pretty wasted, so I wasn't sure what they were.

Terrance's friend and a friend