China 2017, day 8: Dayi

We had a full day planned by the family. First, we all drove to Liu Manor in Dayi. Liu Wencai was a rich landlord who leased land to farmers and cheated them in order to keep them in a constant state of debt. After the communist revolution, his manor was turned into a museum, with items from the estate on display, and a set of sculpture depicting the injustice done to the farmers. It’s an impressive exhibition, even if the facial expressions of the sculptures is extremely exaggerated.

Then we walked around in the old city of Dayi. You know this video?

So they were selling these in the souvenir shops. I grabbed a bunch of rubber chickens that were hanging from a hook and tried to recreate this fantastic effect. Instead, I חן managed to drop the chickens and toys from some of the other hooks. I tried to hang them back and instead dropped more toys. Then I accidentally made eye contact with the store owner. Then I ran away. Then I saw the expression on Julia’s mom’s face. I thinks it was disappointment. I’m not sure, because she wears that expression a lot.

Next stop was the Jianchuan Museum Cluster. Julia and I like to take our time when we visit museums, but this is not the way the family, namely the Xiaos, does things. Julia and I were constantly pushed to move faster so we can see as many museums as possible in the two hours we allotted to the cluster. Fan’s (Julia’s mom) rationale is that it’s the same thing spending an hour or four hours in a museum because you’re going to forget everything anyway, but if you come back it will all come back to you. I don’t understand this woman at all.

So we saw the Earthquake Museum, dedicated to the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, and a couple of museums dedicated to the second Sino-Japanese war. I sat out of the fourth museum. This whole ordeal took only two hours or so.

For dinner, we met with Fan’s high school friends for hotpot. Julia and I sat at the kiddies table with Lili and his wife and two other couples in their late twenties. They spoke no, or limited, English, which I was OK with as it gave me the opportunity to concentrate on my food.

As you come in, they give you a bowl, an apron, and a small bag of sesame oil, and send you over to the dipping sauce making station, where you put the oil in your bowl and add vinegar, garlic, oyster sauce, and other goodies.

Then you go to the giant fridge and pick the meats and veggies you want. These come in little trays or on skewers. Most of the veggies are unidentified leafy greens. The meats range from simple chicken and beef slices, through tripe and kidneys, and all the way to pig brains.

Then you sit at your table and start cooking your food in the broth. At the end of the meal, all the skewers at your table are weighed to determine their amount, and the trays are counted. Then, as the custom in China goes, you physically fight for the right to pay the bill for your table, unless you sit at the kiddies table, even if you’re over 40. Then you get to sit back and watch grownups fight.

China 2017, day 7: Pandas!

We woke up to a lot of yelling, which is how the Xiaos, Julia’s mother's family, communicate. From what I later gathered, Erjiujiu was mad because we saw the Wuhou Temple without him, while he was looking forward to this reunion so that he could spend time with us. He made all these plans, rented two cars, but then everything gets trumped by Julia’s mom who just has to be in the center because she’s the favorite child. Julia’s mom was mad because she thinks Erjiujiu just resents her for being the favorite child.

So Julia and I dragged her mom out to go shopping. We got me a jump rope which I need to start using to recover my healing foot, and a nice traditional Chinese shirt. For Julia we bought 7 pairs of socks for 10 Yuan. Then we went to the shoe district to buy Fan some shoes. There are enough shoes here for the entire population of China.

It took us forever to find something Fan was happy with, but we finally did, and then it was time to walk over to the restaurant where we were supposed to have lunch. The grandparents joined us, as well as Erjiuma, who is Erjiujiu’s wife, and Lili, their son, along with his wife, Liu Shuting. Lunch included a soup served in a unripened papaya, that had frog meat in it. It was actually pretty good.

Then, to try to bring peace back to the family, Julia and I drove with Erjiujiu to the panda park. They have pandas, and red pandas, which are even cuter, and peacocks.

They also have a small museum of endangered species, with some of the world’s worst taxidermy.

Throughout our visit there, Erjiujiu drove me crazy. If he thought there was a better viewing angle than where we stood, he would forcefully grab me by the arm and drag me while yelling at me in Chinese. He would also get impatient when we watched a panda, and yell at us “zou le!” (let’s go). Finally, he would walk twice as fast as us, and scold us for being too slow.

We drove back, but now Erjiujiu asks if it’s cool for us to tag along to get the second car. I didn’t want my frustration with him to affect our relationship, so I agreed - it’s just picking up a car, right?

Two hours later, we were back home. I’m never letting him take me anywhere anymore.

China 2017, Day 6: Chengdu

An airport is also a good opportunity for coffee. We had already settled down at the gate, so I decided not to bother Julia and Tize and get coffee on my own. I walked around, found a place with a lady in front, and asked “you meyou kafei?” (do you have coffee?). She led me inside and pointed at a table. “Bu yao zuo.” (I don’t want to sit) I said. Then she took me to the barista and showed me a menu. I pointed at the cappuccino, and gave the barista 100 Yuan bill. She gave me my cappuccino and 22 Yuan back. “Liu shi ba!” (sixty eight!), I exclaimed, and after checking with her boss, she gave me 10 Yuan more. After 10 minutes of being unbelievably satisfied with myself, I realized I had just bought shitty coffee for ten bucks.

Then Julia wanted to fill her water bottle from one of the water fountains. In China, people don’t really drink cold water, so the fountains dispense water in three temperatures: hot, warm, and cold, in case you have completely lost your mind. As Julia examined the machine, an airport employee decided she needed help.

- “You want hot water?”
- “No, cold."
- “You mean warm?"
- “No, I mean cold.”

He didn’t like it, but filled her bottle with cold water. Half way.

- “Do you want to add some hot water to that?”

At the airport in Chengdu, Julia’s mom, Fan, picked us up, and we took a taxi to her grandparents’ home. Yeye, Julia's grandfather, is an impressive man who will be 90 in June, yet can't sit still for more than five minutes. Laolao, the grandmother, is a tiny old woman who, how shall we put it, is more affected by her age. We were also welcomed by Erjiujiu (another second uncle, but on the mother's side), Fan's brother, who is very warm, if sometimes loud and too physical for my taste. I still like him. It was also good to finally be back in civilization, with running water and WiFi and stuff.

We all went out to get lunch. And then Julia and I wanted to see the science museum, so her parents tagged along. The weather was great - so much better than in Shanxi. We took a bus and got to the science museum, which unfortunately was closed for renovations.




Julia high-fived Mao.



Then we checked out the library. It's a beautiful building, and the difference between it and the public library in San Francisco is incredible - this one is quiet, packed with young people, and there are no used needles lying around or homeless people changing clothes in the aisles.



Then we went to the Chengdu museum. This building is also beautiful.We spent most of our time there in an exhibition about shadow puppetry, and in the little time we had left, we quickly went through most of the other galleries - these have exhibitions about Chengdu in various points in history. The museum is really great.

Then we went to the Wuhou temple.



And then to Jinli market. We bought all kinds of street food, and that ended up being our dinner. We had things like squid, and rice cakes, and the highlight of the day: pig noses on a stick.

China 2017, Day 5: Taiyuan

We woke early in the morning, packed our stuff, had breakfast, said our goodbyes and got into a taxi that drove Tize, Julia, and me back to Taiyuan. It was a long and extremely uncomfortable ride, but after four hours or so, we were in our hotel. Tize wanted us to have some local food, so we walked around and surveyed restaurants for quite a while until we found one​ that Tize liked. Each of us got a bowl of noodles. Tize’s and Julia’s had goat internal organs in theirs. Mine had goat face meat. Achievement unlocked.

We went to see the most famous attraction of Taiyuan, the Jinci shrine. It’s known for its extremely old trees, some over a thousand years old.

When we were done, we finally had time to attend to one of Julia’s main goals of this trip: to see the Trump chicken. Since it’s the Year of the Rooster in the Chinese calendar, one of the malls in Taiyuan put a big statue of a chicken in its plaza and gave it some of Trump’s prominent features. So we took a taxi to the mall and took a bunch of pictures. Some kid got really excited to see a foreigner in the middle of Taiyuan and asked to take a picture with me. We also took a picture with my phone. After all, why should he be the only one who gets a picture from this encounter?

A mall also seemed like an opportunity to finally get some coffee, but Starbucks was closed, so I settled for coffee at Burger King. It was terrible and yet everything I wanted at the moment. The mall also had the best indoor playground I’ve ever seen - it’s basically a giant ball pit, with slides and balls of all sizes, including ones a grown man can climb into.

Tize found a restaurant that served other kinds of local food, so we had several dishes with different kinds of noodles, and went to bed early - tomorrow we leave for Chengdu.

China 2017, Day 4: Xingxian

There was a lot of commotion again around the bathroom this morning. It turns out that last night it was Julia who clogged the toilet. We're not being very good guests.
Tize took us for a walk around the city. We walked to the main street that branches to the market.

Everybody was staring at me. The vast majority of people here have never seen a foreigner. Some followed us around for a while, some did the "double take", and some people inside the stores stopped everything they were doing to stand at the storefront to stare.
We went into a temple. The term "temple" can be confusing around here, as society is mostly secular, but they do build temples to commemorate people and events. This one is for the the local people who participated and died in the communist revolution.

We walked over to the main square and watched the old folks play Chinese chess.

We went back home for lunch. Sida kept his word, and the food he made was much better than the food we had at the restaurant yesterday. We played cards for a bit and took a nap.
Let's role back a couple of days: right when we got here, Julia got a phone call from her mom. She said Julia and I should cook a meal for everyone to show gratitude for their hospitality. We don't need to worry about anything because she packed the ingredients for us in Tize's suitcase.
Now, there are two problems here. For starters, we don't mind doing it, but we generally don't like it when decisions are made for us (and you know how a mother-daughter relationship can take that notion up a notch), and second, the packed ingredients were two packs of pasta, two cans of tomatos, Italian salad dressing, and a can of chicken breasts - not what we would have picked. Anyway, it looks like we're making pasta. When we came to peace with the idea, we decided to upgrade our dish with some fresh ingredients from the market.
Back to today, Sida volunteered to go with us so that the vendors won't rip us off. We got a nice fresh piece of pork, some tomatos, cucumbers, onions, and red sweet peppers, and a bottle of some really nice rice liquor.

We went back home, took a nap, and started cooking. You can't get ground meat here, so Sida ground our meat for us with a butcher knife. We fried some onions, added the pork, and then we were ready to add the canned tomatoes. There's no can opener. The pork was getting over cooked. I lowered the fire while Sida was hacking the cans with a knife. Ergugu noticed the fire was low and turned it up. I turned it back down. "Oh, low heat!" she said in awe and Mandarin. The water for the pasta was boiling. Dagugu turned the stove off. I turned it back on. We added the tomatoes to the pork. Mali, who somehow was also in the kitchen that really can't​ hold more than two people, ran outside to report to anyone who wasn't in the kitchen, which according to my math was no one: "they are cooking the pork with tomatoes!"
We served them the pasta along with some Israeli salad, which they found even more confusing, except for Sida who enjoyed it. Sanda started another drinking duel with me, which ended poorly for him. Then Sanda took us to another place where we could take a shower, and called it a day.

China 2017, Day 3: Weijiaca

The family had a busy day planned. We ate breakfast, then the nine of us squeezed into two cars, and we drove to the countryside. At some point, in the middle of a windy road, we stopped at the shoulder, got out of the cars, and Sanda got a shovel out of the trunk. It turned out we were going visit the Ma family's burial site.

It's a small hill between the fields. Julia's great grandfather is buried with his wife at the top, under a small mound of dirt. a few feet down the hill, his sons are buried with their wives. and so on. First, we gathered around the grave of Julia's grandfather, and placed some offerings: fruit, candy, canned food, and some liquor. Then we burnt sheets of paper that are scored to look like ancient money and placed them on the grave.

Then we climbed back to the top of the hill, and started a sequence of bowing down to every single grave. This made me pretty uncomfortable, since Jews don't bow, but I'm also reasonable, and it seemed like the respectful thing to do at the time. I settled for kneeling behind everyone else, adding a symbolic nod of the head. Crisis averted.

We took some of the food that the dead didn't eat and ate it ourselves as we walked down the hill. We got back into the cars and drove to the village where the family used to live.

It's a shithole. There was nobody around, and everything looks abandoned. We went to the old house and looked around. In the middle of the inner courtyard there's a cage of corn kept by Sanda. I saw a lot of these piles as we were driving around. The corn is dried, then the kernels are removed and sold to farmers who use it to feed their livestock. The abandoned house itself had two rooms, with a large raised surface that is both the stove and the bed, as the fire under it is used to heat both.

When we left the house, somebody was yelling down to us from a close by hilltop. It was one of Tize's cousins who is still a farmer and lives in the countryside. He came down to talked to us - a man in his fifties, wearing blue work clothes with a tanned, wrinkled face. They all talked for a while, and Tize forced him to accept some money. The cousin tapped on Erda's stomach and made some snarky remark about it, and then we left.

Then we drove to a museum that tells the story of the communist revolution and the role of Shanxi in it. Then we drove to a restaurant. Lunch cost 500 Yuan, and Sida complained that the food wasn't that good and claimed that he can do much better for half the price. Well, it's on - the siblings will collect 250 Yuan which will be the budget, and Sida is going to cook tomorrow's lunch.

Then we went to see Yellow River.

We drove back to the city, and Julia and I collapsed on the bed and took a nap. We were really jet lagged, and to be fair, there's not a lot to do here. It's really cold, and there's no heating. They have WiFi, but our phones don't seem to work with it. There's a TV, but something is wrong, and nobody speaks English other than Tize, Julia and myself. Taking a nap is a good idea.
Tize woke us up for dinner. Food is great, even if not very rich, and everything is with vineger, for which Shanxi is known for. We had some kind of a rice liquor, and every time somebody wants a sip, everybody has to clink glasses. Erda wanted to chug a shot with me, so we did that. Now Sida wanted a shot with me, so we did that too. Then I had another one with Sanda. I'm not sure what they were trying to achieve by that - I have incredibly high capacity for alcohol, and most Chinese people lack the gene that breaks down alcohol, causing drinking to be an uncomfortable experience for them. Taking shots with me seemed like a weird fight to pick.
Then they taught me a card game, in which what really matters is that when it's your turn, you slam your cards on the table to make as much noise as possible, while you trash-talk in Mandarin.  

China 2017, Day 2: Xingxian

Early morning, people on the train started waking up to the sounds of the same two songs playing in a loop through the train's speakers. We arrived at the train station in Taiyuan. We found our way out to the plaza, where we were greeted by Tize's youngest sibling, Tuti, whom I'm supposed to call Sida (pronounced "SIH-da") - "fourth uncle". He flew in especially for this gathering from his home, near Shenzhen. We had breakfast at a small restaurant and walked over to a junction where Sida arranged for a car and a driver to pick us up. Driving through the city we also picked up Ergugu ("Second aunt", pronounced​ "ER goo-goo"), the younger of Tize's two sisters, and then we started heading to Xingxian, where Julia's grandmother lives.

After about four hours of driving, we arrived at Nainai's (Grandmother's) house. There I met Nainai; Sanda - Third Uncle, who lives with Nainai along with his wife and Mali, one of his four children; and Dagugu, the elder of Tize's sisters, who came with her husband. Needless to say, none of them speak English, so the encounter was a little awkward, but they were happy to see Julia, and seemed happy to meet me.

We had just concluded about thirty hours of travelling, so we could really use a shower. It turns out the water supply here in Shanxi is in a pretty bad shape, and water runs for only a short amount of time every day. Because of that, residents take advantage of that short window to fill their bathtubs with water, which is then used throughout the day for cleaning and "flushing" the toilet. Now, since the bathtub is full of water, showers must be taken elsewhere, and a number of business places around the city supply that service. Tize took Julia and me to one of these places, and paid the 25 Yuan fee for our showers. The owner just assumed we were together, and led us to a room that had a bed and a shower with two shower heads. I'm sure this place is used not just for showers.

We came back to the house and collapsed for a nap. When they woke us up for dinner, Erda, Second Uncle, had already came in from a close by city. All six children of Nainai were now there. We had dinner, and Julia and I managed to pull through until 10PM or so, when jet-lag hit us again. 

I woke up at 2AM. I was wide awake, extremely cold, and had to take a dump. The toilet, in contrast to what I was told by, well, everybody (I asked Tize in confidence, and he, of course, asked everybody if it's ok for the white awkward dude to take a dump in the toilet) did not handle it well, and got clogged. Surprisingly, filling a small tub with water and dumping it into the toilet did not help. I used a plunger to no avail. I gave up and went back to sleep. I got out of bed twice more over the night from having a need to urinate mixed with guilt, and tried unclogging the toilet again. Nothing helped. I finally fell asleep, and when I woke up in the morning, I saw a big blister on my hand, that I got from a night of putting everything I had on that plunger. As we were watching the aunts clean the bathroom, Tize recommended that from now on I use the public restroom down the street.

China 2017, day 1: Beijing

Welcome to yet another installment of
Person
On
The
Roooaad!!! (Ba-diam bum)
Before we start, you should know that have unified all my previous blogs into this one, so go ahead, look around - did you miss that time I almost got into a fight with two junkies in Madera? Remember when Julia lost her purse in Trinidad? Were you there when we got engaged in Puerto Rico? Make sure you haven't missed anything!
We're in China this time, visiting Julia's grandparents. We flew out of San Francisco and landed in Tokyo, and after a few hours we flew into Beijing where we were joined by Julia's dad, Tize (pronounced "TEE-tzeh"). Julia's mom, Fan, had already flown to her parents in Chengdu, so we'll meet her later. We took a bus that took us from the airport to the train station. The train would take us to Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province, where Julia's paternal grandmother lives.
The train station plaza is huge and was packed with people, even right before midnight. We joined the swarm of people heading to our train. It's a sleeper train, so every car has 22 bunk beds, each with three beds.

You'd expect a train like this to become a giant snore-fest, but it was in fact pretty quiet. The only guy who was snoring really loudly was sleeping, naturally, in the bunk bed right next to me. Add to that the fact that I already got plenty of sleep on the plane, and that I was pretty jet-lagged, so I didn't​ get much sleep on the train.

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