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2012-366 Day 214 – Ventura County Fair

Yes, it’s the first of the month, but the Resolution Update will wait a day.

For the past ten years or so (the estimate given to me), my parents have had a tradition of going out to the Ventura County Fair on the first day and checking it out. This is encouraged by the fact that, to promote such traditions, the Fair offers admission for a dollar on the first day before 3pm. Jess and I decided to tag along this year and, with the proper work arrangements made, met up at there house and headed on down.

After an uneventful drive to Ventura, we got into the very long line of cars heading into the Fairgrounds. Here’s the problem with parking at the Fair, all of the entry and exit points only have a single lane, and there are multiple freeway exits feeding the same single lane road. This lead to a very long line since we got off a little early for a pit stop. We finally made it into the parking lot with me only having rear ended one of the cars in the line (it was very low speed, everyone is fine, insurance will take care of the tiny cracks in the other cars bumper, I’m only including this factoid for honesty and completeness, we’re just going to move on now, okay?) and crossed the width of the parking lot to the front gates. The courtyard was crammed full of people trying to get in, but they had multiple lines going so we only spent about five minutes getting up to the front and acquiring our tickets. (Thanks again Mom and Dad!)

We managed to move through the sea of humanity in the entry plaza and popped out into a grassy area surrounded by food vendors with a stage at one end. We were all pretty hungry, so we scoped out what was around and headed for the corn dog cart. Jess and I got jumbo corn dogs, which we found pretty underwhelming. I found the secret to the jumbo dog when I decided the corn casing wasn’t my favorite and peeled it off to discover that they had skewered two hot dogs back-to-back and dipped the whole thing. The stage featured some children’s dance troupes that ran the gamut from ballet to modern dance, which I vaguely wondered how someone booked a five minute set at a County Fair side stage on a Wednesday afternoon (although it was opening day) before realizing they were probably from summer programs.

After everyone had finished, we decided to go inside the nearest pavilion, titled the “commercial” area, and found ourselves in the merchant section of the fair. There were all sorts of products and do-dads on display, and we wandered the aisles of a couple tents checking them out. One kitchen gadget caught Jess’ eye and we all stopped, with Jess and my father being tempted by the siren call of never needing a garlic press again. The little grater plate being demonstrated was pretty ingenious, cutting out all the waste and being far easier to clean, so both our households now own one.

Our tour continued with the winners of various art contests from Kindergarten all the way up to high school. It was a little sad to see all the second and third graders with more artistic talent than me, but knowing my sister got all the artistic genes and left me with the technical ones, I got over it pretty quick. There were some really nice projects, although I have no idea how many competitions they have in Ventura County, because I had to have counted several hundred first place ribbons in there.

The next section highlighted the agricultural areas of the county with various displays and ribbons for the winners of beer, wine, and food growing. Outside was a walk which featured the winners of various landscaping displays, which was probably my favorite part of the fair since it was on a mesh covered separate area that was very peaceful, and all of the displays were lush and green, with some featuring my favorite element, flowing and falling water. The entire fair was kind of a rustic throwback, which was a nice break from the current pace, and it really showed through in the care that people took in their plants and displays.

We made our way to the back corner of the Fair to look at the livestock, seeing all manner of sheep, goats, chickens, rabbits, a couple horses, and a small cow (we could not figure out where any of the larger livestock were being kept or displayed). We almost walked past my Aunt and Uncle, who were hanging out in the area and had come on my parent’s recommendation, but I saw them looking into one of the pens and called everyone back. We talked for a few minutes and then went our separate ways to finish up looking at all the critters. A couple of them most certainly wanted some attention, but the majority paid little mind to the humans filtering past their pens.

It, of course, would not be a trip for Jess and I without trying some sort of specialty food. My parents have a tradition of getting an Apple Tower, which was apples, caramel, and whipped cream in a cup, but we were at a Fair and new we had to hunt down the quintessential Fair food . . . stuff that was dipped in batter and fried. We found the appropriate vendor and, after a few minutes, walked back to meet my parents bearing a fried Snickers bar, a fried Ding Dong, and two fried Oreos. The Snickers bar was our least favorite, simply because the frying process pretty much liquefied, so there wasn’t the resistance I expected when you bit into it and everything was melted together. The Ding Dong held up much better and gave a pleasant chocolate center to the fried dough. The star, however was the Oreo, which somehow managed to maintain everything about an Oreo while adding a yummy fried shell. It worked quite well.

At this point we had completed my parent’s annual sojourn and Jess and I had to get back to bring dinner to our friends who just had the baby. It took a while to get out of there, and we hit some traffic pockets on the freeway, but we made it back in plenty of time, dropped my parents off and said our goodbyes, then picked up food and had a great dinner with the happy family and new baby. In all, a very good day and certainly an enjoyable way to spend a random Wednesday in the middle of summer.

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 227.1 miles
Volleyball Match Record: 5-2 (13-8 Game Record)
Fitocracy Level: 23 ID: disciplev1

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By Matt
August 1, 2012

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2012-366 Day 213 – Tags II

First things first, happy birthday to my father!

I decided to do some blog maintenance today and also revisit the tag topic, so I gave tags to all the old posts that didn’t have any and then grabbed a new screenshot of the updated tag cloud (see previous tag post for an explanation). I’m thinking of making this a monthly segment for the remainder of the year, on the last day of each month. Here’s the original tag cloud, and the new one next to it:

There are some steady favorites returning, such as Shepherd Sports, Weekend Wrap Up, and Vacation, have been bolstered both by recent events (vacation gained a lot of steam over the last two weeks), the passage of time (pretty much a new Weekend Wrap Up every week), and my updating the tags of the early posts (Shepherd Sports picked up a few because I talked about soccer at least three times before even playing it). Karate also made a big jump, I talked about it a lot in the early posts.

Advice, Disney_Firsts, double take, EPCOT, fitness, gatsby, ragnar, Ragnar Relay 2012, recovery, religion, sign, and technology all fell off the list. I’ll have to look at maybe revisiting some of those topics again (although I have the feeling that religion and technology were merely the victims of inconsistent tagging). Some topics have shrunk the further away they have gotten, like the secret project and fantasy baseball (I’m not saying anything about my team, it’s a very volatile point of the year right now and I don’t want to be taught humility). And I suppose it’s a good thing that advice fell off, not really my strong suit.

Controversial, Dodgers, Dodger Thoughts, home improvement, humor, insight, Jess, movies, Road trip, Rocky Peak Sports, Softball Tournament, and Spam all jumped on the list, owing both to the past month and a half’s events (Road Trip, Rocky Peak Sports) and updating old tags (Dodgers, Dodger Thoughts, Softball Tournament). I’m using the insight tag to denote blog posts where I kind of explore my attitudes and feelings, so adding a few of those from the old posts to the current ones has bumped it up into the list.

I find tags to be an interesting system, especially when you start going back through them and see the related threads that you may not have put together before. I like looking at the shifting sizes as well, so you’ll be seeing these updates in the future for sure.

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 227.1 miles (+3.5 miles)
Volleyball Match Record: 5-2 (13-8 Game Record)
Fitocracy Level: 23 ID: disciplev1

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By Matt
July 31, 2012

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2012-366 Day 212 – Short Story II

Two friends prepared themselves for a long run together. One was a junior, in his second year on the cross country team, bouncing back and forth between the Varsity and Junior Varsity meets. The other was a sophomore, still fairly raw and building his running portfolio. Neither were the stars of the team, but both were solid pieces; in a school that size (with a graduating class of about a hundred people), they were the kind of people you needed to fill out a non-glamour sport that involved running three miles at a time.

This was a day like any other day, a practice like any other practice. The surrounding neighborhood of the school was largely residential, although a large veteran’s hospital dominated the eastern border of the school. Cross country required travelling distances that exceeded the homey neighbors and proceeded on to areas that housed various sized strip malls and standalone businesses. While our two heroes were certainly willing to put in the work to build up their stamina for the distance races, they were not above having a bit of fun on their runs and would occasionally lose focus. Speed wasn’t important to them, and some times the occasional shortcut was taken to either allow them to catch up with some of the other runners during practice, or just to get them back home faster.

This particular run was not special, a simple loop that took them to the outskirts of those shopping areas a mile or so away from the school. As the two runners emerged from one of the neighborhoods, they came to a corner that featured a single business, lined by a six foot wall that separated the store from the houses they were running past and the shopping center around the other side of the lot. It was at this point the immortal words were spoken by the Junior, “I vote we take the shortcut, WATCH THIS.” (Perhaps the final declaration was not uttered, but the attitude was certainly present.)

With long, confident strides the Junior bounded across the parking lot away from his silent Sophomore friend. Upon reaching the opposite wall he placed his arms on the top of the wall and, in one smooth motion, pulled his body to the top and, with his legs parallel to the top of the wall and clearing it with ease, had a perfect image of youthful strength and agility frozen in time at the apex of a successful jump. Nature and his friend stood silent in breathless appreciation of the athleticism with which the young man had been graced, a silence that was torn asunder by a loud exclamation as time suddenly reclaimed its rightful progression and he swiftly fell out of sight.

His friend dashed to the wall and hoisted himself to the top, peering over to see what terrible fate had befallen his comrade. The drop on the other side of the wall was precipitous, what the young man had not realized was that, while the side he started on was only six feet tall, the pavement on the side he jumped on was at least eight feet below the wall. He pulled himself from prone into a sitting position against the wall. His friend dropped silently beside, his controlled descent a perfect counterpoint to the flailing, dead weight the young man had represented not moments earlier.

“Ow,” the young man succinctly observed.

After a thorough inventory of all limbs and joints was taken and proper functionality was accounted for, the two young men resumed their journey and finished their practice. An important lesson had been learned that day, one that had already been codified by mankind into a long standing idiom.

Yes, on that day I learned to look before I leap by, quite literally, not looking before I leaped.

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 223.6 miles (+3.5 miles)
Volleyball Match Record: 5-2 (13-8 Game Record)
Fitocracy Level: 23 ID: disciplev1

Posted in Matt 2012-366, Matt General. Tagged with , , , .

By Matt
July 30, 2012

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2012-366 Day 211 – Volleyball Game 7

We won today, but sadly it was due to a forfeit since only two people from the other team could make it. We played some pickup games, but were pretty sluggish, so hopefully we got it all out of our system. Sometimes it’s hard to play hard when you know it doesn’t mean anything, and even if one or two people on the court feel that way, more balls fall then usual, or you get a string of points go against you and dig too big a hole to come back from.

Jess and I had a great dinner with my parents, sister, and her husband afterwards and got to visit the new baby after church this morning, so it was a full but very good day.

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 220.1 miles
Volleyball Match Record: 5-2 (13-8 Game Record)
Fitocracy Level: 23 ID: disciplev1

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By Matt
July 29, 2012

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2012-366 Day 210 – Weekend Wrap Up XV

We were out at a friend’s party in Oxnard, so we’re pushing it on time tonight. In other news, our good friends Dan and Vicki just had their first child tonight, so a big congratulations there! Looking forward to meeting the little man tomorrow. Until then, here’s the latest wrap up.

Sunday (7/22) – Volleyball Game 6: I really am a big fan of my team this year, regardless of won-loss records, we all play well and have a great team spirit. Not going to challenge any of the Olympic teams out there, but it’s fun watching them play and comparing styles. Back to our league, it’s a bit funny to me after putting up last week’s standings that half the league is tied at a 4-2 record. We’ll see how that breaks up a bit tomorrow.

Monday (7/23) – Hillside Lodge I: I’m not going to lie . . .

Tuesday (7/24) – Hillside Lodge II: I’m pretty proud of this set. I especially enjoyed the fact that I got to work on my story telling writing while relaying what happened with the Bates Motel wannabe.

Wednesday (7/25) – Road Trip Food II: Jess says I’m not finished with this set of posts since I didn’t pick my favorite meal. After a bit of review and reflection, I have to make the call that we saved the best for last, and the best meal we had was at Dad’s Kitchen (in a narrow victory over Linn’s and Johnny Garlic’s). It was a very good burger and all the components came together just right.

Thursday (7/26) – Road Trip Wrap Up: I don’t think I can do a wrap up of a wrap up, that might tear a hole in the space time continuum or something. ::Ahem:: Sorry, moving on to less nerdy topics.

Friday (7/27) – Road Trip Pictures: One thing I certainly can’t complain about this vacation, it gave me plenty of blog fodder. Apologies if you’re tired of hearing about it, we get to move on tomorrow.

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 220.1 miles
Volleyball Match Record: 4-2 (10-8 Game Record)
Fitocracy Level: 23 ID: disciplev1

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By Matt
July 28, 2012

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2012-366 Day 209 – Road Trip Pictures

Okay, I was wrong, I guess there is one more thing to cover. Here’s some favorite pictures I took of the trip (I believe that I, by far, took the LEAST number of pictures on this trip) and a little bit of commentary. If you’re my friend on Facebook you can see all of my pictures there.

I had Dennis take this one with my phone. The olallieberry (there, I finally looked up how to spell it after all these posts) seemed like it wanted to be an umpire, so I gave it some pointers.

I took several pictures of the structure under this pier in Monterey (this file’s name in WordPress is now “Pier Under”. Get it, peer . . . sorry, never mind, moving on), which might indicated some sort of problem on my part since if I turned directly to my right . . .

This was my view. Yeah, yeah, it’s pretty and all, but look at the shapes under the pier guys!

I took this one at one of our beach stops for my dad, I know it’s a newer model (if you can call 70’s that much newer than 60’s), but how often do you see one VW bus camper, let alone two?

From another beach stop, this was probably the prettiest picture I took on the trip (the beach is behind me here).

This is Sullivan O’Duck (Sully for short) who I picked up for Jess at the Irish store on Pier 39. I only have one picture of him, but there are many more from the trip since I kept “Quackbombing” Dennis’ pictures with him. Yes, we did spend 15 minutes coming up with his name, and yes, the final selection was due to it sounding like “Silly Old Duck.”

I don’t believe they are related, but the duckie seen here is over 30 years old and located in the Blacksmith shop in Ferndale. I only know his age because we happened to see a Huell Howser special on Ferndale before we left and the duckie was briefly featured. I had to get a picture of him after that.

This just amused me, from the small town of Trinidad up north. Apparently you can save some money if you house your police station and library in the same building, and that building is a small house.

This was my favorite spot on the trip, the river where we went chasing river otters. It had a great bridge and though the river has been higher, it was still a beautiful and serene location.

Finally, a river up near the Oregon border that we stopped at briefly for pictures, and sometimes I just like to do my own thing when it comes to taking pictures. I just like how this one came out.

So there’s a sort of top ten of pictures from my trip (again, you can see all 60 or so on Facebook). Shooting with just my camera did limit the quality of shots I got, but it also allowed me not to have to worry about setting up too much. Oh, and I almost forgot, one more bonus picture before we go (click it to make it go):

Jess does not like seagulls, but Brian wanted some pictures of her feeding them. I took some rapid shot pictures and made this Gif of Jess getting out of dodge.

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 220.1 miles (+2 miles)
Volleyball Match Record: 4-2 (10-8 Game Record)
Fitocracy Level: 23 ID: disciplev1

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By Matt
July 27, 2012

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Bean Salad

If you know me at all, you know that I travel via food. Vacations are designed for and around eating. Although, this means that now that we are back I’m having to pay a little penance for my splurging. Meaning I’m eating pretty much only “green smoothies”, salads, and veggies this week. Somehow, miraculously, I actually didn’t gain weight on our trip despite the wonderful food, so this is more a nutrition thing than a diet thing. I always like to say I’m 85/15. Healthy 85% of the time and indulging 15% of the time. This week is me just trying to even out the numbers. Or me trying to make myself feel better, one of the two.

Anyway, Sunday afternoon was spent prepping meals for the week. I made 6 pints of smoothies for breakfasts and a bunch of salads for lunches. Knowing I would grow tired of leafy salad (I did not inherit my father’s ability to eat the same thing every day) I threw together this bean salad on a whim. It turned out GREAT! And, AND, it got Matt’s approval! I didn’t expect that.

Now here’s the problem, when I cook, especially when I am throwing something together, I don’t measure. So these are my closest approximations:

Bean Salad

1 15oz can Garbanzo Beans (Always strain and rinse canned beans)

3/4 of a can each of black beans and kidney beans (I have no justification for this measurement other than I don’t like them as much as garbanzo beans so I didn’t put in the whole can. And lest you think I wasted food, they went into the turkey chili for dinner)

1-1  1/2  cups green beans chopped into pieces (Now I guess you could use a can of green beans. I, personally, do not like canned green beans, they aren’t really green and are mushy, so I use fresh. Trader Joe’s sells them in a bag, you throw it in the microwave for 4 minutes and voila!)

1 red bell pepper, diced

1/2 of a red onion, diced

1 1/2 cups of cooked macaroni or other small pasta noodle (I used a whole grain, high protein version)

Fresh parsley, chopped

Fresh cilantro, chopped

 

Dressing: (Again I am approximating the measurements, so feel free to play with it! )

1/3 cup olive oil

1/3 cup white vinegar

Juice of one lemon

1 tsp sugar

1/4 – 1/3 cup deli-style mustard

Salt and Pepper to taste

Put the salad ingredients together in a large bowl, mix it up a bit so everything is distributed. Make the dressing separately in a smaller bowl, and whisk everything together (or throw it all in a mason jar and shake it up!). Pour the dressing onto the salad and mix until the dressing covers everything.

I stored mine in a large mason jar and it lasted us all week!

Posted in Jess General. Tagged with , .

By Jessica
July 26, 2012

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2012-366 Day 208 – Road Trip Wrap Up

So, over the past week I’ve done two posts on the food we ate on our vacation, and two posts on one of the hotels we stayed at. In them and in between, I’ve related some stories, both here and on Facebook, but I think it is now time to wrap everything up with a nice little bow.

This was planned as our “unplanned” trip. Jess, myself, Brian, and Dennis all piled into Brian’s Explorer and threw in six days worth of stuff on a Sunday morning and headed “North.” My personal goal was to get up to Oregon, but, other than that, didn’t have much specific planned. We did decide we wanted to take a coastal route, so we took the 118 out to the 101 and then over to Pacific Coast Highway.

We made our first stop in Cambria, as Dennis and Brian had been in the town on a previous trip, and we had a request from on of the people in our lifegroup for a jar of pie filling you can get there. After eating at Linn’s (I won’t recount the food here, that’s in the food blogs), we wandered the immediate area for about half an hour, checking out a market there (which was nice but kind of sparse) and the most labyrinthine antique shop you will ever see. The building had three floors, and probably almost 20 rooms crammed full of stuff of all sorts.

We ended Sunday arriving in Monterey, and, after finding the Otter Inn which Brian had stayed at before and checking in, wandered around while proceeding to find that most of town had closed up on a late Sunday night. After some snackage at the Cannery Row Brewing Co, we turned in for the night, while seagulls re-enacted all of Shakespeare’s plays outside our windows for the entire night (hey, can you prove they were doing something else?). I tuned it out pretty well, and Jess had earplugs, but Brian and Dennis suffered a bit.

Not ones to let a Monday in Monterey go to waste, we wandered around the coast a bit after enjoying our crepes and then proceeded to the main event, a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. You may or may not know that Jess is just a little(!) obsessed with otters, and this place has them in spades. We toured the aquarium a bit up until otter feeding time, and made our way to the tanks to watch the show. The otters were very cute and didn’t disappoint, and we could even see some later out in the actual bay (they had viewers on the deck) lounging around in the ocean. Eventually we had to move on, as our car could only stay at the hotel until four, so we got back and headed out.

Our next destination was San Francisco, and on the way up we stopped at several coastal spots to take pictures and hang out (we actually did this both days, but I’m just getting to it now). At one of the stops, Brian’s camera fell out of the car and he later realized that the lens had become broken, the exposure was stuck on full. We found a Best Buy on the way into San Francisco and he was able to rustle up some replacements, but at this point it was fairly late and we needed some food. This lead to the unscheduled stop at the Boulevard Cafe (“We are eating there.” “Are you sure? What about . ..” “No. There.”), and then the entirety of the events surrounding the Hillside Lodge, already covered in detail.

Our early flight from the Hillside Lodge put us in San Francisco proper for our doughnut breakfast, but a wrong address in the app where we found it listed initially gave us a nice tour of San Fran’s underbelly. It also gave us a tour of some of the great hills, and I was extremely glad we weren’t in a manual transmission car when a red light stuck us at a 45 degree angle at the top of one of the biggest hills I’ve been on. After doughnuts we made our way across the peninsula to Pier 39 (without a map, which led to this exchange upon getting to the East side of the peninsula and Pier 28 – Brian: “I found it, I’m good.” Me: “Yeah, you’re only off by 11.” Brian, turning right instead of left and proceeding to the next pier. Me: “12 now”), and, by the way, does anyone have any idea how those piers are numbered? We saw all the touristy stuff walking around the pier and then walked towards Fisherman’s Wharf and lunch, and it was all fun and games until I got pooped on by one of the dang birds around there. After walking to the edge of Ghiradelli Square, I was done and wanted to change, so we hiked back to the car where I changed in a parking garage and exiled my jeans and sweater into a large Ziploc bag (which are great for travel, by the way).

We headed out of San Francisco and across the Golden Gate bridge, stopping at Johnny Garlic’s in Santa Rosa for dinner, and finally tracking down a place to sleep in Ukiah. Pretty much all of Ukiah was full (we found out towards the end of the night that the Nor Cal baseball tournament was going on in town and they had filled three of the hotels, but we wound up finding a hotel that had a “suite” (by Ukiah standards) of three double beds. We all slept well that night.

Jess washed my sweater at a local laundromat the next morning (Thanks again sweetie!) while everyone was getting ready, and we headed north again. The heavy travel and different cities we kept going through definitely threw of my sense of time, it was hard to remember that it was Wednesday. We made our way through the Redwoods and Sequioas in probably what was my favorite part of the trip. I’ve mentioned it in previous posts, but the mountain environment is truly where I am at my most serene. We stopped at several places of note among the trees, including a drive through tree (I looked at the map we acquired from the gift shop there and asked everyone if they had had their fill of drive through trees, as there were two to three more on the route up. Everyone agreed one was enough), the Big Tree, stopping for lunch in the town of Miranda, driving the Avenue of the Giants, and getting out to walk along the river while looking for river otters. I love it up there and hadn’t been in the area for a long time (probably over a decade), though I think I will be going back much sooner.

The only drawback was that we ended up heading out of there and ending up in Arcata/Humboldt for dinner. I’ve made my feelings clear on the area, so we’ll move on. We wound up heading out of town and about seven miles off the path to an Indian casino named Blue River, which, since it was built within the past couple years, was quite nice. I ended up making 300% of my money back gambling before the smoke forced me back upstairs to our room (I started with two dollars, you can do the math), and Jess and I enjoyed ice cream sandwiches from the local gas station mini mart before going to bed.

Thursday was our last day of stopping places before heading back Friday as Dennis had to be back home for an event Saturday morning. We still had not made it into Oregon, so we booked our way up to Grant’s Pass for our northern most point, on the way stopping for gas station sandwiches. We turned south and made it to the town of Ashland, were they have a Shakespeare Festival during the summer. We visited the theater and the gift shop, but would not be able to stay for a performance. We wandered around the town a little bit, did some shopping, then ate dinner and headed out.

We dropped back into California and stopped in Yreka, which was Brian’s old stomping grounds when he was a teen. We actually stayed at his mom’s house that night, Brian trying to troubleshoot her internet connection the entire time we were there (although we were all correct as to the cause of the problem – 3 IT guys know there stuff – we couldn’t fix it because it was a hardware issue with the modem which had to be replaced after we left). Brian’s brother came over with his family and we visited for a while, then we went out that night for some stargazing, which was amazing.

Finally we piled into the car on Friday morning and began the long trek down the 5 freeway to home. We stopped for lunch in Sacramento and ate so much we were actually pretty full for the rest of the drive. We made fairly good time and definitely did not enjoy the same caliber of scenery (or smells) as the trip up, but the higher speed limit made up for it.

In all it was a great vacation, although we’re already discussing which parts we might turn into planned visits in the future. I wouldn’t do all my trips of the unplanned variety, but it certainly was an experience to do at least one. One funny aspect was the time warp due to the travel and the differing sleep schedule, as I never was quite sure what day it was and hours would sometimes just disappear. I find it hard to believe it’s already Thursday and I’ve been back to work for almost a week now, but I guess that’s the advantage of vacation. We’ll see where the next one takes us.

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 218.1 miles (+3.5 miles)
Volleyball Match Record: 4-2 (10-8 Game Record)
Fitocracy Level: 23 ID: disciplev1

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By Matt
July 26, 2012

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2012-366 Day 207 – Road Trip Food II

Guess I should finish what I started, huh? Last I left, we were up through the end of Tuesday recounting all the food consumed on our trip north. Wednesday through Friday produced slightly fewer places to eat (mostly due to skipping a few meals), but definitely had some highlights. Oh, I also corrected the name of the restaurant at which we had late night eats in Monterey from the first post, it’s the Cannery Row Brewing Company.

Wednesday Morning: We headed out of Ukiah after a quick stop at a supermarket for some coffee and milk for the little cereal boxes we brought, so no meals to be reviewed here.

Wednesday Afternoon: Another “because it was there” stop, we were driving along the Avenue of the Giants through the town of Miranda when it was time for lunch. The Yelp reviews for the Avenue Cafe (yes, they have Yelp reviews for towns that small, it’s really handy) were positive, so we stopped in for lunch. Food aside, the waiter we had certainly had the most character of all the ones we encountered on the trip. I was also viciously assaulted by a falling table umbrella, blown over by the wind, but fortunately it landed on my eye socket and not in my eye. The food was pretty good too, I had a meat calzone that checked all the right boxes, my only complaint was the dough could have been a little better. The burger orders were also pleased with their selections, and we got to eat outside on the patio in lovely surroundings (if you discount the attack patio furniture).

Wednesday Evening: I made my feelings on Humboldt/Arcata pretty clear in a previous post, and this was the night we ate there. A restaurant called Luke’s Joint (I’m not sure if they were trying to be clever or not, but again, good Yelp reviews) ended up being our destination and I found a croissant sandwich that featured scrambled eggs, ham, and cheese on the menu which was the least “arty” dish. I got the last croissant and I was satisfied with it, although it probably didn’t help that I just wanted to leave. Brian and Jess both raved about the Potato Parsnip soup and are trying to get the recipe from the place, but no success yet.

Thursday: And here’s where we break from the sections of the day format as we started getting more creative with our eating schedule. We skipped breakfast and ate in the car, and then picked up sandwiches from a gas station (actually ended up decent, much better than the worst case scenario) while making our way up into Oregon. We stopped for a while in Ashland and that’s when dinner time rolled around. A desire for mexican food and some good Yelp reviews led us to Agave, a small taco place on the main drag (we later found out a place called Munchies we parked in front of is actually owned by friends of a couple in our life group, which it would have been fun to check that out). Agave was a decent meal, I had a carnitas and carne asada taco that were both pretty good, especially when I augmented them with the red and green salsa from the chips we ordered. It was very popular, and we were fortunate that the two gentlemen who were using the only table there that sat four ceded it to us (they were purchased margaritas for their trouble), and it was certainly a higher quality mexican food than your usual hole in the walls, but the menu was kind of limited.

Friday: Friday also gets only one entry because we once again skipped breakfast in lieu of what we had in the car and made it down from Yreka to Sacramento to eat at Dad’s Kitchen, and it wound up being the only meal we would need for the day. Another Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives location, Jess was attracted to them because their burger is formed in a pastry ring with the blue cheese, bacon, and beef all formed into a single patty. Those that know me know that blue cheese isn’t my thing (I like my cheese to only have gone bad once), but they had a cowboy burger which I, of course, had to try. I am still continuing my quest to try all the different BBQ bacon cheeseburgers, and this one was certainly up there near the top of the list. If you combined the non-bun portion of this burger with the bun from Linn’s (see part I), you could quite possibly have the perfect burger. The BBQ sauce was great, the crispy onion strings a nice addition, and a very good patty with melted cheese and not too crispy bacon. That and the fries kept me full from Sacramento to the Grapevine where I got a snack when we stopped for gas.

I might have gained a couple pounds from all the eating during vacation, but the walking around places helped atone for it and it’s mostly back off now. I’m not one to skimp while on vacation though (at least when it comes to eating) and some of the great food I had made it totally worth it.

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 214.6 miles
Volleyball Match Record: 4-2 (10-8 Game Record)
Fitocracy Level: 23 ID: disciplev1

Posted in Matt 2012-366, Matt General. Tagged with , , , .

By Matt
July 25, 2012

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2012-366 Day 206 – Hillside Lodge II

Read Part 1 here. If. You. Dare.

Making our way to the door of our room, suddenly a loud rumble could be heard. A train ripped by directly across the street, horn blaring as it receded into the late night mists.

Yup, right behind the railing on the other side of the streets were train tracks.

After recovering from the shock of the unexpected train, I pulled out the card key and approached the dark room. The card slid into the slot and the door lock gave way with an audible click. I pulled down on the handle and breached the threshold revealing . . .

I swear I backed as far into the corner as I could and almost had the phone in my face to make it look as big as I could.

Pretty much the smallest hotel room I had ever seen. Jess and I holding hands could reach both walls and that was without even stretching. Furniture was jammed into every available square inch of floor, with the only unoccupied space leading either into the postage stamp sized bathroom or the “walk in” closet which had the door removed. The bed was tiny, only a double size, but still managed to dominate the vast majority of the room.

With a room so small it was very easy to quickly familiarize ourselves with the little pieces of CSI evidence that had apparently either been missed or not cleaned up from the previous occupants, which was odd since Jess’ first comment upon entering the room was how it smelled of bleach. Apparently they did not use enough bleach to get rid of the suspicious specks above the bed.

I’ve seen this on CSI before. It’s not arterial spray, so maybe it was just a paper cut?

And they definitely did not use enough spackle to cover the suspicious holes in the wall.

Either someone REALLY can’t hang a picture, or can’t aim a shotgun. Actually, you know what, maybe both?

This kind of inattention to detail absolutely littered the place. Remember how I mentioned the furniture was crammed into every corner of the place? I’m pretty sure this was so it didn’t try to escape.

This nightstand isn’t going ANYWHERE!

It’s like the we were in the castle from Beauty and the Beast, you know, if it was the size of a drive up locksmith stand (you know the ones I am talking about right? The little buildings on the corner of the lots. Sometimes sell flowers or were photo developing stands back when that was a thing? No? Darn.) or some other tiny structure. There was a desk with two chairs between the closet and bathroom.

Right under that mirror that makes the room look so much bigger, right?

Hey, wait a minute, I said TWO chairs. Where did the other one go? Granted it would be blocking the bathroom door if it was in the appropriate place, but we can’t have unaccounted for furniture.

Ah ha! Found it trying to escape!

Perhaps we should have followed the furniture’s lead and headed for the door. especially after going into the door-less closet and discovering it was as empty as a necromancer’s soul and housed just as many skeletons. At least I’m pretty sure it did, I kind of ran out screaming when I looked up and saw the bare light bulb . . . that had NO on switch!

Seriously, I looked for like five minutes and couldn’t figure out how they turned it on.

Yet I could do nothing to appease the dark maw of the closet, since there was no way to shut a door that doesn’t exist.

Nothing says classy like a door jamb with no door.

Resigned to our fate, we brought in our luggage and prepared a bulwark against the dark forces that were sure to assail us that night. Or just threw them on the table, my memory is a little unclear on that one. My refusal to place anything into the dark hole that was the closet left only one other unexplored location, the dark and (with the addition of water) dank portal into a putrid land of terror, an area whose purpose (a place to get clean) was so subverted by its contents that one could actually consider it a true case of irony, if I had any confidence in using the word correctly after all the years of the mainstream butchering it.

I’d step inside to take a picture of the whole thing, but I could never fit all of me in there at one time, some body part kept sticking out.

Where to begin with this vile place? Shall I begin with the coffin-like recess they claimed was a shower? A figurative coffin with just as much access to light as its literal counterpart, so much so that external measures were required to lighten its foreboding corners?

Funny, you normally don’t want to be in the spotlight when you shower.

And by what magic did we beat back the darkness? What force of good could stand up to such a shaded terror?

Let there be . . . you know what, not going to finish that one, probably tiptoeing a few lines as it is.

Although it turns out that you’d probably rather not see what was in the shower in the first place. Maybe the management (or whatever lived here when people weren’t around) was doing us a favor, since pulling the shower curtain closed revealed this lovely tableau of mildew (I hope) on the back of it.

Please don’t be mold . . . please don’t be mold . . . please don’t be mold.

What of the towel rack, which, despite its fortification with, I kid you not here, duct tape . . .

Is there anything you can’t be used for duct tape?

But still gave way fairly easily at the tender touch of my lovely bride and possibly became a weapon for our defense against the darkness? I’d say the room might have been doing us a favor, but I’m pretty sure even the weakest werewolf wouldn’t mistake that for a silver implement and could figure out they easily would rend it in twain. Fortunately it was fairly easy to place back on the wall.

Jess’ face here really sums up the whole experience. Maybe I should have just posted this picture as the sole entry on this topic . . . Nah, this is too much fun.

But the piece de resistance was (of course) our toilet, which came with a cryptic message of foreboding and doom.

Looks pretty harmless, right?

What’s that, you want to see closer? Okay, I risked my life for this next picture, I hope you think it is worth it merely to satisfy your morbid curiosity . . .

You want me to do what?

Yes, it wanted me to reach inside the musty maw and perform minor surgery upon it before being made to perform its intended purpose. Only the next morning after survival was insured did I dare peel back the porcelain dome and discover that tag was an installation instruction and no longer applied to its normal operation. But these were chances I was not going to take in the dark of night, with danger lurking on all sides.

Ah, I figure it is not spoiling too much to reveal that we did indeed survive our ordeal, as otherwise you would not be reading this post. (Or would you? This entry easily could have been set to post in the future . . .) The evil spirits denied us internet access that night, as I could not divine the hotel’s wifi password (the suggested “red rum, red rum” did not work) and I did not want to awaken the keepers again lest they try to imprison us in a yet smaller receptacle. My phone hovered on the edge of usefulness, so no help could be called for, as it was observed that our friends room was just far enough away that they would not hear our screams. We settled into the bed quickly and arranged for an early time of departure so we could leave this place far behind, remaining only to haunt our dreams, nay, nightmares.

So I guess the upshot of all this is not to stay at a location that when you type in “Hillside” the autofill on Google populates “Strangler” before the hotel name as you go to look up reviews. Also don’t assume Expedia knows what in the world they are talking about.

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 214.6 miles
Volleyball Match Record: 4-2 (10-8 Game Record)
Fitocracy Level: 23 ID: disciplev1

Posted in Matt 2012-366, Matt General. Tagged with , , , .

By Matt
July 24, 2012

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