World Cup Retrospective – Visiting the jimsjoint archives
Wow!! It was 44 years ago that we went to the Cow Palace to watch the first ever world wide broadcast of a World Cup final, in COLOR!!
Monthly Archive: June 2014
Thinking of you on Father\’s Day…..
and always
Summer Solstice at the Ranch
Spent a great saturday in Winters. Got to spend some quality time with Diane and Bree. We went for a walk aound the property and visited all the horses. Great day!
Return to the Mother Ship
Its was a crazy couple days. Wednesday morning I was working as usual when I got a dreaded “blue screen of death” on my company laptop. The BSOD is not always fatal. It does cause a “hard stop” on your computer where you are forced to restart the machine. Many times you can restart and not have any more problems. Not this time. When I tried to restart I would only be able to start in “safe mode”. A mode that lets you get on your computer but with very limited functionality. After working with the HP help-desk remotely things only got worse. So bad in fact that the laptop would not fully boot up any longer. UGH!! So I couldn’t access email, tools, anything. I was screwed. No other options other than to scheduled an appointment to get the machine fixed next morning at HP headquarters in Palo Alto.
So for the first time in years I was going to the office, in commute traffic no less! It really wasn’t that bad. only took about 40 minutes to travel 15 miles to the office. I dropped off the laptop at the IT help station. The guys there said it would take about 4 hours to re-image the laptop and get everything working correctly again. So with a little time on my hands I went looking for my buddy Joe. Unfortunately he was not in the office yet. I took a long walk around the facility, had a cup of coffee. Joe eventually got to work and I hung out with him for awhile. After soup and salad lunch in the cafeteria my laptop was ready for pickup. Back home in no time! Thanks to Barb for taking a picture of me ready to go to work.
North Beach Festival – Day in the City
This is turning into one of my favorite day trips. Its so easy and conveniant to take BART to San Francisco. We board in Union City (only two miles from home) and disembark at Embarcadero Station in the city. When you go up those stairs from the station to the street, all of a sudden you are smack dab in one of the greatest cities in the world. Throw in a sunny summer day and you have the perfect ingredients for a great day in San Francisco.
The City was hopping! Not only was there a Giants game going on, there was also the North Beach Festival in Little Italy. The festival was only a short walk from the BART station so we decided to check it out. But as soon as we got out of the BART station someone had to use the bathroom so we stopped at the Hyatt Regency for restroom break. Since we were there we had a drink and light lunch. Crab Louies were really good!!
After that it was off to North Beach. The Festival was real crowded. They had two stages with music, food booths and arts and craft stuff. More like the Fremont art and wine festival but in North Beach. The best seats in the house were the little tables on the sidewalks outside of the Italian restaurants. No such luck in getting any of those. The wierd thing about this festival was the alcohol control. They had these large areas that were roped off where you could drink and buy beer and wine. You could drink in all the bars and restaurants but you could not walk around with a drink. I guess they know from experience that thing can get out of control.
We walked all around the festival and decided to head to the wharf where we thought it would be less crowded. We walked down Broadway to the Embarcaderos and made our way to one of our favorite places, Pier 23. We wet our whistle there and had a little appetizer while we watched a HUGE cruise ship take off to sea with a boat load of cruisers. It blew its big ass horn and was out of site within minutes. Very cool!!
It was such a beautiful day on the wharf. Tourists were everywhere!! We made our way to Pier 39 and checked out all the shops (and tourists). Walked out to the end to to see Alcatraz and the bay. The wind was blowing pretty good and there were all sorts of boats out in the bay. Walked around the other side to checkout the seals that hang out on the docks. Some big boys out there!!
At some point we wanted to eat dinner somewhere so we made our way to Scoma’s. I’d never seen it so packed!! Tourists, Giants fans, everyone, was at Scoma’s. It was an hour wait but totally worth it! Fortunatly we got a seat in the bar while we waited. We were talking to a group of Giants fans about the game. There were just finishing their drinks an offered us their seats. So we ended up with a nice window view seat while we waited for our table.
We started our day in Little Italy and ended it at an authentic San Francisco Italian fish house. The waiters at Scoma’s are old school, professional waiters in white coats who can not only chat you up but also knows everything about anything on the menu. Our waiter was that guy. I ended up with what turned out to be the best fish dish I ever had. When I took my first bite of the sand dabs (grilled in lemon caper butter) I was in heavan!! I only wish that I wasn’t already so full from eating and drinking our way through the city. Either way, those sand dabs were the best ever!
We took a cab from Scoma’s back to Embarcadero BART station. Within an hour we were back home in Fremont. The end to a perfect day!
Happy Birthday Bro Mike!
I miss you bro – How about one of my fav pics – Mike with Kate
Flag Flying on Google Earth
Proud day today. I found that one of the flags that we put out in the bay at the bus stop had made it’s way onto Google Earth! You can see the flag (and shadow) out there to the left of the bench. Sadly, both the bench and flag were taken down by the bullies at Cargill.
Here is a pic from ground level at low tide
Berry Falls Ride – Skyline to the Sea Trail
Downing suggested we do something different for our saturday ride so we loaded the bikes in the back of his truck and headed to Waddel Beach for a ride up to Berry Falls in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. We got an early (0730) start and were on our bikes about an hour later. Fog hugging the coast as we crossed the PCH and got on the trail and made our way 6 miles up into the redwoods. This part of our ride was on the “Skyline to the Sea Trail” that I have heard about and read about but never done. We were actually doing the reverse “Sea to Skyline.” Or at least part of the way up to Skyline Blvd. 
A beautiful sunlit morning on the coast provided for a perfect sun filtered ride through the redwoods. These 200 foot plus beauties towered over everything and in some spots you could tell sunlight hardly ever hits the ground. Like my dad used to say; “look at all the greens!” You wouldn’t know there was a drought by riding this trail. Ferns growing everywhere. Wildflowers, moss on rocks, trees growing out of downed trees. Green everywhere!! No wind and not very many people either. At the six mile mark the bike trail ended. We locked our bikes at the rack and headed the rest of the way up the the falls on foot. I think the map said 1.1 miles to the falls.
As we were making our way up to the falls, following the creek along the way, I was wondering if there would even be any water coming over since we haven’t had rain in months. There was water in the creek but not very much. We had to cross the creek a couple of time on makeshift foot bridges and eventually made our way to Berry Falls. Beautiful spot. 
They built a little platform so you could gaze upon the falls. It looked like about a 100 foot drop from the top to the pool below. Even though it was fairly early, there were already a few people on the trail. There was a family at the falls and they offered to take our picture. We took a short break and then decided to venture further up the trail to the top of the falls. At the top of the falls you could see that there were actually several more waterfalls further up the trail. So away we went. Up and Up and Up. We must have climbed up to another 3 or 4 small waterfalls. At some point we were taking a break and there was some guy coming down. He said there were no more falls up there so we decided to head back down.
Some way, some how, we took a wrong turn and got lost for a little while. Just hiking and talking away when at some point we realized we were not on the trail we were supposed to be on. We back tracked and got right and before we new it we were back at our bikes. And boy was I glad we had our bikes. As we were cruising (and mostly coasting) back down to the beach, you realize that all the people hiking were hiking at least 14 miles from beach to waterfall and back. That’s a lot of miles. But for us, it was a 12 mile piece of cake bike ride and a 3 mile hike. PERFECT!! We actually passed a scout troop that had passed us going down when we were going up.
Those redwood trees not only blocked the sunlight but they also blocked the wind. We could believe how windy it was back at the beach. Crazy windy! We took a short break before we headed up highway 1 and towards home. The bonus of the trip was that we stopped at the store in Pescadero and got a coupld of loaves of artichoke bread!! When I saw the sign for Pescadero I knew we had to stop, and I’m glad we did. Bought two loaves that were still warm out of the oven.
Another point of interest was the traffic. When we made the turn onto highway 92 in Half Moon Bay to head back over the hill, the traffic coming the other way (to the beach) was backed up all the way to highway 280.That is a long long way. Unfortunatly for those suckers, there really is nowhere to turn around so you are pretty much stuck. We’ve been in that mess before and its no fun. So if you plan on going to the beach on a nice summer day, GO EARLY!!
