Category Archives: goings on

goings on, music, ramblings, random

Clearing the Cobwebs

Oof, where to begin? I’ve been busy doing life things (so say we all, given the rather unappealing alternatives), but have not enjoyed the intermittent reminders from this website that I had “content” to moderate.

“Content” being of course the millions of admirers and followers I have amassed over the course of my storied career as a tastemaker, influencer and wheeler-dealer.

Or maybe it was innumerable spammers telling me how excited they were to find my site and how insightful my posts were and that I should checkout their site or look at some sexy milf pics.

After previously logging in only to prune all the comments, I’ve finally updated all the things. I’m not terribly happy with how unresponsive the design is right now, but it’s serviceable. I’m a bit annoyed that Instagram shut down the scraper I was using for posting photos. But then, I don’t post anything but stories these days, so I suppose it’s a wash. Perhaps I will write more often.

While I have no pretensions that folks give a shit about what I have to say, I do find it a bit cathartic to put finger to key. And in today’s what-the-fuck-is-going-on-with-everything world, that’s not something to discount.

I type this on the eve of the midterm elections, the results of which I fear will accelerate the decline of the US as a global power and beacon of hope and freedom.

Perhaps, not unrelatedly, I’ve turned off comments. That’s until I can get my “$5 a month to post all you want on my blog” service off the ground.

[This post was typed while listening to the excellent Natural Brown Prom Queen.]

goings on

An interesting start to the day…

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Last night, after a nice evening at Amber (save for some smoke), I crashed over at my lovely gal’s place.

Deborah leaves for work pretty early and I usually opt to sleep in. She
left me a set of keys and asked that I make sure the cats are out of
the room and that I close the door to her room before I left. She’s had
some issues with her roomie that have led to some increased security
measures.

"Sure thing sweetie," as I drift back to sleep off the remainder of the night’s beers.

After a few rounds of "slap the snooze bar," I get up and make my
preparations to depart the house. First stop: the bathroom to brush my
teeth and put in my contacts. I trudge out of the room, being careful
to close the door so the cats don’t get in.

Brush the teeth. Install the contacts.

Go to the bedroom to get dressed…

Hand on the doorknob…

Locked.

I’m in my underwear.

The realization of "I’m fucked!" washes over me rather quickly. I
double/triple/quadrulple check the doorknob. I can hear my pants,
shirt, shoes, wallet, phone laughing at me from beyond the door.

I begin to laugh myself, at my prediciment–visions of walking back to my house in my underwear playing through my head.

I head downstairs in the hopes that there is a spare key or something
that will free my belongings. No key in sight, I realize that I am
going to have to find a way back to my house without the usual
accoutrement.

Then I spy, through the window into the laundry room, a pair of pants!
Black Danskin sweatpants, to be exact–size 8, flared at the bottom.
Better than underwear, though barely. The pants are tight and stop just
below my knee, with a nice flare.

I spend a few minutes on the back patio, seeing if there’s an easy way
to climb up to Deborah’s window. With knee in current state: not
advised.

I head back upstairs to the hall closet (Deborah’s roommate keeps some
overflow clothes there) in search of a top to complete my ensemble. No
shoes that fit; no surprise there. I settle on a nice black DKNY jacket
that covers most of my arms and a bit of my chest…

Now, to find a way home!

I open the front door and lean out, looking to find a cab to hail. A few go by in ten minutes, but they all have passengers.
A man walks by and I ask him if I can borrow his cell phone to call a
cab. He looks me up and down and says: "Sorry, I don’t have a cell
phone," and continues walking down the sidewalk. Heh.

Then, I see just down the street, a guy has parked in a driveway and
was loading stuff into his car. I suck up my pride and step out onto
the sidewalk. After explaining myself, he smiles and phones me a cab…

Happy Friday!

games, goings on

E3 and beyond

Well, my sister is putting me to shame with her regular updates and she is almost seven months pregnant and works full time, so I guess I don’t really have much excuse for not writing. I always seem to have plans for writing, but then can’t decide if I should even bother updating on events that have happened a while ago (eg. I still haven’t written about the trip to Mexico). Oh well. I’ll just start rambling and see where it goes.

E3

Last week I was down in LA for E3, the big video game hoo-ha. It was a pretty good year for us (SEGA), though I have to say I think I’m pretty much over the whole show. It’s such an incredible sensory overload — your nerve endings get fried within a few hours on the first day. Then you realize you have two more days + six hours of it. And then you realize you have to meet with people to have *important* discussions about things, your brilliant schemes having to compete over the cacophony. And then you realize you have to do it the next day with a slight hangover. Well, that’s my experience, anyway, heh.

For most people in the industry, it’s a real clusterfuck of meetings, hob-nobbing and the just plain drudgery of working the booth floor. Fortunately, most of my hell was front-loaded in the form of  preps (website, setting up meetings) for the show. I didn’t have to work the floor and had just a few meetings a day. So that left me some time to check out some games and catch up with friends network.

If you read the gaming news, the new system from Nintendo (the unfortunately named “Wii,” pronounced “We”) stole the show. To me, this is merely because Nintendo has the hardest-core fans and Sony totally dropped the ball with their announcement of their new system costing slightly less than tuition to Harvard ($600 for the full system and $500 for a ghetto stripped-down system).

Don’t get me wrong–I love Nintendo. They are doing some really cool things by trying to reach beyond the normal gaming audience with their innovative controller, which will no doubt lead to some pretty cool new gameplay mechanics. But, so far, the only people that have really glommed onto it is the normal gaming audience. Will it catch on and go mass market? Hard to say. There were some interesting things on display in the  Nintendo booth. They had a neat tennis game (yes, you swing the controller like a racket) and the to-be-expected new versions of Mario and Zelda. We were also showing two games in the booth (Monkey Ball and Sonic). I think the funniest thing I saw though was a demo that had you conducting an orchestra that played in time with you waving the controller like a baton. It was kind of funny/cute to see the band frantically try to keep pace in a cartoon fashion.

The PS3’s price announcement was pretty annoying. Sony is trying pretty hard to lose its market share/stranglehold, that’s for sure. It will be a very interesting holiday season. PS3s will no doubt be uber-expensive and in short supply (as will quality launch titles, save for our most excellent Full Auto 2, natch), Wii will be $200 (or so it’s rumored) and Xbox360 will have some seriously nice games. For the price of one PS3, you could pick yourself up a nice wii600.

I think the best night I had was Wednesday–I just headed out to West LA to have dinner with Sirr, Vadan, Jay and David. We ate a pretty tasty dinner at the restaurant in a strip mall (gotta love LA). It was nice to get away from the schmoozefest and just chill with the peeps.

I did get my schmooze on the next night though, making the rounds with the notorious F.O.E. He dragged me to the Gametap Party which was on the 32nd floor of the SBC building. Would have been a nice view, if the weather hadn’t been so crap. Or maybe it’s typical LA sky/smog line. Anyway, had a few drinks and then was shepherded into a cab bound for the Escapist party on Sunset. The Escapist is a cool industry rag that manages to rise above the muck and do some solid thinking/reporting without the PR-stank that usually comes with gaming journalism. Had some interesting conversations before heading out to Dodger Tedium for the Sony Party (after scoring a last-minute ticket). The party itself was fairly meh, though I had fun hanging with some work peeps. We (thankfully) arrived just after the band played (Incubus), so you could actually do some socializing. Didn’t last long before packing it in and calling it a night.

Next day was a few meetings and then managed to get on an early flight home–score.

I did actually manage to get some work done–had some pretty interesting meetings with some peeps
I’ll probably do biz with. Can’t talk about it though. 😉

The weather was fantastic over the weekend, so I took advantage of on Saturday and and went hiking with some folks in Marin. It was actually more of a leisurely stroll from Pantoll down to Stimson Beach (including a nice bit of relaxation on the hot, yes hot!, beach. It was good to get out in teh nature after four days of asphalt and unwashed masses.

Inside_manIn the evening, took in dinner at Country Station Sushi (love that place) and a movie with the lady–Inside Man, the new Spike Lee joint. It was a pretty good movie, actually. A nice heist caper with a Lee twist. There were some annoying Lee moments (the obviously oppressed Arab and overzealous police), but there were also some funny things that gave an otherwise cliche plotline a nice splash a something different. Not to mention Clive Owen and Jodie Foster are badass.

goings on, music

A long weekend

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…and a musical one at that!

CoachellaAbout to head down to Palm Springs to hit Coachella — the best music fesitval ever.
There I will bask in the sun and take in the sights and sounds.

Pics from last year.

 

Looking most forward to:

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – <shame>I’ve never seen them before</shame>
Joey Beltram — old school techno dj
The Like
Ladytron
Scissor Sisters
Giant Drag
Minus the Bear
Metric (my current fave these days)

There’s tons more and I hope to discover a few new faves, but those are the ones I’m most looking forward. Might be interesting to see how the decrepit Madonna shakes her thing these days. I saw her on the Like a Prayer tour a while back. I used to be a big fan, but have lost interest in her antics over the years. Depeche Mode is headlining tomorrow–never seen them.

Better_offLast night went to see Better Off Dead at Dolores Park. It was a bit cold, but it was great to be outside and see one of my favorite movies from when I was a kid. I can pretty much recite the whole movie, I’ve seen it so many times. Deborah and I arrived early for the land grab and I fetched some buritos and beers. We were joined by a bunch of folks and we sat on the grass, munched popcorn and laughed the evening away. Really glad someone has the motivation to pull something like this together. Next month is Princess Bride, another great flick.

I want my two dollars!!!!!!!!!

Ok, off to pack…

film, goings on, ramblings

Weekend update+

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I’ve finally received a jolt of motivation and I have to say it feels good. I’ve been kind of low-energy/initiative for the past few months. Some of it stems from a bit of post-Dad depression, I think. Also, I’ve been hobbling around on a bum knee for several months. I went and got an MRI which revealed that I have two small meniscal tears in my left knee. Not bad as far as knee injuries go (better than, say, a torn ACL), but still no fun to deal with. The doctor recommended a rather simple relatively non-invasive surgery (arthroscopic). That really didn’t sit so well with me, so he gave me a shot of cortizone instead, which was supposed to help with swelling. It actually did help a bunch and let me go have a great time down in Mexico with Deborah. However, after about a month, the tweak sensation came back.Yay. So now I’m seriously thinking about the surgery. I really haven’t been able to get any excercise for fear of hurting myself. As a result, I’ve felt kind of sluggy. One positive is that I’ve tried accupuncture a few times. It’s helped with the knee a bit (more pain management than anything else), but I have to say the best benefit has been stress reduction. I love them needles! Which is funny, because I used to pass out when I got shots, so I’m a bit nervous around the needles. I neglected to tell that to the accupuncturist until she had sunk about four needles into me, heh. It went fine and I definitely plan to get treatment from time to time. The treatment definitely makes me feel good afterward. Almost stoned, actually.

Guinness_logo

Friday, Bill, Vadan and I went to a Guinness tasting in the Financial District after work. It was some semi-cheesy marketing thing that turned out to be pretty fun. Well, they were pretty generous about the beer anyway and had a small buffet of nibbles. We sat at large round tables in an oak-panelled banquet hall and listened to some guy yammer on about Guinness while we kicked back some frothy goodness. We took bets on how much/little the guy made shilling beer. It wasn’t a hard sell really–more of an infomation session. Learned a few things, like: Guinness is nitrogenated. That’s where the bubbles come into play and that’s what’s in the draft cans and bottles. Also–you are supposed to pour the cans into a glass and drink straight from the bottles. It has less calories than Corona or Heineken. The final "take away" was that I walked out with a few Guinness glasses for the home collection. Pretty fun time, all in all.

Brick_poster

Made a quick stop at Cassanova for another drink before heading out to meet Deborah on the BART. We treked to Embarcadero Cinema to meet a friend to see Brick. I had seen the trailer some time ago and remember it being interesting. Well, it was interesting up to a point, but I can’t say that I’d recommend the movie. Of course, I was a little tipsy, so that might have a bit of an effect. The movie defiinitely gets style points and some originality points–it’s a total Noir film with a modern day high school setting. The kid from 3rd Rock in the Sun (who I loved in Mysterious Skin — that’s a great film), plays a kid who tries to unravel the circumstances behind his ex-girlfriend’s death. She had fallen in with the bad crowd (gang-bangers, drug dealers, etc) and was in deep. The movie starts with him staring at her dead body face down near a drainage tunnel and then re-winds two days. The dialogue is definitely noir-ish, which makes for some humerous moments–the Vice Principle’s exchange with Brenden is particularly funny, but I felt a bit too jerked between humor and serious to really get affected by either. Again, high marks for originality, but sticking so closely to such a campy formula lost its appeal to me.
 

Saturday, I puttered around on the computer for a bit (including setting up a blog for my niece-to-be). Sister’s due in August and they already have a name: Abigail. And here’s her blog–nothing fancy. I also spent some time on MySpace. We are gearing up for a redesign of Sega.com and wanted to see what kinds of things we might be able to include on the next version of the site. The site is pretty interesting–much more flexible than Friendster. Of course, that leads to some really ugly pages, heh. But I guess the key is letting folks do what they want. Even if it does sometimes assault the eyes.

Ok, signing off for now. Going to go try to swim…

Cheerio.

goings on

Big life update (non-tri)

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Ok, well, this is a loooong overdue update on various activities I’ve been up to outside of triathlon training. Heh, actually, I haven’t been up to much, which is why I had to let stuff build up in order to get a worthy update together…

Letsee. Oh yeah, a bit over a month ago, I went to see Alkaline Trio at the Warfield. I generally have a no Warfield policy as I’ve been very disappointed by shows there — very hit and miss in the sound department. But I was lured out again as I saw a good show there recently (Pixies) and Deborah really likes Alkaline Trio, so there we have it. The show was actually quite good. They aren’t my usual cup of tea, but they definitely can turn it out. If you aren’t aware of them, then you are probably over 16 years old, heh. They are an emo/pop-punky band. The crowd wasn’t as young as i expected, actually, but young enough to make me feel old. Still, I had a good time…

Other big change. We (bill, ballou and I) have a new roommate. Randy has flown the coop and we now have a bit of estrogen to balance things out a bit. So far (since beginning of the month), it’s been fine. Actually, she’s a bit of a ghost roomie–rarely see her at home. Not that I’m home all that much either. Anyway, welcome to Lian. If anything, it will be nice to have someone that forces Bill to clean the bathroom more often than whenever we have a party, heh.

Other stuff that’s been going on:

Went on a cool camping and swimming and goofing off trip to the Yuba River with Sirr and the Crew. It was a blast playing in the river and cooking and hanging out, despite the drama of someone locking their keys in the car. The car that was holding dinner, no less. Doh! As you can tell from the pictures, the team is gunning for a sponsorship from either Miller or Camel, possibly both. I manged to get some training in too.

A few weeks ago, I took the plunge (harhar) and went skydiving. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and my friend Kerry and I made a pact to do it some time ago. Well the time was nigh and we (plus my friend Anne and Kerry’s friend Emily) piled into Kerry’s car and treked out to scenic Byron, CA to drop out of a plane. I have to say, the scariest part to me was the degree to which I had to sign my rights away. They basically make you sign a form saying they have no liability whatsoever. According to the papers I signed, an employee of theirs could push me out of the plane without a parachute and not be liable. Also, if anyone tried to sue them in case something befell me, they have the right to liquidate my assets and give $25K to each of the defendants! I was pretty incredulous and very wary of signing such papers. I mean, what’s their incentive to stay safe if they have no liabiliity? Then common-sense kicked in and I realized that I would be tethered to a person, so it’s pretty much in their best interest to make sure I don’t die, heh. So, I begrudgingly signed my life away. Then came the boring part–the wait. We sat around in the overheated hangar on couches watching some kid play Sonic Heroes on Xbox (go Sega!). One thing I do have to note was the EXTREME atmosphere. There were muscley guys struting around with cool tats and killer shades. I definitely could have used more brut aftershave or something to try to fit in. They weren’t assholes or anything–just definitely EXTREME. I expected there to be a soda machine in which the only selection was Mountain Dew. Alas, this wasn’t the case. Eventually, we got around to getting suited up. Of course, all the EXTREME folks have their own killer gear and we get handed some pretty worn jumpsuits, though I think Anne pulled it off pretty well. Then we sat around some more. Emily and Anne went up first, leaving Kerry and I to discuss our strategy. I decided to pony up cash for the video and had resolved to be as EXTREME as possible. This would involve various hand signals (thumbs up, peace signs, hang ten, middle finger, etc). About 45 minutes after Anne and Emily disappeared into the blue yonder, it was time for Kerry and I to take to the sky. My instructor was a short guy named Vic. We piled into a small puddle-jumper of a plane–it was pretty cramped in there: about tweleve of us or so. The ride up took a while and I guess if I had any nervousness about it it was during the ascent. Vic pointed out various places like Stockton (home of Steve Malkmus, btw) and I could just make out Sutro Tower surrounded by fog. After half an hour or so, it was time to jump. All the non-tandem jumpers (that is, everyone except Kerry, myself and the pilot) went and then Kerry went and then I went. Getting to the door was funny–I had to kind of waddle over with a small guy strapped to my back. Then we shuffled to the door, paused for a sec and fell…

…it was great! I really was surprised by how enjoyable it was. We dropped from 14,000 feet and had a minute of freefall before Vic pulled the chute. It was so much fun that I even forgot to ham it up and be EXTREME for the camera. However, in the second pass-by the guy does, you can see me mouth "EXTREME!!!" I didn’t do so well with the hand signals though. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Very noisy during the freefall and then really quiet and peaceful during the glide down. Vic let me do some lazy turns to get a feel of the controls. The sky was clear and the view was amazing. I’ll post the video ASAP, but meanwhile you can enjoy way too many pics. I made sure to include some unflattering ones. Needless to say–if you want to look cool whilst skydiving, it helps to keep your mouth closed. And not have an EXTREME gnome on your back.

I’ll post back with movie and some more updates soon.

goings on

Weekend Update

Xis_discoJust the quick lowdown on the lovely weekend I had…

On Friday, went to dinner with Deborah to Greens down in Fort Mason. Have to say wasn’t that impressed. Deborah’s vegan and I don’t do the dairy, so our options were a little limited as they seemed to like the cheese. Still, had a pretty good grilled pear salad (drizzled with honey) and a yummy indian soup. Filo entry (supposedly signature) was a little lackluster, but perhaps it’s because there was no feta. The kabobs in moroccan sauce were tasty though. I did have a rather tasty glass of organic zinfandel. In all, it was a tasty meal, but I’m not sure what all the hub-bub is about. We enjoyed Millenium much more.
Greens does have this massive hunk of redwood that seems to be half-petrified. Very cool. Reminds me partly of that tree stump scorpion thing in Flash Gordon.

Saturday, after training, I ran some errands and then got picked up by Phil and Bekki and headed down south for David’s birthday party. Held at a roller rink. That’s right, a roller rink. You may have thought they had been driven out of existance, but they are alive and well. Well, they are alive anyway. The place was staffed by two kids who seemed to really be into the roller skating thing. The girl was particularly set on us not having fun. No party hats on the rink floor. No leaning on the barrier. No hanging out by the exit. No wonder the place was empty… Still, we had fun. I’m more used to rollerblading, but it was pretty easy to pick up and soon we were all doing laps around the rink. We even had our own party room and the rink provided soda (in tuperware pitchers) and ice cream. No outside drinks and food though! Except the cake.

Afterward, we went to Latin American club for a few bevvies. A nice evening all in all.

goings on, tri

Midweek report

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Week has been pretty mellow–consisted mostly of me trainging. Monday, I worked late and made myself do a run after work. It was dark out and I’m not sure how wise it is to go running at night by yourself, but it felt good. I ran down the hill, to Mission Bay Sports Basement, past the driving range, looped back down 3rd Street and up 16th before hitting the hill back up. Was about 4 miles, I’d reckon. I felt pretty good and am realizing that running really isn’t too bad.

Total running: 14 miles.

Tuesday, I met up for dinner with my ex-roomie Maz. We hit Ploy II in the Upper Haight for some of their addictive-as-crack panang. Seriously good stuff. Then we hit Hobson’s Choice for a beer. Noticed there was a Tsunami warning (!) on the TV. Never seen one of those for SF. I guess they are more careful about those things after the last horrendousness. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized that there was an earthquake. A big one at that. Didn’t feel it, but it was pretty far off the coast… I do remember the first time I felt an earthquake here. It was about five years ago and I was talking to my friend on the phone, who live a few miles away. I heard him say: "What the…" and had just started wondering what he was talking about when it hit me. I was standing in the kitchen and I felt the whole house rock in a wave beneath/around me. My reaction was: "Wow! That was neat/fun!" Of course, it was only for a split second–any longer and I’m sure I’d been singing a different tune.

goings on, tri

Weekend (Tri) Report

Man it’s hard to stay on top of these things. I’m not sure to split catching up into several posts or to jam ’em all together. Not that it really matters, I guess…

Lessee here… I guess I’ll do it chrono style, instead of the backwards blog way…

Saturday
I woke up hella early (like 6:45) to get picked up to go out to Marin for a group training session. Fortunately, my mentor lives reasonably close and was gracious enough to pick me up. We bopped out to Redwood High School in her Mini, pretending to be awake. Today was a swim/bike session. I felt good that I had gone for a swim workout that week, but was a bit surprised that some sadist had decided to put me into the fast swimmer group. I did not belong there. Those people dogged me, heh. By the end, I was sucking a heady combination of water and air–quite lovely. Good workout, I guess. I’m still amazed at how friggin’ tiring swimming can be. I remember swimming for hours as a kid, but I guess it’s different when you are just horsin’ around vs. actually doing laps. Anyway, after a brutal workout, we jumped into bike gear. It wasn’t really a workout so much as a bike clinic. Most of it was pretty remedial stuff: clipping in and stopping, turning, grabbing your bottle without looking (actually kind of hard, at least returning the bottle w/o looking is). I picked one new thing though — countersteering into a turn. We also did this fun drill where we ride in twos, side-by-side and lean into each other, practicing riding close to others. This guy and I actually locked elbows and almost fell over at one point, but we recovered quick…

After the drills, we had an honoree potluck, which consisted of sitting down, basking in the sun, munching on sammiches and listening to a few speakers. It was pretty inspiring to hear the stories of two honorees who had recovered from Hodgkin’s Disease and are now in remission. Some peeps also told personal stories about family or loved ones. I expect I will probable have to say something at some point, but I’m pretty uncomfortable right now. It was actually fairly hard to listen to all of those cancer stories. Got me a little sad. But it’s nice to know that I’m good company. Good company that is trying to make a difference.

Swim distance: about 1200 meters
Bike Distance: maybe 4 miles (maybe)

Totals:
Swim: 3200 meters
Bike: 14 miles
Run: 10 miles

Warshed up after ward and ran a few errands before heading out with roomie Bill for the evening. We hit Zeitgeist with buritos in tow and a pitcher of Franziskaner before heading out to Berkeley to see Wilco at the Greek Theatre, meeting up with my friend Kerry and a friend of hers (Dave?). It was perfect weather for an outdoor concert and Wilco didn’t disappoint. They played a real good show, including the three songs I wanted to hear (that I haven’t heard them play live before): Kamera, California Stars, and Heavy Metal Drummer. Funnily enough, the songs I wanted to hear most weren’t my faves of the night. I guess I like the studio versions so much that I was disappointed by their treatment live. A minor issue as the show was a really good one. I’ve seen them three times now and I think that’s probably enough, unless their next album just blows me away…

Sunday
Was picked up by Lawrence, who’s pretty sporty and we headed out to the East Bay again. This time is was a biking excursion. Instead of riding with the group, I decided to do a bit more of an agressive workout. Well, it about killed me. Lawrence has done tris before and is generally more in shape than I. It was a beautiful ride with a lot of views and a lot of hills. We started in Berkeley and climbed up into Kensington, along Bear Valley Road and down Wildcat Canyon into Orinda, stopped for a beverage and then rode out to Moraga before making the climb back up, past scenic Canyon, CA, up Pinehurst Road (really neat school there–I would have loved to gone there–nestled in the woods) and along Skyline Drive and back down to the car. As we climbed back up the hill, we encountered swarms of ladybugs–you would ride through them and find several passengers on your clothes. Sure beats swarms of locusts, heh. The hills were challenging and the views were great–really good workout!

Bike: 32 miles
Total Bike: 46 miles

After the grueling bike, I showered and headed over to Deborah’s, and we hopped into her roomie’s car and went out to East Bay (yet again–some kind of record for me). To Berkeley again to meet up with a bunch of Deborah’s friends, including her friend Seldon in town from NYC. I missed hooking up with them after the Wilco show, so it was good to meet him and see some of her peeps. We went to La Mediterranee, which is generally good for food, though I would have rathered hit a restaurant that is unique/specific to Berkeley. Anyway, it was a good time with a good group of folks.