Our Dumb Blog

Yosemite National Park, CA — Lake Arrowhead, CA

We camped last night in Yosemite, not bothering to pitch the tent because the weather was so nice. We gazed at the stars and the jetliners racing toward San Francisco.

We had to take all the food out of the car and put it in a bear locker at our campsite. Inside we got a free gift…a Coleman stove! We don’t have any propane, and the stove is fairly bulky, but it just barely fits in the trunk.

We drove through Yosemite Valley this morning. Wow! I didn’t know anything about Yosemite except that that’s where El Capitan is. Well, there’s a dozen more cliff faces nearly as impressive…and a couple of amazingly tall waterfalls. Here’s a picture with El Capitan on the left, Half Dome in the back, and Bridal Veil Falls on the right.

Now we’re heading for Lake Arrowhead to spend the night. We’ll head out in the morning for Dallas (or somewhere halfway between, more likely).

San Francisco, CA

On Monday, we took the commuter train from San Jose into San Francisco. The ride is about an hour and a half, twice the time it would take driving, but you don’t have to drive in traffic, you don’t have to park, etc. Unfortunately, you do have to walk quite a ways to the part of San Francisco that people visit.

We squeezed onto a cable car that took us to Chinatown, then found the grittiest Chinese restaurant we could. It was about ten feet wide and thirty feet deep. The downstairs was all kitchen (where you could see the cooks carefully slicing raw fish and chicken), which you had to walk through to get to the stairs. I don’t know how many floors up the dining rooms go; at four p.m. only the second story was open, with a chain across the staircase leading even higher. A sign posted said, “COKE, 7UP, PEPSI, FOOD OK. NO MILK, NO COFFEE, NO BS, NO JIVE, NO ‘FORTUNE COOKIE.'” A man with a mustache plopped a teapot and two cups down in front of us. Then he yelled at the waitress to take our order, but she never did, so he took it himself. We had spring rolls, Mongolian beef, and a plate nearly overflowing with chow mien noodles and duck. Everything was great, nothing fancy, but good food.

We took the cable car back to where we had caught it and walked over to the museum of modern art, but it was closing in less than an hour. So we took the cable car all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf. Our driver was a Sikh wearing a blue turban to complement his brown uniform. We walked around the area for a while, had a couple of brews at a bar that advertized 85 beers on tap, bought a pint of clam chowder and a round of sourdough from a sidewalk stand, and ate them on the curb. Then we wandered back to the cable car.

While we were waiting to get on, we noticed a man shouting advice to someone walking away from him, “…it’s five dollars and really fills you up…a great place to eat!” He was carrying a big knife. He approached the line of cable car passengers muttering loudly but a little slurred, “I had a string break earlier…took me an hour to take it off.” He plopped a couple of milk crates down in front of us and sat down on one with a small, silver guitar. His muttering became even louder when he began speaking into a mike, “…and then it took me another half hour to put one on.” He strummed a wildly out of tune chord, then tightened the high G way past G until the string snapped. “Aw, man, what is with me today? I apologize for the short show, folks.”

By then we had hopped on the cable car, in the best seats, up front in the open air. The Sikh was our driver again. As we passed Chinatown, two Canadian girls hopped off as we passed slowly through the intersection. “Please!” shouted the Sikh in a thick accent, “If you want to get off, just ask me! I will stop the cable car, and then you get off!”

“We’re sorry!” shouted back the Canadian girls, clearly contrite.

“I do not want to be taking anyone to the hospital!” the Sikh continued. Everyone on the cable car laughed. “I am serious!!” he shouted even louder.

We rode the cable car back to the other end and caught a bus the several blocks to the train station.

San Jose, CA

Stephen has a cat named Oxy. Oxy likes to attack feet beneath covers when you’re sleeping. She did this morning, waking me up. “Oh, that’s just the cat,” I thought. Next she moved onto Berck’s feet. He groaned and rolled over on our sleeping pads stretched out on the floor.

Next, Oxy began tearing around the room in as big a circle she could run, making bird-like noises. Unfortunately, on one of these circuits, she made a U-turn on my face, sticking a foot in my left eye socket. Fortunately, Stephen had recently clipped her claws. It still made a nice gash beneath my eye. I washed it out as best I could, then groped in the freezer for a package of frozen vegetables to hold to my eye. Even so, I’ve got quite a bruise. I look like a battered wife.

Brandon took us to The Tech museum of San Jose this afternoon…lots of fun things to do there. Then we went out to eat at a Chinese bistro. The lamb with cilantro was fabulous. The orange peel shrimp were good too. The sechuwan beef was SPICY. The crab won tons were delicious. The lemon scallops were mediocre, though. We got some ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s afterward.

San Jose, CA

Last night we engaged in some local culture, going to Dave and Buster’s, a Show Biz Pizza for adults (except that they don’t have pizza). Mostly they have tons of overpriced video games. Berck and I raced each other on linked driving games, which was cool. I played a single game of skiball that cost a dollar (ridiculous).