A Week at the Beach

Less than 36 hours after my flight from Seoul touched down in Hong Kong, I was back on an airplane again, this time to Tokyo and San Francisco. Although we were on holiday, my notes from Korea made the trip with me as I had to do some writing, or at least some heavy-duty transcribing and outlining, at the beach. If I didn't, they would be completely stale by the time I got back to the office, and it's no fun to write with stale notes and memories.

My first stop was San Jose for Shelly's cousin Ryan's wedding. My trip got off to a fine start in Tokyo, with some kind of braking problem on our plane which delayed our departure by about 90 minutes. As we taxied back to the terminal, I could feel my mid-afternoon nap in a California motel room starting to evaporate. I used the time to fill out my arrival form rather incompletely. I've filled this form out dozens of times, and I have always supplied a US street address prior to this trip. But something on this travel day made me say that, as a US citizen, I shouldn't have to provide that specific information to my own government, so I wrote down "San Francisco." After all, is it really their business exactly where I'm staying? (In the opinion of the guy who eventually let me in, the answer is "yes," and my arrival form eventually reflected that information.)

After picking up my rental car, my first order of business was to find Diet Pepsi. The Diet Pepsi I can buy here is made from a different formula, so I was looking forward to a US-flavoured Diet Pepsi. Also, I was hoping to avoid falling asleep on the 101. My second order of business was to remember that I was back in the US and that a) Californians tend to drive on the opposite side of the road as people do in Hong Kong, and b) they tend to drive somewhat less aggressively than people do in Manila. Not wishing to get a ticket or end up with head trauma from a head-on collision, I did my best to drive like an American.

Shelly had flown in the day before me, so I was trying to get in touch with her, but eventually just pulled into the motel parking lot and picked up the key she had left at the front desk. I took a shower -- I desperately needed one at that point -- and looked at the clock, only to realize that I actually had time for a nap, as long as I kept it to less than 15 minutes.

I took it.

And at 4:00 Saturday afternoon, I headed out with Shelly and her parents for Ryan and Listay's wedding, which was quite nice. Somehow -- perhaps it was through the magic of caffeine -- I managed to not fall asleep. Or perhaps it was through the entertainment provided by my niece and nephews. I have to say that Sam was looking sharp in his wedding tux.


Dinner was fun. Sitting next to John was really fun. Note that I'm not the only person taking a picture of John showing off with his whipped cream. Is it any wonder that he's such a ham?


My to my wife's surprise, I even danced with her that evening. I felt that was a significant sacrifice on my part. Have I mentioned that I was really, really sleepy at that point?

Sunday took us north of San Francisco, Shelly to visit her best friend Tatyana and me to visit my friend Wal-Mart. When I picked Shell up later that afternoon, she told me she had had "California food" for lunch. I reported that I, too, had eaten California food for lunch: my first-ever trip to the quintessential California fast-food chain, In-N-Out Burger.


And after that, we went to the beach.

There's no place on earth like Dillon Beach, where my in-laws' history reaches back a century and where my father-in-law and mother-in-law played together as kids. (Years later, a neighbor told Nick he should look Kathy up, since they were both at the same university.) Just an hour or so north of San Francisco, Dillon Beach has deliciously cool breezes and frighteningly cold water and a few hundred cottages for rent. If it sounds like I've totally bought into the family's love of Dillon Beach, I have.


We celebrated Nick and Kathy's 40th anniversary, had a hot dog roast, ate S'mores, put on a skit, went on a couple of scavenger hunts and had a number of let's-climb-on-Uncle-Greg sessions.


My parents came out for the week, too, so it was an all-around fun family week at the beach. On Wednesday, I went to San Francisco with Mom and Jerry, mostly to go to Alcatraz, which I had visited before but which they hadn't. I think the fact that I thought it was worth spending $22 to see again probably helped convince them it was worth a trip to the city.


We ate sourdough bread, took a tour of a sourdough bakery, ate seafood on the pier (very touristy but fun to do) and rode the cable car. We also watched the sea lions which have moved in at Pier 39.


The week in California went by faster than any vacation I can recall in recent memory. I even managed to get a jump on my stories from Korea.