Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘pigeon point’

Road Trip 2019: Northbound 2

Posted in Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on 09 May 2019| 2 Comments »

While the first section of our road trip north was one of discovery, the second section was focused on re-discovery.

My wife spent most of her youth in San Luis Obispo, down near where we started our northbound trek, but I grew up near San Francisco, as a fourth-generation resident of Marin County. I was born in San Rafael (the heart of “I Want It All Now” country), and received most of my education in Marin and San Francisco. My wife and I met in Marin, backstage at the ballet company where we both danced, and I courted her on from sides of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Since our wedding, though, we hadn’t spent any time in San Francisco, other than to pass through en route to see family. Thus, as part of this just-for-us quasi-top-drawer road trip, a few days spent in our old stomping grounds was a must. It was in scheduling this stay that I learned that my wife had never taken a ride on a cable car. You know how it is; you never do the touristy things in your own town, right? Well, now we were the tourists, and I was going to make damned sure she got her cable car ride. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Road Trip 2019: Northbound 1

Posted in Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 08 May 2019| 4 Comments »

Driving the California coast on Highway 1 comes with challenges.

For most of its length, CA-1 is a narrow, undivided, two-lane road that climbs and descends as the topography demands (sometimes rapidly), hugging the often precipitous coastline with switchbacks, hairpins, and a gazillion good old twists and turns. Negotiating these requires a fair bit of concentration, especially when you’ve already put hours of them behind you, and still have hours of them to go. As hard as it is on the driver, though, it’s even harder on the passengers, as they end up as little more than ballast, tossed from side to side like Kirk and Spock on the bridge of the Enterprise during a Klingon attack. While I spent about 80% of my brain power trying to achieve the optimum balance between minimizing the turn-induced, stomach-sloshing G-forces and maximizing our velocity so that we might get to the hotel by the end of check-in time, my wife, whose superpower is the ability to sleep in damned near any moving conveyance, spent several nausea-limned hours regretting our decision to take this route.

Fortunately, the California coast provides ample excuses to pull over, give one’s innards a rest,  and enjoy the scenery. We found the first excuse fairly quickly. (more…)

Read Full Post »

%d bloggers like this: