The Ramen Project

On my first trip to the Manila Oriental Market in Excelsior last year, I discovered something wonderful-- an entire store aisle devoted to instant noodles. The store offered an impenetrably diverse array of ramens, with flavors I'd never run across, like "cuttlefish" and "pickled cabbage fish". Sarah and I first just tried the ones that sounded best to us and tried to keep mental track of our favorites. It wasn't until I was on my own that I decided to take a more systematic approach to dealing with the intimidating breadth of options. By then it had become apparent that memory alone would not be sufficient to map out the best and worst of instant noodles. At the suggestion of a coworker (Laura Ray), The Ramen Project was born. This post is its ultimate fruit. I bought one of each of about two-thirds of the aisle's offered instant noodle varieties (the poor girl at the checkout looked ready to kill me) and began to work my way through the pile one lunch at a time at work, saving the packaging with brief post-it reviews affixed. After months of careful study, the results are in.

The survey covers 39 flavors of instant noodles, all single-serving with one exception. Prices mostly ranged from 39 cents to 79 cents, with a couple of standouts costing over a dollar. Ramen noodles are generally fried in saturated vegetable fat like palm oil and the broth typically includes flavor-enhancers MSG, Disodium 5'-Inosylate, and Disodium 5'-Guanylate (which is actually a component of DNA/RNA, interestingly). The artificial meat flavor is non-vegetarian, which means it includes animal products and isn't fully "artificial" in the classic sense, but only a couple of brands included such luxuries as straight-up crab meat or beef extract and forwent synthetic flavor enhancers. There's nothing really dangerous or unhealthy about synthetic flavor enhancers, but as a rule I tried not to consume ramen more than once per 48-hour period, as the calories are pretty genuinely empty and it would have made me feel "off". Noodle packages typically included 2-3 packets inside them in addition to the bare noodles, usually powdered broth, garlic or soy-infused palm oil, and freeze dried garnish. The survey includes "glass" noodles, rice noodles and noodles intended to be served without broth, in addition to the more classic ramen noodles.

I've condensed this to the "discoveries" or "best-of", but you can find the complete unedited reviews here. Below are the highlights:

Both Thai brands (ZoZo/Wai Wai and MAMA) were consistently excellent, and the general sour/tom yum genre is pretty solid.
-ZoZo/Wai Wai Sour Soup Flavour Instant Noodles- Good. Spicy, delicious and simple.
-MAMA Shrimp Creamy Tom Yum Flavour- Creamy, delicious, appropriately spicy, and with good texture. This is probably my favorite Tom Yum of the lot. Note that my coworker Jeri's favorite ramen is the non-creamy variant, but I prefered this by a slight margin.

Vietnamese company Vina Acecook has a few brand name titles, including Hao Hao, which was uniformly mediocre, and Daily, which had its moments (see below). Vietnamese brand Vifon was ok, but I wasn't especially fond of the mealy texture of their rice noodles and they didn't quite rise above "good" anyways.
-Daily Beef Ball Flavour- Surprisingly delicious, with complex spicy herbal seasoning.

Both soup type ramens from Filipino brand Lucky Me! were excellent, but the chow meins (served without broth) tended to be rancid for whatever reason. It wasn't the only brand for which I ran across a rancid one, but these were pretty consistently rancid. Otherwise the chow meins were quite good, but I'm only featuring the soups.
-Lucky Me! La Paz Batchoy (La Paz Style)- Fancy! Four packets, including one with little balls of textured soy protein. Rich and garlicky broth.
-Lucky Me! Bulalo (Bone Marrow Soup)- Smells fantastically savory. Great flavor, salty.

Indonesian brand IndoMie's chow meins were excellent and it is the brand I'd recommend for the chow mein style. The process of straining the water from them was a bit tricky to do at work with nothing but a microwave, a fork, and long sweater sleeves to insulate my hands, but the results were great. Note that these and the Lucky Me! chow meins are Sarah's favorite instant noodles.
-Mi Goreng BBQ Chicken- Absolutely delicious.
-Mi Goreng- Excellent, sweet and peppery.
-Soto Mie Flavour- Sesame and chili flavor. Delicious as always.

Unif is a pretty gigantic brand out of Taiwan, with a lot of different packaging configurations. It's offerings range from outright "meh" to quite good.
-Unif Tung-I Chah Chiang Flavor- I believe this is seaweed flavor. Dark, savory and surprisingly unsalty (relatively speaking) soy sauce-derived broth. Would pair well with Californian hops, esp Simcoe or Citra.
-Unif Tung-I Instant Bean Vermicelli Mushroom Flavor (Bean Thread)- Good, interesting nutty mushroom flavor.

As I am sure will surprise no one, the Japanese brands were the most expensive, nutritionally substantial and reliably delicious. I decided that udon took a bit too long to cook to be practical for work.
-Tonkotsu Artificial Pork Flavor- The "nondaily creamer" milk solids make it pretty chill. Nice and garlicky and sesame-y.
-Shin Ramyun Noodle Soup "Gourmet Spicy"- Totally excellent in flavor and texture. Pleasantly spicy, but otherwise fairly normal.

Honestly, the most promising (and as-yet unexplored) frontier in ramen at this point for me is the multi-serving packages. These tend be on the higher end of the price range per serving, include some of the most unusual flavors and the quality has so far been remarkable. Only one multi-serving noodle was included in this survey, and it certainly makes the list. The brand is unclear but it was manufactured by Sichuan Baijia Food Co., Ltd.
-Artificial Pickled Cabbage Fish Flavor Instant Sweet Potato Thread- Unique and utterly delicious. Cabbage and beans and sour and spicy oh my! Note this is vegan and rather oily, with chewy clear noodles

Below is the full array of recommended noodles. Hopefully this will prove useful to everyone who has access to an asian grocery store. It's a great way to keep your lunches at work cheap and interesting.

Brewing and Retroactive Idea Theft

Howard and I finally did it. We finally brewed some beer. We bottled it yesterday, so we've just got a few weeks until it's carbonated and ready to drink.

We made two one-gallon batches of my California Sunshine Ale. The first was a simple scale-down of the recipe I posted earlier. The second was a variant that completely dropped Cascade hops for Amarillo.

It's pretty uncommon to brew in one-gallon batches. Practically every recipe online is written for five gallons. Brewing at all is a lot of work, so people try and make it worth their while. Larger batches are also more stable and, according to the owner of our local brew store, a difference of scale changes extraction rates and thereby the recipe requirements.

I decided to brew in small batches knowing full well the reasons it was uncommon. I didn't get into homebrewing to save money. The ingredients for making beer cost roughly half the retail price for buying craft beer from the store. That may sound pretty good, but when I take into account the work and risk involved in the process and the superior quality and variety of beer available at the store, it's barely breaking even. Five gallons makes fifty beers and that is a heck of a lot of any single kind of beer for a person who's accustomed to buying single bottles. The fuzzy feeling that comes from knowing my beer was made with my own hands only gets me so far. I decided to start homebrewing to learn more about beer and to kick around my own recipe ideas. We may have had to borrow Howard's lab scale to measure hops in hundreths of an ounce, but I'm a scientist, after all.


So after one and a half hours of driving and one and a half days' work, Howard and I have twenty-three bottles of beer to show for it and that's fine by me.

Above: Our cooling system to keep the beer around 70 degrees in the middle of the Davis summer (my idea)
Below: Our chicken wire drying rack (Howard's idea)

On a separate note, it has come to my attention that American brewers have been time traveling from years past into our present future and viciously stealing my beer ideas from this blog. It turns out that Cascadian Dark Ale aka Black IPA is an established northwestern variant on the IPA style that uses dark malts to conjure an intimidating color. While it sounds like a lot of breweries are using debittered black malt to give the maximum color without affecting flavor that much, some have actually embraced the pairing of hop bitterness and roasted maltiness.

Also, on the day before we bottled our California Sunshine Ale, I happened across the spitting image of my concept for the beer. Deschutes Brewery's Twilight Summer Ale is an APA that lightens up on the crystal malt, adds something toasty to pair with grilled food and relies on a combination of four hops with emphasis on Amarillo.

To counterbalance said losses from my creative stable, I'd like to present a new beer concept. I was idly reading the ingredient list on Barq's Root Beer and noticed that the last ingredient was acacia. For those of you who don't know, acacia is planted as a shrub all over orange county hillsides for erosion control. It has oval grey leaves and little fuzzy yellow flowers that get pollen all over the place. It has a very distinctive smell, like a dirty, grainy version of some platonic true herb. As soon as I'd read it I started to either imagine or taste it in the Barq's (to my satisfaction).

Acacia would be great in a light summer porter. You heard it from me first, somebody should brew a summer porter with acacia leaves.

On Dana Point

I lived in Dana Point from the age of 11 until I left for college. My mom still lives there and my dad still lives in the neighboring town of San Clemente. The pictures were taken my senior year of high school.

Dana Point is a coastal town in Southern California, located almost exactly halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. Dana Point sits at the southern tip of the greater LA/Orange County metro area along with neighboring San Clemente. To the south of these two beach cities lies a wilderness area dominated by Camp Pendleton. Dana Point gets its name from a mention in Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, where he described throwing cowhides off the bluffs of a cove that served as port for Mission San Juan Capistrano.

Dad, Donna and Bri in the foreground, Dana Point bluffs and harbor in the midground and Catalina Island in the background, January

San Clemente brags that it has the best climate in the world. Both cities have an average 342 days of sunshine and typical highs in the high seventies/low eighties in the summer and low sixties in winter, respectively. Like all of California, the bulk of annual precipitation falls in winter months. However, among the cloudiest months is June, a phenomenon known locally as "June Gloom" and caused by warming ocean temperatures.

Matt Wingert in my front yard, December

Trees commonly planted in Dana Point include palms, eucalyptus and coastal pines. Subtropical and Mediterranean plants are easily grown. Some classic continental plants that require chill or extreme heat are difficult to grow, like cherries and watermelons (though that didn't stop me from growing a 94lb pumpkin). Undeveloped headlands and canyons are mostly coastal sage scrub, a chaparral-type mixture of californian sage, sagebrush, lemonade berry and coyote broom.

Demographics in Dana Point are mixed, not possessing the wealth of northern neighbor Laguna Beach. A significant number of Mexican immigrants and lower-middle class whites live in apartments, while professional class people commute to central Orange County and live in hillside houses with ocean views. The local economy is driven primarily by tourism and the aforementioned commuters. The worst traffic jams in our area happen on sunny Saturday afternoons.

Many neighborhoods in Dana Point were developed slowly enough to evidence an eclectic mix of social classes. The oldest houses are beach cottages, built in the 50's with low square-footage and flat roofs. Many of Dana Point's N-S streets are named various colors of lanterns (ie Blue Lantern, Golden Lantern, Amber Lantern). The town's decor is mariner themed, and houses are frequently painted marine blue-grey. The town has approximately reached build-out, though adjacent landlocked cities demonstrate textbook McMansion sprawl, particularly Laguna Niguel, a place that handily manages to be both much wealthier and much uglier than Dana Point (I have a lot of high school friends from Niguel and that is fact, not opinion).

The local public education system is excellent. Dana Hills High is both a Blue Ribbon and California Distinguished School. It offers a large number of Advanced Placement courses and produces high standardized test scores. The school football team has always sucked. The school surf team is pretty good, but never beats neighboring rivals San Clemente, who frequently contend for the State Championship title.

Prom photo, taken at one of the half dozen locations commonly used for weddings within walking distance of my house, May

The two cities collectively lay claim to a handful of excellent surf beaches that host annual surf contests including Salt Creek, Doheny, T-Street, Trestles and San Onofre. Dana Cove was famous for a surf break called Killer Dana until the harbor was built. Surf culture is everywhere, most visible in the many local board shops, board-laden cars and the popularity of the word "surf" in mostly taqueria restaurant names (one Dana Point restaurant, in fact, succinctly named "Taco Surf"). In addition to both Mexican-owned and white-owned taquerias, the region has a lot of local burger joints that recall the glory days of Southern California car culture, as well as a mix of 20$ entrée restaurants with an emphasis on California cuisine and sushi.

The overall culture is laid back. Politics are mildly conservative. In spite of those politics, hostility towards immigrants is remarkably low. Upper-middle class people either appreciate the Mexican immigrant population for services rendered (though I don't know anyone with an in-house maid, as pop culture might have you believe of OC, even in Laguna) or respect them for their strong work ethic. The stereotype of the lazy Mexican has always struck me as a foreign idea, product of Los Angeles demographics.

View of my neighborhood from my front yard, February

I live in a beach cottage in a mixed-income part of town. The yard is fronted by a couple of Canary Island Date Palms. It takes me 20 minutes to walk to Doheny with my surfboard underarm. I love the diversity of houses here. I love the weather, especially the foggy and cloudy days. I love the smell of sagebrush. I love getting burritos after a day at the beach with friends. I love walking downtown to pick up avocados from little Mexican markets. I love that my prom photos have a backdrop most wedding photos would be in envy of (in fact, Brandon's cousin flew from the east coast to get married in Dana Point this weekend). I love hearing Bandas on the neighbor's radios. I love Dana Point.

Picnic Day

So last week was Picnic Day, the greatest annual event in Davis. Every year a hundred thousand people or so flock to the university's (and city's) open house. Live music blasts from five stages at any given moment, all of the departments put on events and every imaginable animal show finds a place here. Undergraduates wander drunkenly through crowds of visiting families. This year my family came; that is, my sister, mom and the Norrises, family friends whose daughter is a freshman here. Everybody slept in my living room and everybody was delightful.

I joined KDVS for the Picnic Day Parade. The weather was a perfect, cloudless low 80 degrees (the last one I was in was a sodden death march).


I thanked Allison for babysitting my family and began to show them around. The sheepdog trials are the most awesome event at Picnic Day, which is saying something.


We lounged in the grass and watched the incredible spectacle. The dogs work like their lives depend on it.


I slipped off to chat with to Jill and her mom, who were by then pleasantly tipsy. We lounged in the grass some more and her mom, Ra, snapped a couple of pictures of the two of us. This one was a keeper.


I met back up with my unit for some more grass-lounging as we listened to the Battle of the Bands, where school marching bands take turns playing songs until they succumb to exhaustion.

I later showed the Norrises my radio station, capping off my favorite Picnic Day yet.

Davis Rain

My freshman year at college I wasn't sure that it was possible to get sick of rain. It probably isn't in Southern California. That winter it rained for a month straight and in a brief moment of weakness I yearned for the sun's glare.

It's been raining for about three weeks now without indication of letting up. I'm still enjoying it. My favorite place in the house has become our bathroom because it's the only room with a skylight. You can hear each raindrop hit the glass and gaze up at the mottled grey sky. Never has pondering on the throne been so prime.

I photographed a drippy faucet at work in the Chem Dispensary. Davis water is so hard that most faucets on campus have an impressive encrustation around their taps. This one was particularly spectacular.



The soil in Davis is completely waterlogged. Every pore seems to be oozing moisture and green has been sprouting in unusual places. The weather's starting to warm in spite of the relentless rain, some trees are blooming and in between rainstorms I'm noticing some telltale signs of the Davis spring.


We're not there yet, but the hints have gotten me thinking wistfully of the coming season's heady atmosphere and raucous enthusiasm. It's the time when we revolt against winter's heavy cares and stop giving a shit about school. It's the time when possibilities stretch out. Indeed, spring is the season of Picnic Day.

I won't, as is fashion, be getting wasted this Picnic Day. My mother's visiting. Surely we can appreciate Picnic Day as a multifaceted event that can be enjoyed in many ways? I'm crossing my fingers for sunny weather, though. That KDVS parade I participated in a couple of years ago turned out to be a death march.

Mammoth

This weekend we went up to Mammoth. We came in with a storm forecast and hopes for some fresh powder.


Our first day on the slopes we witnessed as Mammoth Mountain was first wreathed and then consumed by a snow storm. You can see mom on the right and a rainbow (snowbow?) over the Mammoth lakes.


The second day Bri and I braved a full blown blizzard. I noticed during this trip that it is much easier to capture genuine smiles when people are genuinely having the time of their lives.


The white out conditions meant we could hardly see the snow we were skiing on and the crest winds nearly blew us over, but the conditions also meant some fantastic powder.


The next day we made our way home through the high desert, passing storm after storm.

Wipe Out!

Since I moved, the route to school is mostly a long straightaway on Anderson road. The result has been my riding harder and riding faster than any time since early freshman year. I've been pushing my physical limits, developing some impressive quads, and pushing my bike's limits, sometimes skidding slightly around campus traffic circles.

So this afternoon on my way home for lunch, it was to my surprise when I was passed by a bicyclist with a nice road bike. This happens maybe twice a month. I caught up to him on the next red light and I decided to draft him when it turned green. I found that I only had to pedal intermittently to keep up with him. My chain needs lube, so every time I pedaled there was an audible grinding sound. The rider turned around and told me so. I said that I knew and asked if it was alright that I was drafting him. He nodded his assent. A block later he prepared to turn onto his street. I laid into the pedals to squeak through a yellow light, feeling pretty good about myself. I was going extremely fast and still pedaling as I began to cross lanes for my upcoming left turn.

I've long been aware of the similarities between bike riding and surfing. The sensation of flying, the casualness of countersteering and the rush of a smooth, deep turn make the resemblance unmistakable.

One crucial difference is the inevitability that when you wipe out on a bike, it will hurt. Never mind submerged rocks or shallow water, the pavement is right there waiting for you. I think the knowledge that you are gliding over hard, unfriendly stone is one of the most magical things about the bicycle.

I looked to the oncoming traffic to time my turn. There was plenty of space behind the last car, so I cut across early and hard. I got greedy and pedaled through the turn for additional speed. That's when my pedal dug into the pavement and launched the Ash Maiden and I across the street.


This was the fourth wipeout of my college career and by far the most badass. Never have I wiped out at such obscene speed. I bruised my heel hard enough that I've got a limp, my chain derailed and my hip was shredded red from the landing, but otherwise it was a practically bloodless wipe.



Some might take away the lesson to ride less recklessly. Not so for yours truly. I learned to make sure to tuck in my feet on my next high speed turn.

Face Paint

Face paint is officially awesome.

Face paint is infinitely superior to masks. Breathable, flexible and compact not to mention emotive, face paint has the capacity to radically change your appearance with little money and full artistic license. Face paint can be deeply creepy or frightening without being static.

Of course, at college Halloween parties like the ones I visited this past weekend in Isla Vista, looking creepy and/or frightening is rarely the objective. For girls, Halloween is generally treated as an excuse to wear as little as possible. While guys are permitted a bit more wiggle room, considering Halloween mythology it is remarkable how nonthreatening the vast majority of costumes are. Come to think of it, Santa Barbara girls are no strangers to face paint, but the frightening result is sadly inadvertent.

I am a huge fan of holiday spirit and a hot nurse outfit just fails the Halloween litmus test. What happened to the desire to be thrilled by the holiday? Maybe these girls just thrill themselves at their own daring. I imagine standard costume-picking conversation to go something like this: "No way, that's just too slutty. I mean, that's over the line, even for you.""Oh, but yours is way sluttier than mine.""At least ours aren't as bad as so-and-so's.""Yeah!"

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bitter and I'm not opposed to cleavage. I'm just waiting to see a rabid playboy bunny with nasty, big, pointed teeth.

And I assure that you will find a truly creepy or frightening costume to be deeply rewarding. You are a living part of the Halloween dream. I was talking to this girl that night as a mime and she was quite friendly, but when I started hitting on her she practically ran away. Not one hundred percent sure that was the paint...

So dress not to impress, but to terrify those around you. I demand monsters! It is your holiday duty just as come December it will be to spread holiday cheer. Dress as a skeleton, a vampire, a zombie, as Frankenstein's monster or a sinister rabbit of pure evil, just recall what makes Halloween Halloween and not another costume party.

The Central Coast

Before the start of school I visited Southern California for a few days before embarking on a road trip with my mom and sister up the central coast to drop Bri off at UC Santa Cruz for her freshman year. As you can imagine, the trip necessitated some serious photography. Not one to shirk duty, I nearly filled up both memory sticks and ran through three sets of batteries.



We camped in San Simeon State Beach on our first night and the next morning we went for a walk.



Later that day, we stopped to see an elephant seal colony.


After camping in Big Sur, we arrived in Santa Cruz. Waiting in a line for unloading directions I noticed Brandon's distinctive political bumper stickers on the red minivan in front of us. His brother happened to be moving into the building next to my sister's.

Though Bri had been freaking out about the move the entire trip and we bailed on her that evening, when we brought her her mini fridge the next morning she already seemed to be flourishing.

Mom and I left up Pacific Coast Highway on a pilgrimage to Mavericks. We found the surf shop that held exclusive rights to the name in the middle of an industrial section of Princeton-by-the-Sea, a fishing village just north of Half Moon Bay.


In all of my travels through California that week I didn't find a town nearly so charming as this harbor hamlet. I resolved to spend a summer there if I get the chance.



Those rocks are a half mile out to sea and are threaded by the brave surfers of Mavericks. The biggest rock is almost two stories high. That day I was repeatedly informed that it was too flat to surf. Everybody there seemed to have a distorted understanding of the term "flat".

Train Ride

A week ago I returned to the land of my upbringing. It was probably my last trip home from Davis by train.

Given the choice between air and rail, I will choose the train. Sure it will take a full day and sure I love airplanes, but there is a certain leisure to rail car. Seats are spacious and there's a plug for your computer, but the clincher is just idly watching the land go by.

It's the same reason I love road trips, but it provides a radically different perspective of California. People don't put Billboards by train tracks. There is, in fact, zero effort made to beautify the scenery. Trains pass through the grimiest, greasiest parts of town and view only the backs of buildings. There's a romance to the disembodied wharf pilings, weeds, stacks of paving stones and piles of rusted scrap metal so common along rail routes.


Of course, traveling through California by train also has long stretches of extreme classical beauty. It's hard to avoid in this great state, but I managed to sleep through them.

The most memorable thing I saw passed too quickly for me to catch a photo. There was a teenage boy sitting on a roof, watching the train go by.


Sometimes photography is an art of ideas. Juxtapositions and new ways of looking at the world. It isn't hard to use a camera the way it is to draw or to play an instrument, you just need sharp focus and a close frame. I think that's why it's such a popular amateur pursuit.

Othertimes it's about being at the right place at the right time or being invisible. That's when photography becomes something requiring patience and skill. That's when I go back to words.

The Gang Makes A Move

I am writing this amidst a mountain of boxes. I had no idea that poor college students could accumulate so much crap, albeit overwhelmingly cheap crap. I apparently need twenty-four boxes and ten bags worth of stuff, plus furniture. That's right I counted. And that was only my room.


On Moving Day the streets are choked with trucks and the dumpsters with abandoned furniture. All the hippie-hobos of Davis come out to scrounge college-kid refuse. I myself acquired a broken dresser and a couple of chairs.

We began packing boxes Friday night so that we could empty and fill them again that night. Saturday, the Uhaul truck was so big it took us most of the day to pack and unload and by nightfall the toll of the day's labors weighed heavily upon us. I responded by drinking heavily.



On Sunday, Brandon's family came to help us. After evacuating our apartment, we set to work cleaning. Our muscles screamed as noxious fumes savaged our lungs. It won't surprise you to hear that that night also ended with heavy drinking.

On Monday we again plunged our lungs into the fumes. We closed our now-empty apartment and said farewell to our neighbors. Then we began unpacking.

Our former apartment was incredibly cheap, incredibly located and incredibly ghetto. Residents were mostly working class and our favorite neighbors were friendly drunks. During the two years we lived there, the complex kept changing hands, and each management demonstrated a complete apathy toward our myriad repair problems. The most recent company decided to flush everyone out with rent hikes and recast the complex to be student friendly. This guy's moving to Woodland.


Each of my roommates left their mark on the truck. Brandon hit a protector at the gas station and Howard took a chunk out of our complex's "pool house". It was a fitting farewell to make the complex look that much more like a war-torn former Soviet republic.


We will be joined this year by Greg Webb, a friend of Brandon's from DCD who's going to share his room. With Greg's contribution, the average rent is as cheap as our previous locale. Our new place is a duplex with the exact floor plan of almost every duplex in Davis and our landlord is a cute little Indian woman. We now benefit from such luxuries as central air, unbroken windows, and a dishwasher.

We are still without internet or phone service and my room's still mostly in boxes, but the TV is set up and we cooked our first meal in the kitchen tonight. This year we're living in style.

What the Heck is a Parkway?

A week ago Caius, Brandon and I went for a trip up the American River Parkway, which is the long way of saying we went on a bike trip. The route goes from Sacramento to Folsom via parks (hence the parkway) along the river for about thirty miles. The path is well-maintained and winds through gorgeous country. Along the way we discovered some logistical issues of extended bike rides. Caius discovered that borrowed mountain bikes go half the speed and take twice the effort of the road variety. I discovered that shorts chafe really badly.


I decided that wearing a backpack would be too hot, so I improvised a satchel from a sheet to hold our provisions. It worked pretty well. Here I am with the Maiden, satchel and camera case, in white.


To our utter surprise we came upon a miniature golden gate bridge in the middle of nowhere. My dear roommate insisted his photo be taken on it.


We hopped off the trail for a deli sandwich and a beer. Another cliche's logic irrefutably validated.

On our way back the men in red regaled me with French lessons. They both happen to be more or less fluent speakers and they've been happy to drill me on the language until it extrudes from my ears. The only problem is that they periodically forget my novice status and get into lively discussions on the obscurities of French grammar.



So we made a round trip of about twenty miles, covering a third of the trail. Next time we'll attach bike racks to avoid satchels and make road bikes mandatory. Next time we are going all the way.