Day 89, August 15th 2008, beginning in Petaluma, California

I got up around 6:45 because I wanted to see John off to work since we would leave before he returned. The kids were all already up and they were watching Home Alone 2, so I joined the party. I said goodbye to John as he headed off to work with a promise that I would return to California (ehh hemm… Meghan).

After the movie was over Nolan and Grace felt compelled to continually jump on my back. I let them go to their little hearts' content. Turns out small children jumping on the back can be quite therapeutic to the weary traveler. Once they grew tired of it, they decided to search for another victim. Paul was sleeping peacefully in his bed, he would do just fine. They looked to me to see if it was okay and I obviously consented to any shennanigans they felt necessary. Nolan began throwing whatever objects were within reach at Paul , and eventually they were jumping all over him too. Just what Paul wanted on a day where we weren't leaving until after noon.

Eileen went for a run and left the kids with us. After we supervised the kids' knife tossing competition in the kitchen, which was preceded by their downstairs obstacle course scissor race (close one Ian), we had had enough excitement and began packing our stuff to have ready before the soccer game. Eileen returned to a safe and happy home, as we ate most of what they had remaining in the house. We tinkered with the bikes a bit before heading out to the pickup game we had seen the day before.

We rolled down the road to the soccer game, and weren't late as I feared we might have been. The skill level was pretty high, although it was to be expected from the Monday through Friday mid afternoon entirely Spanish speaking crew. We had a lot of fun as we baked on the turf field. It was fun getting a chance to play some competitive soccer; I missed it dearly.

We got back to the house and hung around for a bit. I would find out later through the grapevine that the children thought I smelled particularly ripe after the soccer game. What can I say, I leave it all out on the field (except apparently the aroma). After we cooled off, and were ready to go we said goodbye to everyone besides John who was still at work, and hit the road for San Francisco. Our short stay in Petaluma would not soon be forgotten; thanks for everything Hosbeins! You rock… red rock!

We got back on the 101 heading south towards San Fran, which was less than 40 miles away. We got one of the best tailwinds we had so far for the first 12 miles or so, which completely turns around after that. Boo. We began noticing how heavy traffic became as we approached the city, and a driver instructed us to use a bike path instead of the 101 which would have been disastrous if we continued much farther. We heeded her advice and rode right along the freeway on a path meant for us.

As we rode for a while, we were having a tough time following the path. Fortunately, someone on a bike noticed that and came to our help. He was actually a warmshowers host in the area, and ended up riding with us nearly into the city, taking us along a path we would have never known otherwise. What a find.

When we approached the Golden Gate Bridge, the wind picked up significantly, and made it difficult to right the ship at times. Unfortunately, the fog was very thick as we crossed over, yielding not the most scenic pictures ever taken from the most famous bridge in the states. After crossing the bridge, we made our way to my friend Ryan's apartment. We dropped off our stuff at his place, changed quickly, and left to get some food. I hadn't seen Ryan, who also went to UConn, since he left for San Francisco nearly two years ago.

Ryan's apartment is in the Haight and Ashbury area, where hippies allegedly started in the 60's. It's a pretty vibrant neighborhood, where I had popcorn thrown at me within a few minutes for refusing to give a stranger beer money. After that, we got Mexican at this place right down the street on Haight. The burritos were amazing, and the people had this rapid and precise wrapping technique that added to the experience. Good spot.

After we filled ourselves, we headed back to Ryan's place. We weren't planning on partying as Ryan had an LSAT prep exam to take for his class the following morning. We stayed in and watched some Olympics. Fine by me. After a while, one of their roommates Matt returned to crash on the couch which left the floor for us. Matt is currently interning for Lucas Arts, doing artwork for some of their video games. Cool stuff, nice guy. He was one of the most amazed people at what we had accomplished that we had come across. He was "truly jealous". We all fell asleep to the olympic games in the living room.

Life was good.