California

My time in California has been busy and filled with visits to friends and family. When I arrived Friday afternoon at the Sacramento airport, Lori was there to pick me up. We stopped at a new cafe in downtown for a light lunch and then she rode her bike back to work and loaned me Pam's Audi for the weekend. I headed for the Petruccis (but first I had to pay a visit to the Berghold Winery in Lockeford to say hello to the owners and taste their new vintages). It's always fun to revisit the places that created many happy memories.

Sally and Ernie joined me for dinner at the Feed n Fuel in Clements and it was the first time in a long time that I ate deep fried food and mostly everything that is bad for a diet. No regrets, though, the food was fabulous.

Saturday morning I headed for Stockton to get together with Mike, Teresa and my new granddaughter, Jessica. We had a delicious breakfast and it was a great opportunity to hear more about Jessica's wedding scheduled for August 15th.

After some shopping at my favorite Chicos I headed for Borra Winery where the wine tasting room manager, Barbara, and I spent over an hour enjoying tastings of their new wines and catching up on the past few months since we last talked. Barbara and John are planning to visit me in Portland and I can hardly wait because we have such good times together.

The rest of the afternoon and evening I spent with my friends Ed and Liz and we ended the evening with dinner at the School Street Bistro (another old favorite of mine in Lodi).

This morning I started my trek to San Francisco and the ride was delightful. The weather today is warm and balmy and the Bay was beautiful. There's something special about the smell of the air when I start to see the water in S.F. Bay - a crispy clean salty sensation that is difficult to describe.

Once I crossed the Bay Bridge the plan was to meet Ron and Rosanna at Perry's on Union Street but that's where things started to get complicated. It turns out that today was the Bay to Breakers Marathon which draws a huge crowd of people walking the streets - SO - the streets that I needed to navigate were closed. Imagine the feeling of being in stopped traffic 4 lanes wide with no place to go for over an hour. I finally managed to get free of the traffic and then I went directly to the Bonham's Butterfield's Auction. The bad news is that I didn't buy anything but the good news is that I didn't spend any money.

I'm spending the night in S.F. and tomorrow I'll head to Sacramento. I've taken a lot of photos so I'll share them when I return to Portland.