soccer dad

i mean "soccer dad" in the sense that i'm a male, therefore, not a soccer mom; also, that my duties these days surround the oversight of a couple of kids, not that i'm necessarily taking them to soccer practice. in fact, we don't even have a car here for me to drive (which sucks, cause i really want an excuse to put this huge soccer ball decal on a car).

timmy is 4 and stephie is 2. they are really cute, but definitely a lot of work, especially at this age. i can tell i've been watching these little south african kids long enough, cause i catch myself almost saying phrases like 'for ages', 'come come', and 'but you must" in place of the more familiar 'forever,' 'come on guys,' and 'please.'

today we did all sorts of things. watched planet earth, played, slept, played out back, played cars, tickle fights, and we even went to the park twice, though the second trip nearly turned tragic as we almost lost a spade (see what i mean? i should be saying shovel!) in the street on the way there. believe me that might have been bad if we had!

anyways, i badly wanted to post a video of these little ones. i wish they would have said more so you could see what i mean, but i think they were a little camera shy.



we'll see what tomorrow brings! actually, i know what tomorrow brings. i'm the babysitter - and for the sake of sanity i must have a plan. we are baking cookies tomorrow afternoon. yes we will be doing other things, but that's the only thing worth reporting. for now =)

sleep time.

-m-

ps-- doesn't stephie look like a little natalie portman?

i went to a real live race track, mommy!

yesterday we went wine tasting and then headed to laguna seca. this was a cool day for two main reasons:
1) i've always wanted to go wine tasting because i know nothing about wine, so we did
2) we went to the laguna seca racetrack

well, wine tasting was a blast. it was cool to learn a little more about wine. i texted dave in the middle of the day and told him that our wine tasting adventure was pretty cliche. it was a sunday afternoon, we were driving a cadillac listening to classical music and driving through the rolling california hills to local vineyards to wine taste. he replied saying that all we needed to do was visit the theatre later in the day to make the cliche complete. sadly, there was no time or energy for the theatre afterwards.

here are a couple pics from the wine tasting adventure:

the ride:


the places:

heller estates:




ventana:


garden outside of ventana:


random backseat boredom:


next, was laguna seca. i wanted to check it out for two main reasons (don't you love these lists? someone should digg this!):

1) i love cars
2) laguna seca was an actual course in one of my video games gran turismo and i fake raced on it so many times i really wanted to see the real thing.

here are some of the pics from laguna seca (not to be confused with laguna beach, ladies):

welcome!




this was taken on the bridge you're not supposed to take pictures on:

(i think the idea behind the prohibition of people stopping on the bridge is if you cause one of these huge trailers with cars loaded to crash on the bridge, it will most certainly spill to the track below, which is, as hair dye boxes say on the color chart for Scooter's hair, "not recommended")

in the far left area you can see the sharp, world-renowned corkscrew


you would die on this turn if you weren't paying attention:


fake:


real:




well, the next few days probably won't allow for much more sightseeing as i start babysitting the kiddos tomorrow at 6am! yowzas. the next three days, rinse and repeat with that. but maybe i'll take some fun shots of the kids while we're hanging out. they have the cutest little south african accents. "mum! come eah. the sky is so blou!" maybe that's an exaggeration, but you get the point =)

-m-

monterey bay

saturday was cool and super relaxing. we drove back down to big sur again, this time with rheta since we now have a bigger car. went into some of the shops there. the place is definitely owned by hippies. the only things they sold were woven purses - you know, the kind that you feel like may have been fabricated by the swiss family robinson, jewelery, weird music, and of course, art! it was cool to be there at least and experience that.

from there we drove up further north, through pebble beach, pacific grove, and monterey bay. monterey bay was so majestic. my camera was dying, sadly (way to plan, homie!), so, here are a few of the scarce pictures from our drive along the bay:

the sky and water are made up of these amazing blues. look in the far distance and you can see the mountains on the northern coast of california:


i had to take this for keith!

another cool shot of the bay:

another great sun setting by the firehouse back home:


the weather has been amazing for the past 4 days. the kind of weather where you have all the windows and doors wide open and you can't notice a change in temperature when you walk in and out of the house.

about to head out now to a vineyard and then go to laguna seca. i'm really excited about both of those things. i just hope that today is the local porsche enthusiast event where local porsche owners bring their cars to race. that would be sweet!

i'll miss frontline in person tonight, but i hope to be back in time to join you all online.

-m-

no shoes... yes service

you gotta love any state where you can drive barefoot and where you can drive your motorcycle to the front of the pack in between cars at stoplights. not only that, but you can even drive around and in-between cars in motion, granted traffic is moving 40 mph or less. it makes for an exiting animation of vehicles on the road. it also beats watching the DC motorcyclists walk their bikes home on route 123 in rush hour.

the past few nights have been really peaceful. drix showed up first, on thursday. he is a manager of a stadium in cape town and he, along with the other south africans, are here to construct and man several aspects of an annual mountain bike race at laguna seca. drix brought some great south african wine that we consumed over a great steak dinner. yum!

last night, rheta showed up. she's pretty cool too. each year, she ditches her entire family for 2 weeks to come run some of the stands at the bike event. her husband is a brandy maker and all her kids are either professional cyclists, or on their way to becoming professional cyclists.

so late yesterday afternoon we put the top down on the solstice and rheta and i drove to whole foods in monterey to get some stuff for dinner. it was really refreshing to be greeted in whole foods by so many friendly people. i'm used to walking into a grocery store and not being spoken to.

we were near the salads and this lady almost put her food in our cart. when she realized she didn't have a cart and indeed had a basket, she let out a hearty hilary clinton chuckle and apologized. she continued to ask us questions about our visit and went on to talk about all the things going on in monterey this weekend, including the 5 minute rant about leonardo dicaprio's new movie that's playing for free and is really awesome because it talks about providing environmental solutions rather than focusing on the saddening environmental problems accumulating in our world today. little does she know that if i see it, its obvi only going to be for leo.

it actually got to be too much after the 2nd or 3rd event she told us about. my smile was more in response to her persistence in making us feel welcome than it was to the coolness of the events she was listing. noticing that her teenage daughter was now completely embarrassed, we really tried to wrap things up. rheta slowly moved towards the salads, and the transitional note was sung.

we needed wassabi, and i felt no remorse interrupting two whole foods employees in the middle of their conversation. as soon as i said "excuse me, can i ask you a question" they both burst out laughing. apparently "excuse me" was the punchline to their joke. really random!

anyways, it was just a nice day yesterday, first with the friendly whole foods people, then with the great driving weather. to top it off, we had king salmon and red potatoes for dinner. so good.

well, about to head out for the day. we needed a bigger car than the solstice for today, cause rheta is coming with us. so cynthia rented a car, and the only car they had was this huge cadillac dts. how cliched, right? whether its just the irony in it being such a [in my mind] typical baller california car, or the irony in us renting the cadillac in time to go to vineyards, its just cliched! but, i'm not complaining. ok. out.

-m-

big sur and beyond

today we drove to big sur and carmel-by-the-sea (yes, that's actually the city name). the sky was amazing, per usual:



honestly, there were so many amazing pictures today, there's no way i could upload them all. i'm excited to upload them all into facebook albums when i get back. for now, here are a few highlights from this morning along the coast:

carmel-by-the-sea








highway 1, big sur, and beyond














and lastly, here was a cool sunset to cap off a great day!


tomorrow is pebble beach, pacific grove, wine tasting in monterey and santa cruz. i hope to find some time to write a bit more about the great food and wine i've had, the cool south african house guests, and perhaps i'll share a little about all the randomly friendly people at whole foods! though right now, i'm very sleepy. night!

-m-

she ain't messin with no broke broke

today is such a nice day out! no complaints. so far the past three days have looked like this:




here is the car cynthia has let me tote around in:


here is the frightening picture hanging on the wall in my room:

(apparently it is an original painting of a famous photo on a national geographic cover)

here is the amazing silver topped yoplait!



we're headed to big sur right now. i'll definitely post more pictures, and hopefully some video soon.

i just found out today that due to a miscommunication on when i was actually headed down to LA to meet up with dave and lisa, i won't be going to see Kanye West anymore with cynthia and her friend. oh well. i'll just have to see him some other time.

-m-

my home away from home

after a ridiculously long day yesterday, i finally arrived safe at the san francisco airport. my flights were fine, considering the madness they could have been. but, put a flight to california, that connected through charlotte making a grand total of 9 hours flying/waiting to fly, with a stressful morning of tax preparation and last minute packing, and then throw in the hour and half drive to salinas, and the 3 extra hours i got from west coast time, i'm a tired little boy!

the house i'm staying at is in monterey county, in the small small town of spreckels, ca. you can actually see the house i'm in if you click street view on this google map page and click south-easterly a few times. its like the only house on the street, right next to the firestation. i'm staying with our family friend cynthia. she's the sister of hans, who owns elevation burger (just trying to bring it full circle!)

the location is really peaceful. we're about 20 minutes east of downtown monterey, and maybe 25 minutes east of the coast. only a 5 minute drive from downtown salinas. the town my house is in is spreckels, ca. i think it's kind of like ballston in the sense that its more an area than a town. cynthia's house is right next door to the fire station, church, and post office (which is convenient considering i still need to get stamps for all the support letters that i have sitting in my bag!). abrupt, low-lying mountains roll along the not so distant horizon and in the valley surrounding us on all sides are vast fields of pretty much every type of lettuce you could imagine. salinas (i think i heard this right) is the biggest lettuce exporter. if you go to asia, for example, and look at their lettuce, it will probably have Salinas, CA on the label. i suppose if you've got to be next to a field of produce, it may as well be lettuce. better that than brussel sprouts or poison.

it's weird... you know "Foxy" lettuce? it's a brand. well it had its own store here. its just funny because, to me, that's like driving down the street and seeing "The Gala Store" or something. cynthia was cool enough to let me drop her off at work this morning so i could drive her black solstice convertible around today. its a really fun car to drive and great area with open roads to soak it up!

well, the way this week is going to work is something like: hang out today, work in cynthia's home office with her personal assistant a few hours a day for the remainder of the week (remember, part of how i convinced myself to come for so long was to actually try to make some money while i was here!), visit big sur, carmel by the sea, monterey, eat good food, i hope wine taste, and possibly go to laguna seca (world renowned race track, its in gran turismo!). then, this weekend, she begins to host a handful of south african peeps who come to monterey to build the track up for a mountain bike race on wednesday the 16th. i'll be sharing my room with someone named drix starting tomorrow. monday, tues, and i guess wednesday of next week i'm babysitting to 2 kids of one of the couples that is coming to help build this course. talk about an eclectic array of events.

pictures to come soon. right now, i am actually going to go running down this road that apparently is used for filming car commercials from time to time. if i see any in progress i'll be sure to attempt to foil their lies! car commercials always seem to capture the best of what you can never, ever do in a car.

-m-