Happy Thanksgiving!

The Thanksgiving weekend traditionally consists of travel, family, and food; not necessarily in that order, and never in moderation. OK, the food’s the defining feature.

We’ll first be joining Kelly’s family in town this year for a large meal before driving up to Chicago with Amy and Henry to join the rest of my family and pick at the day’s leftovers and gorge on desserts (typically more options than guests). We’ll then find another meal prepared tomorrow so we can all share the table again. This is all after participating in a rather large potluck lunch at the office yesterday in the same spirit, later enjoying some pre-Thanksgiving sushi with friends last night.

I will end this weekend 10 pounds heavier. I’m thankful I don’t have a gall bladder anymore, and that I can bike off the extra calories should I choose to brave the cold… I should definitely ride Sunday.

Enjoy your turkey!

Vacation – San Francisco, CA

Quick summary by cleaning out bags, more details to come after we unwind more:

  • ATM receipt for travel cash
  • printed ticket-less round-trip flight itinerary for St. Louis, MO to Oakland, CA
  • receipt for the St. Louis airport’s CPK for a chicken Caesar sandwich shared during the plane flight, not expecting much food on the plane – California connection was a coincidence
  • plane flight Snack Pack box containing empty wrappers for honey roasted peanuts, Oreos, Ritz crackers with cheese, JELL-O fruit snacks – more food than anticipated
  • paper containing phone numbers for Lori (Kelly’s co-worker) and Jeff (Lori’s husband), our gracious hosts for the extended weekend
  • receipt for 1 hot fudge Sunday shared at the Ghirardelli Square
  • receipt and packaging for an additional rechargeable battery for our digital camera, didn’t have enough juice for the random pictures I wanted to take
  • ticket for Coit Tower, great views, great pictures (coming later)
  • receipt for Blazing Saddles bike rental from Friday afternoon in San Francisco – got tired of walking, had to grab a bike, had to take advantage of the beautiful weather and plentiful bike friendly areas
  • map for Blazing Saddles locations and formal bike paths around the Bay Area
  • ticket stub from the Alcatraz audio tour – enhances the experience of wandering around the prison
  • napkins from Ben & Jerry’s, where I had an Strawberry Cheesecake/Vanilla Ice Cream sundae crammed with a core of strawberries – fuel for the walk from Pier 39 to BART
  • 25 cents left on a BART pass, used between the Embarcadero Station to the Lafayette stop, near Walnut Creek where Lori and Jeff live
  • BART Destinations guide
  • boarding pass stubs from St. Louis, Phoenix, Oakland, Kansas City

Update:

Here are some photos from our weekend. I’ve not done any optimize/crop/color adjustment yet, limiting the upload to this raw subset due to the storage limit, but here ya go for now.

There are so many foggy Golden Gate bridge shots because riding that by bike was was so much fun.

After we go through more of the pictures we’ll get more up to share.