Tomorrow morning, bright and early I'll be on my way to Santa Cruz by way of Long Beach, Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, and Salinas... over about 7 hours.  Yep, I will be a patron of Amtrak and that's about the quickest to get up there when you're lacking your own wheels.  Yep, my beautiful volvo baby is in the shop.  It did allow me to buy a $88 dollar headache and one volvo shop I'm no longer allowed to show up at.  ("you never show up here again." the exact quote from the mechanic.)  So, if you're ever in L.A. and need to get your volvo serviced hit me up and I'll let you know all about who you should NOT take your car too.  Needless to say I dropped my car off at another (much better, but farther away) independent volvo place.  And... today still no car, because the guy needs a lot more time to figure my car out and what's going to fix it.  Noises are never good.  Grrrrrr... I just want my car back.  But, since that isn't going to happen and I've got to get up to Santa Cruz by Saturday I will be riding two buses and one train tomorrow.  

And then, hopefully the headache will be done and I'll be on vacation for a week.  (except that I'll be getting an update on my car situation and will have to make some decision on that)  Sunday we're off for two nights camping in Mendocino and then all the way up to Arcata to visit my parents.  I'm excited for a trip and to get out of L.A. and away from my car.  

A little trip to Santa Cruz and San Francisco

Two weekends go (wow, time goes fast) I went up to visit Lukas for a few days.  We had a fun filled, packed weekend together.  It started with car races in Watsonville on Friday.  I didn't quite know what to expect... but I had a blast.  We saw four (I think) different types of cars race.  My favorite were the littlest ones 'cause they went the fastest.  We sat up in the stands slightly above the where the line of little mud pellets stopped.  It was a good thing too.  As the cars flew around the corner they would fling mud all over the place.  And... boy were they loud.  Thank goodness for ear plugs!  It was so much fun sitting up there, eating a messy messy tritip sandwich, and watching the cars speed along (and minor wrecks once in a while).

The next day it was off to San Francisco we went.  We spent the day at Golden Gate Park.  First we saw the Chihuly exhibit at the de Young museum.  See the massive size of all those glass pieces was quite mind boggling.  It all felt a little bit like we were under water.  From Chihuly we wondered around looking for the Conservatory of Flowers.  We only took the longest way there, but we did eventually find it.  The building was brilliantly white against a blue sky.  Inside it was like we'd stepped into a muggy tropical jungle.  It reminded me of botanical gardens I saw in D.C.  Here there was a room full of bright flowers and butterflies.  Then after a couple greasy (but yummy

) hot dogs we headed off towards AT&T park, by way of Old Navy and really really expensive parking (we'll never do that again!).    

The Giants were playing the Diamondbacks and tiny Tim Lincecum was pitching.  We had so much fun (even though the stupid bullpen blew it) that we decided to go back again the next day.

We only got slightly lost getting to the hotel that night and in the morning we heading back into the city.  It was a foggy San Francisco morning.  We went to 

Crissy Field and walked down the beach to Fort Point.

  It was cool to see the bridge disappearing into the fog.  It was such a nice morning.  

After having a couple hot chocolates we called up the Giants' ticket office and got tickets for the day's game.  

Pretty sweet since it was bobble head day.  We both just barely got our Matt Cain bobble heads; they only had a few left at the gate we walked through.  The sun tried to come out for a bit.  We were gonna go check out China Beach after the game, but the fog persisted and we were pretty tired so we headed home.

The next day we did a little "photo shoot" in the backyard so Lukas could practice his flash photography.  

We had fun together... weekends together are so nice.