Happy Anniversary

So, seventeen years ago, Jennifer and I had our first date.  This weekend we celebrated.

On our first date, I had taken her all around San Francisco giving her various views of the city.  We had a picnic in Golden Gate park, ate clam chowder on Fisherman's Wharf, and just had a great time.

This weekend, we celebrated us.

Friday night, I made me new personal specialty, chicken pad see ew.

Saturday, we went for a long ride.  Possibly our longest ride together.

We started off with breakfast at Starbucks, but then rode south.  We raced an Amtrak train from Emeryville to Jack London, and ended up beating it.

We continued on and crossed onto Alameda.  We followed the road around the south end of the island, and came back up to Shore Line Drive.  And there we discovered that they are in the process of installing a two-way bike lane along the water side of the road.  It was great having our own lane that allowed us to mostly ignore car traffic and not have to dodge foot traffic.  There are little concrete islands that have been installed, and they had barricades with an electrician's name stamped on them.  I'm guessing that the islands will have some sort of light.  Based on the plans on the web, these may just be street lights.  Still, we were very excited.

After stopping for lunch at Sushi House. we rode on north, and made it to St. George Spirits.  Unfortunately the new vodka isn't ready yet so we didn't taste.  We did go next door to Faction Brewing for some beer.  It was okay beer.  They poured either full pints, or 5-ounce glasses for tasting.  We chose 8 and sipped our way through them.  As you can guess from the logo, they're into hops.  We're really not, so we doubt if we'll be going back.

On our way off the old navy base, we came across some pyracantha bushes that were thickly covered in berries, and the berries on the individual bushes were different shades of red and orange.  We stopped, and Jennifer took some pictures.

After that, we were pretty much ready to head home.  Until we came across a Foster's Freeze.

Then we rode home.

At the end of the day, we had gone about 32.5 miles.

Sunday, I took Jennifer to Cooperage in Lafayette.  We had a wonderful brunch, and then walked a bit through downtown Lafayette.

We had talked about watching movies later that day, but we weren't sure which ones we wanted to see.  When we got home, "Inherit the Wind" was on TMC, and that was immediately followed by "Forbidden Planet".  With a little pause for homemade chicken nachos as dinner, that completed the night and the weekend.