I’ve been in California for the past few days and had an incredible time. I went to visit my friend Kyle, who also has FA and is the very cool guy behind Ride Ataxia. He lives in Sacramento, but we spent most of our time in the San Francisco Bay area, where we stayed with his (awesome) friends and visited law schools.
In Berkeley, we visited UC Berkeley’s law school and stopped by Goodwill to get sweaters for the Ridiculous Christmas Sweater party we attended on Saturday. I found the place cool and college-town-y; combined with its proximity to a big city, this makes it a total hit for me. The fact that the school has built-in phone booths is icing on the cake:
In San Francisco, we ate at the not accessible but very tasty Alive! (exclamation point theirs), a raw vegan restaurant. My omnivorous dining companions were set to rely on me for guidance, but I had never been to a raw place before, so it was an adventure for all. Our server used the word “blenderized” a lot when describing how some dishes were made to my curious dinnermates. There was a lot of repetition of ingredients on the menu (pumpkin, zucchini, thyme), but I guess that can happen when they’re relying on what’s available seasonally/locally/organically. Despite this, the dishes were varied, complex, and delicious. I had never been to a restaurant before where they show you the bottle of wine, pause for your approval, then pour out a bit for one person to taste. (Actually, even living in Philly, land of BYOBs, I rarely have wine when out to dinner.)
The next day Kyle and I bussed down to UC Hastings, where we ran into an overzealous campus security guard, but we managed to sneak around and check out the campus anyway. Of great help to our cause was the fact that we couldn’t go out the front door as the guard would have liked since there were stairs there, so when he told us to go back to the accessible entrance, we went that way but took a little detour through the building.
Kyle and I in front of the not-actually-gold Golden Gate Bridge
More about my travels soon. Also, check out my flickr feed (in the sidebar on the right) for more pics.
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