San Jose and Beyond
We arrive at The Carle’s house in Los-Gatos-with-a-San-Jose-address and proceeded to catch-up and geek-out a bit. Then we decided to enjoy their spacious back-yard by trying out a game invented by Jodi’s Moms, for the time being called Huevos Horseshoes (or testicle tennis.) It involves two goal-structures made from PVC pipe, each with 3 horizontal rungs. The teams then take turns throwing/flinging/pitching (or “thwing”) a “Huevos Horseshoe” (two golf balls connected by 18” of cord) at the goal, scoring points if it wraps around the rung. It sounds goofy, and by all means it is. Our utter ineptitude at the game led to our stomachs winning as we decided to eat instead of play to the requisite 21 points (I think the final score was something in the neighborhood of Carles: 9 Verives: 7) After dinner at the unfortunately named Double D’s (they did make a damn-fine cheese burger though) we returned to Casa Carle where Julie and I were finally able to grasp the play of the most Midwestern of card-games: Euchre.
More games and more wine followed, back up by more wine and some seizure-inducing videogames before my brain started to melt and we turned it. The next morning we hit breakfast and then the road. It was so great to get to spend some quality time w/ Andrew and Jodi, but we began to realize that on this trip there would be many friends and reunions, but not near enough time to spend with each of them. It would be like a tasting menu of friends. Torn between happy to have seen them, but sad to leave, we struck out on the wonderfully straight-forward silicon valley/bay area freeway system, and were soon on the tiny island of Alameda.
We spent the afternoon catching up, eating some of the hottest Mexican food I’d ever seen (like hot with FIRE. The enchiladas were literally BOILING when brought to the table,) walking around the island, and taking ZERO pictures. It was great to finally see the Holohans after a couple of false-starts, but the road called and cut our visit short. A quick fill-up and 11 freeway interchanges later and we were flying down the I-5 once again. We needed to make to Oregon Boarder by Monday in the early AM and we regrettably had to blow straight through Northern California; missing Jason and Monica, as well as some Aunts and Uncles, in Sac-town, and Anne in Reading. Curses! By 9pm we had the white-line-fever and needed a fill-up as we wound up the mountains past Mt Shasta. We decided to spend the night in oh-so-(not really)-lovely Weed, CA and push into Oregon in the morning.