Last Days on U.S. Soil

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  San Francisco, California, United States
Friday, October 14, 2005

It was 9AM, and our daily budget was already busted. The combination of a rental car to the airport, gas, and breakfast put us over our $100 a day budget for our time in San Francisco. So, upon arrival in SF we opted for public transportation over a taxi to get to our freinds Jedd and Lauren's place in the Noe Valley. It was an easy ride, just a train to a bus to a walk. Great training for the rest of the trip as we carried our packs up one of SF's famous steep hills. Ahh, budget travel!

That night we visited Jedd at his work at the Marin Theater company where he is the Production Manager. It was something else to see Jedd behind a desk. Nearly brought tears to our eyes, so proud! Here's the website of his theater company the Marin Theater Company the evening of our arrival and ate dinner at the Taco Shack in Mill Valley.

The next day, we took care of some banking business downtown and then soaked in the beautiful bay area scenery at the par 3 course in Golden Gate Park. While the scenery was gorgeous and a fun time was had by all, we were reminded of our golf mantra -- practice, practice, practice, patience, patience, patience. We are brand new golfers, just terrible. We both started with lessons a week ago that were gifts from Kristy's parents. We plan on inflicting our terrible golf game on courses around the world.

After golf, we drove to a dance performance in San Jose where Lauren (jedd's wife) was dancing.

01 - Jedd behind a desk (sniff!)

The contemporary ballet piece, White Light, was wonderfully choreographed by Viktor Kabaniaev and danced beautifully by Tina Kay Bohnstedt and Lauren Main DeLucia. It was a really striking piece distinguished by overhead spotlights and really amazing awkward poses. Tina and Lauren dance with the Diablo Ballet . But the best thing about the day, we came in under budget! (our course that's due to the generosity of Jedd and Lauren who insisted on buying our drinks).

On Friday, Jedd and Lauren kindly lent us their car for a drive up to Sonoma. (I have a feeling they may not have known about our record with rental cars!). The tasting at our favorite winery - Robledos Family Vineyard - was amazing. We also had a great tasting at a new-to-us vineyard called Schug (in the Carneros near Robledo). And of course, no visit to Sonoma would be complete without a visit to the Olive Press (right, Amanda?). And, we may be getting hooked on golf -- on our way out of town we saw a really scrappy looking driving range covered in dead grass and tires that we just couldn't resist.

And now we're off to have a drink with Danika, Matt's old friend from New Haven who should give us good tips on Japan, because she knows everything there is to know about Japan.

Tomorrow, we're off to Tokyo. Hard to believe we're finally embarking on the international part of our journey. Not much to say besides - We're off! We'll miss you all dearly and are glad to carry your well wishes with us through the journey.

P.S. Don't feel shy about rating our Travelpod journal! (The higher the rating, the better the chance we'll be featured travelers!!!!)

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02 - Kristy Tees off	03 - After the Dance	04 - Kristy's Tees off into the scrub	05 - Lunch at Rachel Rae's Fav in Sonoma
06 - With a Robledo Brother

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