Pining for the Fjords

As you may have noticed on Facebook, earlier this month, Chris and I were lucky enough to host my Mom for her second visit to our new digs in Long Beach.  Although she's visited San Francisco a few times, this was just her second trip to our neck of the woods (and points even further south, as you'll see), hence the title of these posts.  Here we go! Last time Mom visited , she flew in and out through LAX, which is really a level of the underworld brought topside.  Seriously, if you ever have the opportunity to fly in and out of LAX, and you're not a famous person (which if you are, how did you even find this blog?  Feel free to send me a few bucks, why don't ya?), just don't.  Thankfully, by the time this visit rolled around, Southwest started offering more and more flights between the east coast and our cute little Long Beach Airport, conveniently located only 2 miles from our house.  Mom landed on a Wednesday afternoon, and I was able to finish up work...

After our big day out on the road watching the riders and visiting with Megan and Kristen, we crashed out pretty hard, and we woke up early the next morning, ready to start the day.  We showered and packed up the truck, checking out of the Avila Village Inn after having enjoyed our stay.  It was back to the Kraken for coffee and chai, and then it was a short drive along the coast to breakfast at Fat Cat’s Café.  According to the waitress who seated us, our beverages were “contraband” (apparently a thing all around here), but she was happy to seat and serve us anyway.  We enjoyed a round of big breakfasts (French toast for Chris, biscuits and gravy for me, eggs and bacon for both of us), and it was back into the truck to head north to Paso Robles. Chris in our booth at Fat Cats. They have art and photos from all over, all with rotund felines as the subject. They stick to a theme. Paso’s not that far away from the Avila area – around 45 minutes – an...

On the previous blog , we’d spent most of our morning on the Central Coast wine tasting, and we were finally about to see the riders from the Amgen Tour of California come screaming past our location.  At this point in the race, there was a five man breakaway riding about 2 minutes ahead of the main peloton of bikes; they had as much as a 5 minute lead on the pack at one point in time, but since our spot was about 2/3 of the way through the course for the day, the peloton was starting to gradually reel them back in (although one breakaway would actually go on to win a stage, which is decently rare, it happened the following day).  The official swag car stopped by our position, and we were happy to divest them of some of their Jelly Belly jelly beans, one of the official race sponsors. Hooray, race swag! Eventually, we saw the stage leaders come into sight (click on these to blow them up for easier spotting). Here they come! From left, your stag...