Here were my rules for my time off:

1. I had to go at least four days without checking my email
2. I had to spend at least two days in the garden
3. If I found myself sitting on the couch in my underwear at 2pm, hung over, not able to remember when I last showered, and watching The View I should probably think hard about how I am spending my time
4. I had to finish my story
5. I could break any rule, at any time, and not feel guilty about it

A big surprise was how much I didn’t miss my Blackberry (or having a cell phone for that matter). My first thought on walking out of Mercury without it was, “oh no, nobody will be able to get a hold of me!” This was quickly followed the realization nobody would be able to get a hold of me.

I spent most of the break surfing. I managed to make the jump from “pretty bad” to “almost acceptable” surfer. I am now making cuts on the wave which makes the sport even more fun. After a block of five consecutive days of surfing I came to the conclusion:

1. 53 degrees is @#$!@#$ cold. I think the tips of my figures are permanently blue
2. The water in Pacifica is not clean
3. I might need to move to Costa Rica

My basic schedule was to head to the water in the morning and surf until I was so hungry I was ready to eat my wetsuit. At that point I would head over to Nona’s, a charming little restaurant I would recommend to anybody traveling through Pacifica, and have myself a big bowl of warm soup and a beer. It was a good gig.

Think I can get anybody to pay me for this?

Jul and I spent five days in Boulder with Mark and Mandy where I fell in love with their puppy Lola. It only took me two days to undo months of dog training. I think this didn’t go over well with M&M but I know they realize I am just fulfilling my duty as an upstanding uncle. I guess the MasterCard moment would be:

○ Dog training: $500
○ Many months of consistent training: $0
○ Two days to ruin it all: priceless

Boulder is a beautiful place and the Sladdens are amazing hosts. Their house looks out over the Flat Iron mountains and ranges beyond. Their living room is designed so it fills with light from the moment the sun rises making it a perfect place to sit in the morning with a puppy on your lap. I could have sat on the back porch for days straight.

Do you think I can get anybody to pay me for this?

Jul and I took the chance to head up to French Laundry for lunch and the only thing I can say is wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. We ended up taking about four hours for lunch and made friends with the wait staff. At the end they took us for a tour of the kitchen which was cool to see — it was bustling churn of chaos and yet totally spotless. It will probably be the most money I will ever spend on lunch (or dinner for that matter) and yet worth every dollar.

Do you think I can get anybody to pay me for this?

I don’t have any mileage stats like Gregd and Faktor but here is how it broke down:

Number of days surfing: 7
Number of naps taken at 5pm after surfing and a beer at Nona’s: 7
Number of vacation projects not done because I was surfing: 16
Number of days I didn’t check my email: 3
Number of days gardening: 3
Number of books read: 5
Number of movies watched: 9
Number of days without a cell phone: 16
Number of days I missed my blackberry or cell phone: 0

Jul and I headed out for a weekend in Yosemite with Cara and Gregd (a.k.a Gear man) over labor day. I have always felt I had a solid collection of hiking gear but it turns out my gear levels are not even at the same order of magnitude as Greg. I am in the college league and he is in the pros.

Despite the fact that packing for a hiking trip actually turns out to be the only detail oriented tendency I have, the trip got off to a exciting start when two hours outside of San Francisco I realized I hadn’t packed the sleeping bags. This was particularly exciting because the meadow where we would stay was at about 8,000 feet and got !@#$!#@ cold at night. “Luckily” the central valley seems to have turned into a long stretch of Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Target, Starbucks, Chili’s, Gap clusters. We were able to pickup bedding (soon to grace Gregd’s new guest room) and more critical to survival, several pounds of Swedish fish and liquorice. How Bed, Bath, and Beyond has made the link between bedding and candy I don’t know but I think it is brilliant.

If you ever want to go camping I highly suggest putting Greg in charge. We had a enough food to live for months. Hell, we had five different kinds of GORP. We were visited by several bears at night and it turns out Jul has quite a fear of bears. This fear was not calmed by our “they are more scared of you then you are of them” assurances. In reflection I have come to the conclusion this is a pretty healthy fear and my lack of it only confirms my belief that I would last about three seconds as a caveman.

We identified Greg’s life goal as “learning skills” which was quickly amended to “learning mad skills” in reverence to the great Napoleon Dynamite. As a result we ended up exploring my fear of the post apocalyptic world because I have no mad skills. (Yes I fear the apocalypse but not bears.) When the government falls I just can’t seem somebody saying “quick, what we need is a Director who can direct this mess” or “if only we had somebody to surf those waves.” Given a gun there would be as good a chance I would shoot myself as any assailant. Our friend Fred Cliff will be all set in the post apocalyptic world — he is a bow hunter and a great cook. I think he would end up as clan leader.

I did my best to blast 50 Cent as we drove through the Yosemite Valley so everybody could enjoy music with the amazing natural backdrop. Jul calls me a “punk” when I do things like that and at age 31 I’m pretty sure that isn’t a complement.

One of the coolest thing was we stopped at the base of El Capitan at dusk and watched headlamps of climbers go on all along the rock face. I had no idea it was a three to five day climb and you have to sleep lashed to the rock face. There is something about the perspective of a pinhole size headlamp on the side of a 3,000 foot rock face that makes you understand how big it is.

Everyone agreed the best part of camping was the campfire. And the S’mores. At this point in my life I feel like I should suggest the Four Seasons install a few fire rings. Why not have a camp fire AND a shower and some mints on your bedside table?

I uploaded a short Flickr set of photos.

Despite reports of recent violence Jul and I headed down to Santa Barbara last weekend. On a previous trip we took note of “historic bells” along the side of the road but didn’t think much of them. On this trip we paid more attention and realized there are bells, on average, every mile for the entire 300 mile drive along 101. Upon further research I learned that our state considers:

State highway routes embracing portions of I-280, Route 82, Route 238, US 101, I-5, Route 72, Route 12, Route 37, Route 121, Route 87, Route 162, Route 185, Route 92, and Route 123 and connecting city streets and county roads thereto, and extending in a continuous route from Sonoma southerly to the international border and near the route historically known as El Camino Real shall be known and designated as “El Camino Real.”

Seems very reasonable and very much in line with something the United State Board of Geographic Names would handle. What seems crazy is that they put up a bell every mile from Sonoma to Mexico…on both sides of the road!

First of all can you imagine being assigned to that task? Daunting to say the least. I’m also going to go out on a limb here and say we probably could have nixed that one from the old highway budget. In the spirit of David Macaulay’s fantastic Motel of the Mysteries I’m just imagining the archeologists thousands of years from now,

“It appears as if trade routes were marked by large bells probably indicating the residences affinity for Mexican Food as seen in the vast number of perfectly preserved Taco Bell restaurants. We suspect this affinity was the civilizations eventual undoing as the yellow taco cheese has since been shown to be a toxic polymer.”