Weekend in town!

Always a good time to run up the beast...

First one since July 8th... which was 8 weekends ago.  Long overdue.  Phew.
Started off with a night at OMCA.  These guys rocked!  As you can see from this guy groovin'.

Had a nice Sat morning dad's crew run with Rob, Sam, and Kev (visiting from Seattle), the highlights being Rob booting at the top of the hill, and an owl sighting.

Hard to see egh?

Afterwards I took the kids to Dracena park with 505 upper.  And had lunch with them at Slicer.

Kevin... wishing he had a 750W motor between his legs.  

Lovin playing with the cartoon mode on my Sony

We cruised in (after a 5 min nap attempt) to the city to Jordy and Mary's housewarming.  Probably the nicest housewarming I've ever seen.

Quite the panoramic view...

Sun morning went on a ride to China Camp with Jack.  On the way there his bike fell off my bike rack... Argh... me no likey Thule...

Jack also ate it hard... 

Then I met up with Kimbo (who took the boys on the radwagon) and Hoefts at Crown Beach.

And after a few hours at the beach, we went to Faction for dinner.

The kids were stoked to have so many IPA options...

... actually, they were playing a game where everytime they made it in the hole...

They'd do a group hug.  I loved it.  

Dinner of champions...

Cheers!

Soon we were on the ferry from Alameda back to Oakland...

Pano: Twin Bridges Swimming Hole

We stopped by Twin Bridges swimming hole outside of Placeville after Anthea and Alex's wedding celebration at Camp Nauvoo.  Had a great time chillaxing at the swimming hole to cap off a great weekend celebrating a Alex and Anthea's unity with friends.   Here's some pics from the wedding.

OR road trip part 3: #OReclipse

From Portland, we cruised down to Corvallis to one of Louie's friend's parent's house... where some of his friends were camping out.  So we asked if we could join.  This worked out best as we'd be on I-5, and this way Louie could easily get a ride home (his roommate Van was one of the guys headed there).  

Part 1: http://snowymonk.blogspot.com/2017/09/timberrrrrrrrrrrrrrs.html

Part 2: http://snowymonk.blogspot.com/2017/09/or-road-trip-part-2-shenanigans-in.html

Stopped by Avery Park, as we heard there's a train you can climb on.  There's also a HUGE picnic table made of really old-growth lumber... (sob, sob...)

The train was awesome.  The kids loved the fact that you can climb all over it and really potentially get hurt.  I wonder how long it'll be before it is roped off due to one lawyer looking to get rich... 

The flying conductor

There should be a sign taht No drinking beer while texting on the roof the train!

Whale bone replica... random.  I approve

I like the make shift grill... 

Riding off into the sunset

We put Kai and Nikko to bed in the back of the Prius!  It worked out marvelously... 

Mon - Eclipse day

Happily snoozing... 

So Louie and I went on a quick run.... quick as in short... 

I love the kid's faces here.  

The discovery of "Strawberry" the mantis!

I love eclipse pics... 

The totality was really, really cool.  Not life-changing, but almost.  Seriously... that cool.  I'd love to see it again... I'm really glad that we made the drive.  Kai missing the first day of first grade... definitely not as important as this.  Seeing the totality was really cool for a dork like me.  

The traffic back home was uber hyped.  There were definitely more cars on the road and it got congested at times, but overall there wasn't much of a problem.  

On the way back we stopped in Ashland to stretch our legs... see some deer in Lithia Park...

And meet up with Cam and Stu!

We went up to the Fairy pools where you are supposed to be dressed like Kai.  

The group shot with Stu!

Here's some cool shots of the eclipse from the webs...