California Trip - Day 2

Our plan for day 2 was to drive north to Petaluma to visit the TWiT Brick House, the studio where the TWiT family of “netcasts” are produced. We planned to visit during the broadcast of MacBreak Weekly, the podcast all about Apple related news and events. We arrived a little early at 10:30 and we waited in the lobby where the walls are covered with engraved tiles from the many backers of the studio, very impressive.

About 11:00 we were allowed into the studio and were seated in comfortable chairs in front of the host Leo Laporte’s desk which was in reality a large oak dining room table. The lighting and equipment was very impressive as this podcast is also broadcast in HD video format. The show was very interesting, and had two regular panelists; Andy Ihnatko, ironically from the Boston area, and Rene Ritchie from iMore.com.

After the show, we were invited to sit next to Leo at the table and chat for pictures. An assistant took my phone and began snapping photos of us while we were talking with Leo. This was an unexpected benefit and a real nice touch on Leo’s part. We also were able to walk around the three sets that are in the studio and see how things are arranged which was very cool.

After the visit to the studio we walked around the area to find a good place for lunch, we settled for a nice restaurant named Dempsey’s with outdoor seating. Good food and eating outside is always a treat, even though there were a few pesky bees flying around.

On the way back we stopped at Muir Woods and hiked through the park. The old redwood trees here are amazing! This is a popular spot for seeing an unusual forest with lots of trails of varying degrees of difficulty. We chose the main loop but also took a little side path that started up fairly steep terrain. We continued for a while, hoping to reach some kind of summit but around every turn was additional steep grades! Finally we decided to turn around and return to the main path which took us back to the trail head. Gorgeous scenery was all around and we could see that we were quite high up. It reminded us of the famous speeder bike chase from Star Wars Return of the Jedi, but that was filmed in Cheatham Grove near Eureka California.

On the way back to Milpitas, we also stopped at the Muir Beach Overlook, which featured spectacular views of the rocky California coastline. Muir Beach itself was closed until November for construction but this made up for it. Very windy and even a bit chilly since we were wearing shorts and tee shirts.

Finally back in the car to head to the hotel. By now it was rush hour and parts of route 101 south were slowing down considerably. We decided to stop at an In-N-Out burger place to sample the iconic west coast fast food. We were surprised by the simplistic menu, but that made ordering easy! Food was good, much better than Five Guys in our opinion. After dinner the traffic had eased up and we made our way back to the hotel to crash, and play some Monopoly on our phones. Another day awaited us after a good night's sleep.

California Trip

This year my son and I took our third annual "Father-Son Vacation" to sunny California. It was his choice and having similar interests as his Dad, it was a no brainer that we would visit Silicon Valley. Our minimum places to visit included the Computer History Museum, Google, the Apple Store on the Apple campus, spend a whole day in San Francisco, and take a drive up to Petaluma to visit the TWiT studios. Our first FSV trip was a drive to Dearborn Michigan to visit The Henry Ford, since we both have an interest in cars as well. Last year we drove down to Washington, DC to see several sights we didn't get to see on our first visit back in 2006.

We spent all day Monday traveling, leaving the house at 6:30 AM to sit in traffic on the Mass Pike on the way to Logan Airport. We arrived about 8:00 which gave us plenty of time to get through security and grab some breakfast before making our way to the US Airways gate. The first flight to Phoenix was long, over 5 hours and 2 or 3 time zones. Now, I thought Phoenix was in the Mountain time zone which would be two hours behind the east coast, but when we arrived it was 12:40, 3 hours behind our home state. We both found that strange. We later learned that Arizona does not observe Daylight Savings Time which explains the mystery.

The last leg of the journey into San Jose went smoothly and after we picked up our Nissan Sentra (hoping for a Ford Fusion) we arrived at the hotel in Milpitas in short order. First order of business was dinner and we had an intention to only eat at places that we can't find back home. Nearby to the hotel was a Black Bear Diner which seemed to fit the bill. Lots of good old fashioned comfort food, but probably not all that healthy!

After dinner we took a little drive toward the hills of the Diablo Range that were nearby. It was very interesting driving through residential areas one minute and then farm lands with large expanses of grass hills with cattle grazing peacefully.  We also saw lots of jackrabbits living in holes in the sides of the hills. We didn’t drive too far since we were both tired from traveling and it was starting to get dark. Back to the hotel to relax and get ready for our first full day.