Day Tripping in Berkeley

Wednesday I took a trip outside of San Francisco to Marin County, north of the city, and Berkeley in the East Bay. I couldn't have picked a day with worse weather. Wednesday was gray, cold, and rainy unfortunate for a college town with hip streets to walk down and allegedly some of the most picturesque towns with some of the most stunning views of the Bay.

My day started out with a (free!) drive across the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County. I drove through Sausalito, which I previously knew only from the Pepperidge Farm cookies with the same name. It looked nice, and apparently has great views of the bay, but all I say was a wall of gray. I moved on to Berkeley, home of the flagship campus of the University of California. Coming from the "Berkely of the Midwest", and friend to several current and former Cal students, I was keen to see what the place was like. I walked around a bit on Telegraph Avenue, the hub of student shopping and dining. I then went onto the campus itself. First I checked out the anthropology museum, where there was a great exhibit about brewing traditions around the world. The exhibit touched on the fact that almost everywhere that agriculture arose, brewing arose concurrently, which only gives further credence to the idea that our ancestors just wanted to get drunk and forming civilizations was almost completely a byproduct of their decision to band together to more easily brew beer. Probably not widely accepted, but fun to think about. I also checked out the Physics department, where my friend DY is a student; unfortunately for me, he is in Switzerland at CERN. Baller. I also tried to check out Nobel laureate George Smoot's office, but he wasn't around.

Before I left Berkeley, I stopped by the Berkeley Bowl grocery store, on the recommendation of my brother's Girlfriend. As anyone who has seen my OkCupid profile knows, grocery stores are one of my "happy places". This one was like the Shangri-La of grocery stores. Though it was pricey at points, it was a cook's dream. I went in to grab some steak to go with the wine I had brought up from Santa Barbara and walked out with an entire menu, plus some fresh citrus fruit for the road. The orange/tangerine section of this place was almost as big as many other grocery stores's entire produce sections (photo to come).

I finished my day trip with a visit to the Cheese Board pizza. On one of Berkeley's busier streets, the Cheese Board is a fromagerie with a pizza shop attached. Some will recall my fondness for the simplicity of In N Out's menu, and it doesn't get any simpler than Cheese Board pizza: they make one kind of pizza each day; a slice is $2.50, a half or whole pizza is four or eight times that, equal to the number of slices you get. The day I went they were making roasted potato, pasilla pepper, feta, mozzarella, and cilantro. I had a Boont Amber to go with it as I enjoyed my half-pizza while listening to live a live trio playing in the restaurant. On a rainy Wednesday, people were lined up out the door the entire time I was there; when the indoor seating filled up, patrons sat outside, albeit under an awning, to enjoy their slices. A cool place, and apparently a Berkeley tradition.

Soaked at Kirkwood

I haven't even been able to write about half the stuff I did in the bay area, it seems, and I'm already off on the next part of my trip.

I spent a wet but very enjoyable afternoon at Kirkwood ski area. The snow that fell all day may as well have been rain the bottom of the mountain but up top it gave me a nice powder day. Visibility ranged from poor to near white out at times - which was a bit harrowing - but it's really something to feel yourself plow through a mogul field full of fresh pow pow without being able to actually see it. Hopefully that's what you feel like when you die, just floating in a white out.

My all-mountain skis were woefully inadequate. Tonight Lake Tahoe is supposed to get at least a foot of snow, so I may splurge on some high-end demo ski rentals.

More to come about San Francisco, more to come about skiing.

Burma superstar tea leaf salad

Here is the much talked about salad.

A nice photo: the bay bridge

This is not from today, but from a few days ago. Today was shitty and rainy and you probably couldn't even see the bridge. But it is one of the better photos of me that has been taken of me recently so I feel the Internet needs to know about it

Good Eats: Burma Superstar

Unknown musicians often describe themselves as a mix of more popular and established ones. How many times have you heard of a band described as a mix of Led Zeppelin, U2, and Radiohead, or some other such combination? Yeah. So when Burma Superstar, a restaurant located in the Richmond -  the area where much of the city's Asian population resides - described itself as a mix of Indian, Chinese, Thai and Laotian/Vietnamese cuisines, I met that claim with skepticism. But in addition to being someplace my brother wanted to check out, the restaurant came at the recommendation of my friend Toby, who is from the Bay Area and cooks at one of the best restaurants in Madison. We waited 45 minutes on a Monday night, so I was intrigued by what I might find inside.

The signature dish is the tea leaf salad, complete with tea leaves from Burma/Myanmar, which has been featured on the Food Network. My brother and I decided we at least had to see what it was about. Myself being on a curry kick lately, having recently tasted excellent Thai and Nepalese curries, wanted to see what the Burmese had to offer; at our waitress's suggestion, we got a saucy noodle and curry dish. To complement the noodles, she suggested we go with a sauteed dish, specifically the mint chicken, another specialty, and the coconut rice, which was a must to accompany the chicken.

I won't draw out my judgments unnecessarily: the food was absolutely incredible. It was both familiar and exotic; inspirations from other cuisines were combined to make something undoubtedly unique. All the dished we tried worked well enough with their primary flavors, but also contained a complexity and depth that really required rumination.

The tea leaf salad came out first. I expected to be eating whole tea leaves, however, they were chopped up  almost in a paste and served in a bed of lettuce, along with other vegetables. Fried garlic and other crispy additions such as peanuts, sunflower and sesame seeds gave the salad wonderful texture, while a burst of lemon juice added a nice acidity. Each bite was different and seemingly better than the last. It took a while to taste and process all the flavors and texture combinations, but Chris and I both agreed end result was a terrific salad.

The mint chicken was the most surprising dish, again, completely different different than I had envisioned it. Oily, with whole sauteed garlic cloves and spicy red peppers, it reminded me a lot of a Szechuan food, but the addition of mint clearly made it Burmese. Alone it was good, but mixed with the sweet coconut rice it was almost orgasmic, a perfect pairing of  flavors. The coconut rice itself must have been made with the creamy top part of the can (see it for yourself sometime - non desert coconut milk should have a thick creamy "head") and came topped with crispy fried shallots.

The curry noodles were equally as good as everything else. They had a delicate flavor accentuated by green onion. Unfortunately, I have almost no clue was to what spices and other goodness went into the curry. This was the most Thai-like dish, almost a saucier, curry version of Pad Thai.

Myanmar only very recently re-opened diplomatic relations with the United States. I can only hope that this means we get more of their delicious cuisine here. If I'm ever back in San Francisco, stopping by here will be a must, to try some of the dishes I we didn't have room for:  Burmese Samusas, Pork and Pumpkin Stew, the other two curry noodle dishes, chili garlic shrimp. I can't wait.

Bitchin' Afternoon, Parts 2 and 3

While in Santa Barbara, I had the opportunity to have no less than two bitchin' afternoons with no less than the catalyst for the original bitchin' afternoon. Some history: the original afternoon, as I remember it, was a short run, followed by lunch, a lawn party, and even more day drinking. 

The first bitchin' afteroon took place in Santa Barbara, and included a personal tour of the city hitting such points as the Mission, a scenic drive through the hills, a stop at the beach and a beer on the pier, before grabbing some six packs and chilling in E-factor's backyard. With chips and hummus and guacamole as a snack. It was as awesome and as relaxing as it sounds. 

The next day, Eric loaded up some cruiser bikes and drove north with me as far as the Santa Ynez valley, Santa Barbara's wine country. We unloaded in Buellerton and rode in to Solvang - a faux Danish town, similar to New Glarus's swiss village in Wisconsin - for lunch. I was a little disappointed my lunch salad had Gorgonzola instead of Danish blue cheese, but hey, first world problems. 

We then took a leisurely ride through what Eric calls "Tuscany, but with palm trees". I've haven't been to Italy, but if it looks anything like what we rode through, I'm sure I'll enjoy myself when I get there. The day drinking was accomplished only by me; we stopped off at a wine shop for a tasting. The array provided for me included  lots of Pinot Noir, which I liked, some Chardonnay - which I didn't, and a local Syrah that I liked so much I bought a bottle to share with my brother and his girlfriend sometime in San Francisco. Our route happened to coincide with a century race that was going on that day, so we repeatedly got passed by riders on gorgeous carbon framed bikes, however, their race being 100 miles, and our ride only being 15, there were a few weekend warrior types that we chugged past.

I'll be seeing the E-factor in Vail in a few weeks, so there is a chance for future installments of the now world-famous Bitchin' Afternoon.

Catching Up: Splits from the first leg

One week in, I've made it about as far West as the roads of the contiguous United States will take me: San Francisco. I'll be staying here until Thursday, which finally provides me some time to catch my breath, after sprinting across the Southwest and up the California Coast. Up until now, I had only once stayed somewhere for more than 24 hours – Los Angeles, for about 36 – and my average driving time each day was 7 hours.

While running a race, it is often helpful to get splits for specific intervals. While this trip is by no means competitive, I figured I'd record some statistics for the first half of the driving, though I consider it the first third of the trip.

Days on the road: 6

Total miles driven: 2642

Longest Drive: Madison to Oklahoma City. 837 miles, 12 hours

Shortest Drive: Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. 85 miles, 90 minutes

New Beers tried: 8 - Firestone California Pale Ale, Double Barrel Ale (California); La Cumbre Elevated IPA, South Peak Pilsner (New Mexico); Flying Dog Raging Bitch Belgian IPA (Maryland); Westmalle Trappist Dubbel (Belgium); Anderson Valley Boont ESB (California); Victoria Modelo (Mexico)

In N Out beef patties consumed: 4

Number of head-turning girls in Southern California: too many to count

Cameras in my possession: 3 – my DSLR, iPhone, and a Canon point and shoot given to me by my Godparents (technically 4, since the iPhone has two)

Times I've thought to myself, “I should just stay here and never leave”: 4 - Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Big Sur, San Francisco.

Discs of books on tape gone through: 12 (Proust and the Squid, part of The Genome War)

Best meal: Sushi at Izakaya Hachi, Los Angeles

Honorary mention best single menu item: Chicharrones breakfast burrito smothered with Chimayo red chile sauce, Cecilia's Cafe, Albuquerque

Worst meal: yogurt covered raisins and beef jerky, my car, thankfully only once

Hitchhikers picked up: 0

Phone numbers picked up: 1, from a Kazakh girl in LA. 

Phone numbers accidentally dialed the next day, hung up, then immediately called back by a girl you'll never see again followed by a conversation awkward enough that even the E-factor comments on it: 1

San Francisco: an image.

This is one of the best photos I've taken this trip, mostly because it captures so much in a single image.
Ostensibly, it is a picture of my brother and his girlfriend after we went out for dim sum. But it also gets the transamerica pyramid, the "language of the books" sculpture, and, if you look real close, a Banksy piece. "if at first you don't succeed - call an air strike."

Chasing and racing the sun

Part I

The drive from Oklahoma to the Texas-New Mexico border is long and boring. Flat. Windy. Mostly brown on the color pallet, although the deep red earth of Oklahoma is neat. Lots of billboards for oil extraction services. The only halfway interesting thing the entire trip is a towering white cross off the interstate in the Texas panhandle, which only became interesting later, when I found out from E-factor that it is the largest cross in some mostly arbitrary zone. I just thought that I was in Texas, and crosses like that were par for the course.

Somewhere right after the state line in New Mexico, the Interstate climbs a gradually sloped hill, then drops into a completely different landscape. Previously void, the landscape suddenly contains mesas, plateaus dropping off in sharp bluffs, and small gullies carved into the ground. I hit this terrain right as the sun was low and preparing to set, silhouetting the rock formations. I felt like I was driving right at the sun, chasing it so that it might never actually set, perpetually hovering above the horizon. But since a point on the Earth's surface at that latitude is travelling about 800 miles an hour (~25000 miles circumference/24 hours*cos(latitude)), and my Civic can barely sustain 1/8 of that, I lost the sun, having to wait another day to chase it.

Part II

The Pacific Coast Highway is one of the most spectacular stretches of road in the United States. I've posted pictures of it, with more to come, but it is a zone of boundaries - where mountains drop into the sea, where clouds on the horizon obscure where the sky stops and the ocean starts. It has coves where waves crash and spray stone pillars for rocks-and-water syndrome sufferers like myself, and elephant seal beaches and sea otter preserves for animal lovers.

I have ridden the PCH once before, but never driven it, which is why I allotted myself an entire day to experience it. However, due to several conspiring factors, I got a later than anticipated start out of Santa Barbara county and was forced to the realization that I would not get to drive up the entirety of Hwy 1, which hugs the coast, before sunset. By 5:30 the sun was very low and I had not yet reached Big Sur, which meant I had choices to make: did I stop at one of the many pullouts overlooking craggy coves to try and capture the magic hour? or did I press on, in hope of making it to the famed Big Sur for sunset?

It turns out the decision was moot. The same could embankment that had earlier obscured the horizon line in such stunning way had moved inland. One of the pictures published shows the sun dropping behind that wall of low hanging clouds. Instead of an orange sherbet sunset, I watched the clouds engulf mountaintops in a eerie gray mist.

Good Eats: "Chipping In" In Santa Barbara

On my way up the coast to Santa Barbara I saw something I'd never seen before: people harvesting produce, probably migrant workers. As I see it, that's all part of understanding more completely where our food comes from. Unless you somehow grow all your own food. Someone else is picking your raspberries, kale and bell peppers. What it mean that day for me was that I was in produce country and there was plenty of it to be bought at roadside stands. I stopped off at one to pick up a gift for my hosts. I got seven small but flavorful avocados for $1 and a pint of strawberries for $3.

I was happy to see that my gifts were 1) brought to good use and 2) that I could be there to enjoy them. The avocados made a tasty guacamole that we ate as a afternoon snack. The strawberries were used at dinner, to make a chutney that perfectly complemented a juicy roast pork tenderloin that Eric's dad had made with a peppery dry rub (paprika and cayenne being the two main ingredients). Along with buttery mashed potatoes and asparagus spears grilled and drizzled with olive oil and nutmeg, we had a perfect menu. We finished all that off with cake topped with toasted macadamia nuts, which Eric's family had brought back from Hawaii, a place they visit frequently.

Complementing our entire day, not to mention dinner, were two beers from the Firestone Brewery in Santa Barbara. Sharing the namesake of Firestone Tires, though I had never heard of nor had any of their beers, Firestone apparently has widespread recognition as a top tier microbrewery. After a few sips of the California Pale Ale, it's easy to see why. Their Pale Ale was the better of the two we had, the other being the Double Barrel Ale, which was good, but not outstanding. The CPA is among the best American Pale Ales I've ever had, along with Lake Louie's Arena Premium and O'Dell's Five Barrel Pale Ale. Smooth, citrusy and just the right amount of hops, it's a great companion to a sun soaked day in Southern California.