Super Saturday

When I woke up yesterday, I was in the mood for an adventure. So I corralled the girlfriend and dog into the car, found my sunglases, and took off for a magical Bay Area Adventure Extravaganza.

Stop #1
Karla's office. Okay, this part actually soucked. But I did get kicked out of the Moscone Center in SOMA for having a dog.

Stop #2
The Gingerbread House in Oakland. This place leaps off the road--it looks like a gingerbread house! Except it's really a cajun restaurant, and a mediocre one at that. Still, the food was elegantly presented, we received chilled forks for our marshmellow salads, and the gingerbread was definitely up to snuff. A delightful experience I don't ever need to do again.

Stop #3
Alameda! Alameda is an island in the Bay just off of Oakland, and man, it is cool. It's got a bunch of old school businesses and a great beach to walk along and some fun monkey bars which inspired me to tell the infamous Pete Sugg story, in which Pete was walking on top of the monkey bars and fell on top of them, thus requiring testicular surgery. Also some grade-A people in the parking lot willing to jumpstart my car that doesn't frickin beep when I leave the lights on.

Stop #4
We're driving along Alameda, in a big industrial complex, and Karla says, "Raiders!" Indeed, there is was--Raiders World Headquarters, a big, modern building with the pirate head out front and a huge fence around the complex. Goalposts were visible. I can't say I broke in and trashed Norv Turner's office as I would have liked, but I definitely rang the doorbell and ran, which in my opinion is even better.

Stop #5
The Ideal Grocery in San Leandro. They were out of Diet Pepsi Vanilla, my favorite carbonated beverage - BUT they did have this new soda called Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. I kid you not, all that taste packaged in one twenty ounce bottle. It was a pretty good blend of all those different elements, but there wasn't one distinctive flavor, which may be its commercial downfall. Still, it's always exciting to try a new soda, unless it's called Crystal Pepsi.

Stop #6
After dropping Karla off at Ikea, a store which I will enter under no circumstances, I headed over to Best Buy to watch the end of the Steelers-Jets game (at the Ideal Grocery, I'd noticed it was close going into the fourth quarter). Due to in-store connections intended to highlight HDTV capabilities, only one television in the store had the game on, and it was five inches wide and black-and-white but had an antenna. A Best Buy guy referred to it as the big screen. Still, great finish to a great adventure - Steelers win in OT.