Quick Break

I'm on the go quite a bit these days, so I decided to get out of town this weekend and try to do something non-work-related. My wife and I drove down to San Luis Obisbo to party at the Madonna Inn for Valentine's Day and enjoy the beautiful yet simultaneously scary summer weather. Here are some things I noted while away:

-Congested weekend traffic in the Bay Area now extends past Gilroy and down to Salinas. You're in the middle of nowhere and you're not moving. At 11:30 AM. On a Sunday. 

-San Luis Obisbo truly is a blue zone (read this if that term is lost on you). It's like the internet never happened there. No phones, tons of local shops, teenagers actually talking to one another and looking each other in the eye. I played pinball with a local kid at the Woodstock's Pizza downtown while we waited for our to-go order (this was after having had a romantic dinner—we were still hungry). I gave him about five bucks worth of quarters and he was pumped. I thought all children played with their parents' iPads these days while eating dinner, but not in SLO.

-Cocktail culture has really spread over the last few years and today you're able to find creative and interesting cocktails made from serious ingredients just about anywhere. I had the drink pictured above at a downtown spot called the Grenada Hotel—a mix of cachaça, spiced rum, ancho chili liqueur, and Giffard crème de banane. It was delicious and well-balanced. Most importantly, I could taste the harmonic presence of all four ingredients. We sat on the patio and enjoyed the 80 degree afternoon. It felt like Grenada.

-The Garlic Shoppe right off 101 in Gilroy is worth a stop. I just had to use the bathroom after sitting in President's Day traffic, but I wound up buying about forty bucks worth of various specialty foods. They also have about 100 different types of hot sauce, many of which have the words fuck, shit, ass, or even all three in the actual name of the product. I think one was called "You Will Shit Fire Out of Your Ass Hot Sauce." Something like that. 

-Got home finally and watched the new Walking Dead. Woke up around 4 AM this morning thinking something was in my room. I came in early after that.

-David Driscoll

David Driscoll