July trip to San Francisco and environs

For more detail behind our SF bay area trip last week, read the commentary beneath the last photo. Captions below the pictures summarize the experiences.

BART buddies en route to Danville to see our friends the Willardsons!

Lunch with Valle at an organic cafe in the artsy part (which may describe the whole town, for all we know) of Danville. The waiter seemed offended when Valle asked for a diet coke. They only serve organic foods. I guess the fries were organic too.
Checking out "Batman's car" (per Gayle) parked outside the organic restaurant.

Photo op of the Porsche Carrera.

Three former Mexico North missionaries, 38 years later. Tom Willardson, Gary Redford, and me, in back of Tom's house in Danville - just prior to the cookout at poolside.

The table's set and we're ready for a "Tuscany" meal.

Gayle took this "real life" photo (as opposed to a "still life" painting) of one of Valle's front windows because it resembled a painting. No wonder Valle's car vanity plate says Val Gough (get it?). She actually is an interior decorator. Gayle took numerous shots of the interior because she was in awe.

Standing in front of a fountain sculpture in the Embarcadero district across the street from the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning. The weather was gorgeous for SF.

A boat scene from one of the piers at Embarcadero near the market.

This is the restaurant atrium near the lobby at The Palace Hotel (in the financial district) where we stayed and where I later attended an industry meeting.

"Roses are red, my love"...but not as sweet as you! In the hotel lobby.

"I Left My Heart in San Francisco." OK. Enough of the cheesy song references. (Gayle says, "unless we think of any others.") This is at Union Square, where an Indonesian concert was taking place.

What looks out of place in this photo? Actually, nothing. This is San Francisco, after all. (Note: click on the photo to enlarge to appreciate the full effect. You can enlarge any of our photos, by the way.)

Flashback to Woodstock? No. This is a jazz festival in Washington Square. We stopped by and enjoyed a few acts (and watching the people). There are a lot more people behind us, spread out in the park. See the snippet of a video below for a tiny feel for the ambiance. We call this clip "man in hat grooving to the music."




All ages attended. We couldn't resist sharing this photo of a toddler in front of us trying to look a dog in the face. Excuse the man's knee in the foreground.

Of course a visit to Fisherman's Wharf is nearly obligatory. We went out on the pier to see Alcatraz and the seals on the docks. Needless to say, by late afternoon the wind picks up significantly.

After an Italian meal, we went to Beach Blanket Babylon at Club Fugazi. The show is known for exaggerated hats and hairdos (see the program above). Afterward we walked back to the hotel. Since the cable cars were quite crowded, with long lines, we hoofed it everywhere that day, from the hotel to the squares, to the wharf, to dinner, to the play, back to the hotel. With the hills, we got in some good cardio-vascular work.

Sunday morning the usual SF marine overcast rolled back in. We strolled back to the Embarcadero district and caught the line-up for The Church of the Homeless weekly free breakfast to the homeless. Here's one of the regulars.

Gayle on a pier with the bay bridge and Treasure Island in the background.

And here's what I wrote on July 28th --

Friday, July 25th, Gayle and I left early for the SLC airport. We flew to SFO and caught the monorail over to BART (bay area rapid transit - train system). It reminded me of my trip to Tokyo last December, and schlepping luggage all over Japan on trains - except this was not nearly as crowded or confusing. We took the blue line to the last stop - the Dublin/Pleasanton station, where Valle Willardson met us, eventually. She went to one side of the tracks and we walked out to the other. What did we do before cell phones? We took the scenic route to their home in Danville, past wild turkeys and even a deer. After a nap, I took a run part way up Mt. Diablo, into the park area. When I got back the ladies were tanning next to the pool and I took a swim with Max, one of Valle's grandchildren. The Willardson's were gracious and let us stay in their guest house. The whole place was awesome. We even enjoyed Madsen, their dog. That night we had a cook-out next to the pool and Gary (another former missionary companion, who happens to live in the Willardsons' ward) and Marsha Redford joined us. We later watched a few things (like a James Bond chase scene and some Neil Young) in their luxurious home theater. I forgot to mention that we got a royal tour as well. We particularly liked the mounted pictures on their wall from our Mexico trip last fall. They were a gift from Tom's brother, Bruce.

Saturday a.m. we all (Tom, Valle, Max, Gayle, and I) went over the bridge to the Embarcadero district and took in the Farmers' Market. We had a late breakfast/lunch at Taylor's and enjoyed sight seeing. We tried to get tickets to go later on an Alcatraz tour, but they were sold out for more than a week ahead. We swung by a theater and I bought tickets for "Beach Blanket Babylon." After the Willardsons dropped us off at my hotel (we came to SF because I am now attending a tradeshow) we checked in and got ready to walk the town. We stayed at (and I'm still at) the Palace Hotel on New Montgomery Street. It's a great location. Gayle and I took off and visited a botanical garden near the Moscone Center. We walked over to Union Square and took in a bit of an Indonesian band's performance (with a cute and talented female lead singer). Then we walked next to China town and over to Washington Square and sat down to watch part of a jazz festival. It looked a bit like Woodstock. Did I mention that the weather was unseasonably nice, clear, and temperate? We next walked downhill to Fisherman's Wharf and "people watched" (and seal watched). Then we backtracked to an Italian restaurant for dinner. This left us just enough time to get to the theater early enough for decent seats for the show, which was a lot of fun. It has been running 34 years, but they keep it current with political spoofs. They took shots at McCain, Obama, Hillary, and Bill, among others. I confess, as good as it was I was fighting keeping my eyes open near the end simply because we hit the late showing, and we had missed several hours of sleep over the prior few days.

Sunday we took the morning easy, reading the Ensign for our "church" services. It turned out to be a cool, overcast day (what a surprise for SF!). We headed down Market Street back to Embarcadero where we just observed and enjoyed. We did happen across The Church of the Homeless, where the Minister (a Harvard educated pastor, who is an ex-hippie) and his wife and others serve breakfast to a long line of homeless - I think each Sunday. They read from the Bible to folks in line, and have a trumpet player performing hymns. It really is a good work they do. Later I saw Gayle off as she boarded the Airport Express to head to SFO. Then I went upstairs to set up the exhibit for the Williamsburg Bioprocessing Foundation's "Single-Use BioProcess Components and Systems" meeting (how exciting sounding) held in this very hotel. I won't bore with details of the meetings so far, except to say I did give a presentation today and I think it went well. Thankfully, our main competitor, who was to present after me, had flight problems, so I had extra time and got more attention.

An evening at the Old Lyric Theatre in Logan (and other stuff)

On the evening of Friday, the 18th of July, the Maxsons (family where Alicia and Jesse reside) and we had dinner at the house and then attended a play at the Old Lyric Theatre. They came to Cache Valley to spend time with Sandy's two daughters and families. The play we saw was "Chaps." It's a musical comedy set in 1944 during WWII about a band of singing cowboys that got lost on their way to a BBC station and never made the engagement. BBC employess filled in, imitating the American accents and performing as the cowboys.

It was a healthy spread of raw vegetables, fresh fruit, lean chicken, and corn.

It may look like Gabe is related to us, but he's really Kim and Todd's cute 3 yr. old (Sandy's grandson).

Taking a break from working on Todd and Kim's dream house in Clarkston. Even though Kim's due date is July 31st, when we got there she was grouting stones along with Todd in the hot afternoon sun.
Gayle snapped some shots of our backyard hillside early today (7/21) before work. Here's one.

American Idol concert in SLC - July 14, 2008

Gayle, Tara, and Leslie waiting anxiously for the Davids to perform. We won't post photos of all the performers, but here are some we especially liked:

Brooke White singing and strumming for the fans.

Jason Castro singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and accompanying himself on the ukulele.


The video screens frequently also showed the performers. Here's David A. wowing the crowd. It was actually difficult to hear from all the screaming. He did an amazing job!


This is a very brief clip of Archie singing "Apologize" by One Republic (from Colorado Springs).

And the AI for this year, David Cook, rocks out as the final act.

Sacramento trip with Mom and Dad

On Friday night, July 11th, we flew from SLC to Sacramento with our folks to visit Steve and Susan for the weekend (in Fair Oaks). The occasion was their return home from three years of Steve serving as Mission President of the Morris Town, NJ mission. We enjoyed attending Church with them, hearing their great reports, and hanging out with Susan Crockett and Nancy Muncy (my sisters) and a bunch of relatives, friends, and former missionary elders and sisters. Here are some shots from the weekend:
Here's a real hottie!
We spent Saturday morning (after my obligatory jog along the American River) at a local outlet mall. Gayle wanted to keep on truckin' so she hopped on this. Unfortunately, it ate our coins and she didn't get to ride. Dad and I were not excited about shopping, so we watched the passersby and kicked back on a bench.

Bench-warmers.
After Church on Sunday, family and former missionaries gathered at Steve and Susan's condo for food (you can't gather missionaries without food). A sample of the goings-on follows:

Dad needed some shut-eye, so he leaned back and we put the cover on him. Stephen, Susan, and the folks posed for this one:

Together again after a successful mission.

Susan Crockett flew all the way from Colorado to be with us. We had a great time at our hotel. I even got in a swim on Saturday. Gayle and Susan C. took a walk and along the way saw about 10 turkeys (wild ones, not the usual Californians) that had wandered onto the sidewalk from along the river. Sunday, before Church, we visited the Sacramento temple, which is near Fair Oaks.

Susan Crockett and dad.

And we don't get to see Nancy that often. Here she is with dad.

It was an outstanding weekend. Dad, mom, Susan Crockett, and we all went to the airport and were on the same flight back to SLC on Monday. Susan flew on to Colorado. Mom and dad caught their shuttle home, and Gayle and I stayed in SLC to see the American Idol concert!

I've been meaning to mention that when I'm in town I generally make it over on Tuesdays after work to Logan HS to help tutor adult students on English. Here's a picture of our friend and neighbor Hector Mendiola. He's a retired physician from Mexico City. He organized this effort (spreading to other parts of Utah) helping latinos learn English and computer skills, and even to graduate from HS. The course actually originates from the university in Monterrey, Mexico. We have students mainly from central america and Mexico. We seem to have many from a town in Guatemala called Esquipulas. Hector and/or his wife Margarita are involved with these classes six days a week, among other things. They're doing a great work.

We had a very busy 4th of July weekend! I took off the 3rd and went and performed with Craig Mortensen at the noon summer concert series at the Logan tabernacle. We had a decent crowd and the sound system worked exceptionally well. It was one of our best performances ever and we had a lot of fun. The generally over-fifty audience seemed to dig the tunes too. Here's a shot of us before launching into "Yesterday," where I do the guitar work and Craig takes the lead vocal -- (P.S. for any Saugus readers, the fellow clapping on the right in the foreground is Denny Clark. He and Claudia attended. They moved to Cache Valley from Anchorage, Alaska, where they lived after Santa Clarita.)



Afterwards, Gayle and I posed with mom and dad for a photo inside the tabernacle.

Gayle and I stopped by for a Jamba Juice on the way home!


The next day, Gayle and I spent most of the day doing yard work and completely wore ourselves out. We did make it to the annual 4th of July ward breakfast in the park that morning, and even had our friends from Mexico City, Hector and Margarita Mendiola, accompany us. Saturday Jared and I went to Birch Creek golf course in Smithfield. We had so much fun when he took me to Preston golfing the day before Father's Day, that we decided to do it more often. This time we played a whole 18 holes. Although we don't do great, we each had some good holes. Later in the day I went with Jared to visit some hispanic friends he knows from work who threw a birthday party for their 5 yr. old daughter and used it as an occasion to have several friends over. There were folks from Cuernavaca, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Jared surprised me by how much Spanish he's picked up just being around these folks. Here is Jared with Carlos and Hortencia, the couple who threw the pachanga (Mexicanism for fiesta) --


And here's an evening shot of part of the berm in our front yard, where the plants actually have grown so well we had to thin things out and transplant several to our back hill, which we're gradually bringing up to snuff --

That evening (the 5th) Gayle and I rode our bikes down to main street to check out the annual Cruise-In. This has become a major event. The streets are lined for probably a couple of miles from the fairgrounds out to the north end of town for the parade of antique, tricked out, and unique vehicles of all types and ages. The parade is the culminating event of a bunch of car club activities. Folks and cars come from all over (and I mean way out of state) to participate. Styx, a big act from the 70's, even performed this year. We just went down for the parade. Here is a glimpse at merely the fringe of the crowd on the edge of the tabernacle lawn, awaiting the beginning of the parade:
And here's a clip of a tiny piece of the action --