I just got back from a weekend trip down to California. On Saturday morning, I flew down to Oakland; Celeste picked me up in my old DARWIN (which now has a boring California registration), and invited me to drive it one more time. So we headed south on I-880, and I finally got the opportunity to drive one of my “fun” cars ((among which I count my Mazda Miata, Mercury Cougar, and Subaru Legacy GT)) over Highway 17 to Santa Cruz. Sadly the traffic was too heavy to really explore the potential for accelerating a 250 HP AWD car into one of the climbing turns that make Highway 17 so much fun. But never mind. 
We met up with Chris and Merry at Bookshop Santa Cruz. In spite of the threat from bigger bookshops, this remains the cultural centre of Santa Cruz, and it’s still fun to browse after all these years (ever since Chris was an undergraduate ar UCSC). We then meandered down to Aptos for lunch with members of our extended family, in a lovely home with a statue of a killer rabbit in the yard. (See photo.) We then followed Route 1 south to Carmel, and drove to Merry’s parents’ place, where we stayed overnight.
Today we headed down into Carmel. This is car week in Carmel, and gorgeous cars were everywhere. This is the kind of situation where they roll out the red carpet for cars rather than mere human beings. Even when we walked down to the beach, the cars followed us. (See photo gallery.)
Then after lunch, we (Chris, Celeste and I) headed back up to Oakland. I’d brought along Stop The Clocks, the “greatest hits” double CD from Oasis (the one I’d got from Tescos in Abingdon for £5), and we cranked up the volume and sang along to “Wonderwall”, “Morning Glory” and “Champagne Supernova”. (Of course Oasis were at their peak when Chris was living in Cambridge, England.)
I reached Oakland airport in time to catch the earlier Alaska flight to Seattle, so I got myself added to the stand-by list – but to no avail. That flight was full, and so was mine at 8:00pm. There seem to be a lot of people moving around the country right now…
And now I’m home in Seattle, all set for another week in the real world. I expect there are a bunch of EPFL games on my DVR; I’ll try to avoid reading any sports news from England. No spoilers, please!