ever wonder what those city folk do when waiting for the bus? well here it is: they catch rain drops in their mouths. i think it stems from an attempt to "save water". this act may not span all cities as it very well may just be a san francisco-tree hugger type thing.
this weekend i went to paso robles, a small wine-centered town in the central california coastal location. i’ve been there many times before, but this time it was different. this time around i was treated unlike any other time i had been there. i noticed that people gave me more attention, they directed questions and requests to me instead of my parents, i was treated like a grown-up. mind you i am technically a grown up, but when i’m not at work or at some sort of mandatory dress code function i will be found in a hoodie sweatshirt, some comfy pants and adidas.
let me digress a moment. i’ve been carrying around a banana republic gift card for some time now, almost 1 ½ years. just a few weeks ago i finally got the card back to where it belonged, a banana republic! i tried on a few different ‘ameer style’ articles of clothing, mostly jackets. when i realized that banana was having a huge sale on selected items, and both items that i had identified as potential buys were not participating in the huge sale. so i moseyed on over to the sale items and found a nice black three button blazer. the blazer fit me great, and was greatly reduced in price! so i snagged that instead of the more ‘street’ jackets i had previously tried on.
i wore that blazer to paso robles, and i’m pretty certain that the lack of hoodie and presence of banana blazer made all the difference. so today i wore a shirt and tie to work, just for kicks. tomorrow i’m back to my comfortable jeans and sneaks tho.
i went down south a few hundred miles to paso robles. california has recently seen a huge boom in the number of vineyards and wineries, first in napa/sonoma county, and then every other nook and cranny that one could squeeze a grape (literally). some of the wineries i went to were pipestone, opolo, halter ranch, adelaida, and bianchi.
after x amount of round trips, the 'luv'ly southwest airlines gives a free round trip ticket as a reward for choosing them to do business. i normally take southwest from sf to sd and back, so i made it my mission to go as far as possible on southwest's dime. i would have liked to do hawaii, but that's not an option with this sweet deal, thus: destination boston. my brother lives in boston, and i've never been.
so i packed my bags with a hoodie, a jacket, my beanie, some gloves and the other not so exciting unmentionable necessities, and headed on my way.
in short, i had a blast. spending time with a brother is always good, but this was more than some brady bunch family crap. this was the first time i had seen where my little brother lived. the first time i'd met his friends and lived his bostonian lifestyle.
among some of adventure we experienced: rode the trains, ate the fried foods, enjoyed the history, saw the paul revere house, visited a 150 year old church, drank a beer at the bar which inspired the hit tv series cheers, ate drank ate drank and ate and drank. i neved did figure out why it was called bean town? and for a good 2 minutes we were perplexed that there was no boston tea party memorial -until it dawned on us, nobody died at the boston tea party!
needless to say, for the small price of 2 days vacation, $10.00 in southwest service fees, and a few layovers in chicago's midway airport, i came out a winner.
