Fall in the West

With a dose of my favorite part of the Midwest for a few days.

When in California, do as those fruity Californian's do.  After a morning workout, we biked over for an ionic foot bath.  Taking photos as we went. . .

 Yuck -- the idea is that the ionic foot bath draws toxins from your body.  And this is what the water looks like when you're done.  Ew.

After the foot bath,  we rode through midtown looking for this mural.  Found it in an alley -- Jana got these photos of it.  The mural covers the wall of the building along the entire block.

It looks like that tiger is eating my head.

 From there we biked over to see Mindy Lou for lunch -- she escaped from the DMV for an hour to meet us.  Then to a beer place that I'd never been to -- I think Jana tasted everything they had before settling on one that she said was exactly what she was looking for.  I was going to taste my first Pliny the Elder (a real beer!  gluten and all!) and the barkeep looked at the stuff floating in it that Jana had pointed out and he wouldn't serve it.  Humph.

Then we rode out to Old Sac to sit on the river on a gorgeous day.  Last year at this time I saw a sea otter in the water.  So we sat and stared hard for a while.  No luck.

 Then we biked over to The Porch -- a southern restaurant with outdoor seating, creative cocktails, and yummy happy hour snacks.  Here's my drink that had lots of good stuff floating in it, but I don't remember what.

 These are the pickled veggies we ordered off the happy hour app menu.  They were not good.  Jana's sister made some pickled veggies when we went to her house for dinner and they were infinitely better.

 The bummer about biking around all day is that at the end of it, you still have to bike home.  I think we logged about 24 miles in all.

The day was lovely and slow and we went home to relax.  The next day, after Jana had a two-hour morning nap (she thought it was 20 minutes), we went wine tasting up in Amador.  Found some new wineries, picked up my wine shipment, and enjoyed a drive -- that will be vastly improved once the rains come and green things up.
On our way home, we ordered some pizza.  We thought it would be better -- Jana's was BBQ meat something or other.  I took these pictures to show that even though I don't eat meat, I can still be in its presence. 

 Mmmmm.

And then up for a hike in the lovely mountains -- that are just now getting touched by fall.

Next I'll have to remember to take off my hat.

This photo didn't come out well -- I wanted it to pick up the diamonds sparkling on the water.

Deer!  They mostly just stared at us to see what we would do.  I wanted to tell them that if we'd have been hunters, their patience and curiosity would not have gone so well . . . for them.

This was a sad scene -- Jana laying a squirrel to rest.

At first I couldn't remember why I had takent his picture -- I looked to see if there was something I was trying to capture.  Then I remembered that I turned around on the way up the hill to take a picture of how far we climbed out.  Doesn't it look like we just came out of a dark abyss?  Whew!

Every couple has its fundamental disagreements, right?  On saturday -- this was ours:  Jana wanted to feed her leftover pizza crust to the ducks.  I wanted her to wait until we were done having our picnic. They start with just a few coming over -- to see if you have food.

Then they tell their friends.  After we saw some some children throwing bits of bread at angry and hungry ducks, we both agreed the picnicing would be nicer without 200 feathered friends.

I think if we had been driving her car, she would have wanted to take this one home with her.

She agreed to wait to feed them -- and here they are. 

Happy Jana and happy, well-fed, ducks.

Saturday at Track 7 -- Jeff Harry wearing Jana's infamous cat hat.

 Which seemed to have clashed with his Go Big Red football outfit that day.

Sunday was a trip to the airport.  No one takes pictures of the sad times, so there are none from Sunday.
I wonder what the next trip will bring.