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Next week is spring break around here, and this year we decided to pack up and head down to San Diego for the week, to visit my brother and his wife.

We're driving down, spreading it out over two days each way. It's roughly 1000 miles from Bend to San Diego, so that's a lot of driving. But hey, that's the Jack Kerouac experience, right? Sort of. Though I'm pretty sure Kerouac didn't have a family along with him.

It's been awhile since I've taken this much time off from work. I wonder if I'll be able to go back.

When we were in San Diego, we of course had to visit the beach. So on one of our "off" days we packed up a picnic lunch and headed over to Mission Beach.

It was a nice, sunny, hot day, pretty much what you'd expect for Southern California (even in late September), but you know what? The water was cold, which was a total surprise to me. Not Oregon beach cold, nothing quite like that, but much colder than I would have thought. Cold enough to shock you when you first hit it, and make your feet a little numb.

You get used to it, though, and the kids and I were having a great time playing in the water. There were some nice waves too—I wish I'd had a bodyboard or something to try out. Not that I'm all that surfer-inclined, you understand—I love the ocean but the Oregon Coast is no place for that kind of stuff. I've seen guys in full-body wetsuits trying to make a go of it, but well...

Interestingly, Mission Beach is also home to the Giant Dipper Roller Coaster, a wooden coaster built in 1925 that's still operating. Only "one of two original oceanfront roller coasters still operating on the west coast," according to the website. We didn't ride it, though; the kids are still too small. My brother swears that every time he's ridden the thing, he's seen bolts flying off. That's comforting.

After we cleaned up from the beach, we wandered around the shops a bit, and my wife and the kids got temporary tattoos from a corner shop on the boardwalk. We didn't stay long after that, as the kids were tired and cranky. But we had a good time.

Later, I told my brother we'd gone there, his response was, "Did you see anyone smoking crack?" Huh? My sister-in-law recommended the place; she reaffirmed that it wasn't that bad, but then my wife chimed in and mentioned she saw someone dig a chicken leg out of a garbage can and eat it.

Eh, whatever. It was a nice beach, no one hassled us or anything. I'd go there again. Might even ride the roller coaster of death. We'll see.

We'll be on the road all next week—well, starting this week, really, since we're leaving Friday night—on our way to visit my brother in San Diego. Road trip!

From Bend, San Diego is about a 16 or 17 hour drive. Since the kids are little, we're spreading that over three days each way, taking it easier than just plowing on through. Of course, the portable DVD player we bought for the car should help out, too.

Needless to say, I'll be mostly offline for nine or ten days, starting Friday afternoon. I have a slightly older laptop computer that I'm taking, but I just got it and it doesn't have network access, either Ethernet or wireless (has the slots for them, though). I may be able to get it set up for network before we go, otherwise I'll just rely on the modem in a pinch.

Or not. We'll just see.

Ha, fooled you. The third day of the trip was pretty basic: caught the hotel shuttle to the airport, caught the airplane, made it home.

Okay, well, something happened: when we got to the airport, we found out that the corkscrew we had bought the day before at Viansa Winery would be taken away if we tried to board the plane with it (really!), so we ended up having to check one of our bags and put the corkscrew in it. I mean, really. A corkscrew?

Oh, and when we got back to Bend, we killed a few extra hours by going to see Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. It was fun; not an Academy Award winner certainly, but a lot more fun than a lot of the dreck making it to the big screen these days.

Saturday the 12th in Frisco was the busy day; we took the Napa Valley Wine Train, which ate up about 8 hours.

It was a lot of fun. The tour bus that took us to Napa only had 3 other couples on it, so there were 8 of us total. The driver was a really good tour guide, named Roberto, with an accent that I couldn't quite peg; I knew it wasn't Spanish, so I had settled on Italian, but he ultimately revealed himself to be Portugese. On the way to Napa he detoured through Sonoma (he does that on weekends, because the train leaves later and there's an extra couple of hours to do this kind of stuff. So take the Wine Train on Saturdays) and stopped at the Viansa Winery. We toured the Winery, tasted a lot of really good wine, and bought a few things. We ended up with 3 bottles of wine to take with us, and signed up for 4 months of their Tuscan Club. Very good detour.

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Herewith the beginning of several entries detailing our anniversary trip to San Francisco last weekend (the 11th through the 13th).

It was a good trip! We had to get up too early, though: five in the morning on Friday, so we could be at the airport by 6 or so (our flight was 7:15). I always dread traveling when I have to get up early, but this time it wasn't too bad.

It was a good flight though, quick and without incident. We had everything we needed in carry-ons, so we didn't have to worry about checking luggage. So we were able to go straight from the airport to our hotel, the Tuscan Inn, even though it was too early to check in. We left our bags with the hotel and wandered around the Fisherman's Wharf area of San Francisco.

It was cold, too; we had just come from 90+ degree weather in Bend, to 70-ish degree wind and fog. Fortunately, it cleared up later in the day and warmed up.

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This weekend my wife and I are going to San Francisco for our (5th) anniversary trip. Leaving early early early Friday morning, coming back Sunday. It should be a fun trip.

Friday night we're doing a dinner cruise of the Bay, and all day Saturday we're taking a train tour through wine country. Ah, le vin.

Of course, I'd love to be able to stop in at Anchor Brewing, but we don't have the time. Bummer!