Back from Cali

The roadtrip down to NorCal was a success!!
Sara and I left West Seattle around 5:20am and pulled into San Francisco/Walnut Creek traffic around 7pm, an hour earlier than expected! It may have had something to do with me driving 85 through all of Oregon :) Nothing too exciting happened on the trip: we didn't get lost at all, we only stopped a handful of times for either food, gas, or potty breaks (or all of the above), there wasn't TOO much construction on I-5, and traffic was only bad once we pulled into the Bay Area. We listened to lots of country music (and Charlie Brown Christmas about 11 hours into the drive), quizzed each other on the world's capitols (we both had Dr. Ediger two years ago and had to memorize all the capitols of all the countries in the world), and I taught Sara the state capitols while she recited the provinces of Canada. Yeah, we're geeks :) There were also lots of theological conversations (does God really test people? Do we actually have individual 'callings?') and discussions about certain guys, who will remain anonymous here. :)

Once we got to Walnut Creek, we ate dinner and Sara's mom drove me to Berkeley to spend the night at Karin and Jake's. I had to say farewell to Sara at this point, as she and her dad left for L.A. around 5am the next morning. Hanging out with Karin was a blast! I got to see her and Jake's apartment, their wedding pictures and video from last summer, and we had a good time catching up. Our visit was quick, yet it was so very good to see and catch up with such a dear friend. Hopefully we'll see one another around the holidays.

I flew out of Oakland Saturday afternoon. I got to navigate the BART - Bay Area Transit system - on my way to the airport - very cool. And I got into Seattle around 5:30pm, where I was greeted by Christin, who is finally home from E. Oregon - yay! She and I went to Alki and talked while watching the sunset.
All in all, I had a really great long weekend last week!

Here's one of my pictures from watching the sunset at Alki (more pics to come later):
(the mountains in the background are the Olympic Mts)