Gilroy's Garlic Festival

Every year, I tell myself that I will go to Gilroy's Garlic Festival and every year I hear about it after it takes place. This year, I learned when it was taking place before it took place so...

It wasn't too hard to convince James and Tony to come along, though Grace was a little hesitant. She said, "I have nothing against garlic, I just don't know if I want to be stuck in a car with you guys for more than 4 hours!" After thinking about it, she had a point but she came along anyway.
On the way there, this car flippedin front of us. Thankfully, no one was hurt. James took this one.


Once we got to the festival, we sort of had a game plan. Visit every booth we can...










There were a few things that were very tasty, calamari in garlic marinara sauce, the garlic sausage sandwich, the garlic fries (hmm when did I last have that?), and of course the galic bread. You figure if the garlic bread at a garlic festival was not good, you would have to leave.
There were a few "just ok" stuff like the gator tails and these guys.


James also took this one.


There was a cook-off.


The media. I was thinking that there was no way I would ever get that high on one of those things but in the back of my mind I was thinking "cool".


Almost forgot to mention. It was HOT!!! Oh my goodness! It WAS HOT!!!


I felt sorry for these guys in their black uniforms.


Walking around, we found more food vendors...




There was another thing I wanted to try but the line was insane! There was no shade while in line and by then, I was getting ready to wimp out.


On the streets before getting into the festival, there were some enterprising locals at a few intersections selling those small (9 oz) bottles of water for $1.50 each. I was wondering who would buy water for that much? Once in the festival, I see this...


Once we had our fill and headed out towards the shuttle buses for the parking lot, we pass by this and almost made a u-turn.


I'm glad I finally got a chance to check this out. I don't know if I would go back. It was a drive and very hot! Though we met some very nice folks from our neck of the woods while eating under one of the tents.
I'm sort of regretting not being ble to try the garlic ice cream. Maybe if the festival was moved to the fall or to Los Angeles... yeah not going to happen. Oh well.

College bound

Leaving for college in the end of August, I took Natalie and Allison out for a going away dinner. We went to one of their favorite restaurants in Belmont Shores, La Creperie. They were still a bit apprehensive about leaving home for the first time and living in the dorms. We talked a bit about that but for the most part we just ate. Then walked around afterwards.

Garlic fries


Shadow?


A lot of this.


Across from La Creperie.

35:04 and no Sun!

I was done with everything I needed to do today and was killing some time surfing around the web. James IM'd me asking what was up and it started out with the usual "uh, nothing... what are you doing?" type conversation.
He said that he was thinking of going down to Corona Del Mar before the sun set. Then 35 minutes and 4 seconds later, I was picking him up. The sunset was looking good in Irvine but as soon as we got over the hill towards the beach... CLOUDS! What a difference!
Driving around looking for sun, we were now up in Newport Beach and the sun was getting low behind the clouds.
James said that he remembered taking the ferry to Balboa Island. A quick left onto Jamboree and we were looking for the ferry.
I've never been on a ferry and it wasn't what I was expecting.
No sun!


The other ferry going the other way.


Welcome to Balboa Island! It took all of 5 minutes.


Well, that was fun.

Ho'olaule'a

Every year the Hawaiian Inter-Club Council of Southern California have their Ho'olaule'a, which means celebration. The celebration has been held at Alondra Park in the city of Lawndale for a few years now. The first time I attended was 2 years ago when Sammi was participating in the show.
This year I went to support a new friend...

Missy, Janelle and Berda

an old friend...

Jessi in the center.

I was also pleasantly surprised in seeing someone I haven't seen in ages.

Bel in the middle.

It has been more than 15 years since I've seen Bel. As it turns out they all dance for the same teacher, Kanani Kalama of Gardena.

Here are more photos.
Janelle


Bel


Can't forget about the food! Hawaiian BBQ!! Ono!!




It was a lot of fun! The dancers were very good! The band was excellent! And there were malasadas! We left right after Kanani's school finished, which was perfect since it started to really get hot!

Grunion Hunting Part II: Newport Beach

Ruth missed out on the first grunion hunt we had so she scheduled one Sunday night at Newport Beach. She and her friend sponsor Chimese students for the summer and she wanted them to experience this part of American culture. Unfortunately, the grunions were very sparse. In fact, we saw a total of 3 grunions, all caught by other people.
When we first got to the beach, there were a few people at the water hunting.


Towards the pier there were not a lot of people.


After a while, there were only a few "die hards"...




It was so disappointing that we just decided to just walk along the pier. Once we got there, we learned that it was closed up at midnight!




Oh well, it was like the first hunt, but it was still fun.

Queen Mary Bike Show

One of the things (yes, there are more than one) that I've been drooling over lately has been motorcycles. Custom motorcycles at that. So when I heard that the LA Calendar Motorcycle Show was this weekend, I made sure that I was going to be there. It was a great day for an outdoor bike show. The Queen Mary Event park was a great place to have it too.



From the entrance I made my way through the sportsbikes. Not my usual cup of tea but these bad boys were wicked! I don't know if I would be able to handle one of these babies!





I'm getting really tired of the skulls paint theme on a lot of bikes but up close, you can tell the hard work, talent and time that went into this paint job.


This was one of my favorites...


That's a 6 cylinder motor in that thing!


This trike was built by Russell Mitchell of Exile Cycles.


Here is Jesse Rooke of Rooke Customs being interviewed by KUSH TV.


Here is one of my favorite bike builders Chica (under the red tent, on the right).


Here are a few more of my favorites in the show.












Hey! Who put that picture in here? Oh yeah...

I didn't stay too long once I got to see all the bikes. They had "other" attractions in the show some boxing thing with girls in bikinis, a few girl bands, a bikini contest and a few more things that I did not stick around for.
Sunburn? No this was from my exercise, walking at the beach... really!