Teich.Net :: All In

Having recently quit my job, I took two weeks off before starting the new one. Leaving promptly on my last day, we drove down to LA for a long weekend. Olivia was to fly back Monday, and I decided to stay a few extra days to visit friends and eat food.

When heading down to LA, there are the usual suspects: bomb down I-5, cruise down 101 (if you’re heading to SLO/Santa Barbara/Ventura), or the classic 1. For the outbound, we choose option A (making it from San Mateo to Westwood in 5:30 - with gnarly traffic in the bay area thank you). Easy, but perhaps not quite… engaging. Before we continue, if you’re not into driving for driving’s sake, leave now. If you don’t find California countryside entrancing, move along, the rest will bore you to tears.

For the return ride, I decided to go a little non-traditional. When I used to ride a motorcycle, I was turned on to this amazing web site pashnit.com. Both a forum and a write up on over 600 roades in CA, it was and is the Bible for rides. Although I’m a cager now, I still use the site for road suggestions all the time (shh, don’t tell anyone on the board!) Pashnit came through again. I came across the ultimate backroads ride: From Ojai, take 33 north to 58. 101N for ~9 miles, then G14 -> San Lucas Road -> 198 -> 25 which dumps you in Hollister. For the hardcore you can do the Santa Cruz mountain thing too.

I left at 8am from Westwood, hitting some gnarly traffic getting to Ojai. I gassed up and proceeded up 33. And discovered god, or at least the atheist, spiritually devoid version of god. The pavement was perfect. The twisties were ~30mph - 60mph, variable, constant, sweeping, tight, loose, and spaced like the flying spaghetti driving instructor himself had placed them. Traffic? None. I passed 7 cars (yes I counted) in the opposite direction, and not a soul in mine. The driving was SO good, I was literally stopping and shouting out loud, cackling to myself like a deranged malibu grand prix rider let free into the real world. To take the pictures, I would just stand in the middle of the road. Or crouch. Or whatever. No cars.

Eventually you reach a 5,000′ summit, with views I would NEVER have expected. I took some pictures, but as is often the case they don’t even come close to doing the scene justice. Continue on down the back side, for more of the same. Eventually there’s a left to turn onto 58, before the town of Mckittrick, and after Derby Acres. According to the map that is. There are no towns here. It’s 50+ miles of total emptiness.

58 is tighter, more wildflowers, starting to show some green. Roller coaster humps that had me whooping out loud. And more fun. It passes through Taft and a ton of oil pumps. Scene straight out of the movies, but I was having too much fun to document it. 58 hits 101, but if you’re looking for more about 3 miles before 101 there’s a right turn onto 229, which takes you through Creston and dumps you directly into Paso Robles.

The 33->58 combo is THE BEST DRIVING I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED. I honestly can’t even begin to explain how amazing, fantastic, fun, beautiful, and rewarding it is. From a driver experience, this is as good as it gets. Perfect road. Perfect corners. Beautiful. No traffic.

G14 out of Paso Robles is great. The problem is, after the 33/58 combo punch, it felt downright boring. Maybe I was lagging, but it just didn’t leave any impression on me. As I crossed back under 101 (for the 3rd time I think), I turned on 198, and then 25. 25 IS the quintessential central California backroad. It’s got the pavement, it’s got the twisties, it’s got straights, it’s got dips. Add on green hills and wildflowers for a knock out punch.

Overall, I’d say that 33 is a MUST do. Find the time, and just go. 58 is very close behind. Just do the two together, north or south, and rediscover how good driving can be. If you’ve got the chance, 25 is totally worthwhile as well. The scenery alone merits it, especially the wildflowers right now. G14, I’m afraid I’m just going to say thank, and move along.

Check out both a static and interactive map of the drive. Color represents speed in MPH.

We’re off to Argentina in November for vacation. 5 nights in BA, 4 nights in Mendoza. Since a 13 hour bus trip doesn’t appeal, we’re flying between them. Turns out, it’s not straightforward booking a flight inside of Argentina, so here are my notes on the process, in the hopes of helping someone else out.

First some notes and background you should be aware of:

• Aerolineas is the only airline I can find.
• Aerolineas does not let you book online.
• They do let you reserve online.

So the process seems to be this:

1. Visit Aerolineas site and reserve a ticket, select your flight time, choose your seats, etc.
2. Get your reservation number (email or confirmation page) and call them up - 800-333-0276 in the US
3. Listen to the nice lady tell you to visit the web site for lower fares, and ask you to push 1 a bunch of times.
4. Pay with your credit card over the phone. They don’t give you a confirmation code of any kind - your reservation number is now your ticket number.
5. Fly away, enjoy yourself!

In case you were wondering, standard coach fare for us at time of writing (October 2007) is $250/roundtrip.

I landed in London today. I’m here for work for a week. It has been several years since I last visited (briefly), and I did less planning and research than usual. My super sweet husband made me a a trip plan with interesting activities and loaned me his new Blackjack with Zagat, Maps, and Metro info and I bought a decent guide book in the airport. But even with lots of internet research added in, I’m still feeling low on personal insights. This is where the Lazy Web and you, my fellow foodies and world travlers, come in: If you have any personal favorites, tips, or tricks for London, please post them here! I’m staying in Covent Garden (where our office is) but have feet and will walk/tube/whatever, when I’m not overly discouraged by the cold, wind, and rain. (And don’t worry Chuck, a trip to Paul A. Young Fine Chocolates is already on my list.) You can also leave your only-in-London requests and I will do my best to bring back your heart’s desire.

11585We just spent eight gloriously sunny days in Cabo with Oren’s family. New discoveries and updates are noted in our Restaurant Guide…

I love the food in Baja, though these days restaurants there seem to be generally more expensive than those of similar quality in the Bay Area. My favorites in the area (Mi Cucina and Café Santa Fe on the nice end and Gardenias Tacos for great-shimp-tacos–no-atmosphere) would rate higher on a Mexico- or Baja-only scale, but the top end doesn’t compare to what we have here and I have tried my best to keep the ratings in that broader context.

Oren and I had the pleasure of a few beautiful fall days in Montréal this September. For your culinary inspiration and travel enjoyment, here is our first visit’s pass at the All In Guide to Montréal.
Read the rest of this entry »

I rarely eat steak — with a recovering vegetarian wife, I just don’t get the chance that often.  A business trip to Vegas provided an opporuntity that I jumped at two days ago.  After calling a few of the top steakhouses in Vegas, I finally found a table at Craftsteak. 

I’ll leave the running commentary to others, and cut to the chase.  We had an interest in the Kobe steaks. BY FAR the best option was to get the tasting menu, and get the tasting menu we did. 4 people shared 5 apetizers, 4 cuts of beef, 3 sides, 5 deserts, 3 full glasses of impressive wine (and a patridge in a pear tree…)

Read the rest of this entry »

Note from Olivia: Matt recently posted this story of visiting gorillas and Rwanda more than ten years after the genocide on a password-protected forum. It struck a chord and I found myself wanting to recommend it to a much wider audience. He kindly agreed to repost it here.

We’d wanted to visit Mountain Gorillas for many years but a combination of backpacking, work, a desire to visit many other countries, genocide and a cost verging on prohibitive put us off until earlier last year when we realized that we had a gap in our Holiday calendar and noticed that our mortgage was no more (Woo Hoo!)

Initial attempts to keep the cost down by booking it independently were thwarted by difficulty in booking the necessary gorilla trekking so we eventually settled on Rainbow tours based in the UK who put together a short trip that would enable us to see the Gorillas twice and spend a night in Kigali before returning home. Read the rest of this entry »

As I said, my head is still in Japan, even though my body is now in Mexico. One of the things I keep coming back to is the sight of young men standing on the corners in many of the more popular night-life areas of Tokyo (Ginza, Shibuya) dressed in full tuxedos. Just standing there on the corners, looking dapper, but also bored.
Read the rest of this entry »

For our first night in Los Cabos, before the arrival of the rest of the clan, we headed to the site of one of the nicest hotels and reputably best restaurants in the small town of San Jose del Cabo for a wonderfully pleasant evening. This phot from The New York Times doesn’t do the romance and charm of the place justice.
Read the rest of this entry »

I have read that it’s sunny in Los Cabos all but fifteen days a year. Seeing the brown hills, cacti, and abundance of restaurants that have no option but to close down completely in bad weather, the forecast of a week with highs in the eighties is far from surprising, but reassuring nonetheless. We’re here with Oren’s family for Thanksgiving. It’s a surprisingly easy getaway to another world via a two and a half hour flight from San Francisco. We’re staying at the Sheraton on the beach on the corridor between the frenetic tourist haven of Cabo San Lucas and the calmer, more Mexican San Jose del Cabo. It’s not only a phenomenally good deal (read, free, thanks to Oren’s travel-savvy mother and a particularly nice deal Starwood offers at some hotels: 5 nights and 50,000 airline miles for 70,000 Starwood points), but it’s also a place where I would be reasonably happy paying for a room, at least so far. More to come on the place later in the week. It seems that Cabo may be almost as good a place for food-lovers as it is for sun-worshipers. We are here armed not only with a handful of mostly glowing articles from the likes of The New York Times and Wine Spectator, but also a skinny and enthusiastic guidebook to good eating in Los Cabos. With a week of relaxation, beautiful blue water, perfect weather, good meals, and cold beer ahead, there’s little more we can think to ask.