I figured it was about time to get back to civilization, so I headed towards the bay area. I stopped in Monterey, CA along the way to get some work done, then left the coastal highway and up the 101 freeway.

I met my friends Memo and Jenny in Oakland for dinner. They were at a Japanese buffet downtown but by the time I got there it was closing and the food was all running low. So I decided to wait to eat. Memo and Jenny had taken the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit metro system) from Berkeley to Oakland, and I offered them a ride back before remembering there was no room in my poor overloaded car. They took the BART and beat me after I stopped for a giant calzone from Gypsy's Trattoria Italiano in Berkeley:

Memo is a close friend of mine from school. I've crashed on his couch on many weekend trips from LA to the bay area. He's a PhD student in mechanical energy and alternative fuels at the University of California, Berkeley. Plus he's a very attractive fellow (sorry ladies he's taken)

The next day, Saturday, I hung around Berkeley at cafes and got some work done. It was very relaxing. I like Berkeley a lot. It's sort of a smaller, cheaper, less expensive, more liberal version of San Francisco. There's lots of protests and hippies and cafes and local restaurants and that sort of thing. Berkieley has a city ordnance severeley limiting the number of national corporations allowed to open stores. Everyone jay-walks and smokes weed. It's a pretty cool place.

Saturday night we took the BART to San Francisco and walked to the North Beach district. North Beach is historically an Italian region, but is well known as the hangout of the 'beat poets' Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs, etc. It's my favorite hang out in San Francisco. There are a bunch of good cafes and Italian bakeries and bars in the area. We started out at Vesuvio, Kerouac's old favorite. It sits next door to the City Lights book store on Colombus Ave. It's a cool place with lots of seats on two stories, walls plastered with pictures of famous patrons.

Then we checked out a few other spots. There's a lot of great bars in the area, and good times were had by all. Since BART only runs until midnight on the weekends, we had to catch the 'owl' bus back across the bay to Berkeley. It took a while but was much cheaper than hiring a cab.