Fleet Week

Before last week I have never heard of Fleet Week. Now I feel like I've been missing out for all 25 years I've been alive. All of a sudden this past Monday and Tuesday everyone in my office was talking about going to Fleet Week. Joe and I looked up the schedule and decided to check it out.

On Saturday we watched the parade of ships from the bleachers in front of Ghirardelli Square.

The ships came into the bay under the Golden Gate Bridge. The fog was still hanging around so we could barely see the bridge.

There were helicopters all around escorting the ships while the announcers described each one.

There were some pretty impressive ships in the lineup. We got to see one closer up later on.

Sunday we had breakfast at the Ferry Building and walked South along the Embarcadero past the Bay Bridge. The fog was heavy that morning, but I got a cool shot of the whole bridge.

We were headed to the pier closest to our apartment where a large aircraft carrier was docked and free tours were offered. The ship was the USS Bonhomme Richard. It's homeport is San Diego, it holds 1,200 crewmembers, costs $1.1 billion and is 844 feet long.

The cool thing about Fleet Week was all of the service men (and women) in uniform there to share their everyday duties with anyone that was interested. Here the guy was showing us a grenade launcher.

He even trusted Joe enough to hold it. Watch out!

I looked through this scope that magnified some cars in the parking lot pretty well. I bet this thing could take a couple of them out.

This might be my favorite. Joe with the bullet proof vest (which he put on backwards at first, but I would have done the same thing) and helmet. Plus the city in the background and the very end of the Bay Bridge.

There were multiple helicopters on the ship deck.

And tanks below deck.

Don't forget about the jets. We didn't get to see the airshows this weekend, but we saw (and heard) the jets practicing on Thursday and Friday. It was pretty cool at work to hear them zip by and then see them in the distance over the bay.

Remember this picture from yesterday? I asked these Marines to take a picture with me. They were all so nice about it. I like how only one of them is smiling, the rest look pretty tough. Even though I posted this picture yesterday I had to post it again!

The security to get onto the ship was somewhat tight. It was like going through airport security. We showed our ID and emptied our pockets before going through the metal detector. There were also armed soldiers around so we asked one to take a picture with Joe. He was also pretty nice about it.

Fleet Week was a lot of fun, I'm glad we got the chance to check it out.

Sneak Peek

Because it's Sunday night and I'm finally taking a breather from this weekend.

Because what I said above plus I'm lazy.

Because I want to eat ice cream and watch TV instead of write a blog post.

Because it's almost bedtime and I value my sleep.

Here is a sneak peek from our weekend:

Bet you're wondering what we did this weekend!

Stanford University

When we went to the Stanford football game last weekend we made sure to get to Palo Alto early enough to check out the campus.
Most of the athletic facilities were located right around the football stadium. I didn't take pictures of many of them, but there was the track, aquatic center and tennis courts.

We were in search of the bookstore and headed that direction. The building that really stood out was the Herbert Hoover tower. Clearly it was the tallest building on campus so you couldn't miss it.

I really enjoyed the Spanish tiled roofs all of the buildings had. Plus any campus that has palm trees all over means nice weather year round.

Another thing I loved about the campus was the long tunnel-like hallways. They were all over the place and I kept taking pictures of them.

Joe was willing to pose with some of the campus art.

We then headed to the stadium to watch Stanford play UCLA, but you probably already read all about that yesterday!

Stanford vs UCLA

This past Saturday we jumped on the Caltrain and headed to Palo Alto for a Stanford football game. This was not only the first time we'd been to Stanford, but also the first time we used the Caltrain as our transportation. I know I've mentioned it before, but San Francisco has the most amazing public transportation I've ever see. Anyways, the Caltrain runs from the city all the way south to Gilroy (the home of the garlic festival by the way. You can smell garlic when you dive through the town, no joke).

More on the campus tomorrow (which is pretty darn cool!), but today I want to talk about the tailgate and the football game. Stanford has a fan fest area open to anyone that we took full advantage of. There was free posters, free face painting, contests, etc. We both decided to try our luck with a football toss game. After standing in line for a while I knew I wouldn't make a fool of myself... no one else was making it in the hole! Plus we knew even if we didn't get a single football through the hole we'd still win the same prize. We both chose sunglasses and rocked them out until the sun went down.

I attempted to look as excited as I could in this cutout picture. If the football player, who is Andrew Luck by the way, was excited I figured my face should show that too.

Sadly this is the only picture we got of the two of us. It's always so hard to keep asking people to take our picture. Oh well, I figured one was good enough.

The tickets Joe bought for this game included one burrito and drink. The burrito was amazing and they let us redeem the drink ticket for a beer. What could be any better? Oh and if you noticed our Stanford shirts, we hit up the bookstore before the game.

One thing I picked up on right away was how untraditional the marching band is at Stanford. You can't really even call them a marching band. They don't march, they run in circles and find their spot on the field. They don't carry nicely polished instruments, some of the brass ones were painted. They don't even wear the same costume. Basically they all wear a red coat, black pants and the ugliest tie they could find. Entertaining it was! We read in our program that this style spurred from an uproar year ago. The new director decided to let the students roll with their modern music and bizarre style.

Another tradition for the university is "the walk". It started in the '20s when the locker rooms were across campus. The team would walk from the locker rooms to the stadium before the game. We stumped upon this with perfect timing (we didn't know anything about it until we read more in our program). We got up close with the football team and I snapped probably 75 pictures of the team and the band that followed. Joe spotted Andrew Luck right away so I made sure and got some good pictures of him. He's really the only player that I know anything about.

Finally we made our way into the stadium. Joe and I both agreed it was the cleanest, nicest stadium we've ever been to (well maybe other than Kinnick). In all seriousness, the stadium was renovated in 2006 and it looked like it was done just this year.

We thought this picture was cool because the shadow is a tree... shadowing the tree on the stone... get it?

We walked around and snapped some quick pictures of the stadium.

Our seats weren't the best, but the whole stadium was about sold out. When the game was about to start and the sun had just gone down I snapped a few more pictures. The color in the clouds was amazing.

Then the game started and we cheered Stanford on to a victory. Now that we've seen them play in person Joe and I will be cheering for them to do well this whole season.

Luck for Heisman!! :)

Baseball Season Is Over... For Me At Least

Baseball was pretty intense last week. We watched Wednesday night as the Braves blew their lead over the Phillies and lost the game in 13 innings. Good thing we're on the west coast. It wasn't very late here, but it was after midnight in Atlanta. This was the last game of regular season, but also the game that decided their playoff future. Not only did they blow this deciding game, the Braves also blew a 8.5 game lead in the wildcard in September. Long story short... the Braves should be in the playoffs right now and instead their season is done.

On a lighter note, we caught one of the last Giants games last week when they played the Rockies. Joe's work had tickets for everyone and had an extra so I joined. This game wasn't nearly as intense as the Braves game, neither team had a chance at the playoffs.

The stadium was still pretty packed. The Giants broke a season attendance record with over 3.3 attendees in one season! I'm pretty sure this all has to do with the fact that they won the World Series last year, but that's just a guess.

Although I won't be able to watch the Braves again until next season, it was fun to squeeze one more baseball game in. AT&T Park won't sit unused this fall though, all of the home Cal football games will be played here. We look forward to watching some of those!