Friday in San Mateo

Cali is fun, though not the uberhealthy place I imagined. I suppose that’s mostly my and my friends’ fault for the places we chose to ate, but yesterday morning we went to the local greasy spoon for breakfast. I ordered an egg white, turkey, spinach, and mushroom omelette, and swapped the toast for an English muffin… but the English muffin came out pre-buttered (I ate it anyway… bad Laura), the omelette was HUGE (though I’m proud to say I only ate half – I’m getting better about leaving food on my plate!), and it came with a mountainous pile of potatoes that were ridiculously salted and seasoned (they were amazingly tasty but also amazingly bad for me). I felt kind of sick to my stomach after breakfast, which at least makes me feel like it’s good that my body isn’t used to eating junk like that!

We spent yesterday at the beach (Half Moon Bay), which was gorgeous. There were all these cliffs (as seen in the pic of Mike below) that made it kind of tricky to climb down to the actual beach, but once we did it was great – beautiful, smooth sand, and icy cold waves to cool off my feet when the sand got too hot. I got a nice tan with no burn too, which was super. Only disappointment is that it was a bay, and not the Pacific, so I still can’t say I’ve been to two oceans. Someday!

Mike doesn’t have a car here, so we’ve been walking a lot and then taking the bus, which is pretty healthy. On our way back to the bus from the beach, we found this awesome fresh organic produce stand, so we picked up oranges, strawberries, and dates to munch on, and also some stuff for me to make orange broccoli stir fry for dinner. The guys loved it, which made me happy, and we had also stopped by a wine store where I picked up an awesome bottle of Gewurtztraminer that I thought would pair well. Apparently my instincts are getting better, because I think this was the best pairing I’ve ever made! The guys were impressed with my wine knowledge and agreed that it went perfectly with the food, so yay 🙂

After that, we proceeded to drink our faces off at the local dive bar. I managed to win a few games of pool/bumper pool by sheer luck (the rest of the time, I could barely get one ball in each game), and I had a great time. Unfortunately, I haven’t adjusted to the west coast time zone, so that’s why I’m up at 8 AM while everyone else is sleeping.

On tap for today – heading into San Francisco to see the sights! (I’m in San Mateo now, which is a little south of San Fran). I’m excited. We also need to figure out our costumes for the race tomorrow, as I’ve definitely decided to drink/walk rather than race/run. One of the guys I’m going with had the idea to dress as babies (as in, wrap swaddling cloth like a diaper and then push a baby carriage full of booze), but I’m not really too sure about that one. I know lots of people run it naked but I don’t really want to go topless thankyouverymuch, and I can’t think of how to convey baby without the classic diaper-and-nothing-else look. Especially since I don’t want to spend a bunch of money buying something. So hopefully we can come up with another idea to be fun and hide our booze. Suggestions welcome!