6/2 Mountain Goats @ GAMH

Mountain Goats show at Great American Music Hall.

I met a cute girl - I had an extra ticket, we locked eyes, she joined me on the balcony for dinner, between songs we talked about cross-country roadtrips, I kind of fell in love a little. Afterwards, a nice chat with Peter Hughes (diskothiq), a hug from John Vanderslice. Yay! I think this counts as Doing It Right.

Alas, the girl vanished during the last song of the show. She said something right before but it was lost to the cheers of the crowd. I assumed she'd reappear, but she didn't. Oh well. Nonetheless, a beautiful evening.

🎵 🎵 Some things you will remember /
Some things stay sweet forever 🎵 🎵

Oh, also, I hadn't been to GAMH since ~1999 when Chris Perkins took me there to see Mr. T Experience. And we were all in the mosh pit and running to catch the last BART to the east-bay.

Apparently the band greatly preferred the Fillmore (the previous night's venue) - at GAMH the chatter of the bartenders and bar patrons carries over the audience to the great consternation of the band. (At one point John whisper-shouted "Shut the fuck up!" at them.) Nonetheless, the GAMH is a beautiful venue full of gilded splendor from another age - it opened originally in 1907 as the Music Box.

Nice live recording of the show at https://archive.org/details/tmg2015-06-02 , and the SF Weekly, in their review, correctly calls out PPH as "most dapper fellow on stage". And John Vanderslice has a kickstarter going on to build an awesome little recording studio here in Oakland. Looking forward to having an extra ticket again, to the inaugural private show night in January 2016.

6/6 Biking up in the clouds

With Vickie, biking up in the East Bay Hills. I'd kind of dismissed Tilden Park as being too boring and developed, but this was anything but. We started at Inspiration Point and biked the Nimitz Way, through the sometimes howling fog, through the whisps of cloud and bits of rainforest. Who knew there was so much open space in Berkeley?

East Bay Open Space

6/7 Byron Flying, Couchsurfing, and Hitchhiking

For the first time I had a repeat Couchsurfer - Amanda, who couchsurfed at my place in Germany along with her boyfriend Brian, came up to the Bay Area this weekend for a big Quora meetup, movie-making, and other fun. Today I took her out to Byron to go up in a glider.

After Amanda's flight, I went up for two flights with the instructor (JDB). For the first time I did a satisfactory "boxing the wake" -- this is a maneuver done while being towed by the tow-plane, to demonstrate your control of the aircraft. First you descend down through the tow-plane's propeller wake (very noticeably turbulent!), and then take the glider in a square path around the wake - right, up, left, down, etc. You have to hold a lot of rudder to keep the glider flying straight even though it's off to the side of the tow-plane, and the tow-line is pulling the glider inwards. We also practiced slack line maneuvers - dealing with slack line that might develop in the tow rope.

Amanda continued on her roadtrip back to Los Angles, and I decided to give myself a little adventure and try hitchhiking back to Berkeley. I thought I'd probably get a ride into Byron, stop at the gas station for an ice cream sandwich, and then get a ride to a BART station. But, lo and behold, the first car to pass picked me up, and drove all the way back to Berkeley.

It was brutally hot out at Byron today: 96 degrees F forecast, 105 for tomorrow. Summer is here. Time to head to the mountains!

6/3 + 6/4 Sailing.

As if flying airplanes every weekend isn't enough - I think I might have to join a sailing club. It's based right here in Berkeley, and $33/month includes all equipment and instruction...

By luck I got invited out twice last week to sail in the bay, both times out of Emery Cove marina, first with a burner on the Knotty Dream, and then with likeabikemike on his Ericsson 24 named R2.

It's kinda beautiful, and with our late sunsets, you can go for a nice sail after work on a weeknight.