birthday weekend report

what a good idea... escaping the 30th birthday hoopla and head for the hills with my better half. amy and i blazed up highway 5 straight to santa cruz on friday afternoon. it was pure hippie heaven. kinda like stepping right back into college times. the trip kinda went that way... a theme of life in the 20s, on into the 30s and beyond. starting in hippieville (the college years... partying hard and dancing to silly music), then up to san francisco for fancy ladies out on the town (life in our late 20s... we got a little cash now and we want to spend it in style) and finishing off in outdoor safari wonderment surrounded by elders and their offspring (i'm guessing what we have to look forward to).

santa cruz was hanging with a couple of my old high school homies who i hadn't seen in ages. same old guys doing the same old things. drinking beers, smoking and dancing to really bad dancehall at a club with the worst sound system in history. thing that bugged us out was that these santa cruz kids were loving it... noodle dancing and sweating all over the place... like it was the best music they'd ever heard. it was weird. all amy and i could do was laugh and marvel at these kids. were we that dorky looking during in the phish years? yeah, i'm sure we were. scary. it was like the ghost of christmas past took us back so we could see how far we'd come since then.

if santa cruz was the past, than san francisco was the present. we stayed at this too hip for it's own good hotel. it was basically a souped up motel that was trying a little too hard. luckily the toilet in our given room broke and we got upgraded to a snazzy suite. bonus! we got all gussied up and hit the town by cab. started out in north beach wandering the streets for a good place to get a drink and a bit of food. luck was on our side again as we ended up at this amazing brazilian restaurant. and the host just happened to know about a brazilian club with live drumming for later. perfect. we made our way to a hip hoppy club for a minute then made our way down to the mission district for brazilian times. they almost didn't let us in, but when i begged and told the guy it was my birthday (proving it with my ID), he let us in. so much fun!!! amy and i were feeling really good by then and the drums were ON. such a great samba band. we shook our asses and got sweaty to the beats. a perfect ladies out on the town evening.

next up was safari west. the place was owned my amy's family friends so we got the royal treatment for free! the place was beautiful. it was set up like you were on a real african safari... staying in "luxury" tents, eating yummy bbq meals, and going out on safari looking at all the exotic animals on their 400 acres of land. very cool. only bummer was the weather. it pretty much rained the entire time. but that didn't stop the fun... we managed to make friends with some of the others staying there. grandmas and moms and their kids. we played cards and drank delicious wine from napa valley and chatted the night away. life in the slow lane. and thoroughly enjoyable.

all in all it was the perfect well-rounded weekend of fun. yay for 30! bring it on!!!