This past Saturday morning my friend and former colleague, Steve, picked me up and we headed North for our little US Open adventure. We went up Interstate 5, here in California, to Santa Nella and the second of the two Pea Soup Andersen’s restaurants (the other being in Buellton, though some incorrectly think it’s in Solvang).

We chose to stay at the Best Western hotel associated with the restaurant as it wasn’t too far from Pebble Beach and because it was reasonably priced. We couldn’t say that for many of the rooms available much closer to the venue. We checked into the hotel, rested for about a half hour, then had dinner at the restaurant. We both had a bowl of split pea soup (how could we not?) and a salad. The salad was excellent and came with some pretty tasty onion rolls and butter.

After that we had found a brewery in nearby Los Banos, which we wanted to try out and taste some of their craft brews. As it turned out, Saturday night was their monthly comedy night and we got to enjoy five comics, all of whom were quite entertaining. It was interesting being in a fairly small town, far away from any large urban area, and spend time in one of their establishments with all the locals. If it does nothing else, it reminds one of the ubiquity of our culture. Not entirely, but the overlaps, when viewed alongside the dissimilarities, are faskinatin’.

After a decent night’s sleep—my Fitbit tracker told me I slept 5.5 hours, and my goal is usually 6 hours per night—we headed out, our destination being the campus of Cal State University-Monterey Bay. From there we boarded a bus for the final leg of the journey. During the day I walked 18,189 steps, equivalent to 7.88 miles, and climbed the equivalent of 41 flights of stairs. Needless to say, that’s a fair amount more exercise than I’m accustomed to doing. I’m glad I did it, it was a fun day, and I’m paying for it today – as it was pretty hard getting out of bed this morning.

I took a few pictures with my iPhone Xr and I’d like to share a few of them, with a little explanation of each: