Farewell Fairfax

The move became real this week. The relocation company arrived on Wednesday and they started packing up boxes. The temperature soared into the upper 90s which made the manual labour extremely tiring. Joel and I had to settle on what exactly needed to be in the container going to Singapore (which we won't see till October) and what needed to travel with us for the next six weeks in Canada. Then we sent our furniture and fall/winter clothes up the coast in a truck to be stored in Victoria.

Our good-bye visits this week were both wonderful and sad. We feel incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to build this kind of community and to get live here.  We will miss strolling around Fairfax at night, the live music and great places to eat and all the weird and wonderful characters wandering around. We'll miss all our fantastic neighbours and Delila, our cat friend. I will miss my school and having all my talented classmates around to critique work. I might not miss room 521 though.

We'll both miss all the great people we met through Joel's work and the many great impromptu gatherings we had. California has been great but it's time to adventure again! Thanks for all the great memories, we'll be back one day.

-Stacey

The Bucket List

As our weeks here dwindle away we've been working our way through a bucket list of the things we set out to do before leaving. I took our friends Jon and Christine wine tasting in Sonoma on Friday and enjoyed my final trip to our favourite tasting room at Sojourn. We drove around the headlands and up Mt Tam too.

Joel and I have been out to some new restaurants in the area and in fact haven't really cooked at home much in the last while. Our latest finds that we whole heartedly can recommend are:

123 Bolinas which is at that very address in Fairfax. It's a new wine bar with a small tapas menu and a great selection of wines by the glass or half glass and wonderful cheese plates. Cozy atmosphere and choc full all the time.

Picco in Larkspur has been on my list to try for ages. It's a popular night spot in the neighbourhood for casual fine dining. Our dinner there was fantastic, don't miss it if you're in that area.

Next week we set sail for the legendary Chez Panisse...


-Stacey

Bikes and stuff

I finally got my new road bike in April, The Precious is a Cervelo R3SL equipped with Sram Red. I've got my Quarq power meter in my carbon fibre crank set (on my second one since I wore the one I got last year out) and I've still got my Mavic wheels I bought last summer. So that's my gear geekery out of the way.

I've been riding all winter under the supervision of my coach and started this racing season in February as a Category 3 rider - another jump up from last year. I decided to do mostly stage races this year which are 3-5 days of racing several different stages (like they do in the tour de France). In May I raced in the Sram Tour of the Gila, which was literally in the Wild West of New Mexica. And I did two races in Oregon later on, Mt Hood Classic Stage Race and the Cascade Classic Stage Race.  I placed high enough in those races to earn "upgrade points" and made the jump up to category 2 a few weeks ago!

Now I have to try to not die in the last few races of this season.  Category 1 and 2 riders are often lumped in with the pro riders so this is a whole new and much faster group of riders. Pretty excited to get out there and give it my best though.

-Joel

Our last Summer

It's hard to believe that our time in California is coming to an end in a few weeks! We hosted a farewell party for us as well as five of our friends who are also setting off on international voyages for new jobs. It was our best party yet. Over 70 people showed up who were from all the various groups we've been part of here. We had our friend, DJ Source spinning records all night long, I had a South Indian place cater food and Joel's cycling team had their Sponsor send over a full size keg. We danced the night away and even had a visit from the Fairfax police who were pretty cool about the whole thing.