Today is our first real day in California. The weather was great. I got up very early and got working on my laptop in the hotel room. My foot is still killing me. Dominica got to sleep in for quite a while.
We ordered breakfast in the hotel room. We didn’t want to deal with going anywhere and I needed to get work done so that was just easy. I got locks on a bagel. Very New York of me. Can’t get that in Texas really. Salmon in California definitely tastes different than it does back in New York.
Mark was the first of our friends to get into town getting in this morning. After he was settled in I went down and attempted to meet him for drinks in the bar. But we discovered that the hotel bar was not open until late afternoon so we decided to go down the street for beers instead. I would have taken Dominica with me but she was very sleepy all day, jet lag I guess, and so I just left a note with her as she was asleep and let her get some rest.
Mark and I ended up at a really excellent pizza place just a few doors down from the Tollhouse where we are all staying. We got some beer and I skipped food as I had had breakfast already. Mark ordered some food and Rich emailed us to say that he had landed and would be getting to the hotel shortly.
Rich ended up meeting us before Mark’s food arrived so Rich ordered a beer and a pizza and we all hung out for a bit. Rich let me try some of his pizza and it was really amazing. I can’t believe that we found pizza so good out in California.
After lunch the guys went back and napped in the hotel and I got back to work. Dominica thought that it was pretty entertaining that she had slept through the whole thing.
This evening we were having dinner with the Pertino guys at a restaurant just down the street. We walked down, it was a really nice evening for a stroll in a little town in Silicon Valley. What a gorgeous area. I had no idea that Silicon Valley was anything like this. It is really nice and has a real small town European feel about it.
We had a really nice time at dinner with Pertino executive management. We had some great California food and after dinner went down the street to one of the local bars. Mark, Rich and I went back to the hotel and picked up Dominica and brought her along with us and later on in the evening Jeff Pierce stopped by at the bar to visit as well.
After we closed down the bar (it was probably only midnight but felt really late) we hit another bar out by Jeff’s house and had another beer there and then went to Denny’s for some late night food.