Awesome weekend

As I’ve only got a few days left in the US, I’m really glad that last weekend was a good one; a great one, in fact! It was Independence Day weekend, which is a big holiday over here, and everyone’s was keen on having a fun time.

First thing on Friday, Independence Day morning, I was having breakfast with Pat. He was loudly reciting the Declaration of Independence while I sang our national anthem. He won on duration, I won on tune. The plan for the evening was to go for a sail around the bay; Pat used to have a stake in a trimaran moored in Emeryville that was making an outing. Alongside stocking the cooler and doing some War of Independence research for banter repellent, my preparations included making a red-coat type outfit, complete with patriotic t-shirt:

We managed to co-incide the sail with the fireworks displays, and being in the middle of the bay, we could see the shows in Oakland, San Francisco, Sausalito and Berkeley.

One of the captains of the ships, Tim, is a freegan, who told us about a bakery in the east bay which regularly threw away lots of excess bread. Sure enough, we found six dumpsters full of focaccia, cinnamon bread, challah, baguettes and so on, which is why our freezer door now doesn’t shut.

That was just Friday evening! Our plan for Saturday was to head out east and do some kite surfing in a river delta. After some snafus with cars, we made it out there for the mid-afternoon. Unfortunately, it was an onshore wind, making it hard to launch, so I minced around on the beach with our posse, while Pat went and bust some radical moves.

That evening, there was a kite surf party: the first, and hopefully not last, beach party I go to. We were just lazing around eating some salsa when people started coming out of nowhere with all sorts of stuff: kegs of beer, a huge sound system, barbecues, lights, lasers, … It was a bit better planned and executed than we had expected! We all bounced around to techno music until early, early, all under the stars on a nice warm night.

The UK has got some competition when I come back on Friday!