San Francisco and Atherton,CA

Alright, picture this with me...We are five years younger, and we are sitting in the parking lot of Graceland in Memphis Tennessee, trying to open a jar of salsa. There is a woman and her friend looking at a map a few cars down. We walk over and ask if she can help us open the jar, when we notice her Brittish accent. "Oh gosh no, but I'm sure my friend Chris can!" Sure enough, Chris could. She started talking to us about our trip (the big one five years ago) and pointed to the little lady with the accent. "We are picking up a car for Esther's grandson, and driving it back to San Francisco for him." In no time my mom was exchanging her e-mail address with the ladies, and we were invited to stay at Esther's house when we got to San Francisco.

Fast forward five years. My dad and I are staying with Esther and her husband Ross for the third time. My mom has stayed with them five times now, and this is my brother's second time. So as you can see, we have gotten to know them alot better in the past five years. They don't actually live in San Francisco, they live about forty minutes south of it in a suburb called Atherton.

We picked my dad up from the airport on Friday night, and spent all of Saturday just doing fun stuff. Dad decided we should go Go-cart racing while he was there. It was so much fun! John and Samuel went in Turbo cars (you had to have your license to drive a Grand prix car) and I went in a Grand prix double seater with Dad because I knew he would go faster than the rest of them. Plus, I'm pretty sure I might crash the thing! On Sunday we drove into San Francisco and did the things we usually do there. Oh yes, we have a list of our favorites!

• Drive down the most crooked street in the world (Lombard St.)
• Drive down the steepest street in San Francisco, and that's saying something. (Filbert St.)
• Walk the Golden-Gate bridge, or at least see it.
• Walk through China town.

This is the basic outline every time we go, but we often intersperse it with other cultural things. This time when we walked China town, Dad wanted Dim Sum, and of course you can't tell what a thing is, and most of the employees of the "House of Dim Sum" don't know what most things are in English. It was quite the experience when one of the only words we recognized was chicken feet. "Do you have anything vegitarian?" Mom wanted to know. "Uhhh...you mean like betchtables?" "Yeah, just vegetables" "No isss all made wif pork". My cousin is Jewish and therefore, cannot eat pork, so we looked for a different place. After getting our non-pork items, the lady offered us something un-expected. "Would you like some chick-un fee?" Chicken feet? They didn't look very appetizing...They probably tasted great, but last I checked, my dad is not Anthony Bourdain. "No thank you". And that was that!

Yosemite, CA

For us, Yosemite has been a place we've wanted to visit for years. Ever since we got back from our huge trip in 2005, mom would be telling someone about the time we went to Yellowstone, and she would get it confused with Yosemite. This isn't hard to do since Yosemite and Yellowstone are both very famous national parks, and they both start with a Y. We had never been to Yosemite before, so John and I would always have to say "Yellowstone Mom! Not Yosemite!" To say the least: It's been on our list for awhile. We are finally there, driving up and down the mountains in the park when we start to smell burning rubber. At this point we just think it's somebody else's tires, and we keep going on our way. We drive through a tunnel and stop at a gorgeous overlook to take some pictures and enjoy the view, but as we are getting out of the car, mom looks at the front, left tire and sees smoke coming out of it. Of course we're worried now, and mom says a little prayer for God to send us the right person to help.
A group of motorcyclists pull in and start taking pictures, but one is all by himself, trying to take a picture with the waterfall in the background. This just isn't working because he is such a tall guy, and his viewfinder is kind of cutting his head off in the picture. Mom walks over and asks him if he would like us to take it for him, and he says yes. I don't know why, but a lot of people are intimidated my motorcyclists, but this guy was completely friendly! While mom was taking the picture, I noticed he was wearing a cross necklace. OK, so he's not the usual skull-and cross bones biker, but maybe he just likes to wear crosses. I still wasn't sure, and when Mom asked if he knew anything about cars he was glad to help. We started chatting with the fellow, and pretty soon it was obvious that he wasn't just wearing that cross lightly. His name is Eric, and he assessed that our brakes were over-heating and that we should wait at least an hour before going back up the windy road we had just come down. In the end, it was all good, and even though our brakes were a problem, I'm so glad we were able to meet Eric!