Food and Drink

Carrie, kicking back and chillin'. An afternoon spent at my favorite wine bar with Carrie, Dan and Jessica. It's not for everyone but I find it cozy and I like the wine.

This year I only sent out a handful of Christmas cards. I had been scouring all my photo folders from this year because I wanted to print some pictures and enclose them in the cards. To my dismay I've found that pretty much all of my images were running related; running a race, spectating and volunteering at one. I need to do a better job next year of having pictures from other activities. Now on my mobile phone however, I found a bunch of pictures that made me laugh because most of them were food and drink related. Shows you were my mind is at when not at work or working out. I thought I'd share them here. I haven't had lunch yet and this post made me hungry!

Enjoy the pictures.

Jessica, keeping me away from Bob's Donuts.

At Gitane, the new bar down the street from Cafe Claude, same owners. Great wine from Europe. I don't know much about wine but I know the characteristics I like, know enough to ask the right questions.

Hanging out at the wine bar again. It really is called just "the wine bar".

At Jochen's place for a BBQ. Jochen is a fellow ultra-marathoner who I've come to know more this year. He and his girlfriend Kaori are in the neighborhood too, only 5 blocks away. Grimacing in the left corner is a fellow ultra-marathoner, Beat, who twisted his ankle earlier in the day. He's not happy because he has a big, big race the weekend after.

At a new Filipino restaurant that friends took me too. Like the atmosphere, love the food. Good thing it's not close.

At Asuka Ramen.My friend John Branderhorst is half Japanese, has lived in Japan and is quite the ramen connoisseur. I don't know where this place ranks on his list but it is literally just across the street from my building and I like their Tonkatsu Ramen (ramen noodles in pork broth). It's tasty, hearty and usually what I order. They also have good chicken katsu. This was a day when I was particularly stressed with a project and needed the break, good food and away from the computer.

At Pacific Catch. One of things I miss most about Hawaii is "ahi poke", a raw tuna dish. Pacific Catch's is the best I've tasted here in the city and I go back whenever I get the urge. The sweet potato fries is also very good. Unfortunately my camera things so too, it focused on the fries:)

Mmm...Philz Coffee. If it was closer I'd be in trouble. I would go all the time. Not that far about a 20 minute walk. It's not cheap at $3+ a cup but it's good and the staff, at least in the Van Ness location, is very friendly and helpful. A more welcoming atmosphere than Blue Bottle. I prefer their house brand which is called "Tesora", sometimes I'll have the mocha version which is only a quarter more.

New Volunteer Position

So after a stint as the Run Director for my triathlon club in 06, a failed attempt to become the club president in 07, hiatus in 08 and 09, I am now the Design Director for 2010. What does that mean? Well I advocated for this new position and fulfilled it's duties back in 06 along with my run director stuff. What it means is somebody who is in charge of the club's marketing assets; the logo in all it's various forms, artwork for all the merchandise, creation of brochures, flyers, posters, etc. and a possible help to the web director. It all got started when the Merchandise Director needed to track down the logo and have it resized for stickers and shoe bags. I helped out and was soon creating other design related items for the club. I also played photographer and took lots of pictures which came in handy for more communication materials later. I'm no photographer, I only had two classes in photography during my school years but I take a lot of pictures, do a lot editing and know Photoshop.

This year I plan to help out in the same capacity but I also have a couple of new ideas. I have to flesh them out before our January meeting. Last year's Board of Directors was a successful one and I'm hoping the 2010 board will be just as successful.

John's Campaign Poster/Shirt. It used to say "For GGTC Social Director". He won so now it just has the date.

Dave is our new Bike Director in the triathlon club and a good friend.

Ahhrizona

I was in Arizona onHalloween for a race. I was there to support, crew and pace a friend. I never though I would like the Arizona dessert but this event, the past two years, has changed my mind. I wouldn't want to be here during the summer when it's really, really hot but Fall is good. It still got hot during the day because there is no shade on the course. The night was beautiful though, full moon and the light reflected on the sandy trails. Sunset and sunrise were spectacular. I've also been to the Grand Canyon, ran it in fact but that's a different kind of beauty. I would come back to this event just for more weekends just as we have had the last two years. These pictures were taken at McDowell Mountain Region Park.

Comic Relief

Comedian Louis C.K. talks on Conan O'brien about technology from
Nathan Lunde-Berry on Vimeo.

Love this video. Saw it once before when it made the rounds, saw it again today when someone posted in on Facebook. Take a look if you haven't already. So funny. A little comic relief for your day. Even if you've seen it already it may still be funny, it certainly was for me.

The Whitest Haoles

Jess asked me if I could design a logo for her and Sam. They are part of a local canoe club here in San Francisco and they have come to calling themselves the "whitest haoles". The word "haole" originally meant foreigner in Hawaii but it has come to mean "white foreigner" and not always used in the spirit of aloha. I tried explaining to Jess that you can't actually be a "haole" IN California but she's already sold on the moniker and ain't listening to me.

Hawaiian/Polynesian culture and designs dominate the paddling scene, at least from what I've seen, so I've tried to capture that feeling in the design. I hand drew everything including the letters and it was a lot of computer work once I imported it in to a program called Adobe Illustrator - the whole project took a lot longer than I anticipated but a lot of fun. In retrospect I should have based my letter sketches on an actual font. I work with type all the time but I'm no typographer. I should have either made the letter forms really funky (graffiti like) or traced them from an actual font. As it is, it is somewhere in between and a good designer will be able to spot the awkward not quite right sections in the letters. I needed help with the "O" and the small case "e" and ended up tracing those from an actual font anyway. It was then that I realized I should have worked it that way from the very beginning. It was a really fun project and I learned a lot. It took a long time but I didn't mind so much because I was enjoying myself. Besides I owed Jess and Sam, Jess especially. Jess has been my crew chief for my two summer 100-mile ultra-marathon races - it involves driving around in a car and meeting me at the checkpoints, getting me whatever I needed to keep going and staying up all night until I finished. Sam was my pacer on my last race, running miles 75-100 with me, from about 11am Saturday night to a little after 5am Sunday morning. So you see it was my pleasure to work on the project for them.

I was always taught that a logo should work in black and white first. The coming of web and interactive design has blurred that rule. I'm old school though, I've kept to the original rules that was handed down to me. Even in this day and age we still need these identities to survive in one color applications, i.e. the back of event t-shirts, faxes or a yellow page ad.

The logo in color. Looks a bit washed out, I hope it's just the photo. Image courtesy of Jessica Fewless.

Madison, Wisconsin - Summer 08

I was looking through some old photos and I found pictures from the time I visited Madison, Wisconsin last summer. I was there for a race and after I got back the only thing I talked about and showed pictures of was from the race itself. The pictures from Madison was put aside and ultimately forgotten until now.

At the time my cousin Margie lived in Madison and I stayed with her before and after the race. She and her husband Adam actually now live here in San Francisco. Anyway I arrived a couple of days before the event and took the time to explore the area. Both Margie and Adam were working so I did my own thing for the most part. I really enjoyed it. Food was good and so was the beer. Margie worked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Adam was a graduate student there, both are chemists. I returned the day after the race from the Kettle Moraine area, about an hour east/north east from the city, to explore a little more before heading off to the airport.

It was such a brief visit but I enjoyed my time there. I even enjoyed the terrible thunderstorms they were having. Unfortunately they were terrible enough to cause a lot of damage. I ran through two of them during my race which took 21:40, that's 21 hours not minutes. Lots of lightning, thunder, heavy rain, falling trees and everything while tornado sirens wailed in the background. What an experience that was and I truly did enjoy the sound of thunder and flash of lightning even when I was running in the Kettle Moraine trails... well when I was in the shelter of the trees, not so much when I was exposed in the open. I enjoyed thunderstorms as a kid in the Philippines but we don't have them here in San Francisco, we didn't have them in Hawaii either. Good times. I wouldn't want to be there in the winter though, brrrrr!!! I've heard the stories and seen the pictures.

Enjoy the pictures.

Waterfront, Student Union, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Waterfront, Student Union, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Waterfront, Student Union, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Enjoying one of my favorite activities.

Walking to the Museum of Modern Art.

Inside the Museum of Modern Art.

The capitol building.

Margie and Adam.

For more pictures click here

Between 50 and 80

That refers to temperature. When you live in the San Francisco Bay Area your ideal temperature will fall roughly between those two temperatures. Anything above 80 degrees fahrenheit and it's a heat wave and anything below 50 fahrenheit is too cold. Last night I was at a dinner party and I listened to two friends complaining how they have completely lost their tolerance for heat, one is from Texas and the other from Miami. Yup, yup, living here will do that to you. My very good friend Jessica is from Wisconsin where they have really cold winters and these days she can't stomach the cold. Love it here but we do get spoiled with the temperature.

It's 5:30am and I've been awake for the last hour because it's too warm to sleep! I bet I could go running outside right now in nothing but a pair of shorts and feel totally fine. Makes for a spectacular sunset though. The dinner party I was at last night had a great view of the bay and Mt. Tamalpais. Tonight, like last night, the restaurants in the neighborhood will put out tables and chairs outside and it will be a fun time to walk around. Alright time to go back to bed. The heat from my monitor is going to over heat me, haha. It might not be a bad idea to buy a fan, I think we have this weather for a few more days.