The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

This year, the niece and nephew had a few new experiences while visiting in San Francisco, such as:

• Not being let out of the airport by Delta, since they were unaccompanied minors and we weren’t expecting any issues
• Eating at a very crowded La Taqueria at lunch time, which is a Mexican restaurant like they’ve never experienced
• Walking along Haight street and checking out a funky used record shop playing electro music, another that was much bigger and packed with all sorts of music, plus a few “hippie” shops with a variety of fun clothes and stuff
• Taking shoes off to have a Thai dinner
• Running around with dogs on a beach, so now they can say they’ve been to a Californian beach
• Seeing a stick bug that was attached to our house
• Seeing quite a bit of graffiti art, as opposed to regular graffiti
• Tasting odd ice cream flavors, seeing even weirder ones on the menu, and having to wait in line about 20 minutes just to get it
• Having tacos in what used to be a garage
• Playing Ticket To Ride, and having Brian and Haakon win a game
• The big Converse store in downtown San Francisco
• The rainbow crosswalks in the Castro neighborhood
• A really weird and interesting costume shop
• Cereal from Paris and London
• A big store full of board games, including a bunch of tables to sit and play games at

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And probably much, much more.

What were you doing with your friends in June of 1997?

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I was hanging out with my two best friends, Jeff and Keith, my dog Sam and Jeff’s dog Chinook (yes, a dog, not a salmon). Thanks to Gary (Jeff’s dad), for the on-going use of their ski boat back then, because we had a blast hanging out on the lakes and river spending our time wakeboarding and knee boarding. The 3 of us often joke about how safe-and-sane we were back then compared to our options at the time. I suspect we were clueless, but we’re no different now (maybe we’re still clueless?).

Parents might call this “good parenting”, we might call this “good judgment”, but we call it “good fun.” We’re still just trying to just have fun, but maybe now with a little bit of good judgment thrown in (to make us sound smart).

But back in June of 1997, Keith, Jeff and I were all single and had quite a bit of fun on the water and often in the mountains on the snow (technically, that’s also on the water). This time, we were wake boarding on the Columbia River, near the (now destroyed) Trojan nuclear power plant. Yes. Really, despite, what you might think: Jeff has a really cool and normal (non-toxic-waste-deformed) daughter, and he even learned to windsurf in the cooling pond of the power plant! Anyway…

I usually remember things through my photos, but I clearly remember something I don’t have a photo of. Sam, my dog, was running along the beach with Chinook, because we figured they might want some time on the land to do their business and be out of the boat. Plus, as you can see in the photos, we all knew Sam, the lighter brown one, didn’t really enjoy riding in the boat. (Gary: No, he never got sick in the boat. Everyone else: Sam is the one who clearly doesn’t want to be on the boat.)

… The dogs were running on the beach and we were in the boat, listening to our music, as “kids” are prone to do. I very clearly remember looking at the beach; there were only 2 humans on the beach. They were having a nice little picnic. Unfortunately for them, Sam was the most loyal dog I’ve ever experienced. As we went upriver in the boat, he ran upriver on the beach. So, when we turned and went downriver, he turned too. He ran right over the picnic blanket with the picnic food. The couple reacted as Sam was about 5 feet past them, as Chinook wisely went around them. Did I mention Sam barked the entire time he was running up and down the beach? I doubt this couple has such fond memories of that day.

However, I smile when I remember hanging out with my friends, wakeboarding, and having our dogs with us. For those who know me, you know I value experiences in life. This is one of many experiences that isn’t overly exciting, dangerous, or adventurous. But, it’s an experience I cherish because my friends and my dog were with me doing something fun.

There must be a life lesson in there somewhere!

Yes, Lorie and I can now add "bartending in an Irish castle" to our resume, since that’s exactly what we did at Blackwater Castle. Parts of the castle have been standing since the 12th century (around the year 1170), so it has quite the history and is probably haunted.
Although Patrick, who runs the place, told me that it’s the 2nd most haunted castle in Ireland, I never noticed anything even when I was there by myself for a couple hours one evening.

We were there for our friend Geoff’s 50th and James’ 40th birthdays. We spent 3 nights there, but the party continued for another 3 nights, so we passed the bartending duties over to our friend Matt who had a few of his own cocktails to add to the menu. However, our menu was quite the hit, even though most everyone would have been happy with the Guinness we had on tap, once we started mixing the drinks people got into it and started reading through the menu and selecting which one to try next.

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Afterwards, we took a short trip to the coast, through Waterford, then over to Dublin for a couple nights before flying home. We were there when Ireland voted to legalize gay marriage in what was a rather historic vote. In fact, our hotel was about 2 blocks from the Dublin Castle, where people gathered as the vote was counted and where the news crews interviewed people about the vote. But our highlight in Dublin, may have been The Little Museum of Dublin, where we got a 29 minute history overview of Dublin (perfect amount of time for us), and they have a room dedicated to the band U2.

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We had a couple of days in Paris between Cinque Terre and the castle in Ireland, so we did what we like to do the most in Paris: We walked around. Since it was somewhat nice out, we even had a coffee (Lorie) and wine (Brian) in the park near The Louvre, which turned out to be the worst we had on the entire trip. We also discovered a two new favorites. One is a casual wine bar called La Trinquette  and the other is Shabu Sha, where you pick your own ingredients to boil as they roll around the belt (like a sushi belt).

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Our Cinque Terre trip included 3 nights in Monterosso al Mare, with a hike over to Vernazza, which took us almost 3 hours in the heat of the day even though it’s only a 3km hike. I think jetlag, no breakfast, a bit of wine the night before, and not having enough water all worked against us. But, the highlight was the hike, since in goes through the vineyards in the hills, you can see how the local farmers live, and it has great views of the Tyrrhenian Sea along the way. It’s interesting to see how the farmers (mostly lemons and wine grapes) have a roller-coaster set up to help them move up and down the hill side. The direction we took, from Monterosso to Vernazza let us see Vernazza from the hillside, which offers probably the most picturesque view of a village I’ve ever seen.

The next day we took a train to Riomaggiore, and all 3 days we enjoyed pizza and wine. We found that not all wine and pizza in Italy are good though.

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Thankfully this little brewery in town sells socks.