Days 36-37: A Blooming Good Time

Catching up with the Bloomers is always fun. John and Liisa are both entertaining, in vastly different ways. I also finally met their kids Maddie and Alex. Both are absolutely awesome and warmed up to me faster than they usually do.

While having lunch outside near the beach, we actually ran into my old friend Chris Mason leaving a late and long lunch at the same restaurant. He looked drastically different, shedding his surfer locks (or what passes as the surfer look in Rochester, NY) for the clean cut look. We had a barbecue with him and his family on June 29th. Even his Mom was there, whom I hadn't seen since I left Rochester many, many moons ago. Everything was wonderful and it was great to see him again after so long.

John played hooky earlier on Thursday, and we visited a bunch of places, the highlights being the Carvin guitar store and the Matchless guitar amplifier factory. The manager/engineer for Matchless is a friend of John's and graciously spent some time showing us around the relatively small warehouse. Oddly, we didn't get to actually hear any of the amplifiers, probably since they were pretty strapped for time getting a shipment out. Their operation was surprisingly small, but cool in a startup kinda way. We also visited the Labrea Tar Pits, which weren't quite as interesting as I thought they would be.