Sport Fishing in Oceanside, CA

On Easter, we decided to go sport fishing with our adventurous pals "George" and "Marge".
It was an absolutely perfect day and we shoved off from Oceanside Pier at 10am for a half day trip using Helgren's Sport Fishing.

We were hoping for Yellowtail Tuna so Marge and I started out using live bait. I switched to squid soon after but Marge stuck it out.

Helmut and George caught a bunch of calico bass but had to throw them back because they were too small.

We were using squid mostly but then I decide to try adding some of these cut up sardines to add something shiny that would attract the fish. Helmut followed suit and caught a calico bass right away!

He let me reel it in cause he's cool like that. Turns out it was the biggest fish of the day and Helmut won a jackpot of 60 bucks!

It was barely enough for a meal for 2 people but there was something rewarding about eating a fish you've caught yourself. The fish were barely biting at all and it turns out that there was an endangered black bass near where we were positioned that was eating all the other fish. Bummer! 

Marge was the photographer for the day and she took this rad picture of a bird that was flying next to the boat on the way back to the pier.

When we got back, we were exhausted! who would've thought that fishing would take so much out of ya?

Castroville, CA...Artichoke center of the world!

So we're cruisin down the road just south of Santa Cruz, and we enter the town of Castroville which touts itself as "Artichoke center of the world". I say to Helmut,"if this is the Artichoke center of the world, there should at least be a roadside stand where you can get fried artichokes, boiled artichokes, artichoke stew and stuff like that." No sooner were the words out of my mouth did we come across "Erika's World Famous Giant Artchoke Restaurant" where you could get all of the above.

We got some artichoke nachos which were good but not great. We had a great time though...I mean, how can you see a restaurant with a giant artichoke out front and not stop to eat there???

 And of course, we got t-shirts!

 

San Diego Airport

A few days after Thanksgiving 2014, we started our Indonesian adventure from Lindberg field in San Diego. The flight was going to be a long one and we got to the airport super early so we decided to go have a few drinks at the bar before our flight.

Normally, 11am would be way too early to drink, but what the heck, we were on VACATION! 

After our first bloody mary, a guy sauntered up next to us at the bar and ordered a drink. He was clearly either the Most Interesting Man in the World or a close relative, so we struck up a conversation. 

After a short time, we found out his name was Paco and he was from Chicago. He was on his way back from a family vacation and revealed to us that he owned his own executive recruiting business and was of Greek Ancestry. Why his name was Paco is a mystery, but either way, we became fast friends and he ended up teaching us how to play a card game called "Casino" and bought us a few more drinks. 

We will probably never see Paco again, but he was super cool so we decided to name our beta fish "Paco Mcgillicuddy" after him. We don't know his real last name, but we figured that if a greek guy could be named Paco, his last name could be just about anything.