Carmel

Last year for his birthday, Chris' parents granted him one of his great wishes -- high performance race car driving school. This weekend is the course and Chris and I are down in Carmel for his class out at Laguna Seca.

We headed out of town early Saturday morning, and started our weekend with whale watching in Monterey Bay. I have never seen a whale before and was hopeful that we would see one. Our prospects looked good when we arrived and saw that gray whales had been spotted all week.

We were lucky, as the weather this weekend was supposed to be very wet and windy. While windy, which resulted in some very large sea swells, we managed to avoid rain, with about five minutes of exception. (The storm came in over night, and is still lashing out!)

We were lucky on the whale watching front as well, as we were less than five minutes out when our lively hostess announced a whale off the bow of our boat. Sure enough, first we spotted a shower of blowhole water, followed by a gray whale's tail fins, or fluke, as the whale headed back into the depths of the water. We tracked two gray whales while out in the Bay, although I spent half the trip on the back of the boat, fighting sea sickness. (I don't know when I lost my sea legs!)

Regardless of not feeling so great, it was a really fun thing way to spend Valentine's Day.

As we headed back to the car to make our way to Carmel to check into our hotel, we stumbled upon some street vendors and ended up purchasing two photographs that we loved from a local photographer who printed his photos on canvas. The photos are of very colorful doors in Mexico and perfectly compliment the Jim Nilsen prints I have been collecting over the years. I can't wait to get them home.

The remainder of our Valentine's Day was spent being lazy and relaxing - way overdue for the both of us. I didn't realize how tired I was until I had the opportunity to relax for a few moments and to watch one of my all time favorite cycling events - the Tour of California, which started yesterday with a time trial in Sacramento. (Our Sacramento office was on the course!) Now I knew Lance Armstrong was back and participating this year along with George Hincapie and Levi Leipheimer, but I was delighted to discover yesterday that many other big names are back -- Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton, and my all time favorite IVAN BASSO! I literally yelped with joy with the discover. Chris started laughing.

We are planning to watch part of the Sausalito to Santa Cruz leg of the race on Monday, as we make our way back to San Francisco, and now I really cannot wait. I will be on the lookout for Ivan, George, and maybe even Lance.

Speaking of spotting athletes, this morning, as we made our way to breakfast at our hotel, I almost stopped dead in my tracks when I realized the gentleman standing directly in front of me, and who ended up sitting at the table next to us, was Dan Marino, who is in town for AT&T National Pro Am Golf Tournament at Pebble Beach.

I think a cruise around town this afternoon might be order to see who might be seen!