The blog name is a lie

There are actually 4 bridges and 2 tubes on this island city of ours.

When people talk about "the tube," they're actually talking about the 2 parallel bores right next to each other on the west end of the island. They are officially the Webster Tube (Alameda-bound) and the Posey Tube (Oakland-bound).

That's a minor technicality, but the 4th bridge is just an out-and-out omission on my part for no particularly good reason other than "four bridges and a tube" somehow is less poetic to me than "three bridges and a tube." That 4th bridge is actually quite charming and leads to a strange and magical land called Bay Farm Island (whose name is also a lie because it's not an island, but a sort of chunky peninsula attached to Oakland). Bay Farm is an odd collection of suburban homes, lagoons, golf courses, industrial parks, the Oakland Raiders headquarters, a shortcut to the Oakland airport, and a secret (shh) outpost of the always crowded east bay restaurant, La Penca Azul (née La Piñata).

Liz and I actually spend an inordinate amount of time on Bay Farm because it also features some really beautiful running/walking/biking trails. We do most of our longer Couch-to-10K training runs there because the views are awesome, we can run on dirt for a good bit, and there's something special about how isolated we feel out there in the middle of the bay.

Anyway, back to the bridge. We park the car and do our stretches right under the Bay Farm bridge, and last week we had the rare opportunity to see it draw up to let a sailboat or 2 through. This is exciting because: 1) engineering feats, however small, are neat (read: I'm a geek), 2) I've only seen the bridge go up twice in the 5 years I've lived on Alameda, and 3) the adorable adjacent bike bridge (arguably bridge #5) draws up too! Look!

So, to make up for leaving it out of the blog title, consider this my ode to the Bay Farm Island bridge and all the secret fun it leads to.

Dream Taps

Despite my like/hate relationship with social media, I just wasted 2 days making a Tumblr thing (Tumblog?) about one of our favorite conversations: if you owned a bar or restaurant that had 5 available taps, which beers would you serve?

Could be fun. Click the blue square on the right and check it out. 

Another Cat & Cocktail, with a Side of Cliantro

Okay, so I started to feel shy about posting too many cocktail reports all at once. Problem is, I try to take a little posting "break" and then lose stride for over a week. So we're back at it with the Cat + Cocktail series.

This time around I finally made the Thai Me Up (aka Thai Martini) I'd been hankering after pretty much since starting work at the hangar. It was DELICIOUS. The kaffir lime vodka came through, but so did the cilantro. Some ginger simple syrup was also involved, but the overall taste was light and somehow clean, yes clean. Here's out it looks, both with and without cat:

One cocktail was perfect for me. Well, I guess Josh wound up drinking part of it, so there's that. But Greenie felt it a bit more, apparently: