Catalina: Cute, but no Porquerolles

In January, the BBC published an article on US parks only accessible by boat or seaplane. Among the list was the Channel Islands, not so terribly far away off the coast of Los Angeles. It sounded like the perfect long weekend, a great extra box to check off in the category of American adventures before we put a bow on our time in the States. Back then, we didn't anticipate that we wouldn't have a single weekend when the two of us would be at home and not traveling for business after the month when those travel plans were made. So here we were, making a rapid turn-around as I unpacked my bags from my most recent week down in Austin only to refill them with gear for the weekend.

Catalina was cute, and also pricey. After getting hit with a $30 price tag for a pair of ice cream cones right after we got off the boat, we started paying a little more attention to our wallets over the weekend. There was still enough to see and do without breaking the bank, though my calves had a few things to say about said low cost (and high elevation change) activities. We found that the 60s Fahrenheit hits far different under the Southern California sun than it does up in the San Francisco Bay. We didn't spot a single one of the legendary bison descended from the pack of 14 brought over for a silent film a century ago, one that didn't even feature them in the final edit. We tried our hands at a round of mini golf, I ate some fantastic lobster roll at the aptly named Lobster Trap, and we somehow didn't find the time to get Nico an authentic straw hat at Luau Larry's.

After a few months of weekly work-related travels, some SoCal voyaging just for us!

The island was cute, but with more tourists and fewer vineyards than its Mediterranean counterpart, Porquerolles. I'm glad we did it, even if it was hardly a chance to catch up on the sleep debt I've been accruing over several months of hopping back and forth between Austin and the Bay. We even made the most of the airport delays with a surprisingly pleasant discovery of a Hefe-Weissbier from the world's oldest continually operated brewery, Weihenstephan. It was lovely to simply have the chance to enjoy a few uninterrupted days in each other's company before either of jobs sent us jetting off once more.

Neurarunners do Bay to Breakers

After somehow going over seven years in the San Francisco Bay Area without once doing Bay to Breakers, I've done a total about-face and, just one year after my first run, captained my very own team this year. After sparkling my way through last year's adventure as the neuron rep in a team of microbes, I knew I had to bring this nonsense to the Neuralink run club. A year later, the raccoon/wizards team gave a fabulous nod to OG Neuralink lore, both to our history early days as a raccoon farm and to Tim Urban's Wait But Why article that first introduced our technological ambitions to the world, describing it as a "wizard hat."

The Neurarunners repped as raccoons and/or wizards

We were a solid crew of Bay to Breakers newbies, my whole single prior run somehow making me an expert. After a chaotic morning assembly around the Ferry Building (but honestly, are you doing Bay to Breakers right if it's any less than chaotic?), we gathered, tossed pitas, revelled in the collective surprises from the creativity of various costumes (or lack thereof), and then scattered as soon as we crossed the starting line. (I'm not sure the whole team got the memo that Bay to Breakers isn't to be run for time.) I tagged along with the speed demons until the top of Hayes Hill, only to lose sight of their sparkling capes when I paused for a congratulatory selfie. After a mile or two of solo running, I salmon'ed my way back upstream until I caught the mid-speed runners, Amanda and (non-Neuralink honorary team member) Israel, whose team I'd joined last year for my first stab at the event. We jogged and laughed and danced our way through the latter half of the course at a much more reasonable speed, though I still somehow entirely missed the human car washes. We crossed the finish line hand-in-hand, earned ourselves some comically green bananas, and finally whittled our group down to the final four who made it out for beers and Chicago deep dish in Hayes Valley before I frantically made a mad (and unplanned) dash back over the Bay Bridge to grab my forgotten suitcase before speeding back through the city towards SFO and another week down in Austin. The Neuralink fun never ends.

The raccoons and/or wizards of Neuralink did Bay to Breakers in sparkling style.

Here's to Neuralink's first (and perhaps not last) appearance at this San Francisco classic.