Road trip #5,617 to the Bay Area.

Gina and I dated long distance... for a long time. It was lame. But during that time, we were lucky (?) enough to master the route from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back. Now, we're happy that we're both in the same city, and it's great that we don't have to make that trip anymore by ourselves, but really, we're over that road trip. Like... for real.

To spice things up a bit this past trip up there, we rented a car. Truthfully, we needed a bigger car to transport her parents, who were visiting the bay area from Ohio, back with us to Los Angeles. I did the responsible thing and rented a full sized car. When we got to Enterprise, the gentleman with the one-size-too-large-suit and tousled hair said, "You know, we're running low on this sized car... I can upgrade you cheaply, if you're interested."

Gina and I looked at each other. "Let's see what you got," I said.

We ended up renting THIS, for $31.00 a day (normally no less than $70 a day).



This picture doesn't fully tell you how big this Xterra is. It's huge. Gina and I are such SUV haters, but we sure didn't hesitate when we saw this little hush puppy sitting in the parking lot waiting for us. My car, a Chevy Cavalier, gets about 350 miles per tank, highway driving. This car gets the same. The difference: my Cavalier has a 13 gallon tank. The Xterra has an 18 gallon tank. We didn't care. The car had 2800 miles on it, it was bigger than almost everything else on the road, and it had a V6 ENGINE. We were in heaven. Mostly because I looked at Gina and could picture her driving a car like that with our kids in the back seat fighting. It made me happy.

Okay, on to the important part of the trip.

Giovanni was born a month ago on March 2, 2006. You can see his pictures from then on my March 8th post, which I would link for you but the post doesn't have a unique link, which is just one more reason I need to learn HTML and design my own freakin' page. Anyway, here is the perfect little boy... warning to any of you who have a baby and are thinking about having another one (you know who you are): this post alone might get you pregnant:
















(Click on the photos to go to Flickr, where there are a few more.)

Giovanni's dad (Gina's brother) Frank lives in the bay area with his wife Karen. Also in town for this weekend was Gina's brother Brian. I got the three of them to stand next to each other as more crazy DNA evidence. Brian wouldn't smile, though... but if he had, you'd see he looks exactly like Gina:





On our last day there, we went to this incredible Farmer's Market that Frank and Karen used to take us to when I would visit. It's in Mountain View. They have samosas and cappuccino covered almonds. Can you ask for anything more? How about some big ass "organic" strawberries?



Or how about a cute girl to shove a whole one in her mouth?



I got both.