all in one peice, not in one place

Flashback: Wednesday April 27th
Arrived in Berkeley in the afternoon, rainy and the girls sleepy. Stayed at Faculty club, let's see..where to start. Well Jane threw up in the middle of the night, the girls hard a hard time going to sleep and sleeping. Everyone was up by 5:30 am - and we all were already contemplating going home. Ella kept asking when we were going back to Elliott Street. We usually love our trips to Berkeley at the Faculty club, but it's a lot of work when you're on a road trip with all your stuff in the car and you have to park your car a good 10 minute walk away from your room. That night we ate dinner a quick walk away at Haas School of Business and ate in the wonderful indoor lodge atmosphere of the Faculty Club in a huge dining room all to ourselves. It was raining, but we still walked the girls around and made it down to the bookstore and Telegraph and up to get some pictures of a architectual famous house (can't recollect the name of it now, but it's in almost all of the Craftsman home books I have.) And we mostly had the whole living room/lobby area to ourselves the next morning. Then we learned that Grandad and Fr. Mike were already in Santa Cruz so we needed to get down to Monterey in the morning so we could catch up with them. So 1 night was all we stayed, which turned out to be fine, we've done the Berkely thing, we wanted to get going on our treasure hunt.

Jack pot! We got 'em!
flashback: Thursaday April 28th

We spent most of the morning trying to unsettle our 1 night stand settlement at the Faculty Club. Once we got the car reloaded and were on the road again we made it to Gilroy for a little break. We got the girls some much needed cough meds at Target and got to peruse the Outlets - a little. Reality hit back, we were on a mission. The biking duo once again was making good time, Granddad called to say they were not far from Monterey. So we jumped back in the van. Would you believe it about 40 minutes later we had spotted them from Highway 1? It was so exciting! We had just reached the 1 and spotted a bike path that ran along next to the 1. And about 2 minutes later we saw some bike flags waving in the air from something low moving near the ground up ahead!! We could see the flags and then the back of a recumbant biker. It was right outsite Ella's window she was waving right with me, I was practically out of the car window waving my hand estacically. Adam's in the far right lane of the highway trying to maintain freeway speed and tap honking the horn. We first drove by Fr. Mike, he looked great and gave us a big smile and wave back. For a second I thought we missed Granddad, but then I saw his flags -- we were gainging on him. He was in the zone, biking strong. We drove by looking like the scariest family traveling in a minivan and he finally gave in with a wave. I think his legs were peddling so fast with excitement too. :) Next we're looking for a spot upahead to pull over, which happens to be where they were going to pull off the bike path anyway into town. So the timing was perfect, what luck that we happened to be there right then. Otherwise we would have met them in town later that evening and miss our live encounter of the speed of bike journey - 4+ weeks in action. It was meant to be and worked out great.

We pulled over right off the exit, next the bike path which was now directly next to the road. Now we looked like a crazy family doing a Chinese fire drill on the exit's shoulder lane. Adam darted out to the back and threw open the rear door, threw out Ella's mini dirt bike with trainging wheels and "Star Catcher" lables on it. I jump out of my seat, slide open Ella's door and get her shoes and biking shirt and helmet on. She's so excited, yelling at me to hurry up. Adam has Jane out and in the stroller, (she was almost asleep for this whole thing and is a little disoriented, couldn't risk having her walk so close to the freeway) Ella's leaps onto her bike and pedals so hard up the slight little slope aiiming to crash right into Granddad....then we see him speeding down, and Ella determined to get to him. It was great, I wish I could post videos here. She was so proud and they stopped, two bikers having a chat and of course a big long overdue HUG! It only took a couple of minutes before Jane was back to preferring that Granddad hold her instead of us.