Almost since the moment we all moved into Brohaus, there has been talk about taking a trip together. We dreamed of renting a castle, spending days on a houseboat, going to the beach, traveling together. After years of dreaming and vague plans, we never actually went on an offsite. In the spring of last year, I decided to do something about it.

Kirby Cove is one of the highest demand campgrounds in the country. It is situated in a small, private cove slightly northwest of the Golden Gate Bridge on the Marin County side. There, you’ll find an old fort called Battery Kirby and a beach offering sweeping views of the bridge and San Francisco. Within, there are 4 campsites and a day use site that are available by reservation only. Reservations open up 3 months in advance at 7am PST and are usually gone within a minute or two.

I woke up a few days at 6:45am, but the reservations were going extremely fast. I was almost going to automate the process, but fortunately I didn’t need to and landed a reservation for a Sunday night to Monday morning reservation.

Fast forward three months. When the day finally came around, we packed up a few cars with all our camping essentials and started the drive north.

Le Garage
Sausalito, CA

Before setting up camp, we stopped for lunch at Le Garage, an affordable brunch spot offering quick and relatable French cuisine. It’s situated along the bay by the Liberty Ship Marina. The views are refreshing, the service is quick, there is plenty of (valet) parking and the food is top notch. If you are in the area, definitely stop by.

Given the large size of our group, we waited a while for our tables to get ready. As anyone would when they are about to go camping and get away from it all, we all pulled out our phones.

Some of us perused the menu.

A few of us worked on our dating profiles.

When the food came out, we were happy. My omelette was cooked perfectly and topped with the largest caper I have ever seen. The frites were perfect, crispy on the outside and a little mushy on the inside.

Clockwise from top left: Mark, Omelette, Jeff and Dustin in awe of an egg, Burger

After we finished up lunch and packed back into our cars, we were off again, this time to Kirby Cove!

The drive there was an amusing experience. We were all in a line about to take a left into Kirby Cove road. On the opposite side of the road was a long train of tourists waiting to park at the lot for Battery Spencer. I noticed that if a lady driving a minivan were to just back up a foot or so, we would be able to squeeze our cars past and down towards to Kirby Cove gate.

I made eye contact with her, rolled my window down and asked if she could reverse a little so that we could get through. She must have been frustrated with the slow moving line she was in, and I could see it. After I spoke a few words, her eyes immediately lit up and she shouted back something along the lines of, “You’re going to have to drive all the way to the back of the line, mister!” I then calmly responded that we weren’t trying to cut in line and that we were actually trying to access a road to her right that goes down into the cove.

She looked down at the road to confirm that there was in fact a road leading down. Bewildered, she turned back and started slowly inching her car backwards. We waved thanks and continued driving down towards Kirby Cove.

Kirby Cove is only accessible by car to people who have permits (because of the extremely limited parking space). Hence, all campers and day users must display a printed permit for that day on their windshield and must use a combination to unlock the gate on Kirby Road. Here I am unlocking the gate.

After we got everyone through, we locked the gate back up and continued down the rest of the 1 mile dirt road towards the parking lot.

In true Bay Area fashion, we brought an electric car with us.

Even though we had made it all the way down the cove, there were still a few hundred yards between the parking lot and our camp spot. We had reserved space number one, arguably the best site, but also one of the furthest from the lot. As you can see below, there was plenty of dragging gear from our cars to the site.

Fortunately, the NPS made some wheelbarrows available for use. They made the job of transporting our items ten times easier.

Once we had everything at the site, we immediately started pitching our tents.

We brought the tent that we purchased for Burning Man and a smaller tent that JJ has.

The View

This is one of the reasons that space one is the best. Just look at the view. Can you imagining waking up to this?

Below is an unedited panorama from the next morning. Scroll or swipe left and right to view it. Unfortunately, that morning was pretty foggy and SF was not visible.

After the tents were up and the campsite was in order, we started on a well deserved snack: beer, bread, cheese and meat.

Then came the exploring. In the picture below, the shaded area to the left is where our campsite is. The pathway in the center leads to Battery Kirby to the right. Battery Kirby, the namesake of the cove, was in use from the late 1800s to right around the time of World War II.

I guess boys will be boys. We climbed and explored all over the battery.

None of us knew that Eric was a parkour master. Look at those moves, and those shades.

Some of us were a little less talented in the parkour department. ^^

Drew, however, may actually be a monkey.

One of my favorite parts is a tunnel that leads to…

You guessed it, the ocean! We spent some time soaking in the views and the sound of the gentle waves on the beach.

Then we discovered the swing. Any of you who have been to Kirby Cove know the swing. It’s a rope that is tied to an old tree on one end and a small plank on the other. You may take a few tries to get enough speed and quickly plant your bottom on the plank, but once you get a hang of it, it’s a blast.

The feeling of nearly being launched into the ocean was both terrifying and liberating. Some of us counted the swing as our favorite part of the whole trip.

As night started to fall, we turned to our favorite camping food for dinner, Frito pie.

As the fire raged on, we sat around in a circle talking, took solitary walks to the beach, looked at the stars and even scared away a raccoon looking to get a free meal. I stopped taking photos at this point because I was so immersed in the experience. If you want to know more, you’ll have to ask one of us in person.

Shenanigans

We are a bunch of goofballs and we did what goofballs do best. Mark got attacked by a rusted support.

Drew demonstrated proper tsunami evacuation form.

Mark got hungry and resorted to eating wooden signs.

We got to use our pocket knives to empty some water before leaving.

Fin

All trips need a jumping shot. I’m going to have to apologize at this point. It was my first time taking my (then new) camera with me and I didn’t properly set the shutter speed for this. The photos came out a little blurry, but nevertheless great.

We had an amazing experience. We may just want to make it a yearly thing. Kirby cove is everything we could hope for in a camp ground and the location for an offsite. You should go there and blog about your experience. Send me a link!

Last year, two of our annual east coast visitors, Vinny and Meixin, joined Sean and me on an adventure to Yosemite National Park.

Yosemite in the winter is a peculiar place. As it is a valley, different sections of it receive vastly different amounts of sunlight. While one patch of ground my be complete dry and warm, another a few feet away could be cold and covered in a thick layer of snow.

The following picture captures it well. If you crop the top half off, you have a beautiful winter wonderland. Crop the bottom off and you have a typical California mountainside in spring or summer.

The weather in the valley also poses some interesting problems for getting into and around the park. We took my car into Yosemite. Even though it has four wheel drive, it still needed tire chains during sections of road due to the ice on the roads. I never thought much of it, but driving with chains is a pain. You can’t go very fast and the chains create noise and vibrations as you drive.

At first glace, my car may not look like an offroader considering that it is basically a family van. However, I think it looks well suited to the snow and icy roads.

On the first day, we arrived in the park in mid day. We knew that we wouldn’t have enough time to go on a long hike. So, we instead explored a bit on foot and then dropped by the visitors center to scope out a trail for the next day.

With the help of the park rangers, we chose the Yosemite Falls Trail. It is 3.4 miles of beautiful scenery that takes you 2700 feet up from the bottom of the valley to the top of the valley, above Yosemite Falls

I put together this video in Google Earth using GPS data I got from RunKeeper. It should give you a good idea of the terrain.

As you look through the pictures in this post, pay close attention to the terrain and to what we are wearing. It will give you a good picture of the extremes in temperatures that we experienced. Here we see Vinny towards the beginning of the hike wearing quite a few layers.

And soon after here is Sean wearing far fewer layers.

Asians taking photos of scenery!

The view from the trail was breathtaking, but I don’t need to say that. Just look at my photos.

If you are wondering if the photos are completely natural, my photos have been only minimally post-processed. I shot RAW on my X100 and applied a VSCO 04 Velvia preset. So, the beauty is just a result of the lighting that morning and the clear air.

I think Vinny’s smile is proof of how much fun we had along the way.

Even though the top is open to direct sunlight, it was covered in a bed of snow. It was so tranquil that I forgot how far we had hiked to get there.

Some steep icy parts required climbing up and glissading down.

We were one of the first groups to reach the top that day. While at the top, aside from the footsteps of hikers before us, we were alone.

This isolation from other hikers and tourists is one of the best reasons to visit during the off season. Yosemite is one of the most visited National Parks and can be quite crowded in the summer.

There were some pretty steep drop-offs, but fortunately they were lined with handrails. I wonder who installed them. Getting them up there and installing them must have been an interesting task.

The hike was great, but best part of the day was lunch. We brought with us sandwiches that we prepared early in the morning. Nothing can beat cold cuts and cheese on bread after a few hours of walking

Surprisingly, we had great cellular data at the top. We Facetimed from the top. It felt like an Apple commercial.

Fallen icicles were embedded in the snow along the way, like bizzare fossils.

I had a great time at Yosemite. It was a chance to bond with friends and get away from civilization.

If you haven’t visited Yosemite in the winter and live close by, you are missing out. Going in the winter offers you the chance to see a unique and beautiful side of this California landmark.

A few days after the X100 arrived in the mail, I took it on a walk around the Hakone Japanese Gardens in Saratoga.

The gardens are a really peaceful place to take a walk. I think I may purchase a year long membership.

After walking and enjoying the serenity of the garden for a few hours, I had a delicious egg salad sandwich at the Vienna Woods European Deli. I saw this Porsche out front and just had to take a picture. I love the spoiler and black painted Fuchs wheels.

When we arrived at Pinnacles, we started off the trip with a short hike to the Bear Gulch Resevoir.

A more believable recreation of this earlier photo from my trip to New York in 2012.

What a cute couple. ^^

One of many sweeping landscapes that we were able to enjoy:

When we got back to camp, we set up our tents and started dinner: quesadillas, chilli and frito pie. Unfortunately, I was too busy cooking and eating that I forgot to take any pictures of dinner or our camp site. >< After sleeping and eating eggs, bacon and breakfast burritos, we set off for another hike. This time, we went to the Balconies Cave, the only cave open at the time (the Bear Gulch Cave was closed in order to not disturb the bats that live there).

If you live in the bay and want to do some camping or hiking, I highly recommend Pinnacles. The campsites are well maintained and the hikes offer a wide range of scenery. 

Everyone had a great time, and surprisingly the trip wasn’t too difficult or expensive to organize. Let’s make this an annual event!

I only included a small subset of my photos in this post. See the rest here in my Flickr set.

First up is the 2013 Nachos NY Guactacular. The event is run like many chili cookoffs and other amateur food competitions. Entrants bring their best guac and set up shop on a table. We then walk around with a bag of chips, sample their creations and then cast our vote for who we think is best. I left my ND filter on. So, the photos didn’t come out very well. ):

Many entrants tried to use gimmicks like dressing up their table or adding other ingredients to gain an edge. However, our favorite (the one that went on to win the audience prize) was just a normal guac.

Next is Lambda line dinner. Most of us from my big brother’s (fraternity big brother) line got together for dinner at Carmine’s. I can’t believe how much the line has grown since I crossed in 2008. These guys made me feel at home. I almost forgot that I’m not a student anymore.

Afterwards, I walked 60+ blocks down broadway with my big bro and little bro. Good times.

The next day, I worked remotely from Lucas’s office. After work, we walked to BCD Tofu House and met up with other Lambdas for dinner.

Then, Andy and Will came with me to Salvation Taco for their ping pong tournament. We met Chithra, Vinny, Leslie (who invited all of us), and her friends there. The tournament was a simple doubles tournament with the winners and runners up taking home gift certificates.

None of us won anything that day, but Chithra and I did reach the semifinals before being knocked out by another sibling team.

After the tournament, Andy, Will, Vinny and I stayed back for drinks on their rooftop bar.

New York, how I miss you.

I met Caroline at Penn Station, before we headed over to Williamsburg on the L. Caroline bought a water bottle and received an Indian rupee instead of a quarter in her change. That’s less than 10% of the value of a quarter. >.<

Caroline and I met up with Leslie and Vinny at Smorgasburg. Gino met us later on. One of the first stalls we saw is a “Teriyaki Ball” stand. The describe their food as “born from a love of the traditional Japanese comfort food, Takoyaki, customized to New York City’s diverse and eclectic tastes.” The sad thing is that they don’t actually have tako (octopus) in the balls.

Leslie bought a donut. It looked delicious, but I knew I had to conserve stomach space so that I could maximize the number of things I try. >.<

First up, nachos with cheese sauce, jalapeños, radish, pickled onions, and scallions.

Next, fried anchovies “Jersey style” or with their heads on.

We bumped into Lucas and Yoojin!

I bought this hibiscus tea with lychee jelly. It was mediocre. I don’t think anything can beat Tea Era in my book.

Asians taking pictures of food!

Delicious

Vinny thinks so too.

Uni noodles. The uni wasn’t as fresh I’d like, but it wasn’t bad.

One of the very few pictures I have of myself (thanks Leslie!).

People’s Pops. The best thing for a New York summer.

Taco!

Unfortunately, I didn’t charge my camera before setting off. So, it ran out of batteries soon after we left Brooklyn. We headed over to the highline before going to Da Mikele Ovest (Edit: Good catch Leslie and Vinny) for pizza, where I was reminded that nothing can match pizza in New York.

I used cheap Kodak film and processed it at Costco. The wavy multicolored lines you might notice running through the photos are from damage caused to the negatives by dirty equipment at Costco. ):

Most pictures were untouched. Some had minimal processing in photoshop after scanning like straightening.

An E9 with Alpina wheels.

Stay tuned for the second part of this post!

When we arrived at the Main Post, Caroline and I found a place for our blanket while Chris and Sean immediately went to Del Popolo to order some pizzas.

The crust on the margherita pizza was thin, crispy and chewy while the sauce was sweet with a hint of acidity. It is by far the best Neapolitan style pizza that I have had in California.

Even though the Margherita was my favorite, the Bianca was equally well executed. I especially loved the contrast between the crumbly texture of the ricotta and stringy, chewy nature of the mozzarella and grana padano.

Chris had a cream-filled donut.

We bought a few glasses of this agua fresca. I don’t remember exactly what was in it, but it had a slightly sweat and herbal flavor. Really refreshing!

Ceviche tostada! I only remembered to take a picture after we had eaten most of it. >.<

They had free Bocce sets for rent.

Why can’t I hold all these Bocce balls?

Chris’s favorite picnic pastime.

The view through one of the cannons at the Presidio.

After a few hours of eating, drinking and games, we took a walk around grounds.

Then, we got in the car and drove south. Next Stop: Hayes Valley.

Our destination: Smitten Ice Cream.

Smitten is unique for using liquid nitrogen to almost instantaneously make your ice cream from fresh ingredients after you order it.

Sean and his scoop of maple brown sugar pumpkin.

I had salted caramel with TCHO chocolate sauce.

If you live in the Bay and haven’t tried Smitten, then you are missing out. If you actually live in SF, then you have no excuse. Go try it at least for the novelty.

Sean didn’t want to be in this picture. I forced him.

I don’t remember Subaru offering this model in the US.

We had dinner in San Mateo (wasn’t that good) and then went to Tpumps for bubble tea. It’s another must visit for Bay Area residents. Here is my strawberry, mango green tea with lychee popping boba.

Update: Corrected some mistakes that Sean found. I originally wrote New York style pizza. It is actually Neapolitan. Also Chris bought the donut, not Sean as originally mentioned.

Graduation marks a momentous point in my family’s life. My parents are no longer financially burdened by Chithra’s or my education. Chithra and I are now on our ways to carving out our own lives, careers and eventually families.

Watching the Class of 2012 walk across the stage and being back on campus made me truly realize how much I miss college and will continue to do so. I walked around campus quite a bit, reminiscing about college and reevaluating my life and my decisions since graduating. The feeling of being an outsider (not having swipe access to buildings anymore and not recognizing most people on campus) still hasn’t sunk in.

After spending time with my family and friends around Columbia, I moved over to Brooklyn to stay with Sean. Vinny, Sean and Caroline took PTO  for the day and we headed over to BCD Tofu house for lunch and then Bear Mountain for hiking.

The hike started in an abandoned town with a funny name, Doodletown. There wasn’t much to see of the ghost town other than occasional remnants of stairs or foundations. Right at the beginning of the hike, we spotted some beautiful butterflies.

We also spotted cute chipmunks!

Sean and Vinny took the lead for much of the hike.

Beautiful moss on a crossing:

One of the magnificent views along the way:

Feelings of joy from reaching the first starred vantage point on the map.

We could see the city in the distance!

Everyone had to capture the view.

Then, Vinny spotted something interesting below.

However, while investigating it, he fell down and we had to rescue him.

Caroline and me:

We spotted some creepy crawly wildlife like frogs:

millipedes:

and mushrooms that look like expanding foam:

By the end of the day, we hiked a total of 7 miles and climbed over 1500 feet. You can see the RunKeeper data that Sean captured. Mine is missing the first .5 miles of the hike.

After the hike, we went to Manhattan and met up with Leslie and Meixin for ramen at Jin. Too bad I was too tired and forgot to take pictures ):.

The next day, Caroline, Leslie, Sean and I met up in Smorgasburg for a food adventure through Brooklyn and Manhattan! Half of Sean’s sandwich:

Uttapam wrap!

Fruit pop!

Manhattan, seen from Brooklyn.

New York > Chicago.

Sean trying to photobomb a picture of a jalapeno pineapple fruit pop.

Tea from Kung Fu Tea.

We walked over the Manhattan Bridge to Manhattan.

The Brooklyn Bridge and Jane’s Carousel viewed from the Manhattan Bridge.

We made a pitstop bought some macarons at Almondine. They were great.

We took the Subway back to Brooklyn and walked through Dekalb Market on the way to dinner. It is really my kind of market, a large lot with stores and eateries housed inside shipping containers.

Late, we had dinner at Chuko. It was the best Ramen experience I have had and hands down the best vegetarian ramen I have tasted (even better than Totto). If you visit New York or if you live there, the food at Chuko is well worth the trip to Prospect Heights.

Finally, we went to Sean’s apartment to enjoy the view from his building’s roof and rest before Caroline and Leslie returned home.

When booking my tickets, 10 days seemed like more than enough time to spend in New York. It definitely wasn’t. New York, I shall return.