Sunday, January 31, 2010

Saturday Morning Caltrain Adventures

We have seemingly started a new tradition in the last couple weeks by taking the Caltrain places to have Saturday brunch.

Two Saturdays ago, we took Caltrain to Laurel St in downtown San Carlos. We jumped on the 11:19am train, watched the world go by on the 25 min train ride, had a nice leisurely brunch at Town, stopped by Vanilla Moon Bakery for some delicious cupcakes, played a bit at this great, independent children's bookstore called The Reading Bug, had a little time at the train station to do some yoga (see pic), and then jumped on the 2:01pm train back to Mountain View. A 3 1/2 hr trip altogether - and a wonderful way to spend a Saturday morning / afternoon.

Then, this past Saturday, we took the train to Menlo Park. While we hopped on the 11:19am train again and rode 15 min to Menlo Park, Wendy drove to Stanford Shopping Center to run a quick errand and met us for brunch at Ann's Coffee Shop, an old-school, inexpensive greasy spoon in the middle of posh Santa Cruz Ave.
After brunch, we met up briefly with our friends Joyce and Eddie to meet their new baby Diego at Cafe Borrone down the street. And then we drove home together. In hindsight, we could have easily taken the train home after that (the next train would have come in 15 min at 1:14pm), but it worked out well nevertheless.

This new "tradition" has been a lot of fun for us, and something we might try to do a couple times per month. We can have fun riding the trains and explore new restaurants and towns, all without having to get in a car!

More potential Saturday morning Caltrain stops:

Monday, January 25, 2010

Our Threshold for Taking Public Transit

We try to take public transit as much as possible instead of driving - not only because it's friendly to the environment, but also because Kaiya loves riding the bus and train! For trips within ~ 15 miles of our home, it works out well especially since we have such great access to public transit in downtown Mountain View. Beyond that, it sometimes works out and sometimes doesn't.

Here is the thought process we went through a couple Saturdays ago when contemplating a trip up to Oakland:
  • Saturday morning plans: meet our friend Marna at 10am near Lake Merritt (where she lives) for a stroll around the lake + farmer's market, roll over to Fenton's in nearby Piedmont for baby Vivien's first birthday party from around 11:30am til 1:30pm or so, and then back home with either a nap in transit back home or when we got home
  • Public transit options: From our general knowledge of Bay Area public transit, we knew that I had two options - 1. Caltrain to BART (Mountain View to Millbrae) , BART to Oakland, bus from Lake Merritt to Piedmont; 2. Drive to Fremont, BART to Oakland, bus from Lake Merritt to Piedmont. With Google Maps very cool public transit option, we could figure out if either of these options were feasible.
  • Option #1: We knew that we would have to deal with the infrequency (only 1 per hr) and slowness (no express trains) of the Caltrain on the weekends. What we didn't anticipate was challenging connections in Oakland - the closest BART station (19th St) was 1.5 miles from the Lake Merritt farmer's market, which would mean a 30 min walk or waiting for a bus (also ~ 30 min). Total trip time to get Lake Merritt: 2.5 hrs. We could either leave at 7:10am and arrive at 9:30am, or leave at 8:10am and arrive 10:30am. Yikes!
  • Option #2: On the positive side, driving to the BART station in Fremont on the front end and walking from the 19th St BART station would eliminate the hassle of transfers. On the negative side, the 21 miles to the Fremont BART from our home in Mountain View is almost 1/2 the distance to Lake Merritt. 30 min drive to BART + 10 min to get tickets + 40 min BART ride + 30 min walk = 1 hr, 50 min total trip time. A significant improvement over the Caltrain/BART option and probably would have been okay on the way there (we both have lots of energy and the novelty of the BART and walk), but probably would have been a disaster on the way back (both of us too exhausted to handle a 2 hr trip home).
  • Conclusion: Feel a tad guilty for driving all over the Bay Area, but feel better that we at least considered our options and gladly trade the convenience of a 50 min drive to/from Oakland (not to mention getting from Lake Merritt to Fenton's).
  • For future reference: Getting to SF on the weekends is hard enough (1 hr 15 min to SF from Mountain View) via public transit - getting to the East Bay is nearly impossible. Best just try to make sure we take advantage of our time in the Oakland/Berkeley and combine visits (see multiple friends and/or make multiple stops).

Friday, January 1, 2010

We Can Save Millions of Trees...

... By using cloth napkins at home instead of paper napkins. One stat (from the Natural Resources Defense Council) is that if every American household replaced one package of 250-count virgin fiber napkins with cloth napkins, 1 million trees would be saved from the chopping block. For more info, here is TreeHugger's analysis and a run-down of green/greener options from Care2.

At home, we have been using cloth napkins for a few years and now it feels totally normal. We have ~ 20 napkins that we use for a few meals and then just throw them in the laundry. Less garbage, fewer trees cut down, and no hassle on our part.

We were recently looking to buy some cloth napkins for Grandma, and finding super eco-friendly cloth napkin options (i.e. bamboo, hemp, organic cotton or otherwise sustainable fabric) is not that easy. We eventually narrowed it down to these choices:

Kaiya & Daddy New Year's Resolutions

New Year's Resolution: get outside and play more!
  • Visit the park more often
  • Take more walks around the neighborhood
  • More regular visits to the garden
  • Bike rides to daycare and around town
  • Go camping (Angel Island in July is booked!)
  • Play at the beach
  • Hit the hiking trails at Rancho San Antonio
  • Visit the farms where we buy food from like TLC Ranch
  • Use our Monterey Bay Aquarium membership