Cool cloud.
Cafe lover.
No parking, with emphasis.
The sprinklers in this park are watering an awful lot when we're not supposed to water our lawns much during the drought.
It's gonna take a lot of nickels to get much time.
Highway 68 on the way to Monterey gets pretty plugged up around here during rush hour. I think a big part of the problem is the road goes from two lanes to one here.
Normally I don't like bicyclists in the road as they really mess up traffic, but he's far enough off the road it's fine.
Also, he's going faster than all of the cars, at least in this area.
Birds hanging out on top of the vehicle.
It's such a pain trying to get health care. First I need a PCP referral, then I can get an X-ray or MRI, and then I can go to a specialist. Theoretically I can go straight to a specialist with my insurance, but none of these will see patients without an MRI.
Waiting outside the urgent care center with a few other people to be there right when they open. I was going to go to my PCP but when I called the one listed on my insurance online, the clinic said there was no provider with that name there; how wonderful.
Even being one of the first ones there, I had to wait around an hour.
They have pictures of this photographer up.
The doctor who saw me. He was nice, but he didn't even touch me, just asked questions and did an X-ray. Wouldn't feeling my shoulder possibly help to figure out what's going on?
They gave me a CD of my X-ray, but who has CD players on their computer any more? It'd be more useful to get a USB drive.
Ogii has a nice view at her office.
Fun license plate.
This father and son has very large zoom lenses on their cameras.
A guy getting a picture of his dog.
Lots of Magikarp near the Monterey wharf.
Ooh, a Blastoise. You normally don't see one of these, just the weaker Squirtles that evolve into him.
Oops, I used the Pokemon Go on him, which will almost never catch a strong Pokemon like him. Better to catch him manually.
There are often tons of Pokemon at the end of piers.
Another level.
These are pretty rare.
Althoug the evolution isn't useful.
It appears you can now order McDonald's on mobile and pick it up.
A nice rainbow.
Aw, the ramp is closed.
I'll just go around. Except this road is also blocked off.
So I had to drive on this dirt road to get around.
And dodge around all of this farm equipment.
Tractor crossing.
And sure enough, there one is.
I almost always bring the Prius in for an oil change a bit after the 5,000 mileage, so the mileage on the sticker is always some odd number, like 110243. However, this time I brought it in just under 110,000, so...
... I got a nice even number on the sticker.
When I'm shopping on a day I'm not working, I always wonder how so many other people are shopping as well instead of working. I have a rather weird schedule at times, but shouldn't all of these people in this store be working instead of being here?
Lots of fruit trees. It'd be nice to have all of them in the back yard for fresh fruit.
The handle was so hot from having it in the oven I wanted to cool it down so I didn't accidentally grab it later. This is also the first time I've used the faucet sprayer here.
A nice steak from Costco.
Friday night dinner and movie.
Too many balloons in our bedroom.
The mileage is a palindrome.
Early morning conference call with the parents, Monica, and Ogii.
We went to Castle Air Museum for a car show.
Nice little museum.
Lots of PT Cruisers.
Bears on this one.
They had some pretty murals.
Very American.
British.
A firefighter doll putting out the fire on this one. Also a mini PT Cruiser on top.
Dogs.
Onto the classic cars.
Big motor.
Lots of bombs dropped.
Even the name "superfortress" sounds huge.
Guns on the front of this one.
Dodge Viper.
A Bristol Roadster, the precursor of the Shelby Cobra. You see a fair number of Cobras at car shows but not many of these.
Pretty bare bones...
...except for the motor, which is huge.
Cool doors on the new Stingray.
Another huge plane.
A flight simulator.
A very tall truck.
I like the skull with a crown on the front of this car.
Another one where the rest of the car is quite bare.
Ogii in front of a transport plane.
Simple seats.
Pretty picture.
A car with a toy car.
It's amazing how these rotors don't hit each other.
Very pretty green car.
Another plane you could walk into.
A view from the plane.
Looking towards the back.
Gotta have coffee.
It's a refueler.
Ogii in the cockpit.
Too many gauges.
This man was the one who laid in the back and guided the probe into the other plane.
He was showing people where he laid and explaining what he did.
Even more cars and planes.
One of my favorite cars with a bullet. Some barbed wire, too.
A pistol shifter.
Gatling-gun exhaust pipes.
Ogii by a huge bomb.
Where the bomb comes from.
The engines are so complex.
They were also giving helicopter rides.
Extra gas for the helicopter.
Thankfully the line was very short. Us running up to the helicopter as they refuel it.
Ogii getting in.
Us inside.
Ogii in front.
The air museum and car show from above.
Lots of similar houses.
Coming back down.
Cool center console in this car.
A drone.
A band.
The food court.
My favorite plane, the SR-71 Blackbird.
All of the hotels in downtown Fresno were completely booked. So I reserved a room in a hotel here, by the zoo, which should be a pretty nice area, right?
Nope. We saw at least three hookers walking along the street, even in the middle of the day, as we drove along the block. Lots of other cheap hotels here, too. You'd think with a name like "Executive Inn" it'd be in a nicer location.
Ah, this is why no hotels were available downtown. The Future Farmers of America had them all.
Neat tables and chairs.
A big burrito for Ogii.
The fountain at the courthouse park.
Time for a poker tournament.
We were both doing fairly well.
Me playing.
We both got knocked out before the money, though. I had K7 suited vs Q7 off-suit all-in preflop and lost, even though I was a 76% favorite. Ogii had AA vs AK all-in preflop and was a 93% favorite and lost. Oh well, all you can do is play correctly.
Onto cash. I got really lucky with this hand and had top set when both other players also flopped sets; we were all-in on the flop. A third diamond came on the river but thankfully neither of them had a diamond draw. Although I had more chips than either of them so I didn't make too much money.
I built my stack up to almost four times what I bought in for. It would have been nicer to cash in the tournament, but still not a bad night.
Off to the zoo the next morning. Wow, that's a huge line.
And it's still going.
I think we'll skip the zoo for today.
Onto Forestiere Underground Gardens.
A little history on the place.
Pretty flower.
Ogii at the entrance.
Ogii is the first visitor from Mongolia.
One man dug out all of this by himself.
A well.
There are lots of fruit trees.
A vine that grows through multiple sections of the wall.
His bedroom.
Bathroom.
Kitchen.
A little hole he could look through to see visitors waiting at the entrance.
A tree with multiple fruits.
This tree had seven types of fruit grafted onto it.
There are three levels to the place.
Going down one set of stairs.
Ogii at the bottom.
It got cooler as you went down.
A fruit tree sticking up from a lower level.
A scraper he used to dig out the earth.
There were many of them made.
A fig tree.
Flowers out front.
Ogii by the flowers.
This one is huge.
Onto the Shinzen Friendship Garden in Woodward Park for a cultural festival.
Some bonsai trees out front.
Lectures on trimming them.
Pretty park.
Tea house.
Cute turtles.
Very picturesque.
Fish.
Ogii on the bridge.
Children's activities.
Vendors.
A bonzai collection.
Very nice displays.
Quite complex.
I love the thick wood on this one.
Ogii on a shaded bench.
A view down a stream.
A little waterfall.
Looking towards the bridge.
Japanese food.
Drummers.
More bonsai trees for sale out front.
Another stream out front.
Then to the Fresno State campus for Vintage Days. We hadn't even heard of this but a woman at Forestiere Underground Gardens mentioned it, so that was nice.
Giant balls.
A dunk tank.
Lots of good food.
Beer tent.
The event covered a large area.
Petting zoo.
Pony rides.
Many vendors.
Metal sculptures.
Hand-made wooden toys.
Very nice metal photographs.
Dichroic glass.
Wow, that's gorgeous.
We got Ogii a necklace and matching earrings.
Wooden cutouts.
Metal flags.
These bowls are neat; they fold down into platters. Although the only time they're really cool is transforming between the two, and you can't do that if you're serving stuff on them, maybe only before or after, so the cool part really isn't seen much.
Kettle Korn and boba, but the line was too long.
Another food court on the other side.
Live music.
That sounds fun.
Aw, students only. It sucks being old. Although maybe we could take a class or two to get a student ID just to get into the parties.
An agricultural laboratory?
Yep.
With cows.
And sheep.
Very neat decorative walls.
I haven't parked away from a building to park in the shade of a tree in a while, but it was hot today.
Next stop is Oh Wow! Nickel Arcade.
Only $2.95 to get in.
Six-player X-Men.
Skeeball.
I hit a lot of the 50s and made 220 points.
Ogii's turn.
150 points.
Basketball.
I used to love Rock N' Bowl as a kid.
As well as Hydro Thunder.
DDR.
I wonder if anyone still uses the cards for it.
Ogii playing Wheel of Fortune.
She's really into it.
Thankfully at only a nickel a play, it's cheap to play a lot.
This was the closest I got, but Ogii hit the jackpot!
Pinball.
Tekken 5 has a stage with a lot of women in bikinis in the background.
The old next-in-line quarter holder.
We cashed out exactly 400 tickets.
A party came in later on. Fun place.
I don't think any of these are anything a real undercover spy would use.
A few cops out on a rural road with their lights on; I wonder what they're doing.
A huge patch of bright flowers on the way to work.
Samsung Pay has Samsung Rewards, which you can use any time you use the app to pay.
You can use them in addition to your normal credit card rewards, which seems really good.
Except it takes a ton of points to get anything decent, and you have to use the app a lot to get to the 4x bonus.
Live at the Bike videos on YouTube have way too many ads; each of those little yellow spots in the timeline is one, and it's only a 15-minute video.