This past weekend I made a trip up to NoCal (”Northern California” for those of you who aren’t cool enough to abbreviate…because abbreviating is obviously cool). My trip was split into three pieces: the greater San Jose area, San Francisco, and Berkeley.

I hopped in my car on Friday morning and made the five and a half hour drive through the desert by myself, with nothing to keep me company but the incessant singing of Lady Gaga (I swear, that’s the only music that plays on the radio out here). After stopping at a sketchy-looking Subway in the middle of the desert, I drove the final stretch to Los Altos, where I have some relatives. I got to spend some time with them eating good food, seeing Los Altos, and visiting Stanford. I even made my pilgrimage to the Apple Campus in Cupertino (I’m a dork, don’t judge).

The next day I went into San Francisco with the relatives and enjoyed a beautiful warm day. We walked around town, saw the Golden Gate Bridge, ate on the Fisherman’s Wharf, and absorbed some much-needed sun. It was good that I had been to San Francisco before, because the day went by so quickly! Before I knew it, I was hopping on the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to go across the bay to Berkeley.

I met Kevin on Cal Berkeley’s campus and stayed with him until Sunday afternoon. The campus was packed with prospective students and parents who were visiting for “Cal Day”, a festival which basically schmoozes prospective students into choosing Cal. Highlights of Berkeley included killer calzones, watching Sylvester Stallone in “Cliffhanger”, eating breakfast at a mexican rooftop restaurant, and making fun of the goofy parents who followed their students around on Cal Day (no offense to all the goofy parents out there, but foam visors went out of style a long time ago).

On Sunday I drove back to Burbank (with Lady Gaga), stopping at a Chipotle on the way. Nothing makes for a better five hour drive than shoveling a huge burrito into your stomach! If I had an extra day or two, I would have tried to stop by Napa and tour some wineries, but I had to be back to work the next day.

Today's Useless Fact About My Life In L.A.: If you compare the number of hours I spend driving each day with all of my waking hours in California this semester, it comes out to around 15%. That means 15% of the time I am awake is spent in a car. Whoa. (yay for hour-long commutes!)