After a restful night of sleep at Uncle Ira's, we woke on Monday to do some quick exploring of San Fran before starting the four and a half hour drive out to the ranch in North Fork.
The view of San Fran from across the water. (I had a ton of really great pics of us all fucking off on some crazy-ass abandoned military base near here, but alas, they were amongst the pics on the card that was in my Canon Rebel - yep, the ones I erased.)
We got to North Fork and met up with Fatty and Grant's good friend Aaron Schmidt who had driven up from San Diego to visit with his boys. We dropped our stuff off at the ranch house and by the time we'd driven back into town (around 10pm, mind you) the only place open that was serving food was McDonalds (where the heat wasn't working). Here's us with Aaron "Double A" Schmidt eating and freezing.
Fatty took himself a little post-McDonalds nappity nap and opened his eyes just in time to see Grant taking a picture of him as lead star in the first braining of our California adventure.
Tuesday morning we got up bright and early: eager to explore our surroundings. (Keep in mind, there are like NO LIGHTS on the ranch. We'd arrived in the dark and hadn't even really been able to get a good look at where we were staying). Here's Ross and Jord's ranch house from the back.
The house is located on the 4,000 acre Wyle ranch;bought by Frank Wyle, Jord's maternal Grandfather, in the 60s. (Frank is one of the guys who funded the
development of the calculator!Holy crap. And her cousin is the guy from ER. You know you love
him. Don't be shy, go on and join. You know you want to).
Another one of the houses on the land. The guy that owns this house is the Italian studies professor at UCLA. All of the stones used to build this Italian-style house were brought over from Tuscany. (For real).
The ranch has a ton of free range cattle. Here are some action shots of them grazing. (Despite my hopes that the cattle would chase us or do something zany, this is about as exciting as action shots depicting cattle get).
After walking around for a few hours - we planned to go into town and play PAINTBALL! But then, um, it turned out the paintball place was closed on Mondays. FUCK! So instead of running around and getting exercise and being healthy, we decided to go to a nearby restaurant and get CHICKEN FRIED STEAKS with COUNTRY GRAVY. (*Falls to ground drooling and clutching heart*)
After food we went back to the ranch and relaxed. Then later that night we drove to the nearest theater (like 45 minutes away) to see the midnight showing of the third installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. (Bonus points to Grant for flipping the bird while pulling a Pomodoro Guy face! Noice!).
After getting our eat on and saying goodbye to Aaron, Fatty and I left Grant alone to work on the book while we set out to do some more exploring of the ranchlands.
See that grate? That's there to prevent cattle owned by one family from walking onto someone else's property (without having to have a gate that blocks all the roads). People and cars can drive over it, but cattle - with their hooves - can't cross it. Neato, right?
We were planning on riding horses the next day so Fatty and I decided to walk over and try to make friends with some of the guys that we might end up riding.
Horses are pretty fucking scary if you're not used to being around them. My only experience with horses up until then had been in enclosed spaces. When these horses (that were grazing in an open field) saw us step across the hoof guard thingy into their field, all four of them came galloping over to us full speed. I was looking at Fatty like "Should we run?" In the end we realized that they were just excited to see new people, but it was still kind of unsettling having an animal that big excited to see you.
Another thing I learned (other than the fact that I'm apparently a little frightened of horses) is that cattle are really dumb and really suspicious (buy hey I guess if some guy in a funny hat cut my balls off and burned a logo onto my ass, I'd be a little more wary of people too).
Later that night Grant, Fatty and I went over to the The Buckhorn, the local cowboy/loggers bar to do some research for Grant's "Sex Advice from Cowboys" article. Here's me with the bar's very real stuffed bear.
