Do You Know the Way?

San Jose, CA, USA

San Jose is Greg’s home town.  Many of you have been told, by Greg himself even, that it’s San Francisco but it isn’t.  Why were you misled? You see, the San Francisco Bay Area is huge.  It’s simply massive…a mega-city that’s 7.15 million people strong.  It’s actually comprised of three large cities with several dozen large towns all filling in the gaps.  The entire bay is inhabited so town lines are sometimes a bit… arbitrary.

San Jose (technically the largest single city in the Bay Area, thank you very much) and Oakland, each weighing in at around the 1 million population mark, are no small villages and each is famous in its own right.  San Jose for all the tech.  Yes – Facebook, Adobe, Apple, Google, EBay, Yahoo, all that stuff is from Greg’s home town.  The fact that you can’t go five seconds in this modern world without something chirping at you?  His city’s fault.  The reason why both Starfleet Academy will be built here and Terminator’s SKYNET is SF based?  San Jose.  Tech is their thing.  (Ironic being as Tiffany is the techno geek of us but we digress.)

Oakland is famous for the Raiders and…er…Pixar.  Yes. (look, no one gets Oakland OK? 😉

On their own both of these cities would be major and known regional powers but they are located within an hour’s drive of one of the world’s most well-known cities: San Francisco.  So SF gets the bay, they get the region, heck they even get the baseball team (cuz who cheers for the Oakland A’s? pfft.)  As Greg has found that most people don’t want this entire explanation every time they ask “where are you from?” he just goes with “The San Francisco Bay.”

It’s just easier.

Oh and in case you don’t know the etymology of the title of this entry: it seems like every time anyone over the age of 30 finds out Greg is actually from San Jose they immediately break into a rendition of the 1968 smash hit “Do you know the way to San Jose?”  Then they smile, thinking they’ve been quite witty and smart in remembering a pop culture reference from over 4 DECADES ago.  Yeah…not so much.

(obviously, this isn’t us singling, and the rights stay with them.)

 

Greg: Everything my town does and really?  This?  This is what people remember?  *sigh*

For our time home we stayed with Greg’s mom being as we love her very much and she has all of our stuff. 😉  Even for a short, temporary return one’s life must be restarted at a basic level.  In order to keep things manageable and easier to put back when we leave again, we kept this only to the bare essentials, the things we had easy access to and that were absolutely critical to us…

 

It’s been years people, years.  The XBOX was clutch.

 

Tiffany went home to Florida for a week last year and she went in a life raft and got to play with firefighting equipment!  This was considered “training!”  Check out Tiffany battling the blaze by clicking on Tiffany and the STCW

About the authors

Greg and Tiffany are traveling around the world on sailing yachts and keep a video blog of their (mis)adventures. If sailing to Tahiti on a 44 ft sailboat, 3-day delays for wine tastings, getting pooped on by seagulls, opening coconuts with dull machetes, sailing past tornadoes and ukulele Christmas carols are for you, then check them out at www.CoastGuardCouple.com!

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