2025 JM Pizza, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles Trip
(8/2/2025 - 8/8/2025)
2025 JM Pizza, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles Trip(8/2/2025 - 8/8/2025)
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On Saturday, August 2nd, 2025, Katherine and Brian first flew to the San Francisco area to see some friends, then we drove to Santa Barbara, then drove to Los Angeles. We took our little dog Ava along, and it was Ava's first airplane trip. Remember you can click on any photo below for the highest quality original version that exists. Here was our itinerary:
- Sat, Aug 2 - JM Pizza Party (15415 Shannon Rd, Las Gatos, CA)
- Sun, Aug 3 - Jenny Fong / Michael - Delores park (591 Dolores St, San
Francisco, CA)
- Mon, Aug 4 - drive (4.5 hrs) to Santa Barbara, dinner with Randy/Ramey
- Tue, Aug 5 - 2pm - wine with Randy/Ramey/Doug
- Wed, Aug 6 - drive (3 hrs) to Los Angeles, dinner with Chungs (25 Thorsen
Ranch Rd, Rolling Hills Estates, CA)
- Thu, Aug 7 - pizza with Jason Knight
- Fri, Aug 8 - drive to LAX (drive 1 hour to airport), fly home to Austin
Pictures mostly in time order. Below we are are preparing Ava for the airplane ride by getting her used to the "pet carrier" she will ride in. She willingly crawls into it near my home office to hang out, which is good.
Below is Ava on her first airplane ride! For takeoff and landing she gets "stowed" under the seats in front of us, but sometimes during the 3.5 hour flight she rides like you see below.
Katherine is tired because we got up early to catch the flight.
At JM Leon's house in Los Gatos. On far left is Wendy Riggs, her husband Nick Tingle in back facing camera, Ram Bajwa (white hair facing away from camera), Pavni Diwanji, and Katherine Chung.
The pizza oven with a view! In the picture below you see the pizza oven is fired up cooking a pizza. The stone surface has pizza dough directly on it (and the stone rotates slowly), and the big paddle has a propane canister behind it under the pizza oven. JM used a thermometer laser gun to check the surface of the stone was between 700 and 800 degrees. A "Neapolitan pizza" actually has standards that it should be cooked at these high temperatures. It is very fast to cook, like 90 seconds.
Christilla (Chris) Leon, JM Leon, and Pavni Diwanji eating pizza.
The following day Katherine and I met up with Jenny Fong and Michael Enslow at Delores Park in San Francisco. Below I took a screenshot of my phone to remember where I parked, LOL.
A panorama from the very top of Dolores Park. This is a famous spot to take a photo. It's also a nice day for this, and a good example of the "scene" on a nice weekend day here.
Near the top, all in one section, some men are wearing skimpy bikini briefs.
Back in the hotel room, Ava (who is always with us everywhere we went on this trip) is leaning up against me. She seems happy, and loves this adventure, but is a bit clingy maybe due to so many new places and things and people to meet.
The next day we drive to Santa Barbara. Ava is in the rear seat of the rental car, and below is her "elevated" doggy perch. Ava LOVES car rides. She is quiet the whole time, just peering out the windows watching the world go by. This was a 4+ hour drive and she mostly sat up in her car seat like this. Side note: there are steel loops built into the car for children's car seats to mount to. That is how this dog perch is anchored.
In Santa Barbara we stayed at Hotel Milo.
Katherine checking into Hotel Milo.
In the front lobby of the hotel, they had s'mores! Outside in front you can see the gas table top to cook the marshmallows.
View from our room. The hotel Milo has several buildings, all kind of "U-Shaped" around little courtyards like this.
Ava likes sitting up on the bed (which she is not allowed to do at home). We build her little ramps of other furniture so she can climb up and down easier.
The hotel Milo is wrapped around a restaurant called "Chad's". This restaurant was originally the very first "Sambo's"! We had a Sambo's in my home town in Oregon (there were over 1,000 scattered about in the franchise). The restaurant's name comes from the two partners that opened the restaurant: "Sam" and "Bo". For a while they borrowed the artwork and story of Little Black Sambo for promotional purposes which was a terrible mistake. "Chad" is the grandson of the original Sam of "Sam and Bo".
We got wine out on the "Deep Sea Tasting Room" on Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara.
From left to right: Randy Wilson (my brother), Doug Wilson (my cousin), Ramey Echt, and Katherine Chung.
I brought along a Starlink Mini to play with while traveling. There wasn't any real need, it was just an experiment for later. Below you see the entire thing, it is the satellite dish, and built into the satellite dish is a WiFi hotspot. The dimensions are about 10 inches by 12 inches by 1 inch. Where the 1 inch thickness is only really at the center and it gets thinner around the edges. This barely takes any space in my regular carry on airline luggage due to how thin it is. Also pictured below is a car suction cup mount I bought (but basically failed, it fell off and the Starlink Mini still worked fine), and I used this Starlink Mini car power adapter (also seen in the picture below). I brought along a Anker 737 Power Bank which I estimate will power the Starlink Mini for 4 hours but I didn't use it. I SHOULD have used it because when we shut off the car for 10 minutes like at a rest stop it stopped the power to the WiFi. If I had wired in the battery (where the battery is charged from the car's USB ports) I think it would work even better.
Below you can see how I attempted to mount the Starlink Mini in the rear window of the rental car with the suction cups, but it "fell down". I just left it there flopping around and it worked well anyway. It "rattled" against the rear window so I taped some napkins around the corners so it didn't annoy us while we drove.
As part of the "experiment" I had a Nestcam setup to live stream the drive from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. This helps me check how consistent the internet connection is (Nestcams upload their video constantly in real time). Below you can see the Nestcam on the dashboard. I didn't need to stick it down or anything, the weight of the base was good enough.
Below is another angle of the Nestcam.
Below you can see the clever Starlink Mini charging cable. It plugs into the cigarette lighter outlet on the car, and provides a USB port to power the Starlink. This is all hidden inside the center console between car driver and right front car seat. The center console is where I should have placed the battery "inline" so when we shut off the car at a rest stop for 10 minutes we still had internet.
Here is the whole Starlink Mini and Netscam system driving south on California Highway 1. Ocean is off to the right.
This next part is kind of funny (to me). The Starlink Mini wanted to upgrade it's software while we drove. So I clicked <Allow> and it downloaded it's update while we were driving. This is also important because it caused a reboot of the whole system causing an internet outage for a few minutes.
Okay, below you can see that I tested the internet connection about once an hour on our drive from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. The speeds varied around a little, but 50 Mbits/sec download speeds were the "minimum" I saw, and 123 Mbits/sec were the "maximum" I saw. Uploads are always slower and you can see those numbers below. The "ping/latency" was between 21 ms and 29 ms.
The screenshot below I took of the Nestcam website after the experiment was all over. This is to show any network "gaps" in the constant never ending Nestcam uploads. Two things are important:
The thumbnail below is not linked to a video yet! Don't click it!
Along the drive, I kept seeing these "bells" by the side of the road. I looked it up, and they are "Mission Bells" marking the path of "El Camino Real" which is a 600 mile route connecting the 21 Spanish missions in California.
Seen in Los Angeles (map link: https://maps.app.goo.gl/1FBCC7qLct3Jo3Ba9 ) is this crazy "Red Bull Mini Cooper Pickup Truck".
Below is a random picture of a Southern California beach we are driving by.
Katherine and I stayed at the Shade Hotel in Redondo Beach.
Random screenshot below of the location in relation to Palos Verdes (where Katherine grew up).
This is the view from our hotel room of the Redondo Beach King Harbor Marina. Random factoid: I bought a boat from this marina 23 years ago (in 2002) and hired a professional captain to help me drive the boat from Los Angeles to San Francisco Bay.
All the rooms here have "tubs" on the decks overlooking the marina. I think it's very strange. At least we're on the second floor. The tubs on the first floor decks literally have people walking by at "tub level" all day long. It would be pretty odd to use the tub.
Early in the morning, Ava came out with me on the deck while Katherine was still sleeping. Ava watched all the people walking by (and birds and other things) intently, and would "woof" if the people walking by had a dog with them.
Ava is very strange. We brought the pee-pad with us so Ava could be comfortable and pee inside the hotel rooms. Here she is lying down comfortably on the pee-pad. Now Ava DID USE the pee pad sometimes, and would never lay on it after she used it. I think it's strange.
We met up with Katherine's parents Yong (용) and Ki (기) for sushi. Also seen below is Will Chung (Katherine's brother).
I have been noticing these eBikes with kind of fat tires that you don't have to pedal in several cities (including Austin and Redondo Beach and Santa Barbara). I stopped these kids to ask about them. A common brand is "Super73". The decoder ring for these is:
Another brand of eBike seen below called an Aventon. Notice the thumb throttle near the right handlebar.
The eBike below is another brand called "Rad Power eBike".
Ava (dog on far left), Will, Yong, and Katherine at the Rolling Hills Chung house. The bright sun kind of washed out the picture quality.
Katherine and Ki in the Rolling Hills Chung house.
Will brought rare flavors of KitKat chocolate bars home from South Korea.
We had pizza with Jason Knight near here at Paisanos Pizza & Pasta in Hermosa Beach.
The morning we checked out of our hotel in Redondo Beach, we had brunch at "Sea Level Restaurant". Very scenic. Ava hopped into her pet carrier.
Picture just to remember this: Rat Beach means "Right After Torrance" (it is just south of Torrance County Beach, between the cities of Torrance and Palos Verdes Estates). Katherine used to come here with her friends because it was the a reasonably close "sandy beach" to where she lived in Rancho Palos Verdes growing up.
Spending a few hours at Katherine's parent's home, Ava was woofing/barking and unhappy until I let her into this room where she could watch the bathroom door. Ava is waiting for Katherine to come out.
As we depart LAX airport, a picture of "Los Angeles Welcomes You".
A blurry picture on the airplane ride home. Katherine was moving and the light was low.
That's it, all done! Stop reading! The rest are just notes for me because I forget things.
This is not for you! Stop reading! I'm old, I forget
things, this helps me remember for next time.
That's it! That's all the pictures. All done!