DISCLAIMER: The following posts for the next two days will be mostly non-car/Honda related. The posts are more on the lifestyle side of it so if you come on here just to see cars, check back in a day or two…

Okay, finally back in business. I hadn’t really planned on going up to Norcal back to back weekends but I did promise DPK*David that I would go with him to visit the ATS guys whenever he had planned to go. I didn’t know he had his mind set on Labor Day weekend though, which was just one weekend after I came back from going up there with Rodrez. Luckily for me, Anh was able to hook us up big time with a pretty nice room up in San Jose so money wouldn’t be too big of an issue.  I had pretty much just planned on using the money for food and little misc. things like gas so May and I told David and his lady Jackie that we were down and we took off for Norcal late Friday night…

We were gonna get to Norcal really late/early in the am so it was just easier to stay at Ryan aka Rywire’s pad. He’s got a pretty big spot and it wasn’t too far from the hotel so it took us little to no time to check-in to our hotel the next day. By the time we arrived, it was probably about 4:30am or so. We were still pretty awake from the drive so we just kinda hung out before we went to bed…

Hanging out in Ryan’s workshop area where all the Rywire-magic goes down…He’s got a couple of other roommates who are also car guys so there were parts everywhere throughout the house. I literally slept next to a set of BBR wheels and a Backyard Special front bumper in the room that I was staying in…

Trash…I’m just sayin’ 😉

Like 5 minutes after we finally went to sleep, Darryl from DPK’s Element pulls up and out comes Black Pie, Jared, and Darryl. I guess they randomly decided to make the drive to Norcal to hang out and the couples weekend that the girls were kinda looking forward to went right out the window, haha…

We all slept for about 3-4 hours and woke up to go eat breakfast and check into our hotels at the Dolce Hayes Mansion…

There wasn’t anything really good to eat in the area and we were gonna grab food again down at the Wharf later on that afternoon so we settled for McDonald’s…

After we finished eating our McNuggets, we were off to Dolce Hayes Mansion…

Here’s the view of the outside as soon as we rolled up. It was a pretty sweet spot to stay at. Very classy and had that nostalgic feel to it. Weddings are really popular here probably because of the backdrop and how it is sort of removed from everything else…Anh showed up to make sure that we were all checked-in properly before he went to work…

It was so nice outside that I decided to get everyone together to take a group shot. From left to right you have Jared, Ryan up front, Anh in the back with half his face covered, Black Pie is in the middle taking up all the space, DPK*David, Jackie, Darryl, and May…

Ferd from ATS wanted to go down to Fisherman’s Wharf with us so we headed over to his pad to meet up with him…

I didn’t know any of the Norcal heads actually lived in one of those houses that’s on some crazy hill with a driveway that is pretty much impossible …

Pie doin’ his thing…

I took the liberty of takng out complete shots of Ferd’s project because I wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted it out there or not…

Darry’s Element on TE-37 wheels…

Here we are just getting into downtown San Francisco…

May forgot her hoodie at the hotel and it was pretty fuckin’ cold so she went out and picked-up this “Hella SF” hoodie…

Jared attempting the reach-around on metal chilren…

Another group shot, this time including myself and ATS Ferd…

The girls took a picture together as well…

It was time for food again so I went to the usual spot to grab a shrimp/crab sandwich and calamari…May got the clam chowder and it must have been good because we both look super excited in the picture…

Ryan paperbagging it and looking as miserable as possible…

After we finished eating our seafood, we walked over to the old arcade museum because a couple of the guys that were with us had never seen it before…

Most of the games were old as shit but were still playable. This machine that Black Pie is playing with apparently isn’t used for arm-wrestling and it’s primary purpose now is to eat people’s quarters….

Ryan hand-cranking an old XXX machine…I imagine beating off was quite a task during the era when these machines were in use. I mean, what if you’re about to finish and then you have to insert another quarter or something. Then you have to start hand-cranking the lever again to build momentum and you lose your own momentum on the other arm and you can’t even blow your load on the side of the machine anymore…shits wack…

I’m not entirely sure what they were doing here. Probably a failed attempt at break dancing or something…

On our way to Ghirardelli Square, I saw this cable car operator snapping a picture of something. Not sure what it was since he probably rolls through there on more than one occassion everyday…

Our view on the walk over to Ghirardelli…

We got some free chocolate samples and David hung out with some of the ATS homies while the rest of us went to go do some wine testing. I don’t know shit about wine and I didn’t feel like drinking anyway so I just watched…

Jared, May, and Darryl wine-tasting…

It started to get dark and some of us separated from the rest of the crowd so that we could get ready for dinner with ATS Ferd for his birthday…

I ate at Osha Thai the weekend before with Rodrez so I decided to go back so that David and Jacky could try it. David said he was a big fan of Thai food so we definitely had to go…

May and Jackie after we all had a shot at Osha Thai…

May actually got some video during dinner with her Canon S3…Kinda random but I thought it was cool to capture the moment…

Ferd and David taking a shot of Patron for Ferd’s birthday. DPK David is a trendsetter and does the “lime before the shot” method…haha…it takes them awhile to do the shot because everyone kept trying to take a picture…

Here we are doing the birthday song thing to Ferd…It sounds like there were about 40 people singing the song but it’s just the 5 of us…and the waitress of course who just decided to lip-sync it and wave her arms around…

That’s about it for today. The shot above was actually taken before dinner. Ferd took us to the top where we could get a view of San Francisco. It was an awesome sight but it was also foggy and cold as shit. The shot is actually way clearer than the actual view…Anyways, I’m gonna post up the rest tomorrow of the ATS BBQ at Chris Sakai’s place. I was gonna post it all up in one day but I fell asleep like 4 times just doing the first half of this post…Alright, back tomorrow, peace…