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Riding the Rails, Canadian Cuisine, Earthquakes, Mexican Ice Cream Robots, Hopping the Bus, Getting Close to a Shark Tank, Tacos and Goals and Riding my Bike to Jail…oh, and 6-foot Muppets with Hometown Pride…
At the crack of way before dawn, I put my couple-decades-old Worksman Cycles folding bike to work. (I just picked this up off Craigslist a few months back on the cheap–it was covered in tree sap and grime and the previous owner was looking to clear space). It’s a single-hinge folder that I outfitted with a homemade tin cup coffee-holder/phone-speaker amplifier. It feels strange riding a small-wheeled bike with raised seats and handlebars after years of rolling on my hybrid Trek and–especially–our beast of a Yuba Mundo, but I like the change of pace!
I couldn’t find reliable information about bike racks at the Amtrak Station, so I looked nearby to see what was available. The best close option? The county jail. It was a block away, well-lit, and maybe–ironically enough–the safest outdoor parking spot downtown. (I can’t imagine too many people leaving jail feeling brazen enough to steal a bike five feet from the guarded front door.)
Our train trip from Sacramento to San Jose on the Capitol Corridor was easy as pie. During the week this is a pretty packed commuter train, but at 7:40am on a Saturday it was a ghost town on rails. As Russell and I lamented numerous times, we wished that it was more cost- and time-effective to take the train more often, because it SURE IS more pleasant than driving (understatement of the day).
Again, the train provides a scenic view and smooth ride that is just…so…pleasant. (if I was stuffed in a 3-piece suit with a briefcase, checking emails in a packed compartment on the way to a business meeting in another county on a Wednesday, I suppose, I’d take a less wistful view of things.) That being said, leisurely cruising with my buddy to partake in a day of fun, food, and fútbol in a new city we were eager to explore afforded me a rose-colored view. Yay, train travel!
Upon entering downtown San Jose, one of the first things that caught my eye was a bike rental terminal for Bay Area Bike Share. I am so excited for Sacramento to finally get a similar program (which is currently in the works). New York, Chicago and other cities with far less-hospitable climates, topographies and cycling cultures than Sacramento already have these ingenious systems in place. Someday, they will be the norm, and I hope that day comes soon.
The next thing that caught our attention is the SAP Center, colloquially known as “The Shark Tank.” No, it’s not a huge aquarium, but the home of The San Jose Sharks, one of the NHL’s top-performing and best-supported hockey teams. Russell and I are already making plans for a return trip to San Jose to catch a Sharks game later in the year. California sports fans are rarely noted for their passion or consistency–(which, on the whole, is healthy, considering that the cities in The Golden State that have professional teams ALSO have a glut of natural beauty and year-round activities that the nation’s other sports hubs lack; hence, the fans don’t “live and die” with their teams’ fortunes as much as they do in, say, Pittsburgh)–but San Jose’s mix of techies, outdoors enthusiasts and every stripe between embraced the sharks from game one over 20 years ago and have built a formidable and knowledgeable hockey culture in the backyard of Apple, Intel, and the beaches of Santa Cruz.
Russell did some spot-on research and found a place that serves actually serves poutine (the “National Food of Canada”–which tastes a whole lot better than that title, or the above photo, would lead you to believe), so we knew that that was on our list of places to check out. (Poutine is french fries and cheese curds covered in gravy–the kind of thing I usually avoid like the plague, since I started eating healthy four years ago. However, this was a special day, and, you gotta live a little, right?) With “The Shark Tank” being a few blocks away, it makes sense that this restaurant was near San Jose’s largest and most significant monument to Canada.
What we didn’t know, though, was that the poutine-serving establishment–The Little Chef Counter–was housed in an awesome area called the San Pedro Square Market. This indoor/outdoor pavillion just off the main artery of the financial district has live music, communal and private seating areas, quirky and artistic items for sale, and–best of all–some really good, eclectic dining options. The mercantile-style setup has open restaurant counters lined up next to each other, making for a grown-up, really nice and not-at-all-skeezy version of a mall food court, for lack of a better description. In addition to our French-American find serving poutine, there were brick-fired pizza, crepes, sushi, Vietnamese Pho, falafel, Japanese-fusion burgers, chop-house dining and other options from which to choose. We were ready to add another small entree as a chaser to our Canadian carb-fest until we entered the rear Public Market building and Russell spotted…
TREATBOT.
Russell is a discerning man and doesn’t throw out superlatives if they aren’t duly earned, so, when he was audibly excited and made a bee-line for the parked food truck at the end of the market, I knew we were in for something good. Russell had first encountered Treatbot and its specialty ice-cream shop/karaoke bar on wheels when it took part in one of Sacramento’s major food truck events (SactoMoFo) and been quite a hit. Russell knew of my appreciation of the Mexican sweet rice and cinnamon drink, horchata, and said that they had a horchata-flavored ice cream. He had me hook, line, and cinnamon sinker. I tried to savor my scoop of horchata without just inhaling it (it was maybe the best ice cream I’d ever had), while he tag-teamed horchata with seasonally-limited pumpkin spice. This was a formidable combination, to say the least.
Oh, and they have a sweet ice cream trike which, obviously, piqued my cycling interest. I love that these things are becoming more commonplace. I also appreciate that such purveyors of frozen treats have stuck with cycling-specific bells and horns and not felt the need to adopt speakers blaring Scott Joplin’s “Entertainer” like their four-wheeled forebearers. (Yes, in theory, the quaint nostalgia of the ice cream truck is great. But when that white windowless van with the one-song soundtrack rumbles down your street every single night, you may adjust your opinion…)
Our bus ride from downtown San Jose to beautiful Santa Clara University, home of The San Jose Earthquakes (until their soccer-only venue debuts in 2015), took just a few minutes. Again, it was so nice not to drive a car for one minute on this day. Having lived roughly 18 years in Southern California and 18 years in Northern California, I have traversed the state many times behind the wheel and–while many of those trips have been great–I wish now that I would have utilized public transit a whole lot more. While it is convenient to have your car with you, especially in a new town, you sure do miss a lot stuck in your cocoon of four-wheeled convenience (at least I do). It was nice to see two ads for Bay Area BikeShare on the bus, reinforcing that point.
We scored some great seats just across from the north goal box, the weather was gorgeous, and the house was packed. If you’re going to a sporting event (or any other outdoor gathering, I suppose), you really can’t ask for more.
While I have and will continue to love baseball and its pastoral nature, its timelessness and lack of a play clock, the rich history that mirrors that of the nation’s last century and a half, and the wealth of fine writing it inspired from some of the 19th- and 20th-century’s best authors and chroniclers, I am falling for soccer (or fútbol, or footy as the rest of the world knows it) for some of the same reasons, and for some different ones as well.
It is a very elemental game, and simple in nature. This (and, sadly, early 1900’s colonialism) led to its truly global appeal. While American football is played almost nowhere else on the planet and baseball has long taken root in the Americas and Asia and–more recently–parts of Oceania and Europe, Soccer is, far and away, the world’s most popular and most-played sport. It’s universality is remarkable. It is played in sprawling deserts, mountain villages, crowded city streets, barren frozen landscapes, and every type of topography in between, by large groups and solitary figures alone with a ball.
The greatest common denominator, most interestingly, in communities that play soccer and have it as a major cultural touchstone is that it is the pastime of the poor and working classes. America is the only country where largely middle- and upper-middle-class children grow up playing soccer and sticking with it to secondary school and beyond (obviously, children in traditional soccer-loving immigrant-influenced communities and families do this, as well). I encourage anyone, even those who do not consider themselves at all to be sports fans, to follow at least a wee bit of the upcoming World Cup next summer. Soccer can tell us much about the rest of the world. Just as delving into baseball history, (especially as it relates to The Civil War, Westward Expansion, Industrialization, The Great Depression and the Civil Rights Era) could get you a few credits toward an American Studies degree, so can the study of the unifying, political, and socio-economic nature of soccer’s relationship with its peoples teach us–especially in the “exceptionalist” USA–a few semesters’ worth of International Political Science and Sociology courses. To this point, I highly recommend the book How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer, the editor of The New Republic and a journalist I much admire.
Alright, enough of my pontificating…sorry about that. The game was great–it had a touching tribute to retiring team captain Ramiro Corrales, game-long chanting/singing/drumming by the San Jose Ultras supporters section, big goals scored with requisite confetti cannon explosions (see above), tons of kids’ soccer teams there to see their heroes, and a lot of the quaint touches of large sporting events that get lost in the big-money leagues, here in the States.
Soccer, while on an unprecedented swing of growth and popularity in America, is still a niche pastime, nation-wide. One of the cool things about going to a pro (or college) soccer match here is that it is like a safe haven for American fans of soccer to wear their colors proudly. Even though there were, obviously, a huge number of Earthquakes jerseys being worn, there were also a boatload of shirts and jerseys touting teams from Europe, South America, Africa and probably just about everywhere else. This isn’t exactly like grown men dressed as Imperial Storm Troopers at Comic-Con, but when you know you’re among other people who are into the same fringe thing you are, you can wear that favorite shirt you may not break out at the coffee shop, you dig? For example, I actually wore a scarf supporting The Seattle Sounders, which the Earthquakes mascot, “Q,” made me take off (and then held up to the fans behind me to earn their scorn as he proceeded to mock choke me), and Russell proudly sported one of the sweet new Sacramento Republic FC shirts, adorned with the crest of our soon-to-debut River City pro soccer club.
Continuing with the day’s theme of combining new experiences with awesome food, we indulged in the offerings of one of the many on-site Food Trucks for half-time post-lunch sustenance. While there were great options before us, I was excited to see the “El Tonayense” truck. This truck is an off-shoot of a taco and burrito joint in San Francisco’s Mission District, famous for its Jalisco-inspired Mexican food. I’ve heard NPR broadcaster, podcast pioneer, raconteur and SF-native Jesse Thorn speak highly of “El Tonayense” over the years and was excited to try it.
* Editor’s note* [If you are a staunch vegan or vegetarian, you may want to skip the next paragraph]
We were not disappointed. In addition to the usual pollo and carne asada, we could also choose from lengua, cabeza and tripas (tongue, head and intestines of a cow, respectively) which are authentic but not impossible to find. What we did not expect, nor had we even known about, was the choice of “buche,” which is neck-meat. I grew up in San Diego, a half hour from the border, bombarded (in a good way) with Mexican food, with family in and from Mexico, and I had never heard of buche before. Russell ordered it, as well as pork adobada, for his pair of tacos. My two-fer consisted on one adobada taco and one with marinated vegetables. All four tacos, not surprisingly, were quite good, and didn’t last long.
The game ended 2-1 in favor of the hometown squad, and we filed out with the other happy folk, right past the food trucks, which did make us hungry for a little early dinner before we had to catch our train outta Dodge. For the first time all day, we rolled snake-eyes in this venture, with the only options close enough to the university and the train station being Starbucks and Quizno’s. Oh, well. While it would have been nice to find another local gem, we had already been more than fortunate and successful in this regard today, and I probably had enough rich food for the day, anyway.
The train station is literally just across the street from the entrance to the university, making the end of day’s trip as easy as could be. Russell and I got to the empty train platform with more than enough time to spare, affording us the opportunity to relax in one place, take in the dusk, feel the calming breeze, and leisurely recount the day’s activities to each other. For all of the possible pitfalls that could have befallen us (in the travel-inconvenience/setback context…I realize we’re privileged to be able to take a day like this and were in no danger of any kind), everything went smoothly with our various forms of non-car transportation and our extra-curricular activities and meals were fun and memorable.
While I missed my family very much (and was wistful and a bit teary-eyed looking at pictures on my phone and trading text messages with my wonderful wife), this was as good a day trip as I could have imagined, and I was very lucky to have a good and adventurous friend like Russell as a co-conspirator. I was glad, too, to be able to end the day with another relaxing train ride, where we could talk about big things and small things and look out the windows to see the water and the lights and the pieces of the California puzzle we often miss from the interstate.
8legs2wheels 
