Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

A few days ago I wrote about our resolution to try new restaurants. We actually made that resolution a few months ago. And even that wasn't the first time we've made such a resolution. Like widely unkept New Year resolutions to visit the gym twice a week it was made with good intentions but poor follow-through. A few of the failed starts for our try-new-restaurants resolution were understandable because Covid. Now that we're sort of past that* it's time it's time to stop make excuses.

The first new* restaurant I'll write about is Gumba's, an Italian restaurant right here in Sunnyvale, a fixture on Murphy Street downtown for... I don't know how many years. It seemed to be a local fixture already when I visited it on my first trip to Sunnyvale, a few months before moving here, in 1996.

That's right, Gumba's is not literally new to us. We've eaten there before. That's why I put a star next to "new" in the previous paragraph. But that's totally fair to our resolution. When I write "We're going to visit new restaurants" that's a short-hand for our actual resolution, which was "We're going to visit restaurants that are new to us or that we visited so long ago they might as well be new to us."

How might-as-well-be-new to us is Gumba's? I ate there several times in the late 1990s. I don't think I've eaten there since the early 00s, though— about 20 years now. Maybe we ate there last around 2005-2006? Either way, it's been a while.

So. We went again. We ate. How was it?

My first impression of Gumba's on our recent visit was "broken down and over the hill".

Gumba's Then & Now

Gumba's has always been a cramped restaurant on a historic street with old buildings. Years ago is was almost always a bustling restaurant. Whether you sat in the tiny main dining room, the slightly larger back dining room, or the al fresco tables on the sidewalk, it was crowded.

When a restaurant is bustling it's like the field of view narrows around you. The full tables halfway across the room blur into the background as you focus on what's in front of you: good food and good friends. Good times. That's how I remember Gumba's from 20+ years ago.

On the night we visited there were maybe 5 tables in play at the whole restaurant. The sparsity revealed how the Gumba's is only a dusty shell of its former self.

Instead of the dining area feeling excitedly cramped with the hustle and bustle of full tables and waiters dodging every which way, it just felt cluttered. There was too much kitsch everywhere, like the restaurant was run not by a person wanting to convey a theme as much as by a hoarder. And so much of the dining area was taken up by overflowing crap such as extra chairs, stools, storage racks, etc. Really, the whole place screamed "hoarder".... or at least, "Grandma and Grandpa who can't throw anything away."

🎵 SIgn, Sign, Everywhere a Sign 🎵

Then there were the signs. There were signs everywhere. Signs with directions. And by "directions" I don't mean signs like "Venice 30km" to set the mood in an Italian restaurant. Gumba's is full of signs giving instructions to customers. ...Not just instructions but admonishments. ...Admonishments like, "If you do this thing we don't like, this is the consequence." There's a minimum order per person. Limit 1 refill on sodas and iced team. A limit on how long you can stay. Limits on other stuff, too. While many of these things, individually, are sensible business, putting them on signs sends a peculiar message. The message is that the owners view their customers with deep suspicion, that customers would all cheat them given any chance and so ground rules must be clearly established.

I don't feel like eating again at a restaurant where the owners regard me as a likely nuisance.

And the Food?

The food, by the time it came, was frankly beside the point. We were all but certain not to come back. Not to a trying-too-hard Italian restaurant full of clutter, crap, and written warnings.

It helped, though, that the food was... fair. Just fair. It was middle-of-the-road, standard fare for an Italian-American restaurant.

FWIW our waiter offered to sneak us an unpermitted extra refill on our glasses of iced tea. We turned him down, not wanting to get in trouble— or him get in trouble— in case the senile paranoid owner was watching on a hidden spycam or something.

There's been a lot about "revenge travel" in the media the past several months. People are traveling more now to make up for things being closed and people choosing to stay home during the depths of the Coronavirus pandemic. The trip we took to the Pacific Northwest last weekend (which I'm still writing about a week later and need probably another 5 days to catch up on) was revenge travel— but not Coronavirus revenge. This was revenge we've been waiting for longer than that!

In 2017 we took a 10-day road trip to the Pacific Northwest. Things went well, if busy, for the first two days. Then things started to go sideways. A nonsense road closure kept us from a scenic drive near Mt. Rainier. A weather closure kept us from a day of hiking around Mt. Rainier we'd hoped to do. We made alternate plans, but then minor sickness trashed those plans. Finally, just as we were starting to get things back on track the whole trip crashed, hard, when our car broke down. Five days of plans were torched.

The trip we took last weekend was basically us getting back up to Mt. Rainier & Mount St. Helens to do the stuff we were blocked from doing five years ago. ...Well, three days of the stuff we were blocked from. There's another ~2 days of sightseeing and hiking in central Washington that's still on the list. Hopefully it doesn't take another 5 years to complete our revenge!

When the Coronavirus pandemic started I made a huge shift in my eating habits. Overnight I went from dining out in restaurants 12 times a week— basically most lunches and dinners— to cooking and eating every meal at home. I didn't eat restaurant food at all for the first month. Since then, and especially since getting vaccinated over a year ago now, I've eased back toward my old habits. I haven't gone back to dining out 12 times a week but I'm getting close. Lately I've been dining out, say, 10 times a week.

Lately my cooking habits have regressed, too. Instead of preparing delicious, made-from-scratch meals several times a week, like I did early in the pandemic, I've shifted to making mostly convenience meals: heat-and-eat meals, microwaveable food, etc.

This week I decided I can do better. I used to do better! So I know I definitely can. It just takes... planning. And time.



Tuesday I made myself a steak dinner. I defrosted and grilled some short rib I've had in the freezer for... ugh, over a year. (I wrote the date on the freezer bag I packed it in.) That tells you how far behind my old cooking cadence I've fallen. On the side I made creamed spinach from a can of plain spinach, adding butter and cheese to it in a saucepan, and heated a roll of French bread in the stove. Not pictured: the 2½ glasses of Cabernet Franc I drank with it. 🥩🍷😋

Making this meal proved two things. ...Well, three. It was delicious. But other than that it proved two things.

First, cooking real meals at home takes planning and time. Before you can eat the meal you have to buy the food. Then you have to prep it. Then you have to cook it. The steak, for example, I already had in the freezer. But I had to plan ahead to defrost it. I started that Sunday night. But then I had such a long workday on Monday I was left with no time to dress it... or to refill the propane tank for the grill outside! So I put off making my steak dinner until Tuesday. Tuesday it almost didn't happen, either. But late in the afternoon I carved out time to buy gas and I switched my plan from marinating the meat hours in advance (I had no time to do that) to using a last-minute salt and pepper rub instead.

The second lesson is kind of embedded in the first: While cooking takes planning and time, it's doable... when planned ahead. You've got to buy the food or defrost it ahead of time. If there are prep steps like marinating meat, you've got to plan those into the schedule. And when unplanned stuff happens like working stretching 'til after 6pm with no break, as it did on Monday for me, you've got to be ready to call an audible... like "I'll make the steak on Tuesday; let's go out for pizza tonight."

That Monday night pizza was awesome, BTW. But so was the Tuesday steak dinner. And it was actually way cheaper, even though it was prime meat, because I cooked it myself instead of paying a restaurant.

Business travel has been resuming slowly over the past several months. It's like it's taking baby steps.

   » In November we had a luncheon for area employees to meet the execs. It was travel in the sense that we went somewhere and met f2f... even though the travel was, for most of us, just a drive to downtown San Jose.

   » The first flight for a business trip wouldn't happen until our Sales Kickoff in March... by which point it was my first flight for work in 2 years, 2 weeks, and 2 days! But even the SKO was just another baby step as it was an internal meeting, no customers.

   » My first in-person-with-customers meeting since February 2020 is tomorrow. ...Though it's a drive-to event again; a trade show in San Jose. Baby steps!

   » But I'll have a fly-to event with customers next week, in Austin... unless that gets canceled like many other events have so far this year! 😨

So, I'm presenting at a trade show tomorrow. I'm teaching a 2.5 hour workshop with a colleague who flew into town this afternoon. Our boss came into town, too, though he won't be helping with the class tomorrow. The three of us met this evening for a business dinner.

Business dinner. BUSINESS DINNER! An opportunity to carouse on the company dime! ...At least that's how many sales teams treat it. Our dinner this evening was low-key.

Oh, we killed a bunch of fish at a sushi restaurant near the hotel, but there was no carousing. The bill of $150 (before tip) for 3 of us included only $20 of alcohol. I had one beer, my boss had one small bottle of sake, and that was it as far as booze was concerned. We all had sodas or iced tea as our main drinks.

We didn't even stay out late. Normally a business dinner of colleagues who've scarcely seen each other f2f would stretch late into the evening. Tonight we wrapped it up at 6:30. Both my colleagues were tired and want to wind down doing other things. One wanted to call his wife. I dropped them back at their hotel and drove home. I was back in my own house a whiff after 7pm. 7PM! Most business dinners are only getting started at 7pm!

Baby steps.

Day 0 of this sales kickoff (SKO) went pretty easy. I landed in Las Vegas after 2pm, got to my hotel by 3pm, and largely took it easy until just after 6. Then there was a reception at 6:30 on one of the decks outside.

Doing a meet-and-greet with people in person was like exercising and old muscle that hasn't been used much lately. In fact basically not in... 2 years, 2 weeks, and 2 days. In that time a lot of new people have joined my company. And I've seen many of them... but only in 2D. In 3D some of them look different!

For example, my boss is 6'5". He does not look that tall on camera. He positions his camera in his home office in such a way that it makes him look of average height, about 5'11".

Meanwhile one of the VPs in our organization positions his camera in the opposite fashion, making him look an imposing 6'2"... with a haughty and abrasive communication style. He's actually about 5'5". Seeing him in person, in 3D, totally changed my perspective on him. Now I see him as a yappy little dog, a person who projects his insecurity by barking constantly. I noticed a lot of other people recalibrating around him, too. He grabbed a microphone to speak and couldn't even project his voice with the help of a microphone. People ignored him instead of kow-towing to him. I wonder if he'll even last 6 more months now.

Our reception wound down at 9pm. In 24/7 Las Vegas that seems lame but it's actually a good thing. Some people see these SKO events as boondoggles, opportunities to live it up with drinking, gambling, dancing, etc. to all hours of the morning. But the fact, is they're more like timed rallies.

With 12+ hours a day of training and other events that you have to be "on" for, there isn't room for dragging yourself back to the hotel in the not-so-wee hours of the morning and then working through a raging hangover the next day. It's better you get yourself to bed before midnight each night— and not stinking drunk— so you can be ready for a full workday the next morning beginning at 7am.

Next: Mostly Maskless in Vegas

I now have a business trip planned for January. Sorta. My company is hosting two in-person technical seminars, one in Atlanta and one in Austin. They're pilots for launching a larger series of similar events, around a dozen in all, later in the year.

I say sorta because I volunteered quickly when I saw an open slot needing a presenter at the Austin conference, but almost immediately after signing up I started to have second thoughts. The Coronavirus pandemic is hardly over yet. Infection rates remain alarmingly high overall, and the impact of the new Omicron strain has yet to be seen. And Texas is politically a Covidiot state, with laws enacted by its Republican legislature and governor to ban common-sense health measures such as mask requirements. I seriously may look for a colleague who's interested in taking my place at the seminar.

If I do stick with volunteering for this seminar, tt'll be my first business trip after 23 months. Yeah, it's been a long time. I'm itchy to get back out on the road, in front of people. I've just got to be confident I'm not putting myself at unacceptable risk.

Update: On January 3 the company canceled all in-person events for the month.

We had dinner with a friend last week. Once upon a time we used to see him at least once a week, either at a gathering of friends at a restaurant or at one another's house. Since the start of the pandemic 20 months ago we've seen him maybe three times. As the topic of conversation came around to gradually resuming normal (pre-pandemic) life he quipped, "I forgot how to people." Meaning, talking to people in person now is unfamiliar and taps skills and energies that have shrunken from disuse.

Have you forgotten "how to people"? 

For myself I'd say the answer is No. I still "know how to people" even if I've been doing it a lot less for the past nearly 2 years. For me it's like learning how to ride a bike: once you learn you don't forget. But also like riding a bike, if you haven't done it in a while your balance maybe wobbly and you may tire quickly. Or maybe you've just lost interest in bicycling. That's how it feels for me. After so many months of having infrequent and brief f2f conversations I've become accustomed to not talking to people in person. I've stopped seeking it out. I'm actually fine being at home, by myself or with my spouse. I've got to rebuild the proverbial muscles— but more importantly, the desire— to meet people in person again.

Eldorado National Forest, California
Friday, 16 Jul 2021. 10pm.

After hiking to the fire lookout atop Bunker Hill— the one at over 7,500' in Eldorado National Forest, not the one in Boston— we drove across the Crystal Basin area to the vicinity of Wrights Lake. As the crow flies it was a distance of about 15 miles— we could see Wrights Lake at the foot of the Crystal Mountain range clearly from the peak— but in the car it was a drive of about 30 miles as we wound around mountains, ridges, and lakes. Then, once there, we had to find a campsite.

There was good news and bad news on camping. The bad news was all the developed camps were full. We know; we checked several of them. And this was on a Friday, before the leave-after-work crowd had arrived. Earlier in the day a ranger advised us most of the sites were already full from Thursday night, with people staying through multiple days. "Revenge travel" is definitely a thing now. People are looking to get out again after Covid lockdowns have lifted. And indoors activities still carry some risk, so people are going all-out on the great outdoors.

Anyway, said it was good news/bad news. The bad news was all the developed campsites were full. The good news was we didn't need a developed campsite. We came ready to rough it.


In the national forests there's a practice called dispersed camping. You just pick a spot and camp there. There are rules to it. For example, you can't camp within 1 mile of a developed use area, within 150' of a stream, or in designated sensitive areas. And right now you can't have a fire except in a fire ring at a developed campsite. Fire danger is real— we know because we saw one this evening!

We found a nice little spot a few miles out the road from Wrights Lake. We parked our SUV in a gravelly pull-off (another one of the rules of dispersed camping is that you must park off the road) and toted our tent to a spot about 150' away underneath a stand of trees at the edge of a meadow. While we could still hear cars traveling the road we were far enough back to have some privacy.


Hawk and I started setting up the tent together. Assembling the poles and threading them through the stays in the fabric is best done as a two-person job. Then I left her to finish the rest, including carrying our bedrolls out from the car, while I set up our camp kitchen and cooked dinner. I did the cooking next to the car to keep the food smells that might attract bears away from our tent. Also, it was easier not lugging all the cooking gear and food 150' away.

For dinner we ate hot dogs with tortilla chips and guacamole. The hotdogs we brought from home; the guac we picked up fresh-made at a grocery store this morning. I washed it all down with two bottles of beer while we sat on folding camp chairs beneath the darkening night sky next to our tent.

I stayed out until about 10pm, watching the stars come out. We walked out into the meadow next to us to get a clearer view. Even early in the evening there were so many stars out. It's amazing what the difference is when there's no light pollution. I would've taken some night-sky pictures but I'm still beat from our hikes earlier today. I'm going to hit my bedroll and try to get well rested for a big hike tomorrow in the Desolation Wilderness.

We had friends over Sunday evening. Once upon a time that would've been barely worthy of note. Back in The Long-Long Ago (i.e., before the pandemic) we had friends over at our house a few times a month. But that was... *checks watch*... 16 months ago. Sunday was only the second time in 16 months we've had friends over.... and the other time was over 2 months ago! Since then our house once again got cluttered.



Unlike in XKCD we didn't use cleaning as a reason not to have guests. We simply cleaned. Fortunately, 1) our house is by no means a disaster zone; mostly, it's just cluttered. 2) We cleaned two months ago before having friends over that one other time, so some things we cleaned then didn't need cleaning again this weekend. Or they only needed a touch-up. And 3) the friends were only coming in through our foyer, up through our living room, to our dining room and kitchen. We don't have to clean the upstairs.

The 20 Minute Rule & the 80% Rule

In the past I've talked about The 20 Minute Rule for cleaning. Well, I've talked about that in person; I'm not sure I've posted it here. The idea is to break down big, imposing cleaning tasks— the sorts of things it's tempting to procrastinate— by tackling them in 20 minute increments. Staring down at, "Ugh, I have to clean all the bathrooms, vacuum the carpets, and scrub the whole kitchen!" is hard. But saying, "I'll commit to 20 minutes and knock out one or a few pieces of the whole," is easier to manage.

The necessary cleaning today took more than 20 minutes, even with both of us working on it. But that's okay; 20 minutes is a minimum, not a maximum. We gave it 20, liked the progress we'd made, and in that found motivation to do another 20 minutes, then another to polish things up.

Yeah, it took us 3 x 20 minutes x 2 people today. That's what happens when we let things slide. The 20 minute rule is best applied as an everyday thing. Just do 20 minutes a day and there will rarely be a need for a major clean. That idea's also reflected in something I read recently I call the 80% rule: 80% of cleaning is simply putting things away.

That may not describe your house but it definitely describes ours. A lot of our messiness is clutter, things we didn't put away at the time because we expected to use them again or were plain lazy. After a while those bits of clutter stack up. Some of our cleaning today was actual cleaning— vacuuming floors, wiping tables and railings— but much of it was putting things away, especially sorting out things in the various "landing zones" we have on and near our dining room table.

One thing that's changing as lockdown lifts and life returns to normal is eating out at restaurants. When the lockdown started (actually a few days before it started) I made an abrupt change in dining habits. I went from eating restaurant food at least 12 meals a week down to 0. Zero. I didn't eat restaurant food for a month! After a month I started to do takeout, but only twice a month at first. Gradually I increased that to once a week, then to twice a week— especially as pleasant summer weather made outdoors dining a thing.

I never felt frustrated while my eating-out habit was way down; I was happy that I was cooking at home. Part of it, yeah, was knowing I was safer at home. But a bigger part of it was knowing that home-cooking was cheaper and healthier than buying restaurant food. The pandemic was kind of the kick in the pants I needed to change my habit.

All throughout the lockdown I wondered, When things return to normal will I eat at restaurants twice a day again? I hoped the new habit I created of cooking at home a lot would endure. Sure, I knew my dining-out frequency would be higher than zero; the point was, would it be significantly lower than the old 12x a week?

I'm happy to observe that over past week I've only had restaurant food 4 times. That's actually exactly what I'd set my goal at: twice during the week and twice on the weekend. I'm looking to make something around 4x/week the new normal.

A big part of what's helping me maintain this new normal is having food I enjoy at home. Yes, being forced to kick the old habit has helped. But it's not just about practice saying "No" to going out to restaurants. Any behavioral psychologist, even any dog whisperer, will tell you that to eliminate an undesirable behavior you need to replace it with a satisfying good behavior. A key to being able to eat at home, for me, has been having food I enjoy eating at home. Several times this past week I've thought, "Hmm, I could go out for lunch today..." then thought about food right in my kitchen that would make me happier overall than going out.