Linden Street Brewery -- Oakland, CA

Easy to get to, and a nice place to get a beer before finding brunch.  Before brunch, because sometimes they have food trucks here, but then they don't, so you get a beer anyway while you load up Yelp.  Still trying to find that ramen guy ...

Brown Sugar Kitchen -- Oakland, CA

The claw!

Quick, enjoy it before there's a two-hour line of hipsters out the door!  The wait isn't a problem if they're recycling things across the street with that awesome claw, though.  Also, next time get, like, a million of those biscuits.

Madison Supreme Laundromat -- New York, NY

The place was fine, people were interesting to watch, and no one minded a guy with a helmet and a laptop.  Forget it Jake.  It's laundry time.

Holiday Inn Wall Street -- New York, NY

Note to self: Just dandy.  Do it again.

As long as the place is tidy, tall enough for me to get a nice view of the street,  and in a nice location, I'm good.  I mean, the zip code starts things out on a good footing already -- I'd probably be fine in a pretty slummy spot -- as long as I'm in the city.  Probably.

The place could use a little more Ramen, and some laundry, but it's in a great location.  I actually got to do runs up both rivers.  Reminder for next time -- the path up the East River isn't long enough for a full run.

Chevy Malibu (2014)

Redux: Stop the madness.

You know the feeling.  You look at the selection of cars and realize "oh great, it's down to just the American cars."  Does anyone actually *want* to drive one of these?

This thing handles like you expect.  You have no idea what the tires and the road are negotiating beneath you.  The handling feels like a video chat -- you move your hands but the steering doesn't see it for half a second.  A bouncy house and a fish had a baby and put a tinny engine in it.

It has cute bells and whistles .. but all the interactions with them are nonsensical.  Here's a sample of the goofiness.

You can pair up your phone and play music through the car's audio system.  Great right?

But the next time you start up the car, it seems to have forgotten all about that.  It just switches on the XM radio, tuned to whatever your first station preset is.  It doesn't even remember which XM station you may have last listened to -- it just switches on the first and starts blaring.  Before your stopover, you were grooving to Caro Emerald -- as soon as you start the car back up, you're listening to John Tesh.

Can you imagine if your first preset was a Country station?  Think of the children!