Samskeyti

The other night I was bored (which is very common when I'm not at work) so I Googled (since when did that become a verb?) "record stores". A small list of stores in the Fremont area came up but the one that most caught my eye was a store called Needle to the Groove, which sells only vinyls. Worried that it might be closed, I hurried to my car and punched the coordinates into my GPS navigator (which I have affectionately named Shilo Desiree, a name derived from two of my favorite Neil Diamond songs). About 10 minutes later I arrived at the shop only to have my worst fears confirmed: it was closed. It's located in one of those small downtown-type areas where everything closes at 5 PM. I made note of their Saturday hours and resolved to return on my day off.

Saturday (yesterday) rolls around and I leave my place around noon, which is when they open. I get to the store only to be met with a new sign on the window, "We will open at 1:00 PM on Saturday." Psh. Not far from the shop I noticed a road called Niles Canyon Road. I had about an hour to kill before I could head back and peruse their vinyls so I decided to try it out. After driving for roughly 10 minutes I came to a town called Sunol (sounds like the title of a Sigur Ros song). I got off the highway and drove through the town. There wasn't much to see so two minutes later I was back on the highway. After a few more minutes of driving, the road forked. I took the smaller of the two roads, Calaveras Road. It wasn't long before the speed limit was reduced to 25 MPH and the two lanes became one. The rest of the road was a series of switchbacks that curved up and down the side of a small hill-like mountain.

I took some pics.

Driving on this road made me feel like I was in a John Steinbeck novel (a lot of his stories are set in California, not too far from here).

I tried getting artistic with the barbed wire. The body of water in the background is Calaveras Resevoir. It's funny, you can always tell when it's a fake lake. Either way, it was still pretty.

The road took me to a town called Milpitas, which is sandwiched between San Jose and Fremont. The part of Milpitas I saw sort of looked like it was in the 70's, which wasn't as cool as it sounds.

I made it back to the record shop. I added Led Zeppelin IV, Rush 2112, and Foreigner Records to my vinyl collection.

Next week: the Forest Moon of Endor.