Tuesday, December 3rd: We hit the road!

We headed North for Canada, a trip we were spreading over the rest of the working week. The first stop was to be San Francisco (minus the other stops: food, nappy changes, toilet stops and fuel....! We know how to drag out a trip ;] ) where Jonathan's two brothers Jeremy (eldest) and Josh (who we had seen already at Thanksgiving) live and work. From Jonathan's mom's place in Lancaster it was to be a 5-7 hour drive, depending on traffic. We were planning to stay at Jeremy's originally, but it didn't work out - Jeremy decided it was cheaper to put us in a nearby hotel/motel than the dogs in the dog hotel ;) We didn't mind, as Jeremy's wife, Sarah is 3 months pregnant with their first baby and we are quite a force to have invade your small home!

We arrived around 4:30pm which wasn't too bad. Jeremy works for Facebook, and wanted to show us around and take us their for dinner. Wow. We battled a bit of traffic to get there at 6, being city, but arrived at the (appropriately named) "1 Hacker Way" complex. We headed for building 12 at Jeremy's instructions, parked and headed in. We had to sign a disclosure/waiver agreement to go in (that we wouldn't steal any intellectual kind of property) and they issued us with lanyards and let us in. The deal was that we weren't supposed to go more than about 12ft without Jeremy if we didn't want to attract security in large numbers ;)

Dinner is served at 5:45 and Jeremy took us straight there. There are lots of places to eat at Facebook (it's like a uni campus) but only a handful of them are open at night. Breakfast and lunch is a different story. Oh, and did I mention that it is free??? Apparently there is a Mexican restaurant and one coffee shop that you pay at but everything else is free. Dinner that night had a healthy theme (can't remember exactly what) and secretly we were delighted. There was also a ginormous salad bar (anything you could think of you wanted in a salad it was there, plus about 12 types of salad dressings which Americans don't eat salad without!) and dessert too.

We had a bit of a tour after dinner. The kids had a run around and Jonathan managed to take some photos of Mark Zuckermann's (???) office which you are not supposed to (or point at, believe it or not!) - oops! We also picked up some burritos (free) because Jeremy wanted to take one home for Sarah for dinner and Josh, who was coming over. Jonathan also went to get some pizza (more free). Lastly we went through the buildings to pick up some stuff from Jeremy's desk. As we were walking through, I was behind with Moses letting him walk. We passed a guy working at a desk and Moses looked up and said, "Hi!" so he said "Hi!" back, to which Moses went "Hi!" again and kept walking. Very cute! Jeremy said to take some snacks for the kids (see the photos - free drinks, snacks and coffee in every work area) so I took some little oatbar things. Ezekiel took some turkey jerky! I only found it when I got to the car ;) Jonathan said they also have a free vending machine with things like iPhone covers in it and things, you just swipe your ID card and you're done!

We went back to Jeremy's and met Sarah, said hi to Josh (who had the cold we had too!) and then went back to our room. We had two queen beds and one portacot Jeremy had borrowed. Silas and Zeke shared the queen bed against the wall, and Moses had the cot.

The next morning we went to Jeremy's again, and fed the twins the instant porridge I still had from Australia for our plane trip (the instant porridge mixes here are sickly sweet in comparison). Then everyone explored out in the sunshine (though cold!) in the yard. Jeremy is lucky to have quite a decent yard considering where he lives. The kids harrassed his meek little dog, called June-Bug and climbed around all over the place. Then we needed to get some breakfast...but by then we had missed the breakfast boat. We ended up with an early lunch of....burgers and chips. Hmmmm. Not that they were bad, it wasn't a fast food place, but by now I can't even look at a picture of another burger...!

In the afternoon Jonathan dropped the kids and me back at the room so they could sleep and Jonathan could spend some time with Jeremy (they went and explored Facebook by daylight, Jeremy really wanted us/him to come and see everything we couldn't see at night). We went out for dinner - I managed to order some chicken and roast potatoes, the guys had pizza (!) and we shared a delicious plateful of rocket/greens salad!

Back to our room for the night - off in the morning!