Weak End

[howeird]

Had a full weekend. Started Saturday taking the car to be washed, then edith_mf came over and we went to Little House in Menlo Park for a talk/panel on Islam, presented by CAIR. On the panel were three American-born Muslims and one foreign-born. The latter was the only male and by far the most knowledgeable of the four. Their message was that Islam teaches peace and justice, and The Prophet would not have been pleased with the violent reactions to those cartoons. When asked what they were doing to spread that message to the people who were rioting, they said they were working hard to do that but blamed the media for not covering it. The old saw about riots being news and peace talks not being news. I don't really buy that.

They had free copies of the Qur'an and a DVD on the life of Mohammed, so I picked up one of each. I had read the Koran in college, but that was so long ago that all I have are impressions of it being a guide to how to follow the Old Testament in a tribal warfare environment. It seemed pretty warlike to me, but the reason I read it was to see what the Crusaders were up against, so I wasn't looking for words of peace and harmony.

We tried to go to the Crazy Buffet for dinner, but the place was packed and they weren't doing anything to seat the 20 or so people in the lobby, even though there were plenty of empty tables. We  didn't even realize there was a "take a number" system until someone who got tired of waiting gave us her number. We bailed soon after, and went to Todai at Valco instead. Pricey, but excellent food and no wait to get in. They were busy too, just more organized. I hadn't been to Valco in months, and didn't know they were doing a major building project. It's going up on top of what used to be the entrance to the parking garage which I usually used. We had to circumnavigate the mall to get to that lot.

Sunday the only thing on the agenda was to go to the Mountain View art & wine faire. It was a bright sunny day, pretty warm, so I rode my bike to the foot of Castro Street (about a mile and a half) and parked it at the CalTrain station, then walked the length of the faire about three times. Despite the great weather, people were not scantily clad, so my camera did not get much use. The faire was much smaller than the last one, a block shy of El Camino, a block shy of Central Expressway, and no booths at all on some of the side streets. There were also gaps where booths should have been, and a couple of companies just didn't show up. I think Mountain View has two of these a year, and the second one is bigger.

After the faire I went in search of a map of the Bay Trail, but there doesn't seem to be one. Neither of my nearby bike shops had anything showing the trails I was on last week. Maybe tomorrow when I go out at lunchtime I'll just take a photo of the map they have posted.