The Aldridge Artifacts: My Not-So-Brilliant Idea....

Well it has taken me three weeks to actually publish this post....

Matt and I drove out to Patterson, CA to look at houses (more on that later) and to drive around the town to get a feel for it. If one were to look on a map to find Patterson it is directly East of San Jose. But between the two cities there are mountains or foothills... so my brilliant idea was to drive back through the mountains to San Jose to see if was any faster, mind you I did this spur of the moment without researching on the web first.... BIG MISTAKE! I now look at the map at look at the winding roads and cringe a little and I am good car rider. Friends you know I will drive a good distance to get something or go to eat some where. Think somewhere past Grapevine all of my Texas friends... ;)

The beginning of this two lane road seemed so pretty with its winding roads following a meandering little creek and offering a great scenic view. There were places to go 4 wheeling, fishing, and hiking all along the way. An hour and half into this trip we had only gone 20 miles... you have to take into account altitude because we were winding up these mountains... and we could not turn around. We could not turn around, we had to keep pressing on...

We were not even to the worse part of the trip...

The Worst part of the trip came at the very end of the trip as we approached/winded/climbed Mt. Hamiliton (you can see the top of this horrific Mt. from anywhere in silicon valley because there is an observatory on top so it serves as a constant reminder of this trip.) As we started to climb this mountain the road became curvier and curvier. We eventually ended up in the cloud bank in almost white conditions next to a cliff. It. Was. Terrifying. Really. As we reached the summit there was a school zone (I know random...) and I was shaking because I just envisioned us driving off the cliff and plummeting to our death. At this point I would of paid anything for a helicopter to come and get me to take me home, and I like driving in the car remember. Now we had to go down the Mt.. It was just as bad going down as it was going up.

All of the sudden we came across this hill and we could see Silicon Valley. It was a sigh of relief that we were almost home, 3 and a half hours to drive the 40 miles from Patterson to San Jose. I can put money down that I will never be on that road ever again in my lifetime. It definitely was not my most brilliant idea....