Michael As you might have heard, I've taken off two months from work at Yahoo earlier this year to learn surfing. During the first month, I kept driving down to Pacifica (15 miles south of San Francisco) almost every day, and caught some waves in the ice-cold water with my Alaska-grade Wetsuit and a newly purchased Foam Board . And then we went to Hawaii for three weeks, where I started exploring some surfspots on Oahu, mainly around the Waikiki area.

Michael When the old Hawaiians discovered how to surf waves on boards, they celebrated it as a community event, and the more surfers could paddle into a wave, stand up and surf simultaneously back to the beach, the better they considered the party to be. Compared to the massive wooden logs of yesteryear, today's high-speed epoxy boards are much easier to maneuver and for that reason, today's surfers don't aim in the direction of the beach when they set on to surf on a wave, but are riding sideways along the wave, going up and down, similar to a snowboard enthusiast swinging down a slope.

Angelika Since San Francisco has the Pacific Ocean right at its front door, which is why there's a great selection of fresh fish available, either for sale in selected supermarkets or readily prepared in fine dining establishments. Connoisseurs even have access to local oysters, prospering in the clean waters of the Point Reyes National Seeshore. We've mentioned Point Reyes here a couple of times already ( Rundbrief 04/2006 ), because we often drive up for hiking and to escape the hustle and bustle of the big city for a few days. The headland wildlife sanctuary reaches far into the Pacific Ocean and is located about one and a half hours north of San Francisco. The U.S. celebrates "Memorial Day" on the last Monday in May to honor fallen American soldiers, we had the day off and took the opportunity to spend three nights at the "Olema Cottages" near Point Reyes. We've always liked the somewhat rustic charme of the former farm, which has small but free-standing wooden houses for rent. Also, you might want to know that Memorial Day is the last opportunity to get away before the summer season and the start of the summer school vacation. In San Francisco, the last school day was May, 30th this year.

Angelika Every year in April, millions of American tax payers and consultants get very busy because no matter what, on April 15th, every person subject to income tax has to submit their tax documents for the previous year. Thus, this past April 15th, we submitted our tax declaration for the year 2013. Only if Aprith 15th falls on a weekend or holiday, the deadline gets extended until the next business day. It is possible to delay submitting the tax return by six months by filing for an extension until October 15th. But this doesn't mean you could pay taxes owed at a later date. If tax payers estimate that they owe taxes, they need to prepay the amount by April 15th, regardless of their extension status, or they will get hit by additional interest and penalty fees later. For this reason, I've never really understood why people file for extensions in the first place, because if I have to calculate how much I potentially owe anyway, I can just as well finish up the forms and submit my return, unless I know for sure that I'll always get money back by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Angelika I still remember the time when getting edible cheese in the U.S. was almost impossible. Back in the 80ies, when we were travelling cross country, the only kind of cheese for sale in supermarkets was usually sliced and shrink-wrapped Velveeta-branded chemical cheese surrogate. A few times we found good cheese, but it was always imported from Italy, the Netherlands, or France, and only the most popular varieties like Gouda or Camembert were available. I kept asking myself why on earth a country with so many cattle farms can't get their act together to produce better cheese.

Michael When I'm done surfing, I rinse off the wetsuit with fresh water to remove the sea salt, which would ruin the suit in no time. To do this, I simply take all the equipment with me under the bathroom shower and shortly hold the suit and the booties under the warm water before I move on to body care.