The Foggy City

San Francisco!  Gosh it’s good to be back.

So let’s see:  I guess this post begins the day before yesterday.  After spending the day in Sebastapol, and seeing the coast and some more redwoods, we decided to head into Frisco for the evening, to meet up with some of my friends from high school.  We drove in across the Bay Bridge, and listened to the radio…

“San Francisco’s smoooothest station, for R&B after dark…”

It felt like the Frisco I remember.  Memories of high school came flooding back.  I used to spend holidays up in San Fran with my peers, when it was impractical to fly all the way home to NJ.  The boarding school I went to in Southern California, Thacher, had a large number of students who called the Bay Area home.  So I spent a fair amount of time up here, and have always loved this city.  I have been wanting to move here for some time now, and just haven’t gotten the courage.  Something about living in a city again scares me, and on top of that, the idea of working a 9 to 5 again, while struggling to save money, just doesn’t appeal to me.  But being here and seeing all of my old friends, in their new and exciting adult lives, the idea of coming here is one I won’t push aside for much longer.  One day, I will finally move here, like I’ve been telling myself since I was 15.

Anyways, we spent the night at Chris’s house, after grabbing a drink with some old cronies.  In the morning, we hung around Chris’s house until lunchtime, catching up on years past.  Chris is writing screenplays for a living, and aside from his amazing personality and heart, his intellectual pursuits made me remember why I’ve always loved him so much.  Now, he is channeling his creative genius into words, and doing it in such a lovely and novel way.  I was really glad to tap into his brain for a minute.  Lucky to have such great friends.

We went out for sushi for lunch, which was lovely.  It’s been a while since I’ve had good sushi.  The edible joys of living in a city.

After lunch, we left Chris to his writing, and hopped on the Muni to downtown.  We got off a couple blocks from Chinatown, and walked….and walked….and walked….all day.

It was AWESOME to get back to using my legs.  For a second, I wasn’t sure how much they remembered what it was to put one foot in front of the other.  It was refreshing.  It got me thinking about my upcoming trip overseas…I will be walking everywhere, and seeing amazing little streetside markets and weird things along the way.  I can’t hardy wait.

We stopped in a park, in search of a public restroom, and immediately realized that we were being stared at by masses of men playing cards in clusters all around us.  Perhaps we weren’t supposed to be there?  We moved along.  You can kind of see one circle of gamblers behind Ray, here:

We walked through Chinatown, and into the Embarcadero area, by the ocean.  We walked along the piers, and into a weird kind of Disneyland-ish slash Jerseyshore boardwalk world.  This, I’ve learned, was called Fisherman’s Warf.  There were gift shops galore, and expensive ocean-view restaurants abound.  We went up to the deck area overlooking the ocean, to use the restrooms, and heard what sounded like barking seals.  We followed the sounds, and lo and behold, there were a ton of barking seals, laying all silly-like on the floating docks.

It was pretty fun to watch them bark and snort at each other, bickering over who rolled over whom.  It was funny how uncomfortable they all looked, while there were numerous unoccupied docks just a couple feet away.  So it goes.  We videotaped their eccentric behavior, while narrating their actions like Randall, narrator of the Honey Badger.  Have you looked that up on YouTube yet?  Do it.

We looked over the bay at Alcatraz, while Ray slurped down a soft serve cone.  There were two cones, and I used the other as a false nose.  It’s been brought to my attention that my nose is rather…let’s say…conspicuous.  It’s got personality.  So I thought I’d try to cover it up.

Looks good, no?

Anyways.

That pier was fun.  So much fun.

We retraced our steps back through Chinatown, to find the same Muni stop that we got here on.  We walked a very long way that day, and my feet were killing me.  I was wearing flip flops (a poor choice to begin with), and one of them broke.  That is, the thong part that goes between the toes came out and made walking quite the challenge.  To add to the discomfort, the thin layer of foam between my foot and the pavement had worn down over the evening to a very thin layer.  I developed 3 little blisters under the straps.  How lovely!  Serves me right for wearing silly shoes on an adventure like that.  We trudged along.

Found the Muni stop, and got on.  Exhausted, we sat on the trolley car, not quite sure where our stop was getting off.  I saw two girls that had gotten on the Muni when we did, earlier that day, and decided it would be smart to get off where they did.

Not the most prudent thought.

We got off 10 blocks away from where we needed to be.  But instead of hopping back on the Muni, we decided to walk.  At least this time, it was downhill.  The hills in this city are a force to be reckoned with.

We passed by a Vietnamese place, and stopped in for some Pho.  Rare beef Pho, done right.  Yum.

We got back to Chris’s house, said our goodbyes, and got back in the car.  We drove back to Graham’s house in Sebastapol.  We went out on the town with Tara, Graham’s girlfriend, and I had such a great time talking with her.  Goodness, what good people there are, everywhere.

This morning, Graham, Ray and I drove back into the city.  Ate some In-n-Out, protein style, of course, and then took a drive up Twin Peaks to look out over the city.

I remembered having gone here as a teenager, and this was where I fell in love with SF.  It’s really a magnificent place.  The wind almost blew me off the edge, and that would have been OK.

And that’s it.

The Pacific Northwest exploration 2012 has come to a close.

My travel buddy Raymond and I went our separate ways, splitting off at Dani’s house in Richmond.  It was a terrible, sinking feeling I had, as they drove away.  I’ve spent my last couple of weeks having the best time of my life.  Last night as I fell asleep in Sebastapol, I did a recap in my head of all the awesome moments I had on this trip: gunshots in the Redwoods, seeing Crater Lake, sleeping on the street at a truck stop, getting covered in seagull poo in the Olympics, listening to incredible music at our not-so-legit campspot in the Redwoods, cooking Ramen at Diamond Lake, walking along the cliffs at Bodega Bay, narrating random animals’ crazy behavior, explaining to the Park Ranger as she ran our driver’s licenses that we weren’t “Just Married,” as the huge sticker on the back of Ray’s car says, relating everything to the Honey Badger, sitting on the edge of a cliff off the 1 and cooking loaded Ramen, giving Ray a piggyback ride over an ocean channel, to get from a sandbar to the beach without getting his sneakers wet, exploring a cave with no flashlight, driving at 50 miles an hour in a 65 zone…the entire time…etc.

What a great friend and a remarkable person.  I’m lucky to have been able to take this trip with him, and I’m sad to see it end.  There’s not much more to say than that.  Perhaps it’s bedtime.