Category: San Francisco

Things you learn about yourself when you travel

So, this past weekend, The Good Man and I made a whirlwind trip to Southern New Mexico to celebrate my best friend’s 40th birthday.

There was bbq brisket and tender ribs and homemade ice cream with homemade german chocolate cake on the menu.

Of *course* I was going to be there.

It’s not a bad trip from San Francisco to Las Cruces, but it does take a skosh of effort sometimes.

So while riding planes, trains and automobiles, I learned a few things about myself.

Here’s some of the top thoughts while on the journey:

The speed of the girl, while in motion, is variable depending on geography.

New Mexico, the land of mañana, moves very, very slowly. San Francisco, on the other hand, moves very, very quickly.

I do ok going from the super fast pace to the nice slow moving pace.

I have one hell of a time coming back from slow motion into 90 miles per hour.

In fact, I think I stripped a gear.

The sort of person you are becomes self evident after sitting for an hour on the tarmac.

San Francisco was having bad weather yesterday, so our connecting flight was delayed by a couple hours. Then they said, “hurry up and let’s get loaded” so we complied. The plane backed from the gate, rolled toward the runway, and stopped.

And there we sat.

And sat.

They were having a hard time getting a window for take off. They said we could go at any minute. So we all had to stay seated and buckled in.

As we waited.

You really get a sense of a person under these sorts of circumstances.

The lady behind me started making ever more angry calls to her husband. The people in front of us who started out as strangers quickly became friends, trading stories about delayed flights in their collective past.

A lady across the aisle angrily flipped pages in her magazine and sighed. Loud, frustrated sighs.

Me, I read. I had a really good book, so that helped. But after a while, I was getting grumpy and frustrated too. So then I put down my book and started fidgeting. And then it seemed a good idea to start annoying The Good Man because isn’t that what husbands are for?

I guess I’m the sort of person that can be patient…but only for a little while.

Southwest Airlines open seating policy makes people rather aggressive.

Seriously. It’s a seat. It’s not a gold medal event. Find a seat. Sit in a seat. If you have to sit in a middle seat, it doesn’t mean you lost the contest. It just means you have to sit in a middle seat for a few hours. Get over it.

Airports will go to great lengths to get you to buy their overpriced food.

I’m almost positive Auntie Anne’s pretzel place was piping hot cinnamon sugar odor into the terminal. Gooey tasty cinnamon suguar. It was damn near irresistible.

I saw another guy with three Popeye’s boxed meals walking by. He was by himself…

And then there’s Starbucks. Evil place. They suck you in.

I *might* have to succumbed to some of these delights, but the food in the airport is NEVER as good as it is at a real stand alone shop.

But they manage to sucker in almost every weary traveler, prisoners of TSA policies, too weak and famished to resist paying seven dollars for a soggy hamburger.

It ain’t right.

Millions of years from now, archeologists will describe us as a quaint nomadic tribe so attached to our possessions that we dragged them around with us in small wheeled wagons called “samsonites”.

Honestly. Have you ever seen people so damn attached to their suitcase full of crap?

Ok. Well. I am way guilty on this one.

But at least I’m willing to check my rolley bag and not have to clutch it to my chest, and cram, shove and heave-ho it into the overhead compartment.

Ah well, as the old saying goes, all’s well that ends well. It was a fantastic trip to New Mexico, much green chile was consumed. Many wild college era stories were told and fun was had.

Now back to our regularly scheduled insanity….

Things They Didn’t Teach Me

I’ve been a proud holder of a driver’s license for, oh say, about twenty-five years.

I first learned to drive our automatic transmission, four-wheel drive, 1972 Chevy Blazer on the hard packed dirt roads around Logan, New Mexico. Population 1,002.

Those roads were wide, empty of other cars, and easy to navigate.

Ya wanna park? Sure. Pull up somewhere near the house. That’ll work.

Then I got a more formal education from the ubiquitous McGinnis School of Driving. Don’t know if it is still the same now, but back then, every high school kid in Albuquerque learned to drive from McGinnis.

We got the usual lessons. Hands and 10 and 2. Back up in a straight line. Parallel park between the orange cones.

That parallel parking one…I didn’t need that much in Albuquerque.

I needed it A LOT more once I moved to the Bay Area.

Parallel parking in San Francisco is like a sport. People will actually spectate the event. Comment on your technique. And point and laugh as you make six runs at that freaking small spot that you’ve just spent over an hour searching for.

These are things that Mr. McGinnis didn’t teach.

That “spent an hour looking for a spot” is what got me thinking. Last night, The Good Man and I had an event up in the great City of San Francisco. It was to be held in the part of the City they call the Marina.

Now…we were feeling pretty good about our odds of parking (another thing McGinnis didn’t teach, thinking ahead to where you’ll park) because where we were headed has a pretty ample parking area. It’s a big wide street with a line of parking spaces down the middle (Fillmore, for my SF readers). Plus, it was a Tuesday night.

Lots of spaces and a weeknight? High potential! Score!

However….

Luck was not on our side. An accident on 280 and backed up traffic for a hometown baseball game left us running late as it was. And when we got to the Marina…there wasn’t a spot to be had.

So we did what we had to do. We began the slow circle around and around and around. Trolling for a spot.

McGinnis didn’t teach me that.

Then the consideration of an ever so slightly empty spot at the curb. Can I fit my car in that? What are the odds the people living there will call the cops because my bumper is hanging in their driveway? Am I leaking over into the red zone? What are the odds I’ll get a ticket?

Mr. McGinnis also did not teach me that.

And then, while panic growing and growing as we are now a half hour late for our event, the sheer ecstasy of actually FINALLY finding a spot. A big spot! A good spot! A spot we didn’t even have to fend off other drivers to get into!

Yes! Sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found you!

Oh the relief. The weeping. The joy.

McGinnis School of Driving definitely did *not* teach me that.

I had to learn that all on my own.

I’m pretty lucky these days because The Good Man, a longtime San Francisco dweller by way of a Brooklyn upbringing isn’t a’feared of these sorts of things. He’ll plunge into the wackiest of driving, parking and navigating situations with ease and aplomb. Most of the time, like last night, he’s got the wheel and I don’t have to worry about it.

Because me, I learned to drive on empty dirt roads.

What the hell are all these cars doing around here!?!?!

(Don’t think I haven’t TOTALLY whipped in front of a Trolley Car to get to a good parking spot. Because I have.)

Sunday Photo Post…by request

I spent the sunny day yesterday as part of a City College of San Francisco photography class. It was a full day photo walk class through part of the City.

I was excited about this class because when I started shooting, I was all about the nature shots…but I’m moving steadily into more urban themes and this was a great chance for me to improve my skills.

Wow, did I learn a lot. There were actually two instructors, one a professional portrait photographer who really helped us understand about light and how to make people look great.

The other a professional landscape photographer who helped us understand that to take a good landscape photo, you need to have a point of focus.

Both were amazing teachers!

Anyhow, I’d posted on Twitter yesterday that I’d been up and down some of the grander hills in San Francisco, and Twitter friend @pcon34 asked to see a few photos on the blog.

So here you go pcon! A few of my faves.

I’ve only done some very minor corrections on the photos and haven’t cropped or Photoshopped anything.

Click on any of the images to see in various sizes.

Down at Fisherman’s Wharf, you can find lots and lots of good rusty things. The relentless wind off the water sees to that. This was a quick snap at the side of a shed where we had been working on portraits. This chain just caught my eye and the photo has become one of my faves of the set.

A little rust is a pretty thing

More fabulously rusty. I was endlessly fascinated by this thing. I have no idea what it is…but it must be valuable. There is a pretty new lock on it.

Rusty but valuable

This is the hill leading up to Coit Tower. The photo was taken from the roof of the Art Institute of San Francico on Russian Hill. There are a million photos of Coit Tower and I wanted something different. Here, I was trying to make it look like those photos you see of the building covered hills of Greece or Brazil. This one is The Good Man’s fave of the set. This small size doesn’t do the photo justice. The full sized version is a lot of fun.

My City

I wasn’t totally into this photo when first downloaded, but I keep coming back to it. It has something working for me that I can’t quite put my finger on. I may play around with the colors and cropping to see what emerges. These are windows at the Art Institute of San Francisco.

Ventana

The Exploratorium has many fabulous outdoor experiments located all around Fort Mason. This one, the wind arrows, helps you see how the wind moves in different directions depending on height. I caught the arrows in a rare moment, heading mostly the same way. For me, what I love about this photo is the sky! It’s CLEAR and blue. No clouds, no fog! Heady stuff!

Wind Arrows

A white-crowned sparrow singing his tune at Fort Mason. This was near the end of the day and the photo is a skosh out of focus. Ah well, what it lacks in technical skills, it makes up for in capturing the attitude of this little fella. A friend and bird expert says that Mr. White-Crowned Sparrow should have migrated by now, so she’s a bit worried that I saw him. Here’s hoping he finds his way….

I gotta be meeeeeee!

Anyhow, if you’re still with me, thank you for looking at my photos! If you want to see more, there is a set on Flicker, click here

Yup, there’s an app for that

I love, love, love Lomography and the fun plastic cameras that create such individual photos.

One of my faves is the Action Sampler camera that comes with multiple shutters the fire off sequentially. I use it a lot.

It works best with motion, making what can best be described as a four frame movie (or more frames depending on which camera you have. They go up to 9 shutters).

So of *course* someone created an iPhone app that does the same thing, making the camera fire off shots one after the other then bringing them together in one photo. It’s called QuadCamera.

Cool stuff!

Check out today’s trip across the Golden Gate. iPhone held out the window as we passed under the south tower on a nice sunny day. (straight off the camera, no adjustments done)

Enjoy!!

Oh yeah, she’s still a beatin’ away in there

Life has a lot of funny ways.

Like lulling you into a sense of routine and pattern and similarities. You start taking things for granted.

And then Fate yanks that rug out from under you just to remind that hey, better pay attention! The starting pitcher for the cosmic league might just be grooving one right at your earflap!

Had a moment like this today.

The day started out really good. Beautiful, calm.

Had a chance to spend the day up in San Francisco. Got to visit one neighborhood fairly unknown to me and another very familiar part of town.

And it was great. Hey, the sun was even out for a while. There is no city more beautiful than San Francisco on a sunny day.

The Good Man and I made our way through the day at a happy pace, had an amazing lunch, and worked through our chores.

So feeling pretty at peace with the world, we finished up and made our way home down the peninsula.

The ride was easy, we were ahead of traffic, and other than a plastic bag adhering itself to the underside of our car, then simmering on the exhaust pipe, it was the perfect ride.

We get to our town, we turn right, we turn left, and soon we arrive at our neighborhood…

To see two hook and ladder fire engines, two smaller fire engines, the fire supervisor, and several other fire vehicles blocking our street.

“Please tell me that’s not our house,” The Good Man said aloud.

It was then I could feel that ol’ heart deep in my chest start to rev up. The adrenaline gets to rolling into the veins, fight or flight sets in and all the blood goes to the core. Muscles tense. Eyes get a little sharper.

There was a fireman sitting behind the wheel of a parked truck, so I said to The Good Man, “I’ll find out” and jumped from our now stopped car.

I walked up to the man, got his attention, and said, “Um, sir, I live *right there*” emphasized with a point of my hand.

The fireman said, “You can get there as soon as I move the truck” he said.

“But, but…” I stumbled out. “Is that where the fire is?” I tried to keep the panic out of my voice. I’m pretty sure I didn’t succeed.

He smiled, “No, you’re fine. The fire is over there,” he said, with a point of his heavily gloved hand in the opposite direction of my home.

“Oh thank you thank you thank you!” I said while hopping on balls of my feet.

Today, the fire brigade did not come for my home.

My heart is settling back into its regular docile pattern.

And I got a strong reminder today to keep a sharp eye out, because the cosmic pitcher is wild, and fastball might getcha squarely in the back when you’re not looking.