Let's Go Places (And Meet People!): San Francisco part 3 of 3

 

Friends, the California trip has been such a great time, but we can't stay here for ever.  Pretty soon we're going to have to wrap it up and go home.  But not quite yet!

We still have two full days left on our trip, so there are a lot more adventures to be had.  We left off our story on Sunday night, and now it's Monday morning.  We're going to have a some epic werk drama, we're going to get all up in Golden Gate Park's business, and then we're going to spend another day hanging out with Julie.  Let's get back to our adventures!

A Case of the Mondays

We have a major project going on at work, for which the deadlines have not been clear.  I scheduled my time in CA before the project started, and at a time when it when the project start was not definite.  I made my dates known, did work in advance to free me up for play, and sent reminders on my dates as they drew nearer.

Monday morning I woke up to an epic turd in my inbox from the project consultants.  The due date was EOD Wednesday.  It would have been very challenging to finish even if I had been working full days.

The more I looked at the work the clearer it was that it was not a job for one person.  I let folks know what I had been asked to do, just in case anyone wanted to do anything about it, and then proceeded to make like a chicken with my head cut off. I was able to do more than I thought in the half days that I allocated to work on Monday and Tuesday, but it was not a pretty scene.  I turned in the project in late on Tuesday, and as I am writing this three weeks later, the work still has not been reviewed.  Same story different day, there was no reason for the fire drill.

[If you're new here, I am one of those FIRE people (financial independence retire early).  In a perfect world I would have quit my job just about now, and for off-blog reasons I am hanging on to it for a bit longer but not at any price.  There is a line, and if someone wants to push me over it, my attitude is "Go ahead punk, make my day"]

On a happier note, the workstation was a lot more comfortable than than the Sac Airbnb.  The hosts provided a monitor which was much appreciated.

Anyways, I put in more than a day of work in a half day's hours, and then shut my laptop and switched over to vacation mode.

Let's Go to Golden Gate Park!

I started my GG adventures on foot.

It is not an ugly place.

I walked all the way from 30-something avenue to the ocean, which is a decent haul.  It was a continuous unveiling of surprises.  The bison paddock was the winner of the very competitive field for I Was Not Expecting that.

The Queen Wilhelmina Garden was closed, but I still got a good peak at the goods inside.

I got to the beach but not to the ocean.  The wind was fierce, and the sand was scratching my face.  I retreated back to the relative calm of the park.

I'd liked what I'd seen so far, but there is only so much ground that a person can cover on foot.  GG park is about 7 miles long, and I was just not up for that.  So how does a person get around once they've reached their walking limit and they don't have a car?

The answer is Lyft, but not the kind of Lyfts that I'd taken previously.  Lyft has self service bike stations throughout the city.  I grabbed a ride and took off.

[For those of you who caught the little detail of the 23 mph wind, I think that measurement must have been taken at the ocean where I started the ride.  It was breezy, but not 23 mph breezy.]

There is a section of the main drive that is closed to car traffic, which was delightful.  There were a couple of pianos, which were not in good shape since they were just out in the open, but some really talented people were playing them and their talent overrode the condition of the pianos.

I peddled my little heart out and eventually returned the bike at another Lyft return station.  Shortly afterwards I got a notification that I had parked the bike in a no parking zone?  

I saw nothing on the return station that said it was a no parking zone and none of the tips in the email gave me any clarity.  For this reason, I wouldn't rent another Lyft bike unless it was in a situation where the benefit of the bike outweighed a potential $25 fine, but as it was I got my ride and did not have to pay the $25 so as far as I'm concerned all is right in my world.

I had one more thing that I wanted to do in GG Park, which was to go to the Japanese Garden.  I remember going there with my parents as a young 'un and climbing a bridge and drinking tea with delicious rice crackers, and I was all about recreating the experience.  In retrospect I should have kept the bike a bit longer to cut down on my walking time, but hindsight is 20/20 and I did not hate having to walk by the pianos again at a slower speed.

The bridge was, uh, steep but there is no way that I would not have climbed it.  Twice.

The cafe was pretty crowded and there were too many options of different teas and it looked like food instead of rice crackers.  I wasn't prepared to make decisions, so I skipped the tea and wandered around the garden instead.

With that I called it a day and went back to my home away from home.

Tuesday - more of the same

I worked like a banshee for the allotted time on Tuesday, and then set about my business.  I packed up my stuff and got in some more GG park time.  Soon enough Julie came along for another day of play.  She had some "use it or lose it" PTO to burn off, and we don't get to hang out everyday, so we wanted to spend as much time together as we could.

Our first activity was a suggestion that Julie had gotten from both Anne and a coworker, which was a place called FiLoLi.  It is a Rich Person house, and the name comes from the owner's motto: Fight, Love, Live.

I bet you're expecting my rendition of the story of the lives, loves, and losses of the owners of FiLoLi, and that's where I have to disappoint you.  It was a self guided tour, and Julie and I were focused on gawking over the Rich People splendor and talking about everything under the sun.  I remember reading a plaque about the owners but the only thing that I retained is that they were Rich People whose motto was FiLoLi.  I'm sure that the details are fascinating, but I'll take my roaming around and having a good time with Julie instead.

After FiLoLi we had time to do something else before dinner, but what?  We pulled out Google maps and saw that there was a park with a funny name nearby, so we headed there.  Our destination was the Pulgas Water Temple.  The highlights were: it was beautiful, the people watching was to die for, I got to chat with Julie, and I got to see a phrase written down that so far I had only heard.

At our first dinner in Sacramento, when we asked for water with dinner, Julie made a comment about "the finest Hetch Hetchy" that I hadn't really understood other than that's what Bay Area people call their tap water.  Now I got to see the water source in all of its glory and to learn that the tap water in SF comes from the Hetch Hetchy dam, which was quite a feat to set up back in the day.  Sometimes you need to see a commemorative plaque in a park to be able to appreciate a thing.

It was time for dinner, so Julie headed us on a route that would serve the dual purpose of being a fun place to hang out and to get me to the hotel for my final night.  We ended up in a town called Burlingame that had a cute downtown shopping area.  We walked down the street and were trying to figure out where to get dinner, and someone in an upscale Indian restaurant came out and chatted with us so we figured that was our spot.  We split a couple of appetizers, and then we went to an ice cream place.

And then inevitably we reached the end of the evening.  Julie dropped me off at my hotel, which was an upscale Hyatt by the airport (which you may recall that I used my annual free Hyatt credit card night to pay for).  

Julie and I sadly said so long, but not goodbye.  For some reason the saying "friends help you move, real friends help you move bodies" is coming to mind, though it isn't quite as snappy when adapted to our situation "friends comment on your blog, real friends take time to hang out with you and drive you around San Francisco".  As a reminder, here is Julie's side of the story.

The Hyatt was the nicest hotel that I spent the least amount of time in.  I took care of a few work things and it was lights out.  The next morning I was up at four and on the airport shuttle to catch a 7:00 flight.

SFO is the most comfortable airport that I can remember hanging out at.  I got my breakfast and tucked into a chair and read my book (as we have previously discussed I was reading Sky Daddy, which is an excellent/bawdy tale set in SF and SFO about a woman who has a fetish for plane crashes - the location that I ended up reading this book in could not have been more perfect).

And then this happened:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And finally this.  Look I was happy to be home, so I'm just laughing at how my home base chose to represent itself in my cross country montage.

The flight was very smooth and landed a little early, but that did not mean that I got home early.  There was a lightning storm, so the plane had to sit on the runway for an hour until the lightning took a hike and it was safe for the ground crew to be out.  Getting delayed at the very end of your destination is NBD - we were at our destination.  It's a very different situation that all of the budget airline flights that I've taken to FL where if one little thing goes wrong that means your flight isn't coming.

It's true that I left a bit of my heart in San Francisco, but I was now home.  

Thanks for coming along for the ride and letting me relive my trip!  Until next time, California!