unforth | Trip to California

I left on Thursday and headed out to San Francisco. My plane was late, such that I ended up arriving there incredibly late and therefore accomplishing nothing that night. I met up with my brother and his wife, and they had gotten me my own bed in their room, thus saving us all a bunch of money. It was pretty spiffy.

On Friday morning, we woke up bright and early, sort of. They don't vacation nearly as hard core as I do, so bright and early for THEM was about 9 to 10. For me, it was my usual 8ish. I don't even have to set an alarm any more, apparently. Anyway, I had spent a chunk of my time on the flights the previous day reading through a guide book so that I would have some idea what people actually do in San Francisco. We were only going to be there until 3 PM on Friday, so we wandered over to Telegraph hill, climbed up the hill, and went to the top of Coit Tower, which offered some truly lovely views, as well as one of the most vertigo-inducing phenomena I've ever encountered - if you look straight up, the tower is open above you, and the clouds spinning and the wind blowing and the clear blue sky behind it was utterly terrifying and left all three of us dizzy and wishing we'd never looked up. There were also very cool murals around the base of the tower; my favorite involved a random dude getting held up in the foreground of a general crowd scene, it was nifty.

After that we wandered in the fisherman's wharf direction, even knowing it was full of tourist schlock. On the advice of my fellows, who'd done the trip the previous day, I picked up a ticket to go out to Alcatraz a few days later (yesterday) and then we went over to Boudin to enjoy the bounty of wonderful delicious sourdough.

The drive up to Auburn took enough time that we didn't really accomplish anything else, though we did eat dinner at a delicious restaurant called "Awful Annie's."

Saturday was spent puttering around gold country before heading over to the family shindig that was the whole reason for the trip in the first place. We took a tour of the Empire State Mine facility - you can't actually go into the mines because they are almost completely flooded, but they have a lot of original equipment and some original buildings as well as replica stuff, and it was really neat. I particularly enjoyed watching a blacksmith ply his trade, and was highly amused that the smithy, due to being out of the sun, actually felt cooler than the incredibly hot dry air outside did. I was SO glad I wore sunscreen.

At about 5 we headed out to my Uncle Red's place for the promised party. We'd been unable to touch base with my dad or the uncle's, so had no idea what time the party ACTUALLY started - I thought it was afternoon and Ben thought it was evening - so we picked a compromise time and it worked out quite well. Afternoon turned out to be correct, but when the party was in full swing most of the people there were neighborhood folk and no one we really cared about. After they left, mostly around 6, the more family oriented get together really got going, and that was perfect. The only downside is that most of the food was already gone when we got there, which was a pity cause what was left was really yummy. We ate bar-b-que, caught up with the family we hardly ever communicate with, and set off fireworks. All in all, it was really nice, and we stayed until pretty late.

I had noticed I was rather congested on Saturday afternoon, and sure enough when I woke up on Sunday morning it was to be greeted by clogged sinuses. This put an end to my plans to run (I'd managed to get in my exercise on Saturday, I was very proud of myself, I ran along literally EVERY SINGLE SIDEWALK that could be reached from my hotel, and around a few parking lots, and only barely managed to get 30 minutes out of it, sigh). It worked out, too, because I accidentally overslept an hour, the only morning I wasn't ready SIGNIFICANTLY before my brother and Kirsten. We headed back over to Red's for breakfast, but had to leave in a relative hurry because we were gonna get charged for another day's rental if we didn't get the car back to SF by 3 PM.

Once back in San Fran, we wandered back to Fisherman's Wharf, went to the Musee Mecanique, which was pretty neat and full of old arcade machines, and we also wandered around Little Italy and Chinatown. I feel like I'm forgetting something else in here, too, but I can't think of what, oh well. For dinner we met up with some friends of Kirsten's who were local, and it was pretty nice. Yummy (and very inexpensive) Chicken Tikka Masala. :)

Monday morning we headed over Japantown, where I forced myself to resist all of the things I saw at Kinokuniya that I wanted by looked at the American price ($30) then at the Japanese price (1800 yen) and reminding myself that if I wait just 6 weeks I can get the damn things for $15. (just one example). I did manage to find a CD I've been looking for for ages, though, cheap enough that I decided it was worth just getting it. This pleased me immensely. We also ate very good Japanese food. After that, we went down to Golden Gate Park, went to the Japanese Tea Garden, which was lovely, went to the Shakespeare Garden, which was utterly drab and ugly, and then tried to go to the Conservatory, only to discover that it was closed. Vaguely disappointed, we decided to go over to the Presidio, but we were crunched for time by then - we wanted to get to the Cable Car Museum before it closed - so we just took a scenic bus through the Presidio which, as it turned out, got us all the photo ops of the Golden Gate Bridge that we wanted. Kirsten and I stuck our cameras out the windows to get clear shots, though the clearest shot I managed was of the back of her hand. :) Finally, we managed to get to the cable car museum and it was pretty nifty, though rather small it was chock full of information. Dinner was enjoyed at a yummy Italian place and garnished with a cannoli. Life was good.

Not content with the amount we had done, though, we dropped Kirsten off at the hotel - she had a quiz for a summer class she is in - and Ben and I went over to the Metreon, which was pretty darned lame, and then wandered through a Virgin Megastore and an Apple store. When we went back to the hotel, it was about 9:30, and rather than go to bed like sane people after all the things we'd done, we instead headed out and decided (finally) to drop the $5 per person that it would take for us all to ride the cable car. The plan was to go to Ghiradelli square and get delicious ice cream with Ghiradelli hot fudge, but the plan derailed (heehee) when we got on the wrong cable car. So instead we ended up right in front of Fisherman's Wharf again, accept now it was 10:30 on a Monday - nothin' much to do - so we went to In & Out Burger (I didn't eat...in the end I didn't get to have one of their burgers, damn it all) and then wandered home, finally.

Since their flight was pretty early on Tuesday (okay, 2 in the afternoon, but when you need to save 2+ hours for travel, etc., and generally sleep until 10, that's cutting it a little close) and I had to be on the ferry to Alcatraz at 12:35, we got breakfast together and then parted ways.

Alcatraz was totally awesome. I took lots of pictures of everything from the cells to the gardens to the crumbling concrete of the parts closed to tourists. The audio tour was really informative too. I managed to get a nasty sun burn, though, and my cold had only gotten worse...but I refused to let that get me down! I had to be on my plane at 10 PM, and so I had until about 7:30 to do everything I wanted to do that was left. Utterly impossible. So I picked one primary thing - the Tezuka exhibit at the Asian Art Museum - and one other primary thing - MUST HAVE GHIRADELLI ICE CREAM! - and walked a whole shit load to make sure I got to do those two things. It worked out excellently, as it turned out, though I walked until my legs were getting rather annoyed at me (though it was REALLY nice to see just how long that took as opposed to how long it used to take, yay working out!). I also managed to get yummy dinner out of it, and go back to Boudin and grab some sourdough for the road.

My plane boarded at 10:45 and took off at 11 (an hour late). I managed a full hour of sleep before I got annoyed and gave up, and instead I stayed up all night and until about 9:30 AM (now Eastern time instead of Pacific) finishing the 6th HP book.

schenker28 picked me up at the airport, and we stopped at the mall on the way back so I could buy some luggage, because now I have exactly 2 weeks to get all packed up and moved before I head out to Chicago to visit

buzzermccain. The day was then spent unpacking, cleaning, doing laundry, trying (with sadly little success) to upload my trip photographs, and, finally, some serious trip packing - I've completely emptied my closet and I've done a fair bit towards the "pack everything but a couple weeks worth of clothing" goal. I also packed up all my DVD's and games - so you're outta luck if you didn't get your butt over here (sorry,

ultimabaka, I just didn't have time to put a list together...). To tie it all off, I typed in all of the

novel_in_90 writing I'd managed to handwrite while I was away (about 4,000 words) AND do the writing for today.

And now I've been up for almost 36 hours with only 1 of sleep. The world is slightly spinny and my head hurts cause of my sunburn and my congestion, I have a doctor's appointment to get a cavity filled at 9 AM tomorrow and I refuse to spend any more time complaining about stuff, so I'm going the heck to bed.

All in all, I had a nice time. Me and Ben didn't end up fighting hardly at all, I had some good heart-to-hearts with both him and Kirsten, as well a VERY nice talk with my dad, I secured my plans to visit with Ben and Kirsten on the 31st of July, and with my dad on the 1st of August. The family sounded enthusiastic about my journey, and they're all doin' some interesting stuff too, and I left with the feeling that I really aughta try to get out there more often to visit them cause I always forget what good people they are and it's very sad that I know them so very barely. Ben and Kirsten are talking about trying to make it a yearly thing, and if I can I think I'll join them - though obviously not this year. :)

In other news, to give tons of advanced warning, Ben, Kirsten and I started talking about Christmas (I need to get my tickets) and it looks like I'll be in the states from about the 10th of December through about the 23rd of December. I'll definitely hit Bloomington and New York City, and will try to get to Binghamton though it might be too difficult. I know it's way early to get people thinking about December, but, well, now it's out there. :)