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10:48:37 AM PST, Thursday, August 14, 2003 CE
Gate 34, San Francisco Airport, San Francisco, CA
Wow.
The trip's over.
Wow. I don't remember anything.
All right, backwards order. Last night, I went to this place. Betelnut. Best Chinese food
ever. Before that, I went to this Zeum thing, which sadly turned out to be targeted at 4-
year-olds, if that. Before that, we went to an art gallery, where, in my not exactly humble
opinion, I did a spectacular job of failing to appreciate each and every single piece of
artwork. There was a guy out front playing guitar. He was good. Before that, I went to some
old ruins. Apparently at some unspecified time there was a bathhouse, where people would
congregate and swim and such. It wasn't like ancient Roman architecture; in fact, it was
fairly recent stuff. It's in ruins now because there was a fire (in a facility dedicated
to housing water; crazy) and it died. All that's left is the foundation. I sat on it and
watched the waves - it was by the beach - and this old guy with three dogs. His dogs were
cool. One of them kept jumping in this sludgy, scummy, mucky pool formed by rainwater and
then getting out again once he realized that it was a bad idea. He did that at least four
times. It was crazy. Then there was this cliff house thing. It was originally a mansion of
sorts for these rich people, but then it apparently got a "bad reputation" (a house of ill
repute, if you get the drift) and later burned down. Twice. They're working on Cliff House
Mk III, and it'll be done in June, apparently - now, it's just a bar/lounge.
Before that?
I went on a walk out on a pier and got an awesome view of the city. It was sort of cloudy,
just enough to look cool and still let you see the moon and a few stars. There were people
living there, out on the end of that pier. One of them had a tent. They'd done this before.
I took a lot of pictures that night. I'm working on hosting them all, I'll post a link soon.
Maybe.
Before that, I went to the Stinking Rose for dinner. It's this place that serves garlic in
every single dish - one of their appetizers is, actually, just garlic. I had that. It was
good. We talked to the manager guy for some reason, apparently he's interested in perhaps
moving to SA. That's be awesome. Then we went to this bookstore, City Lights. It's famous.
I saw three Rick Riordan books. There was this door, a big wooden one without a handle. It
had holes in it. It was painted white. It said, in big brown letters, "I AM THE DOOR." It
was one of the coolest things ever. That and this sign on the door of Betelnut that said
"cheese free zone". Don't get me wrong, I like cheese, but it was still cool.
I had a pizza for dinner and watched Holes in the hotel room. Room service is good. Before
that, I went to Chinatown. Chinatown was really cool. There were all sorts of stores, each
selling exactly what everyone else was selling. They kept the good stuff out front, made
the things look like market stalls. I bought a couple of boxes of caps (firecrackers) just
because of their packaging. It said, and this is a direct quotation, "Sprite Bombs! Caution:
Hard thew to the groud, only." Think it looks a little weird? Read it again. Carefully.
Yes.
I also found a Chinese candy store and bought something out of almost every bin. I skipped
the dried fish. They looked like little brown stingrays. They were expensive. The candy
was tasty stuff; the Chinese, rather than put up with this sticking-to-the-wrappers shit,
made an edible inner wrapper for sticky stuff that you just pop in your mouth. That way, no candy is
wasted. Yum.
I wish they'd stop calling row numbers for the flight, it's making it hard to concentrate.
Before that - or maybe after - in fact, I'm not even sure if they occurred on the same day -
I went to some sort of Silicon Valley museum. Oh, that's right! Silicon valley! I went to
Stanford. It actually sounded interesting; they've got the stuff I want (the weather was,
however, abysmal: not a single cloud in the sky all day, much less fog or, dare I hope, rain
clouds). What? Museum? Oh, yeah, that sucked. It was for 4-year-olds too. The Exploratorium
is the only thing of that sort that's actually designed for all ages. Because it's cool.
Before that, I went on a hike in Muir Woods. It was long, but it was pretty awesome. It was
shady, too, which made it even better.
Yeah, I've just been told that those row numbers were actually for my flight, and I was
called about ten minutes ago. They're about to depart.
End.
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