I know I’ve been missing for awhile, but fear not, I’m hanging in there. I’ve been on the go on my first trek of the summer. Currently, I’m in Towson, on the third leg of this go-round. The first two were last week: Tuesday-Thursday in San Francisco, California, and Thursday-Saturday in Berkeley before arriving in Washington on Sunday, and I’ll be here in Baltimore until Monday.
To recap:
I decided to bite the bullet this year and go to the theatre conference I usually don’t or can’t go to, LMDA. This year, it happened to be in Berkeley, and California seemed like an appealing change of scenery from Wisconsin, so off I went. The conference is only 2.5 days unlike the 4 days of ATHE (which is this August in Vegas!) so rather than fly to the West Coast and screw up my body clock for just a few days, I decided to add on two days at the beginning and play tourist in San Francisco, which I have not seen since I was about 7 or 8. Also, Ciara moved there last year to be a flight attendant on United, so I could spend some time catching up with her.
Day 1: Up at 7 AM to catch my super-early flight to Denver, with a 2-hour layover there before getting to San Francisco. The airport there is really confusing, and it took me about an hour to figure out how to get out of there and get to my Airbnb, which was in the Excelsior District. My hostess, Kate, was an absolute treasure, and the accommodations were spacious and comfortable; I’d absolutely stay there again.
My first goal of the trip was to get my National Park Passport stamped from any/all of the sites in San Francisco, and since it was 3:30 PM, I had to hustle in order to get to any of them, the closest of which was an hour away. So I made my first quasi-mistake of the trip, taking the bus there. I got there on time and in one piece, but I forgot that San Francisco has hills, so I spent most of that hour clutching my bag on my lap and keeping my eyes shut to keep myself from passing out/throwing up. Eventually, we made it to the Presidio, where I got stamps for Golden Gate NRA. The park rangers told me about a few more stamping stations around the Presidio, including one that was open until 6 PM (it was 4:50 when I got to the Presidio Visitors’ Center, and they closed at 5), so I caught the free shuttle to the bridge lookout at Crissy Field. Fort Point had a separate stamp, but alas, they were only open on weekends, so next time for me.
The Golden Gate Bridge is pretty, and I hummed the Full House theme song in my head as I took pictures and tried to sidestep the crowds of foreigners and the Jehovah’s Witnesses set up in English and Japanese (I swear, they’re everywhere these days). However, there’s not too much to do there other than photo ops and overpriced snacks (at least not at 5 PM, so I waited for the free shuttle back to the Presidio, since I didn’t have a car or another way back. Another mistake there; had I walked or taken a cab/Uber, I wouldn’t have had to wait the hour I waited for the free shuttle. And it wasn’t just an hour, it was an hour in chilly bay winds, and I was in short sleeves. Eventually I made it back to the Presidio, and a friendly lady on the bus told me to check out Chestnut Street for dinner.
I ended up spending the last hour of sunlight in a busy Starbucks, recharging my phone, which was almost dead at that point, and eating a late lunch. Dinner was Thai food at a place called Blackwood. I had some spicy ahi tuna while watching all the yuppies hop between wine bars before heading back to the Airbnb for the evening, during which I made my third mistake, leaving my phone in the Uber. Luckily, I managed to contact the guy, who brought it back to me at 11 the next morning. Still, it was strange and confusing being without my phone for 12 hours (mostly because I was staying in a stranger’s house, in a strange city, where I knew basically no one).
Day 2: Wednesday.
I stayed up worrying about my phone, but when I woke up, I realized that it probably wouldn’t look good for the Uber driver to steal my phone – I could go on the website and write a bad review, which would have been sad because he was really nice to me in the car – but after an hour of worrying (he promised to drop it by at 10), he came by with it at 11. Kate was really nice throughout the whole thing; she made me coffee and kept me company while I waited. It was sad to leave her the next day.
Next up was…lunch with Ciara! We had a happy reunion and caught up on our lives over fresh fish at Pier 39 in Fisherman’s Wharf. Then, we walked to the San Francisco Maritime museum, which was really informative, plus I got some stamps. I bought her some chocolate at Ghirardelli Square, and after a quick Starbucks (where we made a birthday video for Alex), we walked to Chinatown, which was really fun. Even though I’m not the biggest shopper, I just couldn’t pass it up, and ended up spending about 15 dollars on a gift for Kate for helping me out (a calligraphy of her name in Chinese characters in a red cardboard frame), a bracelet, and 2 cute toy panda keychains, on sale for 99 cents. I wanted to get a rayon jacket to replace the one I lost, but they were pretty expensive, and Ciara said she’d get one for me for a quarter of the price the next time she had a layover in China or Taiwan.
We ended the day back at Ciara’s place, with Netflix and Middle Eastern food delivery, before I Ubered back to Kate’s place and packed up for the next leg of the trip – the conference itself, in Berkeley.
My fingers are getting tired, so stay tuned for a recap of parts 2 and 3 of the trip – part 2 is the conference in Berkeley, and part 3 is the part I’m currently on, which started on Sunday night at a banquet in my sister’s honor in DC, followed by a whole lot of sleeping, and will conclude next Sunday with my cousin’s wedding in Potomac.
That’s So Jacob 