Victory!!!

I'm not so much relishing my being correct as I am amazed and excited by the fact that I was indeed correct and it happened once again.  We ran into someone we knew.  I was just thinking earlier today that the trip was almost over and we hadn't seen someone we knew yet...and then out on Fisherman's Wharf we crossed paths with Mitch Walorski, the dad of one of my old grade school friends (who I've also run into in Chicago when he was with my cousins).  And I thought back on all the minute choices that has us walking right through there, right then, to have the opportunity to run into him.  Unbelievable.

Today was swell, aside from failing to see the one thing I'd wanna see in SF.  We found out the Alcatraz tickets were sold out until Monday.  The night tickets were sold out months ago and we never got day tickets ahead of time.  Punch myself in the crotch.  We got lucky with a room in Yosemite, but not so with Alcatraz.

We had already had an interesting morning- after Chris spending an hour last night and us spending another hour this morning, trying to figure out where to stay in SF, we ended up literally driving into the street and back into the next parking lot to the Motel 6 and spending half as much for a room.  Its clear you get what you pay for- but still not bad all in all.  The BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit- train) goes from a mile from our hotel, in Oakland, to downtown SF, in like 20 minutes.  Just as good as walking to a damn hotel downtown SF, without the price.  Our hotel is right by where the A's and Raiders play.  Kinda a junky looking stadium.  We did have a decent free contintental breakfast this morning, highlighted by the magical drink Very Vanilla Silk, which they had in weird tall little juice box type things.  Yeah I took three.  Its the nectar of the gods.  One of them is still on ice here with a leftover piece of pizza, since this ghetto-ass place doesn't have a fridge.   Yeah we left the white-people hotel last night and came to the black-people hotel tonight.  Sorry if I offended anyone but look outside and tell me it isn't true.  Its like night a day, from one parking lot to the next.

What I don't get about this whole place is first, why Oakland is a separate city and not just an extension or suburb of SF (though I guess the same applies to St. Paul, MN) and second, how the hell does Oakland manage to support, and NEED, their own baseball and football team?  I don't really get it.  Oakland is a decent sized city and all, but its literally right across a bridge (albeit a 2+ mile one) from SF.

We got to see The Church of Christ the Light before we left Oakland this morning, once we made our accomodations decision, and that was sweet, since its the most expensive Catholic Church in American history (200million I think?), and isn't finished, and we got some lady to walk us into the building.  Its pretty inspiring inside.  We then got to drive to SF and across Golden Gate Bridge before ditching the car and starting the hiking portion of the trip again, up and down and up and down the hills of San Francisco.  The stories weren't kidding.  We even saw the Crooked Street, which was pretty sweet slash ridiculous slash sweet.  It'd be cool to live there.  Golden Gat was so foggy we couldn't see half of it and couldn't see jack once driving across it, and the fog was visibly drifting rapidly.

Fisherman's Wharf and all that came with it, was like Navy Pier times a thousand, and was lots of people, shopping, food, and repeated identical camera shops and trinket shops.  Seriously, the exact same yellow sign saying "Convert Memory Cards to CD" in three stores, in one block, exact same displays in the window.  How is that possible.  We also saw over 200 sea lions chilling on the docks.

Chinatown was quite...Chinese, and hopefully we can see Japantown tomorrow.  Its farther west along with Haight and Asbury and Golden Gate Park.  We shall see.  We had lunch in some place with some Tsing Tao beer.  Tasty.  The weather is temperate and breezy, high of 63, and we got to wear pants.  The breeze feels great.  Was sunny too.  We walked around and saw a few churches, Little Italy, and ate dinner there, ACROSS from a more expensive place Tiffany recommended called The Stinking Rose: A Garlic Restaurant.  

We also saw Crooked St., climbed up and down a million ridiculously steep streets, and generally marveled at the weather, the hills, and the architecture.

Tomorrow we see all the cool buildings on my list (okay 2-3 of em, cause we already saw TransAmerica) and then have dinner with First Response's former HR person Bev, who loves wine.  Friday our flight is at 4:20 but checkout is at noon so then we have our bags and probably unfortunately just go to the airport and chill.  Nuts.

Day Number Tuesday

And what was awesome about last night is that our windows actually succeeded in sucking so much AC upstairs that Chris and I woke up in each other's warm embrace because we were so cold.  Well no but we were pretty cold.  Then we went to breakfast buffet and stuffed ourselves full of calories to get us up our climb today.  Drinks costed extra.  Yet they had milk, which had a sign saying it was for cereal only.  Ridiculous.

Time to digress though.  FIrst, it was pretty interesting going from Hollywood to Yosemite in one day.  Five hours even.  Being at Warner Bros. reminded me though of this my intense yearning at times to be part of a movie, to be an actor, to be famous, or something.  I'm not exactly sure where it comes from but when it strikes it strikes strong.  Like the momentary thought of wondering if I could really become an actor and be in movies if I tried.  I'm guessing no.  I think the desire is somewhere in between wanting to do something big, wanting to be famous, and maybe wanting to be in the fantasy world that is depicted in movies, with people being rich, famous, happy, or at least Batman.  I dunno.  

But it overlaps with the feeling I got when I arrived in Rome a few years ago, the feeling that struck IMMEDIATELY and then slowly subsided.  It finally dawned on me suddenly the first day I was there that this was really a separate country with a separate language and millions of people with a rich history and culture, that in many ways had nothing to do with or no knowledge of anything American.  It was overwhelming and cool, because when I extrapolated that to the rest of the world, I began for the first time to barely grasp the fact that there are 5.5 billion people in the world that lived in countries and existences other my own.  While you might think its easy intellectually, I think experientially its very hard to truly get outside of your own head and really see the entire world from a perspective other than from behind your own eyes.

This almost frighteningly overwhelming feeling of being one person in 6 billion immediately transformed to the desire to and realize that I could, travel the world for the rest of my life learning new languages, cultures, histories, and geographies.  And then I realized that was crazy.  Though it felt like a really fun idea.  So back to reality.

I get a similar feeling in places like Yosemite- wanting to travel the world climbing mountains and seeing sights and such.  There's a very simple macho task-oriented goal-driven feeling I get when hiking- your brain almost actually shuts down and shuts up for awhile while you completely focus on the next few steps in front of you, and though you feel as if its just for a few moments, its thousands of those moments strung together for hours on end.  Until suddenly THE TOP! and you feel an immense sense of completion and accomplishment, the desire for which has been pushing your feet the whole way up until that point.

Unfortunately I didn't quite get that feeling today, because two hours up our hike we made the mistake of asking someone how far it was to the top of Upper Yosemite Falls (which we had already found out from the rangers was COMPLETELY dry this time of the year- bollocks) and we found out it was another hour.  Our time was shorter than it shoulda been due to getting up at 8:30 rather than 7am, which was an executive decision I made based on the fact that we slept bad cause we were cold.  So we chose to be satisfied with our view of Lower Yosemite Falls, currently a barely-moist stripe down the face of the mountain.  Bridalveil Falls was also reduced to a trickle that basically blew away in the wind as soon as it reached the edge of the cliff.  We got down in an hour what took us two hours to climb, and made our way to the car.  We managed to procure views of El Capitan, Half-Dome, and Glacier Point, and of course each of the three of us took far too many pictures with our respective cameras.  

I might mention that our hike didn't begin for about 45 minutes of driving and jeffing around because we were trying to figure out how to get to a good trail, how far it was gonna be, how much time we had, and most importantly, where to park, which took us to innumerable parking lots looking for something that didn't need a pass of some sort, and almost had my dad jumping out the window.

A 45 minute journey later and we got to the south edge of Yosemite (where we should have gone first yesterday maybe) where the sequoia grove was.  Yosemite itself had giant coniferous trees everywhere and so did this.  And then suddenly there was one, two, five giant GIANT DINOSAUR red trees as wide across as the length of a large truck and 300 some feet high.  I've been wanting to see these things as long as I've known about them, right up there with the pyramids (which we almost saw instead this trip).  They were cool.  Especially the one you could walk under.  Yosemite is definitely worth coming back to (which Tiffany will be happy to know).

We still have a rockin couple of days in SF seeing some sweet architecture and landmarks and things, and a family friend and hopefully my cousin Rachel's old roommate Amy, and hopefully we'll all get stoned off our ASSES at Haight and Asbury.  Right.  Just trying to experience San Fran...

Next Day.

Did I mention its legal in California to drive motorcycles in between lanes on the highway?  Ridiculous.  Whether we're going 80 or sitting in bumper-to-bumper, they're flying by in between cars.  Is this a car chase scene or something?

Today:  Movie sets!  El "Pal-o" Loco!  Yosemite!  This morning we went for a two-hour two at Warner Bros. studios.  Yeah could have done Universal, but we also coulda gone to Dinseyland and we didn't do that either- no time, too much money, not the interest.  WB was just a tour, no rides and garbage.  We got to be on a golf cart most of the time, we got to take pictures *some*, and we got to see a lot.  All the cool stuff of course couldn't be on film.  We saw costumes from Dark Knight, The Matrix, Harry Potter, I Am Legend, 300, and other older movies I didn't care about as much, and tv shows like Chuck and Pushing Daisies (a personal favorite of me and Tiffany in a Tim Burton/Big Fish kinda style with a narrator, on ABC).  We got to see the "Buy More" (Best Buy) set from Chuck, as well as the tallest sound stage in the world, where the whole final 15 minutes of Indiana Jones was filmed.  The original set of Central Perk from Friends.  Saw lots of open street sets and backdrops that were changed and used for many things over the years, including currently for ER, with El tracks reminding me of Chicago (its set in Chicago if you didn't know).  

All this before lunch.  Which turned out to magically delicious Horchada drink again.  Then we drove (or should I say Chris drove) to Yosemite.  He got cut off four times in ten minutes on the day, by people weaving in and out of dense fast-moving traffic, like it was gonna get em somewhere.  Jacks.  On the way from SoCal to uh, "Nor"Cal (stupid), I saw lots of groves of something- oranges maybe, and some were walnuts, and smaller trees maybe cherries or something.  I dunno.  Also saw another dust tornado- saw a few of those outside of Vegas.  They're little things no more than ten feet across just spinning away.  Bizarre.  

We've got Tue-Wed-Thur and half of Friday- tomorrow will be Yosemite things, Wed-Thur will be SF, as will Friday.  Then I return only to find my girlfriend gone to Houston and my grad school starting in two days.  Rude awakening.  

So we called ahead and actually FOUND a room like 8 miles from Yosemite Nat'l Park, after being told by three people in LA that we were CRAZY for not having a room already, in some lodge of a bunch of rooms, a pool, an overpriced diner, and equally overpriced restaurant and gift shop with some food and drink.  We got some pizza that didn't stick around for too long and then some beersssss for tonight and PowerBars for tomorrow.  We drove 2 miles down the road to find our particular little house we were staying in.  It has a little deck, two sets of stairs, a small kitchen and bathroom, and an upstairs loft with a ladder.  It has two different AC units and apparently no exhaust or return of any kind, because the front door gets sucked shut and the window was squealing because it was sucking air so hard through its gaps to the outside.  Now its time for bed in the hot loft- at least we realized how hard the building was being pumped full of air cause we opened the window and its sucking hot air to the outside as fast as it can.  

Ps.  We're in the mountains, with no cell service at some sketchy lodge house thing miiiiiiles from anywhere, down a detoured road across a one lane bridge, because a rock slide covered the real road.  I'm pretty sure we're getting murdered tonight- so if you never hear from us, the guys with the banjos got us.  Oops.  I will say that I miss Tiffany more lately, especially with seeing and doing so much without her- but also not having cell service this evening does make me feel far away.   And I know she'll worry about me.

Day Number I Forget. Its Sunday.

The magical thing about this post is I actually wrote it the day I'm posting it.  Neato.  Cause I need to put up my pictures.  So today we went on more of Carl's wild goose chases.  It started by going to the Ferrari and Lambo dealerships.  Who can point out the million dollar car?

Then we went to the Gamble House early this afternoon (after mass, brunch, and driving we got there at bloody 2pm) and the place was pretty sweet.  Seeing architecture for me, at least stuff I've heard of and studied that rocks, is like seeing the Coliseum for some people.  I mean seeing the Coliseum was like seeing the Coliseum for me too don't get me wrong.  But Gamble House was pretty rockin.  

Seeing and experiences spaces like that that were so meticulously designed with certain ideals in mind is really inspiring to see what is possible- especially for a home.  I want my eventual home to be a place that takes my breath away and makes me smile from ear-to-ear like a kid at Disney World, the way places like this do.  They give you inspiration in so many ways.  Its an Arts and Crafts House built in 1908 for the Gambles of Proctor & Gamble fame.  It was all wood inside (apparently 17 different kinds) and meticulously put together.

After touring Gamble House for an hour, we headed to the Getty Center in LA.  (We saw the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on the way).  Getty Center is the second museum built to house the collection of J. Paul Getty- his first collection is housed in his original villa.  I don't remember how he made his wealth, but coincidentally it was his grandson that was kidnapped by my mafioso relatives in Italy in the 70s, in Plati where Chris and my dad just were.  So anyway, the Getty was ridiculous sweet.  They had a tram from the parking garage to the actual center, along the side of the foothills.  The center was on top of the hills.  Overlooking LA.  Rockin view.  The center turned out to be a complex of buildings, half of which we couldn't even go in.  Oh and it was built by Richard Meier, I guess it only opened in 1997.  Geez.  It had a huge waterfall/water fountain that led down through this amazing green lawn fit for putting, down this hill where people were laying on thin linens (provided by the center for free, as was admission) and listening to live music.  The whole place was just really cool.  Huge, white stone and plastic panels, very rectilinear with occasional sweeping curves, and stunning views of the city.  Oh and you could see the brown smog over the city- glad I didn't miss that part of LA.  

We missed our plan to go to Venice Beach/Malibu/Pepperdine because we went to visit Chris' friend Jess and her new husband Tim in LA, near the Getty.  Saw their new apartment, talked about how Chris is flying out to LA for the third time this year for the USC game (the first time was for Jess and Tim's wedding).  Then suddenly we realized it was like 8pm and we had an hour drive ahead of us.  Oops.  But we also found out we have an extra day because we don't need to go to Sequoia Nat'l Park because Yosemite has redwoods.  So the trips getting repositioned for the nth time.  Hmm I have funny things to say about Chris but I've been typing too much.

By the way today, we went to In-N-Out Ber-jer again.  Got it "animal style" this time.  The dude taking our order was stoked that we knew the inside scoop on what to order.  It was tasty-ish.  But the funny part is just driving around with Chris constantly mocking Karen for giving us stupid directions, pronouncing things wrong, etc.  That and he just likes yelling and people in cars and being weird making faces and weird voices.  I'll need some video (since I already have pictures of him sticking his tongue out plenty).

Day Whatever (Six?)

I did forget something I didn't write about before, that I did before I left.  Got to visit the guitar shop where I used to work.  Sweet.  It had been about nine months since I was there so that was good.  Nice to see a few of the guys, shame it took me that long to get over there being a mile from school and all.  But thats school.

Today was sweet though.  It was basically a Carl planned day, seeing what I wanted to see, which my dad was skeptical of I think but played along with anyway.  He likes to say he doesn't have an opinion on things...and I like to say well, only until you have an opinion on something.  But everything turned out well.  The Disney Concert Hall was PHENOMENAL.  Built by Frank Gehry I dunno how many years ago now, maybe 5-7, right in downtown LA- regardless of whether you think its ugly, bizarre, or just a huge waste of money, I challenge you not to be amazed walking through some of the spaces.  Especially those where they filmed Ironman.  Sweet.  So we spent about an hour there, doing the self-guided tour, which since we were the last people in the building meant the usher-herded tour, as we got scolded for going to the third floor and then returning to the second, because that floor was already supposed to be "clear".  Okay, SORRY.  There was a new usher at every turn, inside and in the garden, directing us to the next destination, just YEARNING to get the hell off work for the day.  We did get to see the concert hall itself inside which is rarely open to the public.  The whole place was just an incredible experience to walk through and discover, moment to moment.  New thing on list of life to-dos (which isn't really that long, but somewhat grandiose)- see a concert at this place.  And hang out in the garden outside afterwards.

From there we went to meet up with my mom's cousin Joe Wack, of Simpsons character design fame.  Look for his name in the credits.  He lives with his wife Katy just outside of downtown up on a hill with a great view of the city.  They're both multitalented people so we had a chance to talk about a great many things, including music and art mostly.  I think we coaxed them into coming to SB for the 4th of July next year.  Its always nice to connect up with people, especially family.  Their yard was of particular interest, as in typical California fashion (to me, anyway) they had fruit tress growing there.  Avocados and limes in the back, figs, pomegranates, persimmons (which I've never even had) aaaaaaand something else I'm forgetting, in the front along with Bird-of-Paradise flowers.  Pretty cool.  

We then made our way into Hollywood, saw Capitol Records (smaller than you'd think) and drove by THREE different buildings associated with the Church of Scientology- one was their Celebrity Center or something, which covered a whole city block and I'm pretty sure housed their compound-worker-children in the back, one place that was being protested at, and once place they were having some event at with people in suits handing out stuff.  All within blocks of each other, right near Hollywood and Vine.  From there our real destination was the Griffith Observatory, free (just like the usher-urged tours of Disney) and waaaaaay up these switchbacks we drove on until we had a clear(ish) view of the whole valley, including LA and two other outcroppings of buildings that were I assume Pasadena and something-something.  We got to look out a huge telescope up in one of those domes with the slit in the side, and see a star in broad daylight that apparently was 2 million miles across.  It was a cool building, WELL traversed by many language speaking peoples, and you could also see the Hollywood sign.  Yay.  

So then we came *home* to Newberry Park, got some wine, and found out they were shooting some new fall show "Opportunity Knocks" that was some game show being filmed in a cul-de-sac of the nearby neighborhood.  Weird.  California.  Watched the most ridiculously world-fastest man EVER on the Olympics in addition to *yawn* Mr 8 gold medals Michael Phelps.  And now it is time for bed.  More great LA sights to be seen tomorrow.  Yesssss.

Day Five

Well I must say its awesome that Apple stock WAS up to $180 but its down to $175.  Still making a sweet return on my bills.  Dark Knight is also within $9 million of #2 all-time, Star Wars.  Only $140 mil more to catch Titanic.  Yeah.  It was also exciting to have internet last night and check my mail.  I only had about 1000 spam messages.  Thanks Gmail for taking care of that for me.  You're mah boy.   

Just drove past the number many-th In-N-Out Burger.  Or "bur-jer" as Karen the Garmin voice likes to call it.  She also calls El Pollo Loco "pallo".  Right.  I don't think I'd ever actually eaten there- turns out they have this amazing little drink that I suppose Mexicans but not Carls are familiar with- Horchata.  Its rice milk and cinnamon.  And oh its magically delicious.  And of course a milky drink is perfecto for quelling hot spiciness from pico de gallo.

Anyway today we basically got up, had our continental breakfast, took brief advantage of the wireless, and went to the SD Zoo.  Apparently world-renowned- didn't keep Chris from being over it, but going turned out to be cool.  They had a skytram that we rode over the zoo, which was those little cable cars up in the air like at Cedar Point.  They had 4 of the remaining 1600 pandas in the world, and they were of course ALL sleeping.  They have the in-process Safari area that is supposed to be for elephants and lions and zebras and all kinds of other stuff...oh and cost $45 million.  They had some other cool aminals but nothing you can't find at Lincoln Park Zoo.  They had a fat-ASS hippo.  Ummmm some other stuff that I forget.  But we spent like three hours there.

Then we went to find San Diego State University's football stadium so we could do rain dances there- or um drought dances I guess, since they play Notre Dame in a couple weeks.  After wrong turning because of signs leading us to Chargers Qualcomm Stadium, we found SDSU campus...and found out they play at Chargers Stadium.  Okayyyyyyy Go Irish see you later.  Now we drive to an hour north of LA to meet up with relatives, technically my grandpa's cousin, though she's quite a bit younger and her kids are like junior-high age.  Sweet.  They have some fruit trees I think.  Tomorrow and Sunday we see the world of Los Angeles.  Not really the super touristy stuff though cause we've already done that bargage.