“The City by the Bay” (Or: “I
Left My Heart in San Francisco”)
7/7/17, “A Quick Turnaround”
John F. Kennedy International Airport,
New York (JFK)
Less than 60 hours ago, 56 to be
precise, I was getting in a taxi in LaGuardia and marking the end of my trip to
Newfoundland and Labrador. Now, here I
am at Kennedy about to fly to the City by the Bay.
In a bit of irony, it will actually be two months before I get on an
airplane again, and, when I do, I will again be flying from JFK-SFO before I
connect to OGG (Maui).
I left the summer
open by design, in case anything went wrong, in case I needed to revisit
somewhere or visit somewhere in service of my goals that I had not
anticipated. Well, everything went
right. I have now completed 12 of my 17
Goals, and this trip to the City by the Bay, while providing me an enjoyable
time in the city itself, was planned to visit the nearby Port Chicago Naval
Magazine National Memorial. After that,
the only places left to visit in service of my goals are found in American
Oceania, and that trip will immediately precede (and include) my 30th
Birthday, again, by design.
Sure, there
will be some fun summer road trips, perhaps some National Historic Landmark
runs locally, the last of the National Park Sites in the northeast, and other
ways to get off the island of Manhattan or the Village of Scarsdale during the
summer. This trip, though, marks the last
time I will get on a plane until I leave for Hawaii, and the quick turnaround
was necessary to make it work the way it did.
Any good weekend trip begins the recounting of Night -1, Thursday, or,
as I call it, the only day this week I both woke up and went to sleep in my own
bed. It was the night of the
most-anticipated movie of the summer, a little movie called “Spider-Man:
Homecoming”. It had rave reviews, and,
based on the trailers, it looked as good as the reviews promised. Every showing was almost entirely sold
out. The K-Man was in Boston for the
day, so he couldn’t make it, and I found a good single seat for the IMAX 3D
showing. I got my chicken fingers and
curly fries, seltzer and popcorn. I was
ready for this.
About twenty minutes
into the movie, the humor that carried his cameo in Civil War started to get
boring. I figured that they would keep
it fresh with a compelling story. He
then kept screwing up, and didn’t stop.
After about half an hour of it, I figured that was just the first act,
and the second act would be his transformation, which would have been the
proper the pacing. Or at least at would
have been if I was writing it. He spent
another hour screwing up without any sign of redemption. It was groanworthy. Then, finally, in the last fifteen minutes he
redeems himself, Tony forgives him and offers to make him an Avenger, and
Pepper makes an unexpected cameo.
It was
too little, too late. He turns down
Tony, decides he wants to just be the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and the
movie ends a few minutes later. I wanted
to scream. The third act was
missing. The third act should have been
him being the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and they could have spent half
an hour of him screwing up, not almost the entire movie. I couldn’t remember the last time I was so let
down by a movie.
I refilled my soda and
popcorn and headed back to my apartment, stopping to pick up my laundry, all
fifteen pounds of it. Now, reader, how
was I going to manage my bucket of popcorn, my jug of soda, and fifteen pounds
of laundry? I was trying to figure it
all out, when a woman, trying to be helpful, offered to hold something for me
while I worked on grabbing everything.
That wasn’t the problem. The
problem was that I would need to carry all things back to my apartment without
spilling. The solution was put the
popcorn bucket in the crook of my elbow and hold the jug of soda in that hand
and to carry my laundry with my other arm.
Even before I was out of view of the laundromat, I realized that I
didn’t have my cell phone. I had left it
on the counter in all of the confusion.
I saw the manager through the window, running out the door, trying to
catch up with me, I suppose, but I had already turned around and was heading
back. He handed me my cell phone, and I
managed to get everything back to my apartment.
I decided I would travel very light, just my day bag for tobacco and
electronics and a small tote bag for some clothes.
I got to the office early, as I knew I would
need to leave early, and the day was slow and quiet, just like the rest of the
week. I got my pre-departure lunch from
Hop Won, mixing it up a little bit by getting brown rice and a combination of
boneless spare ribs and sweet and sour chicken, along wiith my egg roll and seltzer.
I then went to pick up my new glasses, which
I had been informed were now ready. At 5
PM, I left and took a car to the airport, falling asleep en route. Security went quickly enough, and I was
almost at the gate with over two hours before my flight. I knew that they would serve dinner on the
flight, so I just wanted a snack to tide me over, not a full meal, not a huge
bag of chips.
That proved to be a
challenge, but in the end, I was able to get a baguette with lox spread for a
surprisingly reasonable price, especially by airport standards. I ate half of it as I walked to my gate,
where I sat down, I finished my sandwich, and proceeded to write this entry,
which I will now close
San Francisco, California
Well, at last I have arrived here
at the City by the Bay, the birthplace of progressivism, the heart of
liberalism, Nancy Pelosi’s home district, and I have found here the thing I
would least expect. No, not a red MAGA
hat, not a “My mother chose life, you should choose life, too” billboard, not
pickup truck with a “I love my .45” bumper sticker. No, what I found is a beautiful rooftop
garden with a view of the tip of the Transamerica Pyramid, and the rooftop
garden is, drumroll please, a designated smoking area.
I am glad to be here, not just on this
rooftop, but in the City by the Bay.
With all the crazy trips I have done after the past few years, it will
be nice to spend a weekend entirely within a 50-mile radius of my hotel. Sure, I will pick up a few new NPS units, but
I will have time to relax. I will have
time to explore the city, which will surely bring back memories of the times I
visited as a child, and I will have to sleep.
I will need that last part.
After
I closed at JFK, we soon boarded, and I knew that it would not be a quick
departure. Our scheduled departure time
was 9:05 PM, and I put 10 PM as the over/under for getting off the ground. It was over.
Way over. I soon heard a southern
drawl over the PA system from the cockpit.
The pilot was giving us far too much information, too many reassurances
in my opinion. He said that our new
scheduled departure time was 9:30 PM, but we would fly faster, so we would
actually get an on-time arrival.
I had
hoped we would land at SFO around 12:30 AM.
I could get two full REM cycles on the plane and another three at my
hotel. That would be a good sleep. We did push back around 9:30 PM, but the
captain told us there were was a long line to taxi, and some departure
corridors were closed due the weather, but he said that he would now be able to
make up some time with a more direct route.
Around 10 PM, he was still hopeful for an on-time arrival, but I did not
like these constant reassurances. It
felt off.
Around 10:30 PM, I started a
movie, and there was no real progress yet.
I chose “Pretty in Pink,” noting with irony that it seems the only time
I ever watch Molly Ringwald movies is on airplanes. I watched “Sixteen Candles” when I flew to
AMS and “The Breakfast Club” when I flew to ATH. And now, on my way to SFO, continued the tradition
with “Pretty in Pink.” It was a classic
John Hughes movie, and, while the humor does not translate to a modern viewing
as well as “The Breakfast Club” did, and I was distracted by all the activity
and constant PA announcements, it was perfectly enjoyable.
Around 11:30 PM, he told us that we were
moving in to position and should be able to take off relatively soon, but he
was obligated by the DOT to inform us that, if we hadn’t taken off by 12:30 AM,
which marked three hours from the boarding doors closing, he would have to
offload the plane. Stupid government
overreach. He said, though, that he
thought we would be airborne well before that.
A little before midnight, he said we were eighth or ninth in line to
take off, and I calculated five minutes a plane, which would make it almost a
photo finish, but he said it would actually be ten minutes total, only about a
minute or two per plane. A few minutes
after midnight, we took off, my movie soon ended, and I was asleep almost the
moment it ended. I got three full REM
cycles en route, waking up only for dinner, which consisted disappointingly of sesame noodles and sad piece of grilled chicken.
We landed around 2:30 AM PDT, and my reader will note that it was almost
the exact same amount of time from when I left the taxi to when we were
airborne as we spent in the air. It was
a bit of a process to get to the rental car place, and the thirty-minute drive
to my hotel was mildly annoying, but I arrived at my hotel slightly before 4
AM. They were doing their nightly
cleaning, and it was hard to find staff.
I was staying at the Fairmont, as in, the original Fairmont hotel, the
first one. I suppose there is a bit of
irony to that, as I have just said, “Canada Complete,” and the Fairmont is the
hotel chain I stayed at most frequently during my travels to Canada. In fact, I have stayed at a Fairmont hotel in
every provincial capital outside of the Maritimes (though the Hotel
Newfoundland was taken over from Fairmont by Sheraton), along with the one in
the national capital of Ottawa. This is
a nice way of capping it, though it was not by design.
I checked in and learned about the rooftop
smoking garden. I headed to my room to resituate
myself and change into my pajamas. I
then headed out to the garden and sat down in view of the Transamerica Pyramid,
where I lit up my Ardor and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now
close so that I can publish and get another two or three REM cycles before my
day tomorrow.
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