San Francisco, Day 1

[bjarvis]

As mentioned previously, the flight to SF was relatively unextraordinary. I'm still pissed at United Airlines for having a checked baggage fee for every checked bag. I think the first bag should be free to avoid what happened on my flight: most of the passengers of a full 757 took their luggage onboard so we ran out of overhead storage really quickly. Since I was in one of the early boarding groups, this didn't affect me directly but our flight was slightly delayed as boarding the last group and their luggage took forever.

I slept through nearly all of the flight per usual. I was a little annoyed to find my Crackberry woke up at some point and spent most of the trip searching for a network signal which would not come until we landed, thus nearly draining the battery. I ultimately was out of contact with the world from the mid-afternoon onwards; my apologies to anyone who was trying to contact me.

I had a delightful afternoon with low_fat_muffin, his hubby Dave and ever-so-hawt pklexton at Baker Beach, then cruising through the Presidio, seeing the sights:






We also toured the Asian culture festival near City Hall and did some minor domestic shopping.

At 7 PM, a bunch of us gathered at the Firewood Cafe for dinner: dr_scott, excessor, fuzzygruf, double_ohsteven, dhbearguy and dendren:


After dinner, we went out for gelatto and spent a goodly amount of time just chatting & standing in the streets. As time went on, however, our little band went our separate ways to make the most of the evening.

excessor and dr_scott drove me up into the hills above the Castro for a couple of night shots, taking advantage of the clear skies and warm weather.

Photos taken, they dropped me off at the Glen Park BART station so I wouldn't fall asleep on the Muni or miss a chance to switch to BART.

Despite numerous train delays en route, I made it safely back to my hotel in reasonable time and must now get some sleep.