My Blog

What a whirlwind that trip was, starting Wed. the 8th.  I flew into San Jose because it was much cheaper and took CalTrain/BART.  That took over 3 hours so I’m definitely not doing the SJ flight again no matter how much money it saves.  I made it into the city and stayed most of the time with my friends Mike and Noah who were extremely gracious.  They live by the Panhandle of the Golden Gate Park and it was great going out every morning and the first thing you see is giant trees even though you are in the middle of a major urban area.  The first night we went to eat at Herbivore, an amazing vegetarian restaurant in their neighborhood and met up with my friend Joey for drinks at some place that had crazy flavored champagne specials.

The next day I took BART over to Oakland to register for the Harm Reduction Conference.  I went to a couple of the workshops and came across my good friend Heather who works at a needle exchange program in Minneapolis.  It was great to see her because it has been forever and I got to see her and some of her coworkers do a presentation the next day about their agency.  I also ran into Joseph, who was one of the AmeriCorp members I worked with in Tulsa a few years ago and he is doing HIV work in Olympia.  I came back into SF that night and Mike and I roamed around the city coming across places like Underground SF ( http://www.undergroundsf.com/ ) and the Jews for Jesus HQ(pic coming soon). 

The next morning I woke up to the wondrous arrival of the new stove(see pic).  I don’t know why this was such a joyous occasion, it was just one of those things and I played my part by making sure everyone was well aware of the safety regulations.  As I was heading back to the conference my friend Rachel got on the bus.  She had recently transferred with MAC from Tulsa and it was a very pleasant surprise to see her.  I had to look at her for a minute to make sure I wasn’t imagining it was her and after I said her name she gave me the same look for a second.  We exchanged numbers and as I was calling her our friend Heather’s picture came up on her phone which was really apt considering Heather and I have talked about how much we love SF and it is the kind of city where you will always run into people you know.

Friday and Saturday at the conference were great.  Oakland has some pretty rough areas, but the neighborhood by the convention center has some great little shops and Friday they closed off some of the streets for a huge farmer’s market.  There I came across salmon sticks, which you would need to remember slim jims you ate as a kid because of the spices and consistency but replace the beef/pork with salmon.  They were pretty good but more novel than tasty.  The presenters and attendees at the conference were great because they have such a passion for the really necessary and underfunded work that they do.  Visit www.harmreduction.org for more info.

Friday night I went to visit my friends Kelly and Kyle in Berkeley.  Mostly Kelly because I didn’t have long to stay and Kyle was at his own conference in San Jose talking about teledildonics (which is what it sounds like but is a topic worthy of its own blog, http://www.teledildonics.com/ ).  So Kelly and I went to eat Ethiopian food (my first time and it was pretty tasty and very fun) and stopped by Amoeba ( http://www.amoebamusic.com/ ) which I think is the greatest music store in the world.  While riding the BART back from Berkelely to Oakland, I got a great view of the clouds running over the tops of the mountains as they headed inland. 

After another very rewarding day at the conference I headed back into SF.  I had met some interesting people at the conference who invited us to check out their facilities including a place called Magnet ( http://www.magnetsf.org/index.html ) that gave me some great ideas for the clinic and for our local GLBT center.  After stopping by Magnet I went to a downtown needle exchange program that had a really good feel to it and met some great people.  It was one of the many great programs provided by SF AIDS Foundation.  Then I went over for a couple of drinks at an old favorite called the Hole in the Wall ( http://www.holeinthewallsaloon.com/index.html ).  After that I met back up with Mike and we ran around the Mission, Castro, and Haight some more finishing the night with some great music at Underground SF.

Sunday brunch was back at Herbivore with the aforementioned Rachel and another friend named Rachel who used to be one of my AmeriCorps members and is studying Nursing at UCSF.  It was great to catch up with them and have some great food and conversation.  That afternoon I went walking around Golden Gate Park and it was great to see so many people enjoying themselves.  I spent a lot of time in Conservatory of Flowers.  I’m not sure what their main site is but I came across some great pics here: http://travel.mongabay.com/united_states/sf_flower_conservatory.html

I met back up with Mike at his job which was fun because it was a very small office and they had the front area blocked with a giant black drape so it felt very much like you were entering a secret society.  I’m not very creative with crafts myself, but if you are then you should check out this site:  http://www.readymademag.com/ .  Then back on CalTrain for what seemed like forever to get to San Jose.  I was meeting some internet friends, Kelly and Keith, for the first time in person and they were very patient and helpful with figuring out San Jose.  They are some of the friends I have come across at some of the Siouxsie fan sites like www.thecreatures.com .

We went to eat and to a couple of bars in San Jose which was my first time to really experience that city.  I was surprised at how much it reminds me of Tulsa.  The next day there was a lot of flight delays which ended in me spending a lot of time in the Denver and San Jose airports and a lost suitcase but it all got sorted out and I made it back in time for Yuri’s going away party at Tuccis Monday night. 

This was one of the best trips I’ve ever had and it felt like I did more in those six days than I normally do in six weeks.  Thanks again for everyone that helped my visit be such a great one.  This trip has really made me appreciate my friends and writing this has made me appreciate that there is a webpage about everything so you can actually show people what you did without carrying a camera around.

http://www.ktul.com/news/stories/0606/334002.html

They had a microburst, which is basically the technical way of saying the sky fell, and all kinds of hell broke loose this morning. I live about a half of a mile away from the main epicenter where they had lots of big trees and power lines down.

Living here gets one very used to the possibility of these things but it is still really exciting when it actually happens. The weather woke me up this morning, which is pretty rare but the wind was very horizontal and contained some hail making it pretty noisy. When I first looked out it was just raining hard but the second time I opened the front door wind and rain/hail/debris came in really fast and hard and I actually couldn’t see for a second. As usual I had my internal debate about whether I should run outside and play or take my dog with me to the interior closet. I compromised by listening to the radio and watching from the porch window.

There is a really bright orange security light in the parking lot across the street and you could barely see it through the rain. I don’t know if the light was causing a distortion but the rain actually looked very brown. The hard wind and hail couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of minutes and the streets flooded but the winds calmed down very quickly and it went into a light sprinkle. The weather sirens never went off and the intensity of it bookended by such light rain and winds was really odd.

Fortunately my house didn’t appear to suffer any damage. The house I watch next door had a porch window pane shattered and a small bit of the eaves knocked off but neither were too serious structurally. The car came out OK too even though there were some branches scattered around the driveway. The trash can was thrown about quite a bit and all the trash bags were ripped open so I had to pick up the yard for a bit but it wasn’t too big of a deal.