Thirty Days in the Air

I’m home safe in Austin as I write this.  My travel ended yesterday even though AYCJ is technically over at midnight tonight….which means I can totally count my Cap City gig as show #10.

Anyway.

San Francisco is beautiful and amazing and cold and hot but apparently all the damn time.  I would lose track of time there without the burning days of Texas summers reminding me how much I’m going to be griping about the cold when it comes for a few weeks in February.

I did some of the tourist crap.  On the morning of my first post, I just walked walked to the West Portal neighborhood and took the L train to the Embarcadero station.  From there I walked to the TransAmerica (no alt-gender jokes, please, they’ve heard them all) pyramid and then up and down Columbus street.

I found my self in the middle of a funeral in Chinatown.

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Which crossed paths with the Susan G. Komen 3-Day walk that had started in San Jose the day before.  Having walked in honor of my dearly departed mother-in-law, I felt some kinship and cheered them on when I crossed them.

Lunch was at The Stinking Rose.  40-clove Chicken. Can I be honest?  This did not meet my expectations.  It was yummy but the carbonized rosemary on the outside sort of killed the complexity with the taste of burnt wood.  For years I’ve wanted to eat at this restaurant and when confronted with reality; my preconceptions had to take a back seat.

Bought souvenirs, stumbled around looking for The Purple Onion.  Sometimes when you build something up in your mind, your expectations can cause you to miss what’s right in front of you.  So I walked by it at least twice without realizing it.

Somewhere in there I lost the jacket that was on loan from my friend in Milwaukee.  There was a Men’s shop that marked the exact border between the Italian section and Chinatown.  Every place to the right of it was a restaurant and every place to the right….well, I don’t actually know, since shop signs were in Chinese.

And true to form, the contents were all Italian suits…made in China.  I found a jean jacket that would be a decent substitute.  In the end I never had to put it on, so I’ll send it to Rob as a substitute until I can replace the better coat I lost.

Kind of a metaphor for the whole day.  The image I brought with me I had to leave behind, but what I came home with was just as good.