2003-03-10 - 10:20 a.m.

A Whirlwind Tour of San Francisco

Early January my boss's boss's boss came walking by and introduced me to an engineer from Spain. Apparently he is visiting the United States as part of a fellowship between the U.S. and Spain. For the first part of his fellowship he took classes at UC Davis (where I got my Master's degree), but for the second half he is supposed to work along side American engineers. He chose to work in my modeling group.

The problem with this choice is: (1) modeling work has a long learning curve (many of our own staff is dead weight, because after years of doing modeling work, they've still not figured things out), and (2) some of the modelers are just too busy to spend much time talking to somebody else. I actually feel a bit sorry for him. He came to the US to meet engineers and learn how we do things, but all he is really learning is that American engineers are jerks. Er, I'm censoring myself there.

When I found out that he hadn't really been to San Francisco, I decided that I'd offer him my whirlwind (i.e. only for people with a strong endurance) tour of San Francisco. So at 9 AM Saturday morning I picked him up. We made it to Golden Gate Park by 10:30 AM (which is good time for a morning trip west). There I first drove him to the Buffalo area. Yes, there are Buffalo in Golden Gate Park (most Northern Californians don't even know about this). Remember, that to a European, seeing a Buffalo, is what seeing a Panda Bear is to an American.

Next, I took him to a pond in the park where a bunch of guys were playing with remote controlled jet powered speed boats. JET POWERED! Um, I can find the words to describe how fast these boats moved, but to give you an idea, they moved so fast that they would literally jump into the air whenever they crossed another boat's wake.

Moving on, we then visited the Dutch Windmill in the park and the surrounding Tulip gardens. Then I took him to the ruins of the old Sutro Bath House. Yes, San Francisco has actual ruins. Real ruins. Rusty pipes, old stone walls. The perfect place to ... well, I won't go there. *snicker* It turns out that there was a massive San Francisco wide scavenger hunt going on (more about that another day), and a few of the stops were in these ruins. After climbing on the cliffs, I took him to the Sutro Heights, which offers an incredible view of Ocean Beach. Yes, San Francisco has several beaches, and I took him for a long walk along Ocean Beach next.

I don�t like the ocean. I hate swimming in any water, but I do like walking along the beach. The weather on Saturday couldn't have been any more idea. Yeah weather!

For lunch, I ran him through the Haight-Asbury district, but I found out that he wasn't as interested in the cool shops as I am. Oh well. We did have Chinese food, and later I took him through a used record store that used to be a bowling alley. Then I ran him back to Golden Gate Park, where we walked through the AIDS Memorial Grove, Japanese Tea Gardens, and Botanical Gardens (three completely different places). On our way back to my car, we followed some music we heard in the air and ended up going to a concert. He was interested in the music, while I was interested in the cute goth girl playing badminton with her girlfriend. The strange thing? The goth girl's girlfriend was a hippie type. ACK! I don't think I could bring myself to kiss a green clad hippie girl! How could she???

Finally, I ran him over to UC Berkeley and Telegraph Avenue for dinner, where I wanted to talk about Berkeley's roll in the free speech movement. Ha, between Telegraph Avenue and Haight, I think we have about 5 people offer us drugs. (The night before some guy was trying to sell me the "good purple stuff" in Sacramento. I don't even know what the "good purple stuff" is laced with.)

Saturday night was the first time that I feel asleep before midnight. I was exhausted, but at least I fell asleep knowing that somebody I trust got to play American Ambassador.

LISTENING TO: Somatic Responses Augmented Fires

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