Back To My "Home"

I have to say, I'm getting to like this whole showering at night thing, and the ability to sit up in bed and click clack away on my computer. My portable computer. The laptop has grown on me. Anyways.

So yesterday I took one of my pilgrimages to San Francisco. It had been quite awhile since I'd gone, mostly due to this whole Covid-19-stay-at-home-quarantine thing. It was actually early January, the last time I took this road trip. Over 4 months. Wow. So I took a Friday, incidentally the start of a holiday weekend (which I had forgotten about), and made the trek. As most of the free paces I normally park are still closed and physically roped off, I had to improvise a little. Fortunately I'm familiar enough with the Marina District that I know where to go. And it's still with sight and sound and smell of the water. Easy peasy. The length of the day here would ultimately turn out to be a 13 mile, 30,000 step day for me, and the weather was idyllic. Warm and clear - but not hot - with a cool, gentle breeze blowing through the air.

I know, I know. we're supposed to stay at home and so on and so forth. I'm so bad! But hey, I social distanced, which is to say I stayed away from pretty much everyone. Like usual. I did find it funny that there were these professionally printed Stay At Home posters scattered all around the more touristy spots. Like, on the Golden Gate Bridge. I mean really, if you get as far as the edge of the bridge, and there you see a sign, well you're not going to suddenly change your mind, turn around, and go back to where you came from. You've come so far already, you're going to walk across the bridge. It's okay though, 6 feet away from everyone of those signs is another sign saying Stay 6 Feet Apart. So we're good. I only went halfway across and back though, as by that time I had already walked three miles just to get there, and it was getting close to time to turn around and head back for my picnic lunch. Turkey sandwich.

I did walk down what was left of the Embarcadero. They're making use of the down time to do some construction, so a lot of the street was fenced off. Not that it mattered. There's not many people down that way anymore anyway. Pier 39 is completely fenced off, as is most of the seaside boardwalk. But the flowers are all in bloom, and it's still picturesque. I did stop in to one ice cream shop in the Cannery that was open, for a milkshake. The proprietor was relaxing outside, since no one was around to buy anything. But he quickly got to his feet and came into the store to serve me, and he seemed genuinely grateful that I was there. He thanked me profusely for stopping in, and for the 75 cent tip I left in the jar. I feel bad for the businesses that are there. Technically they were allowed to re-open as of May 18, the Monday before, as long as they offered to-go or curbside service. Several restaurants had signs suggesting that they were in fact open. But they looked shuttered and abandoned. And unlike the beach areas of Chrissy Field, there's just no one there.

It would have been nice to have a pleasant sit-down lunch or dinner, as a special treat to myself, if anything were open. I do that sometimes when I'm in San Francisco. But I'm sorry, I'm not going to get a nice meal "to go", and then try and clumsily eat it out of a styrofoam box while perching on a hard sidewalk bench as the breeze steals my napkins and the homeless man on the adjacent bench mutters incoherently to himself while smoking from a homemade bong constructed out of a discarded beer can. And that last part is not made up, I actually did see a homeless man doing this.

So after finishing my milkshake and walking as far as the sadly abandoned cruise terminal at Pier 27, I turned around and headed back to my car near Fort Mason, and returned to home. I'm sure there's folks out there who would say I shouldn't have left home in the first place. But I do consider it an "essential" trip, for me. I had to go. I had to. To feed my soul, which was in need of maintenance. I can't really explain how or why it works, but these trips are one of the few things that repair my soul. It places a band-aid on the small fissure through which my soul tends to leak its essence from. It's a patch job, to be sure, but it does the trick. And now I'm energized again, rebuilt and restored, which will hopefully last until the next time I get to go "home".