Getting Out
There are a number of reasons my posting has been a little light lately: the general blandness that seems to have come over the weblogging world, the late-night hazes that always accompany a new PodWorks release, my struggles with Ikea furniture (long story). My best excuse, though, is that I’ve actually been getting out a lot and enjoying the beautiful spring weather in the Bay Area.
(Warning: Long, rambling personal post with lots of photos ahead…)
The weekend before last, for example, I headed up to Lake Tahoe to try snowboarding for the first time.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: you’re from Colorado—Ski Country USA—for crying out loud! You must have been born with skis on your feet! Sadly, that couldn’t be further from the truth: I never went skiing as a kid and only found it more difficult to learn as time went on, since most of my friends were already at home on the slopes. This being the case, I’ve always looked at my move to California as a golden opportunity to finally take lessons with people who are just as likely to be humiliated as me (a Scotsman and an Ohioan, as it turns out).
Though my friend DeLynn was correct in warning that my first day of snowboarding would be among the sorest I would ever spend, I found the experience well worth the pain (at least once I figured out how to get up). I even finished the day by taking a terrifying wrong turn and down a blue run, only to immediately head back up for more punishment. The gorgeous Tahoe area is a sight for sore eyes to a Coloradan like me, and the instructors at Northstar are top notch. Oh—and I’d just like to say that the inventor of Gore-Tex should be awarded a Nobel Prize.
Interestingly, one thing you can do at Tahoe that you certainly can’t in Vail or Aspen is while the night away at a casino, and that’s exactly what we did—playing 3-6 Texas Holdem at Harvey’s Lake Tahoe on the Nevada side of the lake. I’m proud to say that all the Wednesday nights I’ve been spending playing poker have paid off. Not only was I able to avoid looking particularly foolish at the table, I was also the only person in our group to actually win money (a whopping dollar!).
Last weekend, James Turner, who I stayed with in Scotland, was in town for GDC. So he, co-worker Jamie, and I all decided to head up to “the city” (San Francisco to you non-Bay Area residents) to have a look around. I hadn’t done much photography for awhile, and thought that taking photos of the planned anti-war march from Dolores Park to City Hall might be interesting. It certainly was that.
We arrived at City Hall around the same time the marchers did—just in time to hear the speakers—and let me tell you, it was a circus. As I crossed Larkin Street heading toward the main crowd, we were immediately intercepted by a dazed looking fellow trying to spread the good news about Lyndon LaRouche. After escaping him and making our way past a pair of histrionic fellows in pig masks and suits, we headed into the fray and surveyed the scene. In the crowd, people held signs making the usual over-the-top comparison of Bush to Hitler. On the stage, a succession of rabid speakers agitated about a multitude of pet issues: the plight of Native Americans, toxic waste at Hunter’s Point, same-sex marriages, the need for strong labor unions—oh, yeah, and that war thing.
After taking a round of slides with my Leica (which I may post once I can get them developed and scanned), we decided we’d seen enough and went for some crêpes at Frjtz. On our way back, at about 5th and Market, we came upon a sort of standoff between what the San Francisco Chronicle descibes as a “splinter group” of protesters and the police. Though, according to the Chronicle some blows were exchanged, the drama I saw (and photographed with my digicam) was more comic than tragic: essentially, the police were videotaping the protesters, the protesters were videotaping the police, and nobody was moving.
Now don’t get me wrong—there are plenty of reasonable, intelligent, articulate critics of the Bush administration and its war in Iraq, from all walks of life. Many of them were even present at the protest. But, in my opinion, if you were to judge by what you saw at San Francisco City Hall on Saturday, you’d never know it.
Fortunately, one of San Francisco’s most redeeming and surprising benefits is its close proximity to some places of considerable natural beauty. After bidding a fond farewell to the protest’s rancorous masses, we joined some other friends and headed across the Golden Gate Bridge for a hike in Marin County. The original destination was Muir Woods—a place I’ve been meaning to visit since I moved here—but it was already getting late in the day and anything at sea level was covered in fog. So we headed up Mount Tamalpais instead, where the peaceful, late afternoon bay vistas provided a soothing respite from the day’s chaos.
