Bay Area Trip Day 8 (California Academy of Sciences)

To start the day I walked down to get breakfast at a diner in the Castro called the Squat and Gobble. Originally I had planned on finding a market and picking up some breakfast stuff to cook back at the house but by the time I got down the hill I was frankly feeling kinda lazy. So I ate a really good breakfast sandwich, had a couple cups of coffee, ordered Ursa a breakfast to go and walked it back up the hill so that she could have something to eat when she got up.

We hung around the house until the early afternoon before we headed back down to Golden Gate Park, stopping along the way to do some shopping. Once in the park we headed to the de Young Museum of Art. One prominent feature of the museum is it's observation platform in it's tower which offers some great views of the city. The  de Young is not as big as I thought it would be, though we did not go through the Georgia O'keefe exhibition, and skipped over the Native American, and African art exhibits too, so there may have been quite a bit that we didn't see.

One artist that we did not miss was Dale Chihuly. His masterful work with glass has made him a ubiquitous figure in nearly every art museum in the country and around the world. Seeing him here as well continues to remind me of how prolific of an artist he is. At any rate, his pieces are magnificent, and full of vibrant colors, captivating shapes, and fascinating details. I really cannot take my eyes off of it.

After the museum we walked across the plaza to the California Academy of Sciences. Ursa had gotten us VIP tickets to the "Night Life" event which features a guided tour of the facility, access to the gem and mineral vault, a discussion with some of the scientists working in the facility, priority seating for the Planetarium show and of course an open bar. 

One of the important points to remember about the Academy of Sciences is that its primary function remains as a research facility. The exhibits, displays, and planetarium are all great ways to educate and get the public engaged but the Academy is first and foremost about science. It was founded during the California Gold Rush as a way of accumulating information about the physical environment of this new area of the country that was being rapidly settled. 

While all of the research is great, and it's good to know that is going on, who doesn't love to see the super cool science exhibits? This facility sports a huge rain forest sphere to walk through, filled with tropical birds, and butterflies. Also an aquarium exhibit, and an indoor corral reef which was awesome. All in all it was a fun, educational, nerdtastic night.  

Bay Area Trip Day 7 (Haight-Ashbury)

Well, unfortunately, Ursa ate something that didn't agree with her and had to take the afternoon off from exploring San Francisco. I felt terrible for her, but what would do her the most good was just some bed rest which wasn't going to happen with me bumbling about the house, so I got out my umbrella and set out in the rain to do some exploring on my own.

Janice Joplin's old house on Ashbury St.

In 1967's legendary "Summer of Love" the neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury became the epicenter of a social and cultural movement whose reverberations are still felt today. I had looked up a list of famous homes from that era and combed the neighborhood looking for them. When you see the close proximity that so many giants of the counter culture movement lived to each other it's no wonder that those became such heady times. On the corner of Haight and Ashbury at 612 Ashbury Street, lived Country Joe McDonald. Across the street from him at 635 Ashbury lived Janice Joplin.

The Grateful Dead's old house on Ashbury St

On the next block up at 710 Ashbury is where the Grateful Dead were living, and literally across the street from them, at 719 Ashbury was a house rented out by the Hell's Angels. Just up the hill on Buena Vista West was Graham Nash, and down on Page Street was famed concert poster artist Ron Donovan, down the street from him was a house rented out by Big Brother and the Holding Company. The punk band, Flipper, had an apartment just around the corner from them on Haight Street. It wasn't all love of course, Charles Manson lived on Cole Street, and on Masonic Avenue is where Patty Hearst was in hiding at a Symbionese Liberation Army safe house.

The last stop I made while in the Haight was to do some shopping at Amoeba Music. I love old record shops like this; sifting through rack after rack of old, new, kitch, and local music to find a diamond in the rough to listen to. It's a hipster paradise. Today I didn't buy any albums though, instead I picked up a photo book of Bay Area street art and graffiti.
Tonight, assuming that Ursa starts feeling better, we are going to do something decidedly un-hippy; going to the ballet. We were going to go for a nice dinner as well but I think that with Ursa's stomach issues we might just limit our activity for the evening to just going to the show and coming back. We will have plenty of other nights to sample San Francisco's culinary delights.

Bay Area Trip Day 6 (Botanical Gardens)

(photo courtesy of Ursa Davis)

We slept in a little bit which is fine because often we get so caught up in seeing all that there is to see in the city that we forget that we are on a vacation and it's okay to relax. Once we got up and moving we walked down to the Haight for breakfast. I had a breakfast sandwich that consisted of a bagel, ham, and what appeared to be about 18 eggs. Ursa's babaganouj addiction has still not been sated, so that's what she had for breakfast, more baba.

(photo courtesy of Ursa Davis)

From there we walked to Golden Gate Park and the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. This one is very much like the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh that we visited a couple years ago. I love these types of gardens, they help me understand what a curious and amazing world we live in that produces such an astonishing variety of rich, vivid, delicate beauty. The collections of orchids there were lovely, but also the carnivorous plants could be found throughout. These upturned buckets came in a variety of sizes and colors. The plants grow high up in forest canopies where there is little soil for them to draw nutrients from, so these buckets attract bugs to them who then become trapped inside and drown in the water that collects inside. Enzymes in the water dissolve the insects who then can feed the plant.

(photo courtesy of Ursa Davis)

The final room that we went through was the butterfly exhibit. Again, the diversity of colors and patterns fascinated me as we made our way around. Fortunately for me I was apparently dressed for the occasion in a bright red shirt that the butterflies loved. They were all flitting around me and a few even landed on me.

(photo courtesy of Ursa Davis)

The cocoons of the various breeds were on display including the Zebra Longwings which were all empty and the room was filled with that particular breed. There were other breeds of course but the zebras were the most common by far on this day.

After leaving the Conservatory of Flowers it was a short walk to the Botanical Gardens. We had originally wanted to split these two stops up onto different days, but the weather is expected to take a turn for the worse starting tomorrow, so we decided to get some of our outdoor activities out of the way while we still could. And I'm glad that we did, this was a very pleasant day in the park although it did start to get a little cool by the end. The highlights of the Botanical Gardens were a group of magnolia trees that were just finishing blossoming, and their petals would drift through the air like a snowstorm every time the wind blew. The rhododendron garden was also beautiful, and we had fun chasing an Anna's Hummingbird around, trying to get a decent photo of it. I have to give Ursa all the credit, I don't think that I would have been able to get that pic. Great job Ursa!

(photo courtesy of Ursa Davis)

Bay Area Trip Day 5 (Arrived in San Francisco)

I'm usually a pretty good sleeper on the airplane, and when I fly red-eye's I really count on it. You've got to get at least a few hours of sleep if you want to have any kind of productive day when you get to where you're going. My luck did not hold up this time, and I got only about an hour of sleep on the first leg of our journey, from Anchorage to Portland, and the second leg, from Portland to San Francisco, was one of the small Q-400s that I can never sleep on. I had an aisle seat and every time I closed my eyes someone was bumping into me.

That is why I was surprised that Ursa and I managed to have as productive of a day as we did when we got to San Francisco. The first thing that we did was get checked into the place that we rented. A really cute, one bedroom flat right in between the Castro district and Haight-Ashbury. We have always preferred to rent a house or apartment on VRBO.com whenever possible rather than a hotel. It adds dramatically to the feeling of place, to feel like a local rather than a visitor. Plus, in a town like San Francisco that has a great mass transit system, you don't need to rent a car and fight traffic to get around, you can just jump on a trolly, bus or metro and jet right off to wherever you want to be in town.

We arrived at our place, first thing in the morning, got unpacked, had a glass of wine and then headed right out to do some city exploring. The first thing that we did was to make the short walk from our place to the Castro district where we found an incredible spot for lunch at La Mediteranee Noe. As the title might suggest they served Mediterranean cuisine, which is why it was one of the first places that we jumped at to eat, because Ursa has an incurable addiction to babaganouj. I had a combination plate with small samples of three different entrees, and a cup of Middle Eastern coffee that was spectacular. The coffee is made by boiling extremely fine coffee grounds, sugar, and cardomom with a little water in a small brass container called a cezve. The coffee ends up thick and strong, but not in any way bitter like one might expect. It was delicious.

From there we found our way to a metro station, here it's called BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and took a few minutes to figure out how the ticketing system works, then caught a train to the Embarcadero. It was a long walk around all of the Piers to get to Fisherman's Wharf, so we walked for a while, and did some sightseeing, then caught a bicycle taxi the rest of the way.

Fisherman's Wharf is a cool touristy place to see. Lots of shops and restaurants, and things for the the kids to do. There are also great views of Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and a colony of sea lions that stay there. As tired as we were, it was nice to visit someplace touristy so that we could turn the brains off and let the entertainment come to us a little. But still, we were pretty exhausted so we had an early dinner and set back off for the house to turn in early.
On our way home we got a ride from an Egyptian cab driver who we had a fascinating conversation with. He explained how Egypt, much like Ukraine today, has been victimized by outside powers enforcing their wills upon the Egyptian people. These types of conversations are part of what I love about traveling. Meeting and engaging with people from different places with a variety of views. Injecting a little diversity into life is very much what invigorates me. Traveling is not just about seeing new places but meeting new people.

Bay Area Trip Day 4 (Anchorage, AK)

Aaaaaaaand we're off! Sitting in the Starbucks at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport soaking in some caffeine to keep me at least in a low mental fog through our late night flight to San Francisco. The trick is to get just caffeinated enough to get yourself onto the plane where the coffee wears off and you go into crash mode and can sleep despite having a middle seat and a child three rows back screaming like it just lost its left pinkey toe. Even if my ambitious plan doesn't work, at least I have managed to prove the lengths that my justifications will stretch, and got a cup of coffee out of the deal to boot. Oh Starbucks, you are my only friend.
Many of my coworkers travel on Sundays, so I am expecting to see some of them skulking around the air terminal. Part of me is looking forward to seeing them, and another part remembers that EVERYONE is grouchy when flying red-eyes so they may not be the witty raconteurs that I'm used to... neither am I for that matter.

The weekend spent in Anchorage after getting off of work was well spent, if not altogether productive. It was a much needed opportunity to catch up on some sleep, and take our time getting packed up for the journey. I did get to sit down for dinner with my cousin, Molly and her daughter who were passing through town. I would say that I never get to see her often enough, but that would be misleading because I CAN never see her enough. She's always a joy, and a ball of enthusiasm.. I atulate her on her upcoming wedding. Ursa and I would like to wish you both a lifetime of happiness.
Well, I've got a plane to catch. Talk to you all from San Francisco.

Bay Area Trip Day 1 (Prudhoe Bay, AK)

It has been an interesting week here at work on the oilfield. First there was the cold. Saying that it got cold in the arctic may seem to be blindingly obvious, but when the weather gets cold by arctic standards, believe me, it's worth note.

Alaska's North Slope has been hit with a cold snap, dropping the temperature to a frigid -46 F and a slight breeze that took the wind chill temperature down to -72 F. There is simply nothing in the English language that can adequately describe what -72 F feels like. Your entire body feels like it's been slapped by a giant icy hand, the air hurts your lungs, and exposed skin will freeze within a couple of minutes. I am warmed however by thinking about and planning our trip to California that we are flying off to within a couple of days. When it's this cold, you need warm thoughts to get you through.
Speaking of traveling, there was a bomb scare at the Anchorage airport this week, when someone tried to bring a pipe bomb onto the BP Charter flight to Prudhoe Bay. Don't worry everybody, it wasn't me. The bomb turned out to be an avalanche triggering device, and the passenger had intended no ill will, but that does beg the question as to why he thought it would be ok to bring such a device in his carry on. Surely the proper stowage of one's pipe bombs should be in the checked luggage compartment.
It's kind of funny that when I heard about an explosive device on the plane that I fly, my initial thoughts were not about passenger safety or which of my co workers it may have been, but rather my brain went straight to, "Oh hell, TSA will be worse than ever this week."
At any rate, I have been finding lots of time today to put some finishing touches on plans for the California trip. Booking a few last events and reading restaurant reviews. Looking forward to flying out of Prudhoe Bay today, spending the weekend in Anchorage, then south to San Francisco on Monday. I look forward to keeping you all posted. Bye!