The San Francisco Post

Okay, I’m in San Francisco, yay!

Getting here took a bit longer than I hoped. I drove myself to the Buffalo airport for the first time – had the usual last-minute getting delays and maybe a 25 minute line at US Peace Bridge customs, so I didn’t get to the airport as early as I hoped.

But the plane from Buffalo to Chicago was delayed too. I was worried about missing my connection – the flight from Chicago to San Fran was supposed to leave at 6:15 local time, and the plane from Buffalo touched down around six, then took at least five minutes to taxi in to the gate. Once I got up the jetway to the gate desk there was a nice gentleman who looked up my connecting flight number, and told me my gate number in C concourse, and I was off like a shot, running down those moving sidewalks, down the connecting passageway from B concourse to C concourse, struggling not to yell at people who were just standing in the way. It was around 6:17 when I got to the gate desk in C concourse – was I in time?

Was I ever. The plane to San Francisco wouldn’t be taking off for more than 2 hours. 😦 So I wandered up and down C concourse, got a personal pepperoni deep-dish pizza, (which I wasn’t impressed with; maybe I shouldn’t have picked the vendor with the lowest price,) then went back to the waiting area for my flight and tried to write, only got a few hundred words done before they started boarding.

We landed in San Francisco maybe ten minutes to eleven, pacific time, and after waiting for my carry-on, (which I volunteered to gate-check in Buffalo) at the baggage claim, I made my way over to the BART station in time for the 11:30 train into the city. Coming out of the BART station near my hotel, looking around for the street my hotel was on, a large black guy came up to me, asked me what I was looking for, offered directions, and then asked for some money to get food with. I pulled two dollar bills out of my wallet and he seemed upset that I wasn’t willing to go up to three. His directions included a wrong turn too.

At the hotel registration, I waited for a few minutes behind the guy who had a black Porsche with the valet service. Finally got up to my room maybe twenty after midnight, pacific time, (which is after 3am Eastern.) Tried to get the hotel wifi working based on the username and password printed on my keycard folder, but kept getting ‘Radian server not responding.’ Didn’t get an answer when I called the front desk about it, so I just brushed, flossed, and went to bed.

Woke up early this morning, couldn’t get back to sleep so I unpacked, showered, called front desk about the wifi and they told me to ‘use all lower case.’ Surprisingly enough, that worked. I would have thought that error message meant something other than a username spelled wrong, in fact I would tend to translate it as ‘I’m not even listening to you.”

Posted on the Nanowrimo board, went to breakfast at the Mason street Lori’s diner, which was fairly small, and I was sent up to eat at the bar because I was by myself. Great pancakes and milk, but the bacon was a little chewy. Next time I get bacon, need to ask for ‘crispy.’

Back to the hotel, confirmed for the ML tea party tomorrow, organized an itinerary for the day and transit fare stuff, then down to the Mission for Borderlands write-in. That was a lot of fun – We had five people come out, and it was mostly quiet with a lot of writing getting done, especially because other people around us were trying to write or work, but we did get some fun conversation in. I wrote 3310 words. Then I grabbed a cheeseburger and fries from Burger Join in the Mission, and walked over to the Mission 16th street BART stop to head out to Berkeley

It had been raining on and off all day but by the time I got to Ashby station, up the road from the Office of Letters and Light, it was just bucketing down. I had my telescoping blue umbrella, but still after a minute out in this rain, anything that was close to the edges of the umbrella zone was getting wet from drips and stray spray. I tried to hug my bag close because it had electronic gear, and trudged down Adeline looking for the sweet shop next to OLL, or the ‘other hobbit’ bookstore I remembered on the way. Got to the bookstore, considered ducking in to be out of the rain for a few minutes, then I thought I saw Sweet Adeline at the next corner, so I forged bravely on – but that turned out to be a makeup store and I had to go one more block.

Raced past Sweet Adeline and into the OLL doorway. Knocked on the door, wondering if everybody was out on a late lunch. Then Lindsey Grant opened up, immediately apologizing that there weren’t more people around, but she introduced me to a few of the interns and asked if I would mind helping stuff tote bags with NOWD goodies. Of course I didn’t, and I stuck around for a few hours, carrying the tote bags carefully down the stars, rolling up posters to give away, and chatting about many things both Nano-ish and not. Sarah Mackey showed up after a little while, asked if I was going to be at the Meet and Greet tomorrow night.

Left around 3:30 or so, got some treats at Sweet Adeline, (yummy almond cake!) and walked back to the BART. That was pretty much the end of my exciting day. I caught up with the forums and some email stuff, then went up to the other Lori’s Diner up on Sutter for dinner, still ended up eating at the bar. Went into the Walgreen’s across the street to pick up some snacks, ended up with a stack of Pringles, and a bright blue spare Ipod/iPhone cable, which will probably come in handy, so I can have one with the home desktop, one in at work, and one in the car to plug into the stereo.