Day 1: The State of the Airborne Nation

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Go East: The Southern Slice
Driving Cross Country - August 29th to September 6th

Command Pilot: John Knight (a.k.a. Beetle or Bug)
Copilot: John Yang (a.k.a. L.J)
Flight Engineer: John Salzberg (a.k.a. Salty)

From: Washington, DC and Portland, OR
To: San Franciso, CA

Flight Itinerary
Washington, DC
Kansas City, MO
San Francisco, CA

So after a late night at the office, I stayed up the remainder of the night to avoid missing my early flight out of DC to San Francisco. I got home @ 2AM --just enough time to run some laundry, pack, and run outside to catch my cab to the Ronald Reagan's Super-Duper Security Funland. It's still dark as we cross over into Virgina and lightning is flickering in the distance. I was so glad to get out of the city before four days of thunderstorms sweep over this city.

I get to National Airport at 5:30 for a 7:00 flight and get a red stripe on my boarding pass. A feeling of doom sinks into me. So I get yanked from line at the security check and have all of my precisely packed carryon bags riffled by TSA staff. My backpack was loaded with enough electronics (an LCD TV, FRS radios, laptop, palm pilot, mobile phone, 2 digital cameras, and a portable web cam) to sink a small Indonesian island. You should have seen the TSA agent's face as this backpack spewed silicon toys. Don't mess with my toys.

LJ got tagged with a red stripe too. Then when the trained monkeys are tearing his bag apart, they find a leatherman in his backpack that he'd forgotten about. He backed out of security, bought an envelope and some stamps in the concourse, and mailed it back to his house in VA. We'll see if it makes it there. Meanwhile, he freaked out the security team when he walked back to the checkpoint. "Didn't you just pass through?" I wish he'd said no just to pull their leg. "Why no, officer, that was my evil twin brother." But then he might have gotten a complete and involuntary physical and missed the flight. That would be bad.

The level of security at this airport is ridiculous. I could probably make a robotic hijacker from the pieces and parts of my toys, but a toe nail clipper is an invitation to a cavity check party? Bah. It would be cheaper to keep helicopter gunships and interceptor jets flying in racetrack patterns over the airport airspace.

But LJ had a good point. Anybody who buys a one-way ticket for one and only has carryon baggage is going to get a more thorough examination than a round-trip ticket holder flying with his/her family.

Also, in the terminal, some random Korean woman walks up to LJ and me and starts speaking rapid-fire Korean while pointing back up towards the security gate. After about 30 seconds, I finally told her that I don't speak Korean, at which point, she shot me a dirty look and stomped off. Sue me lady. LJ was wiser and had already returned to reading his paper.

So here I am sitting on a Midwest Express DC-9, reveling in the fact that the seats are stacked two by two with extra wide armrests. ME is usually frequented by business travelers. The airline was started by Kimberly Clark, the big paper manufacturer, which has major offices in Atlanta, GA and Appleton, Wisconsin. They were flying so many of their own people back and forth that they decided to make a profit by flying other people too. The first time that I flew ME was in 1988 when I flew to Appleton for a 3 day laser physics workshop. After a quick snack, the flight crew handed out hot scented towels and started microwaving chocolate chip cookies in the airport. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

On the flight to Kansas City, there's this woman sitting next to me who pulls out this manual on substance abuse treatment that is chock full of overly complicated diagrams. She keeps nodding off as she tries to read it. Big surprise. There should be a pullout insert with the short version that just says in big bold letters "Don't do smack. It'll kill ya." Then she can't figure out how to pull out the folding tray and keeps feeling the back of the chair in front of her. I'm puzzled for a second but figure out what she's trying to do and help her out. We got to chatting and she tells me how much she regrets doing so many drugs back in the sixties; and how she used to hitchhike all over the country but wouldn't dare to pick a hitchhiker up these days. She thinks it may have affected her and regrets it (the drugs, not the hitchhiking). The entire time, she's pulling out all-natural granola bars and snarfing them like there's no tomorrow. Interesting. My single serving friend (a great term from the movie "Fight Club") is a total freak.

Landing in Kansas City, we find out that the connecting flight is delayed. Accidentally, LJ and I walk out of the secure area and have to go back through the security checkpoint. These TSA employees are much more relaxed. Half of them looked like club bouncers and the other half like their grandparents. After a one hour weather delay, we board and take off for sunny Cali.

San Francisco. The rice-a-roni treat. Flying into SFO, the skies are blue and clear. And the perpetual fog around the Golden Gate Bridge forms an arc around half the city, where the temperature difference between the Pacific and the bay creates massive vapor banks.

During the cab ride from the airport to the hotel, the cabbie shows off the digital camera embedded just above the windshield. It captures the passenger cabin and has caught one cab-jacker already since the city mandated their installation about half a year ago. Neat. If only DC taxis were that well equipped. Also, the bermed areas with purple water south of the city on the bay are part of the waste water treatment facility. Excuse me while I kiss the purple poo.

After checking into the Grand Hyatt San Francisco at Union Square, we leave a voice mail for Bug who is still driving south from Portland, OR. We go walking, yes indeed, and talking, yes indeed, down south a few blocks to stop by a camera shop. Then we hoof up north through Chinatown, where sidewalk vendors are passing out pamphlets for various stores and restaurants. Some points of interest to me include a few blocks where the Taiwanese ROC flag flies proudly followed a few blocks later by the mainland Chinese PRC national flag. I wonder if there are gang wars down the dividing line. Probably not, since both "sides" are heavily capitalist. For those of you who don't bring fleece or warmer clothes to Cali (it drops down to 50 in the evenings in the Bay Area at this time of year), you can buy $11 "fleece" pullovers that more closely resemble terry cloth towels. One wash and you have linen plus a lot of lint.

After Chinatown, you start going uphill at a fairly gentle slope and run smack into this little red-light district. More porno bookshops and theaters than you can shake a bishop's mitre at. We were getting hungry and thirsty but decided to keep going and steer away from the seedy little restaurants. Straight up a 30 degree slope with a beautiful view down 30 blocks of a straight street. Heading up towards Telegraph Hill, we stop before the final climb and massage aching legs while taking in the view. Wow! And the skies are clear, blue, breezy, and sunny. What a perfect day.

There's a lot of ethnic Chinese living in this area. San Francisco proper is supposed to be a city of neighborhoods and it sure seems like it. School was just getting out and there were swarms of little kids being chivvied home by parents and grandparents. It was sweet watching little 6-year-old tots being walked home by their grandparents. LJ thinks that this is more of a cultural than a regional thing, but it's cool to see anyway.

And the houses! Have I mentioned the houses? These rowhouses with turrets and overhangs, painted in lighter or pastel colors are absolutely beautiful. A lot of them have these rooftop or balcony gardens. Kind of looks like Italy with different architecture. I feel like I'm in the vegetarian Chinatown that was never built in Rome.

After more walking, we get to Fisherman's Wharf, where we mosey around and gape at tourists gaping at little shops. After grabbing some lunch and beers, we find the sea lion pens where honking, stinking, fish-eaters are napping in the sun on wooden floats. It's pretty neat that a city would go out of their way to keep habitat open for them.


San Francisco Daytime


Fog Rolling In


North of Union Square at Night

Then Bug checks in via mobile phone and heads down the Embarcadero. We buy some nuclear fruit (bright, fresh, and unnaturally huge) at the fruit stalls while waiting. When Bug arrives, we head to Planet Hollywood for some non-seafood fare --- I have a brownie sundae for my entree and then head back to the hotel, where we discover that the balcony window that is supposed to open only 4 inches for safety (we're up on the 25th floor facing the bay), actually slides all the way open. So we walk outside onto 9 inches of concrete balcony with glass and railing. Watching the fog roll into the city is pretty intense from 240 feet above ground level. LJ and Bug go crazy with their cameras. There's so many laptops and cameras littering our room that it looks like a police surveillance team setting up shop. LJ pulls out his binoculars while Bug is firing off his flash 3 times every second. I'm surprised that police don't look up and send a SWAT team to our hotel to take out the "snipers."

After taking up every electrical jack that is not occupied (and some that are) to recharge phones, cameras, and computers, we all go narcoleptic because it's 10 PM by our body clocks. Waking up 5 hours later at 11 PM local time, we revive and head out for some beers. But it's foggy and cold and we're not really dressed for it, so we don't stray too far. We end up at this purported Irish bar that is split into four sections. Bar, piano slash karaoke bar, cafeteria, and Polish sausage festival. Kind of hard to drink Guinness when there's somebody 5 feet away in a cafeteria line ordering kielbasa and cabbage. Meanwhile, an unending string of frustrated locals and weird tourists are crooning "Hey Jude" ... So we head back to the hotel to catch the cable news, watch part of a really bad movie, and fade out to black ...

 

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