In the summer of 1997, George and I made a massive post-graduation road trip from Amherst to Anchorage. Day 32 (of 42) found us in San Francisco, over 8000 road miles from where we’d begun. It was the first time I’d ever been to California, and it was destined to be a brief stay. We headed in from a three-day rest stop in Vegas, followed by a night in Lee Vining, on Mono Lake. I kept a journal of the trip, and the following entry describes our day in San Francisco.

June 29, 1997. “A beautiful city to drive into – lots of great architecture, the beautiful Bay, Alcatraz, the bridge, and everything. Once we got in traffic got pretty hairy, mainly because of the gay pride parade, but also because, as we soon discovered, San Franciscans are by far the worst drivers I’ve ever had the joy to drive with. [Note: My driving experience to this point had really consisted of Alaska, and the previous 8000 highway miles on this trip. I hadn’t seen bad driving yet, as I hadn’t moved to Boston]. Not only were they no signal and all horn, they enjoyed turning across 2 or 3 lanes, parking like morons, speeding, and all of the rest of their endearing habits. We parked on Sacramento and Larkin and walked around to find our hostels. They were either closed or full, with parking sketchy at best…so we hit it for Berkeley. Eight hours later, we arrived. Not really, but it took a long time to get there. We got to see some of Frisco’s crazy streets – insane parking, really rough on cars, I’d think. But that might be all, unfortunately. We got to Berkeley [and ate at] a Thai restaurant, which had delicious pad thai. We went to a cool cd shop, and then got a crummy room here – tartan carpet, a $5 deposit to use the phone, broken furniture… Oh well.”

In the next day’s entry, after recounting pizza in Berkeley with Vlahos from Amherst, at which time I also ran into Dave from CTY out of the blue, I wrote “S.F. got the shaft. Will return with more time & $ later.” So later is now; we leave tomorrow morning, and the blog will be on hold until next weekend. Cheers.