Recently, I went to San Francisco to visit my daughter. She has been living there for three years, but recently got her own apartment and needed some help furnishing, decorating, assembling, and asked me to come visit her. She obviously didn’t want to spend the whole five days with her mom so I contacted an old friend and made plans to get together with him and anyone else he knew in the bay area who could show up. As it turns out when it came time to go, my daughter wanted to go with me, but she invited two friends who had also graduated from Middlebury College. It ended up being six of us at Trader Sam’s in San Francisco. Three alum from the class of 2017 and three from class of 1987. We started with the scorpion bowl to break the ice. This turned out to be a great decision! We were all sharing straws and drinking out of the same bowl!! This was a big culture shock for me because not only am I not much of a drinker, but I haven’t done anything like this since decades before Covid. Covid did make me more aware of close contact with other people though. It was so much fun. We all threw caution to the wind, and really enjoyed ourselves the entire night. The three of us from 1987 were all swim team alum. We have a lot in common and we had a lot of fun that night. And we had fun with the “kids“ although it might have more relaxed and crazier if it had been just us adults. I had to be a mom the whole night for the most part. A lot of pictures were taken, phones were passed around so other people took pictures, quite a bit of alcohol was imbibed even after the scorpion bowl, and there are a lot of pictures to document the fun and shenanigans. My two friends from Middlebury are the two people you would want to invite to any party to make sure that it was a blast. And they did just that. And after quite a few drinks, the kids decided they were hungry, so we wandered down to Clement Street to look for a restaurant. The closest one we found was not one that made me happy but I was outvoted, and as it turned out, I really enjoyed the food and we had a fun night there as well. Map of San Francisco Adventures
I went back to San Francisco again less than 2 weeks later. This time I swam in the outdoor pool every other day. It was 100 feet long (33 and 1/3 yards long). I did not know this at first and my stroke count was 30/length instead of my usual 24 so I thought I was just weak and out of shape. I started each length feeling great, swimming well and fast and smooth but by the time I got back to the same wall, I was looking and feeling rough. I rested a lot and as a result I made a lot of friends. I was swimming in the fast lane which was full of old college swimmers like myself. Everyone chatted and introduced themselves. There was Scott and Kevin and Brian, there was marathon girl and lot of other names I can not remember The air was so fresh and the sun and smell of flowers. I swam 4 times and by the end, my rest periods were much less frequent. I swam for 1.5 hours usually and went longer every time. I did 72, 94 lengths, 104 and 114. By the last day, I needed much less rest and the last 3 days I did one legnth of butterfly! Now that I am home, I really miss swimming. It is too cold in the lakes at this point and swimming in a dirty indoor pool with chlorine gas all around sounds gross. But I made so much progress! I can feel the muscles in my shoulders/lats.
I was also intrigued by a class at Laci's that was given during this second trip to San Francisco. Beetle wing embroidery! It was very interesting and nice to be in a class with like-minded people. Laci's has asked me to teach bobbin lace there so it was good to see the teaching space. It is a great space and the shop museum is wonderful too! So much to see there, I see something new each time and it is only a half hour walk from J's.
I did some fantastic hikes on my own also: Reinhardt Redwood Preserve. This was disappointing. No really big trees and it is a pretty small area but still nice.
The Volcanic Preserve was more interesting. Very cool terrain and views. Also not that big. Both of these areas seem to have been quite encroached on by homes. The homes are on the sides of cliffs with fantastic views but seems dangerous in earthquake country....
