San Francisco

Pam and I were able to spring some time and make an awesome trip to San Francisco in April.  It is a city we have always wanted to visit and it was in all ways worth the trip.  We initially planned on driving down the Oregon Coast and taking in the Redwoods of Northern California on the way but eventually had to scrap that plan in favour of a round-trip flight.

I prepped for the trip by reading "A Crack in the Edge of the World" by  Simon Winchester.  This is an excellent account of the 1906 earthquake and fire and a good general history of Northern California.  Pam and I also watched "Milk", "Vertigo", "Bullit", and "Yours Mine and Ours"!

A big part of our trip was to visit our friends John and Adrian.  John is a fellow cancer survivor and one of the very few who shares my particular situation of a "sacral tumour".  John and Adrian proved to be excellent guides with the highlight of the trip a day-long excursion to Point Reyes Park on the very west coast!  It was truly a great day!

 John, Pam, and Adrian on the San Andreas Fault

We delighted in exploring the "Beat", "Hippy", and "Gay" cultural history of San Francisico.  I was rewarded in my visit to City Lights Bookstore with a chance meeting with Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.  Interestingly, I had imagined meeting him before going there and poof... he materialised out of his upstairs office while I was browsing books.  I was a little dumbfounded at first and then followed him downstairs where he signed a book of poetry he had recently editted.  Thomas Merton was a friend of Ferlinghetti's and spent his last night in the US with him before his Asia trip.  But that is another story.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

We took in a movie in the famed Castro Theatre on Castro Street, tasted wines at Fishermen's Wharf, and shopped for bra's at Victoria's Secret.  We travelled by streetcar, trolley, BART, bus, and MUNI.  Getting around was easy and fun.

I fulfilled the pilgrimage portion of the trip with visits to the National St. Francis Shrine and the original St. Francis Mission.     

We would dearly love to return!

TTFN... Rob; in Vancouver

"Everything the Beats stood for 
was the opposite of the dominant culture today."

Lawrence Ferlinghetti