Home again, home again jiggity-jig

Wow. I wish I could remember the feeling of sheer sleepy happiness I had last night but four hours here in hell has almost completely erased it from memory. Regardless, it was a damn near perfect week, beginning to end. I have notes from Frisco somewhere that I’ll have to type up later, maybe as a hidden addendum to this post but let me fill you in on the highlights:

• Standing atop Telegraph Hill in the early afternoon, under a beautiful blue sky and looking down on the pennisula, Oakland, the Golden Gate and Alcatraz. Absolutely mind-blowing, breathtaking, all those big words that never really can express the sheer majesty of such a view.
• Moseying through the Castro, experiencing the only part of SF that looks and feels at all like most peoples’ conception of California and laughing as two guys lovingly embraced in the middle of the street. It’s nifty to know there are places where people feel safe enough to be themselves.
• Laying hands on Sherman’s Bank, knowing I was walking sidewalks where Uncle Billy once strode. Standing at the spot where the first United States flag was raised over SF thus claiming Alta California for the land of the free and home of the brave. Sleeping in a hotel that survived ’06 and tramping the same hallways as Queen Elizabeth, Ronald Reagan, Al Jolson, Fatty Arbuckle and others have tramped. Walking down the sidewalk where Gerald Ford was shot at.
• Seeing the Greatful Dead’s house and Jefferson Starship’s house and nearly taking out an old Hari Krishna hippie lady with construction plywood. Sweeeeet.
• Dipping a finger in the Bay, not a mile from the Pacific Ocean and not 5 days later dipping a finger in the Atlantic Ocean off the Jersey Shore. The ability of man to traverse time and distance in the early years of the 21st century never ceases to amaze me.
• The angry frenchmen at the Warped Tour that pretty much made up for missing the Dropkick Murphys because we stopped for lunch and a pint at the old Dickens Inn.

More to come, I think, as the day wanes or perhaps, more tomorrow.