Travel Time

So I spent last weekend in San Francisco - it's amazing how every time I go there - the weather back here is absolutely gorgeous and the weather there sucks royally.  Still - I love the city. If only it would be a reasonable temp most of the year - I would so move there in an instance and of course if there is less transient. (:-)) Somebody once mentioned to me that they wonder where all the NYC homeless people went - I think they all went to SF. There's quite a few in downtown SF.  Anyway, it is still well worth visiting for the most part.

Day 1:

I don't know what I was thinking of but this year, instead of going with direct flight, went and took a flight that stopped off in Milwaukee - what should have been a five/six hour trip ended up taking over 8 hours - needless to say I was exhausted by the time I got to the hotel.

I must say - having dinner at The Slanted Door did make up for the exhaustion and the miserable weather when I arrived in town. Now, why can't something like that exist in Maryland?  Of course, I probably would gain 20 lbs just going through its entire menu....but it would be SO well worth it. :-)

The trip was an interesting one as I was spending it at a Salsa Casino Convention. Since these days, my focus is on blues, going to this convention is my one and only yearly salsa event that I attend. It was nicely participated and there were some awesome dancers - I had a blast dancing with these folks even though I was probably stepping on more toes this year what with my muscle memory wanting to do blues rather than salsa. :-) Still it was fun....I also did get a chance to try out the friday blues scene in SF. I was slightly disappointed in that there weren't more great dancers - I had the impression from what everyone said to me that it has one of the most amazing scenes....NOT. Still - I probably had the BEST blues dance ever with this guy - and it was the last dance before I left - so well worth the $25 in taxi fare to get there for it. I went back to do salsa after leaving the blues dance but only made it pass 1AM before I finally had to concede and go to bed.

Day 2:

There were plenty of workshop offerings at this event and I decided to sign up for a few. Not too much since I'm doing it more for fun then anything else - I decided to take the two rueda class with this amazing instructor from Miami (Ramoni Nicholi - his name is iffy as I don't have the flyer on me anymore). Anyway,  I always enjoy taking classes from this guy as he has a very nice style and he was one of the first from the miami scene who came up with a lot of the moves that I learned when I was studying miami style rueda. The classes were fun and I was glad I attended - one of my most priceless moment came in the first class I took - the description of the classes weren't too clear and some beginners had wandered into the class without knowing what they were getting into. One guy asked me to back lead him in three of the basic moves so he could do this particular move. Another guy was even funnier - it seem that during the entire class - the followers who danced with him had been back leading him when he came to a particularly complex part probably without telling him - so he was expecting the follower to do something instead of him - I didn't and he turned to look at me as if to say why am I not moving -  his expression was priceless...I resist the temptation to say - he's the lead - not me. Still I kept quiet and just quickly moved on to the next lead.  I was able to follow along quite nicely and was happy to note that I can still hold my own.

I didn't get to try anything special for dinner - we were suppose to go out for Brazilian food but ended up not being able to do that as we had no reservation. The decision to just walk until something interesting comes around definitely was not good for me. I won't be doing it again. I was with a group of folks and when they got tire of being told they needed reservations - we ended up at a middle eastern joint. Now, while my taste buds have expanded a bit - I still strongly dislike middle eastern food - not sure whether its the spice or what - but anyway, since I didn't like the food - I pretty much just hung out there while everyone ate and then headed back to the hotel and grab some fish and chips from the local diner. While not exotic or special - it is pretty tasty - in spite of the service (it can be seriously slow) - I enjoy the food there - had breakfast there every day while I was in town. :-)

The show that evening was awesome - however I had been up since 3 am that morning so was really exhausted by then. I persevere and watched the show and dance for a few more hours. I had told myself I would stay til the end as this was the main day I was spending on dance but I only made it to 1:30AM then gave in.

Day 3:

Okay - so it is insane to travel this far to go catch a movie instead but I really had no interest in doing much on that day aside from going to Alcatraz but since sunday was the only nice day the entire weekend - the tour was totally sold out. Since I was planning on getting on the red eye that evening - I decided to go with relaxation. I ended up going to the Metreon to catch "I am number Four" at their IMAX theatre (what was awesome was that it was not a fake quasi psuedo imax but the real thing) It was almost scary to walk into that theatre. I enjoyed the movie - and while there I discovered a nice tiny sushi place that I really liked. It had some seriously tasty udon noodles. I would so go there again.

The flight going home was uneventful although it was delay by an hour so I didn't catch it until midnight - I got home the next day relatively early in the day. Still - I don't think I would do that again - it was way too exhausting.

I think trips is a great time for reflection - during this trip I came to a realization - there are many people in our lives that we spent time with often and whom we might consider friends but in reality are nothing more than casual acquaintances and yet there are those whom we rarely ever see and yet they will always be someone we can count on to have our back when we need it.  The strangeness of that is just mind boggling...A thought came to mind - is it the limited amount of time we spent together that strengthens our bonds with each other or is it that we spent too much time together with others that makes one more incline to take others for granted and be more cavalier? Something for me to mull over in the next couple of weeks as I will be on a traveling stint for the next few months......some time soon I will need to get some rest but not now....always something to learn..... :-)