San Francisco

Well, I had some extra time so I visited San Fran, a place that seems to have a little for everyone. I stayed with my buddy Shern and he was a great host even though I only gave him an hour notice! Besides training, I'll get to that later, I had an oppurtunity to walk around the city quite a bit.

The city pretty much looks like they tried to place a city on top of a mountain. Shern explained this is because San fran is such a great port city but I almost pooped my pants trying to park on Shern's street at first. Driving gets pretty easy after that.

The first night Shern took me out on bike to a park at night. He gave me his room mate's bike with brakes that were pretty much shot... Anyway I was terrified going down these hills having little to no control over my life. Shern has always been a dare devil and apparently stop signs and stop lights mean little to nothing to him.

Anyway, at the park with hung out with some of Shern's friends. Shern hangs out with what are called "hipsters" basically a cool to be poor type of crowd. It was fun. I think I spent about 45 minutes on the swings and monkey bars. Shern's friends spent about 2 hours wrestling each other in the park and then we went home!

The next day I walked around Valencia and Mission street. Mission street was a funny experience for me. San Fran is pretty peaceful and loving. I'm used to New York, Philadelphia and New Brunswick. Mission street has ample homeless, cracked out dwarfs, and one homeless guy was even carrying his cat on his shoulder like a parrot. Pretty entertaining. Normally these shady characters would have made me run the other direction, quickly. However Shern was saying everyone gets along and is pretty friendly. I took his word for it!

San Francisco pretty much does what it wants. Public Urination and nudity are legal. Drinking in public is alright with a brown bag. Everyone smokes marijuana. Pretty open minded city.