I left San Diego at 1 pm Friday, and got to my San Mateo pad at 11:30 pm. It was a real battle getting here. Any trip north from San Diego boils down to this: Escape from L.A.! And rush hour comes early on Friday. L.A.’s sprawling tentacles will get you, no matter what you do. I went up 605 to 210, rather than get ensnared trying to sneak through the city center. You spend 50% of your time getting through Hell-A, and the other 50% driving the rest of the way to SF. Anyway, my maneuver was worth the longer route, but I still paid dearly for every mile. So I went out to a local Denny’s for a bed time snack tonight, and it was really greasy and full of weirdoes. I just thank my lucky stars nobody has ever seen me looking like a fresh fruit salad. There was this server with thick, luxurious hair in a beautiful French braid, but when he/she/it turned toward me, I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at. He/she/it had little ear rings, and that pretty hair do. Well, it was a HE. There was some other weird shit that walked in too, but that’s San Fran for ya, baby. San Fran-sissy-co. But it’s really late and I gotta get to bed because I am meeting Duane AG7G and Co. at the Walt Disney Family Museum Saturday morning, so I’m not reporting on any more weird shit. Oh, man, I was pissed off, though, at that San Mateo Bridge. FIVE BUCKS to cross it. Damn. These liberal socialist San Fran homos are really getting up my butt hole. And another thing, this damn place is FREEZING. It’s, like, 57 degrees out tonight. San Diego was sweltering when I left. Oh, but before I go to bed, here’s something cool. The Earth looks like a flat disk to me, not spherical at all. And the sun rise and sun set do nothing to help me feel like the Earth is round, either. It just feels like the Sun is going around the flat, disk Earth. But as I drove north up the I-5, I watched the North Star creep slowly higher as the hours passed and the miles rolled by. That really made me feel like I was driving over the curve of a big ball.

Well, I didn’t mention above that on my way up to SF on Friday, my prostate flared up right on schedule. So Saturday morning I made some calls in an effort to get an appointment at a local Kaiser. Redwood City had one with an Urgent Care facility. I called them, but they took my cell number and said a doctor would call me. Ok, so then I drove from San Mateo to the Disney Family Museum in SF. I wasn’t feeling too hot, so I really took it easy. There was no hurry, as Duane and Co. kept texting me that they were going to be late, later, EVEN LATER. Why can’t Duane control that family? So I looked over a few exhibits, and had lunch at the museum. I had a raspberry soda, which I fortified, for medicinal purposes only. So finally I got a cell call that Duane’s gang was on site. After a tearful reunion, we all started looking around. Duane mentioned that I looked really tired, and I was tired, but I looked bad because I was sick. I hung with Duane’s family, mostly, revisiting what I’d already seen. At one point my cell rang, and it was the quack. I tried to discuss my symptoms discretely, without horrifying the children around me. So the doc called in a subscription for the usual antibiotic, and I picked it up late that night at an all-night Walgreens in San Carlos. After the museum, we hopped in Duane’s rental car and drove to a spot near the Golden Gate Bridge. It was misty and foggy and sprinkly, and I thought it was going to turn into the Golden Shower Bridge. We parked and Duane’s wife went her own way, thinking the bridge hike was going to be too cold. It WAS too cold. Freezing and biting wind. So Duane and son, Erin, and I hiked to the midpoint of the bridge. I had no jacket, just shorts and a tee shirt. We then hiked back and called wife Cynthia, hooked up with her at the car, and drove back to the museum parking area. We all piled into my vehicle, and headed for an Indian restaurant that I’d picked randomly off of my GPS list. It turned out to be very close the corner of Height and Ashbury. Parking was tight, and we had to park several long blocks up the steep grade of Ashbury. I hate Ashbury. On the long trek to the restaurant, we saw many hippy dippy sights. And it smelled like the whole place was enveloped in a cloud of pot smoke. Once seated in the restaurant, we were keeping an eye on a character at another table, who seemed to have cheese cloth wrapped around his hippy dippy head. He had his woman there too, and they were both decked out in some kinda kooky Krishna garb. The guy looked like he ought to be sporting orange hair in a courtroom somewhere, and was acting strangely. I ordered my usual chicken tikka masala. It was good, but the service was spotty. Duane never did get his side of mixed Krishna veggies, and really didn’t get enough to eat. I threw him a crust of my onion nan, and his whole starving family dove for it. Duane was most UNimpressed with the service, and did not tip the semi clueless waitress. He even refused to pee in their toilet; I, however, lowered myself and peed. The waitress wore a jacket and muffler, jeans, and an Indian-style skirt over the jeans. I gave her the usual 15 % tip. I think Duane just rattled her. I think she was talking forest fires and repeaters, in Hindi, and Duane sensed it and gave her the Stink Eye. I stopped for ice cream a couple of blocks down the street, after which we made the death march up Ashbury, piled in my car and headed back to the museum. On the way back to the museum parking lot, my passengers resumed a long discussion of highly-theoretical peeing, that had begun back at the restaurant. They like to talk about it, but they don’t actually do it. It was, on and off, the topic de jour, since the moment I had emerged from the Indian potty, and Duane had turned his nose up at it. I had some empty plastic water bottles, which I offered them. Though appreciative, they decided it best to just keep them in reserve as a last-ditch measure. I was low on gas, and needed to fill up before the long drive home the next day, so I pointed to a gas station and suggested we stop and all this pee theory could become reality. So they went for it. After gassing up, I sat in the car with Cynthia and speculated on what the hell was taking so long. We craned our necks and could see that there was STILL no peeing going on. Duane and Erin were just killing time outside the john, waiting for the occupant to vacate. Duane told me later that a woman drove up and axed him if she could go first, because she “was a female.” I guess Duane told her where to go. I’ve let a few desperate women go ahead of me in my time, but not unless they’ve done time in line with me. With the Duane Gang drained, I took them back to their car, where we all said our tearful goodbyes. I then drove my tired sick ass to the Walgreens in San Carlos to pick up my meds, and then back to my San Mateo pad. Getting through L.A. the next day was a breeze, it being a Sunday, and so I came dragging into San Diego about 9:30 pm, I guess.