Saturday, March 1, 2008

Flyover States and a San Francisco Treat

Well away I go again traversing the country. This time I decided to skip all the boring in-between stuff and make haste from coast to coast. Instead of seeing the country from down below, I got to see it from up above. But I thought you all might want to take a look as well.

(As an aside, this time I decided to use the services of a fine upstanding website called Flickr to store and present my photos. I thought it would make things easier and less time-consuming. I was wrong. But I digress.)

The 29th of February was covered in snow, and so was some of the tarmac at Logan International Airport.



Hovering over the eastern US, I was pleased to be looking down at the snow, and even more pleased to know that I would be leaving it behind for a little while.



The snow put a blanket over the country all the way to the Old Muddy.





And much of Iowa looked like a frosted cake cut up into a bunch of squares.



Moving across the plains the snow finally went away and I entered the land of crop circles, including this one that I thought looked like Pac-Man. Are the aliens trying to tell us something?



Eventually we passed Denver and hit the front of the Rocky Mountains.





There was Utah.



And a couple of odd man-made formations that I couldn't quite explain. Any help from the audience would be appreciated.





Some more mountains in Nevada, which is true to its name.



And finally we drifted back into the cultivated world of California.





I had to turn off my approved electronic devices before we got into San Francisco, so now we switch back to the ground perspective.







It was about 60 degrees when I arrived. Whoo hoo indeed.

The traveling continued with a drive up the western side of San Fransicso, a warehouse district parts of which have been redeveloping in various different ways.



I was surprised that AT&T Park actually has a permanent sign instead of an electronic scroller or cloth banner, that would be more practical given frequent name changes.



The donuts here are as happy as me.



I guess gentrification hasn't completely swallowed the area, as we learned as we went through a classic skid row, one of the finest I've ever seen.



The obligatorily ugly federal complex.



I photographed this so that I could figure out what it means later.



Here's the mint, from which we gets much of our coin.



We cruised through the neighborhoods around Alamo Square, which look rather nice despite assurances from my associate that shootouts happen there on a regular basis.





Then we spent a little time at Alamo Square itself, where I found the maintenance staff to be unnecessarily apologetic.



One of the attractions of this park is a shoe garden. Well maybe it's not an attraction per se. It's there.





Homes.



Whatever happened to predictability? I'm not exactly sure anything happened to it, but we predicted that one of these houses was probably "full" in past decades.



Next stop was the Japan Center, known as "Japantown" among the kids.



It's basically a collection of malls, with all the normal mall attractions.



Food ...



Kabuki cut-outs ...



A bidet ...



Meat holidays ...



And ikebana.



Then we took a ride up to the Presidio, looked at some bridge.



Warmed up a bit ...



Took in a little scenery.





We rolled into the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park for a special Friday night program they do there. We weren't exactly sure what it was, but apparently it's a happening thing around town. It definitely was happening. That night, the attraction was "Carnival San Francisco," a citywide festival inexplicably starting around now, despite the fact that Mardi Gras is long in the past. There were lots of crazy costumes and even one woman in a thong. Of course, with all the excitement I only managed to get one photo.



After that it was fueling up on Burmese food for the big event of the weekend. So long San Francisco, next stop Napa.

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