We were pretty excited about our stop up near San Francisco. And it wasn’t just because we are interested in sorting our rubbish into ‘garbage’, ‘compost’, and ‘recycling’ piles or that we were excited to parallel park on super-steep hills while eight cars behind us honk their horns and a man urinates onto our meter in broad daylight. What could excite us more than these everyday occurrences in the City by the Bay? Fred.
You must be saying, ‘wow, who is this mystical Fred character?’ Well, I’m not going to tell you all the great things about him because then you might want to steal him for your own, and we’re a little possessive. Fred is the guy who drops off a tin of popcorn for the mayor and the police department during the Christmas holiday. Fred is the guy that rents you an immaculate apartment at an affordable price, and will then buy you a round of drinks if he sees you, his tenant, in his favorite restaurant while he’s eating there. Fred is the man, who after his 6 children had flown the coup, took in a lost boy and fostered him into the man I love and travel with today.
And Fred had plans to to spend a week in San Francisco, visiting with two of his sons and their families. And us! In short, we were in our glory with him being around.
In order to get close to Fred & family at a reasonable price, we parked Dyna’s big butt out in Pacifica, at an RV ‘resort’ misleadingly named ‘San Francisco RV Resort’. It wasn’t in San Francisco, and it was certainly not a resort, but it sufficed for being close to Fred. Also, whales hung out in the area of ocean just behind the ‘resort’, so that’s cool. The ‘resort’ got lucky and Howard & Lauren of NoshBus decided to grace them with their presence (at the same time that we did!) We then scored big time and Howard & Lauren allowed us to be graced by their presence as well; we mooched off their ocean front site for some afternoon beer drinking and attempted whale watching hangout time. We liked these folks quite a bit. Their site wasn’t always oceanfront though… and if you are at all interested in visiting Pacifica (and you should be based solely on the fact that Mazzetti’s Bakery is located there and their cakes are clearly made with the milk of unicorns), you should do it soon. Because Pacifica is falling into the ocean, one overpriced apartment complex at a time. This kind of stinks, because Pacifica is beautiful and packed with oceanside running trails and isn’t quite as expensive as the city of San Francisco. Also, that bakery.
Jake & I were lucky enough (#blessed) to have visited San Francisco a few years ago. We did a lot of exploration by foot (including running Jake’s first ‘real’ marathon) then, and stayed at a hotel in Chinatown (where we are pretty sure a porno film was being filmed in the room next door). As mentioned in our previous blog, we went into the city a few times while staying out in Half Moon Bay, so we focused on being with Fred more than touristing the city this round. We did bop into the city solo the day after Fred left with plans to tourist about. Fail. We ended up grabbing some treats from the delicious (albeit not nutritious) Tartine bakery and heading back to Dyna. We blamed the weather, which was cruddy, but in reality, some days you just need to pull out your jack-knife couch, pull down all the blinds, dig out the cable cord you never use, in and spent the day hiding in your RV. It doesn’t always feel like it, but this is real life after all. And real life would suck without days of nothingness abbreviated only with periods of eating delicious nutrient devoid foods. I can also vouch that rest is needed after being with Fred- especially for the stomach; being with Fred usually involves a lot of eating. When we weren’t eating, we toured Alcatraz, strolled through a redwood grove, introduced Fred to Dyna, and spent some time at Matt&co’s (Fred’s son, his wife Jess, and their 2 adorable kids) home (eating). Matt&co are awesome and let us into their home without making us wear muzzles, even around their 2 ridiculously squeezable children, so that was cool. And I should mention that it was pretty trusting that Jeff&co (Fred’s other, equally awesome son & his wife) allowed us within 10 feet of their children, who are of an age that they might remember anything we said or did to corrupt them. Now that right there is some love.
Nomad life is awesome. It would be even more awesome if we could take all the people we love and buy them RVs and start an RV gang and caravan around the country together. I would make us all super cool flags to fly behind our rigs so everyone knew we were a gang. And when we got sick of them we could drive a few miles away and then come back when we weren’t sick of them anymore. Until that happens, we’ll have to get by with the too short visits we are #blessed (hashtag blessed) to get to enjoy.