from Conan to Dawkins

What a jolly hoot travelling can be...!

I've made some real rookie travelling mistakes in the last few days (lost MUNI passes being just one of them), but, then again, I'm cool with the fact that I'm somewhat rusty in the 'mobile warrior stakes.' Nonetheless, I've had a whale of a time and, as it stands, I wish I never had to leave San Francisco.

On a tangental note, I've noticed a 'trying' trend in my recent escapades around planet Earth, whereupon I arrive in a place 'out of season', enjoy a day or two of good weather, haphazardly wombling around the local tourist sites... and then the weather turns!

It happened to me earlier this year in Hamburg and, now, it's done it again in San Fran. I was out at Alcatraz yesterday (I hope to write some notes from that wee adventure shortly) and, then, when I got back to town, the weather turned and holy crap, did it chuck it down.

Anyway, today, being a Saturday, I was up early this morning, heading down to local ice skating rinks to try and buy some ice hockey skates for my nephew. I caught the bus down the road and then as I came onto the main drag, I was passing the 'Four Seasons Hotel' at 765 Market St.

Now the streets were pretty empty, but as I passed the hotel I looked left and noticed a tall chap, with red hair & angular features, who was standing on the curb outside the front of the hotel, talking on his mobile. I immediately clocked who it was, looking somewhat rougher in real life and, I suspect, hungover, but there he was, larger than life, I knew that for that moment in time I was sharing the same bit of the Universe as Conan O'Brien.

Being a sad git and with very little self-pride, I immediately came to a halt, rummaged in my bag, got out my cellphone and made a very poor impression of someone not taking a photo... while taking a photo....

In the heat of the moment, I didn't get much of a chance to take the picture and, as you can see it is a pretty poor picture (you'd be fair in saying that could be any chatshow host, or tall red-haired male for that matter) - but, belive me, it was Conan O'Brien.

...

Many, many shopping hours later (like, 6 at night) and I still have not got the ice skates for my nephew. It turns out that downtown San Fran is not the place buy hockey skates. Eventually, I get a lead on a place that sold ice skating stuff, but it was located in Oakland which, especially with the inclement weather in mind, was located somewhat of a haul from downtown.

Ages later and I'd made it the 26 miles to this shop and bought the skates, but being in the middle of nowhere the taxi I'd called could not find the place to pick me up and had given up on the journey. Kindly, the chap who was in charge of the shop gave me a lift back up the road to the train station in his rather cool Chevrolet car.

Yeah-har, with a tonne of shopping missions under my belt (I have also, virtually, bought a complete new wardrobe in the last few days) I finally made it back to the Hotel at about 9.30 tonight. Happily looking through the goodies that I had bought today, I start flicking through the many channels of crap on the TV.

To my absolute joy there was Richard Dawkins discussing his new book, "The God Delusion" to a University Crowd in Virginia (hah- the Bible Belt). What a laugh, the immediate memorable quote that springs to mind was during 'question time' when someone asked whether people joining absurd religions were helping or hindering the Atheist cause - to which, after a degree of analysis and indepth discussion about the use of Atheists banding together to show their depth of numbers, Prof Dawkins quipped that "trying to get a rally of Atheists together, is like trying to herd cats...".

So, what a great day, admidst the trials & tribulations of dealing with Xmas shoppers, rain, public transport and my own cock-ups, I met some really nice people and, notably, a few folk who really helped me out when they didn't need to.

Now, with a program on Ali on TV, quoting some of his best raps, I need to go to sleep - for tomorrow is, what I hope, will be the highlight of my few days here (or the wettest as the case may be) - as I head out to Monster Park (terrible name - it used to be Soldier Field) for an American Football Game to see the 49'ers playing the Green Bay Packers.

*** please excuse typo & spelling errors - this has just come out as a stream of consciousness, as I wanted to fire this online immedaitely, since I know there are a few folk out there following this, so I'm trying my best to be a good little blogee!