His name was Jeremy and he was actually dressed as a pirate and I think he preferred it. When our paths split he said "have a good night "Argh" it was hilarious. Like one last word to solidify his love of pirates! It was so funny! His sailors coat was an old style but very colorful one and he had these too big boots that clomped really loudly when he walked. He was pretty intimidating at first sight. Dreadlocks for hair and a little straggly but when I realized our paths were converging I braced myself for whatever came next. He was really nice though. Very chatty. I do think he lives not in a home though. His path went down a hill and into oblivion. Who really knows.
I met him on the final part of the trail home. It was 9 pm. I walked for what seemed like forever tonight! Not in a fun on purpose sort of way but because the F Train (and no that is not a knickname "F") wasn't running. In the hour it took me to walk from Market St and the Embarcadero to the main Piers at Fisherman's Wharf one F train passed me(they are usually every few minutes). Apparently the power was out on a few of the piers because shops were closed, restaurants were closed. The Teatro Zinzanni was cancelled. The best part of that walk being so long was the fact that the piers are numbered so you know just how far you haven't gone. I've been doing so good not squandering money but I was pretty tempted to pay a cycle taxi guy to get me to the hostel path.
This morning I started out intending to catch either a train or bus and just see some stuff but I ended up walking into North Beach again. Which is fun. I like it there. I walked to Mara's and had a pastry (of course) that was really fun. The guy there was having a regular Italian morning and I had the place to myself basically.
I love those pastries! And early on in the day he has twice as many as I saw the first time I went by there!
They consider North Beach to be the Italian quarter of the city but at Washington Park there were Chinese doing their morning exercises and it didn't feel very Italian to me. The Chinese are starting to out grow Chinatown I guess. They have a park they usually congregate at so it was strange to see them where they were.
After that I headed up into actual to Chinatown to see if I could find a bandana to pull my hair back with. Guess what?! Chinese people don't use bandanas so not a single shop had one. I did manage to find something though and so I kept moving. I stopped in Union Square to take a break as I'd been walking for a long time already and while I was people watching the Grim Reaper showed up. He made a little girl scream so her mom had to take her away. He was dressed in a big cape and had a painted face and a scythe. Wow. He was pretty scary. He would stop every so often and just stare, like he was giving someone in the crowd a message.
About that point I decided I'd find my way to the office and ended up on a train that stopped before I needed it to. Hmmm so as I'm standing at the station in the middle of nowhere (seemed like) I finally caught sight of the other platform and was able to make my way to it.
My main purpose for that trip was to have some driving practice with a man named Amin. He was going to train me on the pre-trip inspection and also driving etc. He is a tall, good looking Arab man. We had fun. As fun as driving a van can be. When we started out he gave me directions and we went a little ways and then he had me parallel park, which was pretty scary! It was a tight squeeze. So after I got the van in there and calmed down a bit he said "okay, now you can turn the engine off, I'm going to get a coffee" it was really funny. We'd just been doing this serious task I thought, and he was just wanting me to drop him off at the coffee shop. Very funny.
We drove all over the place it seemed like. He took me into the projects part of the city. A neighborhood I'd have never gone into without him along I can tell you that. It was really sketchy. He did that a couple of times though so he was getting a kick out of it. At one point we ended up way out in the middle of an old ship yard. No one was out there and it was just a big open place so we did the walk around part of the test and then he had me back up the van into a parking space a few times.
At the end of all that I was hungry and cold and a bit tired after walking all morning (like 9:15am to 2:30 ish) and the fog was rolling in and the wind had picked up so it was cold!! I was happy to get on the train and head home. :( only to discover that I'd have to walk it anyways.) What do you do?!
So I sat down to have a peanut butter sandwich (just a bit ago) for dinner and a lady I talked to earlier today decided to share her hazelnut/almond butter with me. Yummy!! Freshly ground too! Wow!
So, I'm pretty sure I'll sleep well. Better than last night anyways. I was delighted to find out that besides sleeping right by the door, the keys for the room stopped working so people were struggling all night long to get in. It was pretty annoying. Thank goodness for earplugs, thats all I have to say.
My bed is a tiny little mattress on top of a board, so it's like sleeping on the floor essentially. I'm sure I'll be more tired than annoyed and sleep through it tonight.
Another day bites the dust.
Argh!
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