COME FLY WITH ME
9 October 2002
After we managed to get Spitting Guy to leave the bus on Saturday,
at the start of our trip to Alcatraz, we continued more of less unhampered to the end of
the line at North Point, where we all climbed off the bus and began to walk toward Pier
41, where we would catch the boat.
As we disembarked, I glanced ahead of me and my brain leaped back
two years in time. It was at this very spot where I first saw The Blue Angels, the Navy
flight demonstration squadron.
Peggy and I had spent the day touring San Francisco, seeing Steve
perform, having lunch with him, then seeing the sights. As we were in the long queue
waiting to go down the curly Lombard St. hill, with the sun roof open and Peggy standing up on the front seat, poking her head and camera out the top, I kept hearing loud airplane noises. I
thought--how odd that there would be helicopters flying at this time of day.
Then it became apparent that it wasn't helicopters I was hearing,
but planes. "Must be some sort of air show," I thought.
I don't know when we learned it was the Blue Angels performing, but
we both decided we wanted to see them badly enough that Peggy paid the $20 parking fee for
the only space we could find.
I am not, as a rule, a fan of aerial acrobatics but these guys were
really something. It's a whole different experience standing under them while they are
rushing at you, doing impossible stunts seemingly just inches from each other, rolling in
unison, making skyrockets happen while zooming up high and then separating into a firework
effect.
 
It was a day I'll never forget.
We were still on a high when we returned home, the excitement
lasting into the night as we relived the show, and checked to see if we managed to get any
good photos at all.
The wharf looked very calm and quiet on this past Saturday. There
weren't even a lot of tourists wandering around--you had to go looking over at Pier 39 to
find crowds, and I'm sure nobody there was thinking about aerial acrobatics, the way I
was. But I smiled to myself as I remembered. I'd love to have The Blue Angel experience
again... but in the meantime, I'll have to settle for my own Blue Angel (and URL, of
course), who have been very much neglected these past few days as I've been either
wandering around the countryside, or sitting in a corner wrapped up in blankets and
moaning.
Speaking of which, Dr. G's concoction turned out to be delicious and
even worked a bit. I'm feeling just a tad better, and I actually have a semblance of a
voice. I'm not going to be singing along with John Denver in the car in the foreseeable
future, but I can at least make myself understood when I answer the phone again.
The problem with the concoction is that it's about half honey, so
when I decided to heat it in the microwave in a handy plastic water bottle...and the
bottle exploded, it made quite a mess all over the kitchen. Every towel I
own is covered with sticky goo. Worst of all, of course, was that the mixture was
now gone. I considered licking the stove to get the last of it, but
ultimately resigned myself to going back to the store and buying replacement ingredients
to make it again.
All that honey (1 point per Tbsp and by morning I had consumed
>10 Tbsp)--not even counting the points for the juices that were mixed with it, plus
the JournalCon bagels and Slave Girl's
cookies (to say nothing of the Tim Tams and Vomit Crumble) didn't do all that much for my
diet, and I gained 3 lbs this week. Oh well...aren't you supposed to
feed a cold...? |
