Rick’s Rants and Raves

The other night I had a very difficult time sleeping. I had the kind of sleep where you’re not quite sure if you’re awake or asleep. I kept having visions of volcanoes. I was scared at first, but as I got closer to one volcano, I caught the scent of hops and barley. I know dreams can be weird, but this takes the cake: I saw beer coming out of the volcano! I dipped a hand into one of the flows, and sipped the most amazing India Pale Ale. I went to another flow, and got a taste of a dopplebock, and another was an imperial stout.

Just when I thought the dream couldn’t get any weirder, I crested a ridge on the side of a volcano, and saw a gleaming factory of some sort. Was it a beer factory that was pumping all the beer out of the volcano? No. As I got closer, I could see beautiful women coming out of the factory, each scantily clad, and apparently dancing for my sole enjoyment.

And then I woke up. I didn’t want to wake up, but I did anyway. With the visions of my dream still dancing in my head, I meandered downstairs to get a mug of warm milk. When I drearily passed through my dining room, I was touched on the arm by this:

At first I had no idea what it was, other than a very interesting balloon sculpture. Could it have been related to my dream? How did it get in my dining room? Why did it need fishing string to elevate itself? Extensive searching on the web leads me to believe that the dream and the sculpture are related to some wondrous deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I think I can now officially say that I’ve been touched by his noodly appendage.

At the beginning of my class Thursday, the teacher announced that he anticipated our class ending Friday by 1PM. Normally this would have been good news for me, except that I had chosen a red-eye flight departing at 9:30PM. I really didn’t want to sit around in the airport for six or seven hours, so I paid the $100 transfer fee to get onto a 12:20 flight. I knew this could mean I would miss some of the class, but I was willing to take the risk.

Fortunately, the class was essentially over by 10AM, in plenty of time to head to the airport. I dropped off the rental car, and headed toward my gate. I had checked in the night before using the airline’s website, and printed my boarding pass. I confirmed that the gate was still correct. The security check went well, and I found my self sitting at the gate by 11AM. I was quickly joined by Pat, one of the gents in my class, who was also flying back to Columbus, but not on the same flight.

Around 11:20, we decided to get some lunch. While I was scarfing it down so that I could make the 11:40 boarding time reported on my boarding pass, the gentleman sitting next to us in the restaurant informed me that my flight (and his) had been delayed by 90 minutes.

I rushed over to a gate agent and waited in line a few minutes. I tried unsuccessfully to get on Pat’s flight. As she was looking at available flights, she noted a red-eye that departed at 9:30PM… I almost screamed. Fortunately, she didn’t linger on that option long. She very quickly found a seat on a different airlines. The marvelous coincidence was that it was the very same flight that Ray, another gent from my class, was on. I called Ray to let him know I was on my way. I had exactly one hour get to the new flight. I was a bit pessimistic given my recent experiences.

I had to exit the wing of the terminal I was in to get to the ticket counter. Again, I was pessimistic–ticket counters usually are not quick, and here I was approaching with what had to be an unusual request. My pessimism was in full bloom when the ticket counter happened to be the opposite direction that the gate agent had told me.

Alas, there was no line. Surprisingly, and much to her credit, the agent at USAir’s ticket counter handled the transaction very smoothly, and I was heading toward a new security check point in a minute or less.

Once I reached security, I was flagged for “secondary screening”. Evidently this is standard procedure for anyone with spikey hair, or has transferred flights between airlines. Unfortunately, I was guilty of both.

After passing through the metal detector and sending my belongings through the x-ray machine, I was instructed to wait in a Plexiglas cage. There I met Rebecca, another spikey haired refugee from the very same Northwest flight. She was escorted through the puffer system which attempted to discern if she had any explosive residue on her. I waited while they searched her bag and swabbed her belongings. My concern at making my flight continued to grow as the locker-room stench of millions of shoe-less feet pummeled me in my Plexiglas cage.

A few minutes later, as I was nearing a sublime unconsciousness, I was escorted to the puffer, as my belongings were to be fondled by men with blue hands. Two by two with hands of blue. Just as the puffer is finished sniffing me, my cell phone rang from my pocket. Whoops. It was Ray, wondering where I was. I quickly dismissed the call, but not before a security guard saw the phone. He immediately wants to know how I had my phone with me. I admit the oversight, and invite him to inspect it. The phone is unceremoniously swabbed and x-rayed, then returned to me with admonitions to not repeat such a security threat ever again.

Finally, the blue hands were done touching my stuff, and I was allowed to proceed to my gate. There I found Ray where I related the story of how his phone call had nearly sent me to a dark room for intensive questioning by agents wearing sterile blue gloves.

Mercifully, my new plane took off on time, bound for Charlotte, NC. Equally mercifully, the trip through security was the last drama in my travels this time. I’m now safe and happy at home.

My final evening in San Francisco started with a trip to Naan and Curry in the heart of downtown San Francisco. Several of the people in my class made the trek at the urging of our instructor, Nirm. The prices were incredibly low, even for my mid-western boy sensibilities. A pizza sized piece of naan was only $1. Rice, $1. Bowl of tandoori chicken, or any other dish: $5 to $8. There were ten of us at the table, and we ordered 12-14 dishes (I didn’t count), 6 or 8 naan, and each had our own plate of rice. The place is byob, so I stopped at a Safeway before heading down, and picked up what turned out to be a fabulous SKN merlot. (The back of the label explained that SKN stood for Screw Kappa Nappa. I think this was meant tongue-in-cheek). We ate and ate and ate. I tried as much as I could get my hands on. We passed the bowls around so that everyone could experience the full variety of Indian fare. There wasn’t a single dish I didn’t like. The most incredible part: the total tab was less than $15 per person. I would never have imagined I could eat in downtown SF for that little. Now, this was not high-class dining. It was obvious that they saved a great deal of money by not hiring wait-staff: we had to get our own utensils and drinks. They brought the food to our table, but that was it. I think they also saved electricity by not turning on the kitchen vents. The place was so smoky at first it was a little bit tough to see. But despite the drawbacks, it was wonderful food, and good times.

After dinner, we retired to Val’s in Daly City. Val’s is the kind of place that was high-class dining in its heyday, about 30 years ago. Now, however, it was showing its age, in both the structure and in the clientele. It was karaoke night, and all the local color had come out. There were four of us from my class, all under 40 years old. Even with that, I estimate the average age was 60. Two of the guys I was with had been there a few weeks prior on karaoke night, and tonight they successfully predicted the attendance of 5 or 6 of the patrons. The most interesting one we met was Manny, the Elvis impersonator. I didn’t stay long enough to hear him sing an Elvis song, but what I did hear was excellent. He explained that most of the folks there regulars, just waiting their turn to sing. He was glad to see us there having a blast. The most amusing person to watch was the 70-80 year old woman wearing the jet-black curly-haired wig. She looked the way Meryl Streep’s skeleton would look if you made it smile and walk around the party being extra nice to everybody. I stayed through a round of the locals singing, as well as two of the guys I was with. It became clear that, for me , at least, that the music was about 15 dB too loud for the venue. My friends and I all remarked on the volume, with the result that half of our party left about 1 beer earlier than we probably would have due to the splitting headaches that were developing. It occurred to me that these folks had turned the old rock and roll addage of “If its too loud, you’re too old” on it head. They had likely all turned their hearing aids off, and now the phrase became “If its too loud, you’re too young.”

I made this panorama from shots I took from the top of Mount Tamalpais.

You really should click the image to see the full sized version (only 1.3 MB since I used my old camera…)

I’ve got to give credit here: I did the stitching with Autostitch, which did it perfectly using the default settings. All I had to do was change the output image size, and crop it a little bit afterwards. Its an amazing little program that is free for personal use!