Wednesday, July 09, 2008
California - Part I
Right now, I’m sitting across from Irf at a wobbly table inside Starbucks in Davis Square. Two weeks ago, I was sitting across from Irf at a Starbucks 3,000 miles away from here. San Francisco: home to the baseball Giants, the Golden Gate Bridge, and lenient marijuana laws. I think that’s the actual city motto.
I landed at the airport right around 7:00 PM, west coast time, which meant that Game 6 of the NBA Finals was already an hour underway. I ran to grab my luggage from the carousel and then told the SuperShuttle driver that I needed to go to the corner of Fulton and Lyon Street, where Irf was waiting. I didn’t tell him about the Irf part. The guy didn’t seem to trust my relay of information from the paper I was holding, so he asked to see it.
“What hotel?” he asked.
“It’s actually just a house,” I informed him.
“House of Love?” he questioned, as he examined the paper.
“Yes, that’s it.”
I almost felt obligated to tell him that this was not a place of ill repute, but actually a hippy commune near The Haight. I denied my instincts and let him think that I was a guy who just happened to be into early-evening romps with hookers. I know that’s what he was thinking. He loaded up my luggage and I sat in the very back seat as he waited outside the van for more passengers. In the meantime, Irf called me and let me know that he was watching the game at a bar called The Dog in the Fog.
“Is there room for my luggage?” I asked him.
“Yeah, I guess,” he informed me.
When the driver realized that I would be his only passenger, he hopped back into the driver’s seat.
“Change of plans,” I said.
“Where we going?”
“The Dog in the Fog”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a bar.”
“You bring you luggage to a baah???”
“Yes, sir. Celtics…you know?”
As it turns out, he did know, and we listened to the game on the radio as we drove to the bar. I felt dumber bringing my luggage into a bar than I initially thought I would. In fact, the moment I unloaded my luggage from the back of the shuttle in the middle of a decidedly non-residential section of town, I started getting some quizzical looks. The bar wasn’t very crowded when I arrived, but after a few shouts of “Scuse me, pardon me”, I had found my way to the back of the bar, where my fellow Boston fan was waiting.
In my head, I guess I had imagined that California = Lakers Fans. In reality, though, San Francisco = Golden State Warriors Fans, who hate the Lakers as much as we do. Irf and I had watched close to twenty Celtics playoff games at my condo in the previous weeks, attended Game 7 of the Cleveland series at the Garden, and oddly, there we were in California -- far closer to enemy territory -- to watch the guys in Green clinch the final series back in Boston…all while sitting amongst an anti-Laker crowd. It was sort of surreal.
After the game, I settled in at the House of Love, full-time residence of one Diana Bennett, sister of Julia #2. This was a loose enough connection that I tried to avoid explaining it to anybody. The H.O.L featured some aspects that reminded me of my fraternity, like each room having its own theme/décor going
on and the upstairs bathroom with a tapestry for a window, exposing its inhabitant to the outside world with every stiff breeze. Other things were not so reminiscent of my old house, like the big bathroom with the seriously kick-ass shower and the back yard communal area surrounded by plants and flowers. Ultimately, the H.O.L turned out to be a great place and a key to what could have been a much more expensive vacation.
Steve arrived late Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, so he was able to join Irf and I when we went to the Giants game. We scored some seats at the top of the upper deck in the left field section of AT&T Park, which proved to be very sunny. This was where I managed to obtain the unfortunate sunburn that I would later sport in most of the wedding photos. While I was busy baking, Irf was taking a nap – a fact that Steve and I could not ignore. We did our duty as dudes and commenced the “messing with the guy who fell asleep” phase. Look for this phase again in Part II. While Irfan was getting some shut-eye behind his sunglasses, Steve and I took off for the last row, which was A) out of the sun, B) out of Irf’s direct sight, and C) a vantage point where we could see the sleeping giant as he awoke, alone, in what would clearly be a confused state. Ten minutes later, after Steve and I giggled like school girls twenty rows
behind him, Irf woke up and tried to play it cool. It appeared for a few minutes that he might just pretend nothing was wrong, but we couldn’t take it anymore. During a lull in crowd noise, I let loose a big “Let’s go, Ir-fan!” and a minute later, he had tracked us down.
We were planning on going out near the water later that night, so I brought a sweatshirt with me to the game. I had put it in the seat next to me – a fact that I remembered at almost the exact moment I finished winding down the twenty ramps that lead out of the park. Irf and Steve waited for me on the street while I went up to grab my sweatshirt. Unfortunately, the game had just ended, so I was going “upstream” against the crowd on the way back to the upper deck. To my surprise, there was a huge team of people already hosing down the seats, just minutes after the final pitch. When I went up to see if my sweatshirt had survived the dousing, I realized that it was gone. I told the guys that I had left it there, so they directed me to the head trash-collector guy (his official title, I’m sure). The head trash collector told me that he thought he saw the sweatshirt, so he took me over to a giant portable trash bin and – voila! – there was my sweatshirt, sprinkled with beer and cheesy fries. As I pondered just how gross that was, another trash collector was going full-speed ahead for the bin that held my sweatshirt. He positioned himself to dump a huge trash barrel right on top of my defenseless hoodie. Luckily, head trash collector guy was able to call off the (hot) dogs before my beloved sweatshirt was violated any further. Good news: I got my sweatshirt. Bad news: I had to carry around a dirty sweatshirt all night.
We ended up going to a restaurant called Weird Fish, which featured catfish buffalo wings and the Suspicious Fish Dish, where they don’t actually let you know anything about the dish, other than the fact that you’re getting a full meal. None of us were brave enough to get it. Brian G. met up with us in time for dessert. He used to work at the lab with Steve and was also a frequent teammate of ours when we played some pick-up basketball in Medford. Even though he couldn’t make it for the meal, he still had plenty of time to tell us about how he was recently taken by medivac from a bike accident and briefly discussed his experience with melons. So I…uh, never mind.
Jack and Brendan showed up on Thursday night, just after the rest of us were treated to some fantastic treats from the resident pastry chef. They accidentally went to the very end of the subway line that they were supposed to take, which delayed their arrival by about…four hours or so. Yeah. Anyway, once they finally arrived, Jack and Brendan had to shack up in the same bed, and before Brendan could even get under the covers, Jack had already created something he dubbed the Double Dutch Oven. I would have laughed much harder had I not been delirious from lack of sleep.
The next morning, Irf and I walked over to the local Enterprise, where we had our cars reserved. We loaded up and headed down the highway towards the wedding locale in Paso Robles. Stay tuned for Part II.
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I landed at the airport right around 7:00 PM, west coast time, which meant that Game 6 of the NBA Finals was already an hour underway. I ran to grab my luggage from the carousel and then told the SuperShuttle driver that I needed to go to the corner of Fulton and Lyon Street, where Irf was waiting. I didn’t tell him about the Irf part. The guy didn’t seem to trust my relay of information from the paper I was holding, so he asked to see it.
“What hotel?” he asked.
“It’s actually just a house,” I informed him.
“House of Love?” he questioned, as he examined the paper.
“Yes, that’s it.”
I almost felt obligated to tell him that this was not a place of ill repute, but actually a hippy commune near The Haight. I denied my instincts and let him think that I was a guy who just happened to be into early-evening romps with hookers. I know that’s what he was thinking. He loaded up my luggage and I sat in the very back seat as he waited outside the van for more passengers. In the meantime, Irf called me and let me know that he was watching the game at a bar called The Dog in the Fog.
“Is there room for my luggage?” I asked him.
“Yeah, I guess,” he informed me.
When the driver realized that I would be his only passenger, he hopped back into the driver’s seat.
“Change of plans,” I said.
“Where we going?”
“The Dog in the Fog”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a bar.”
“You bring you luggage to a baah???”
“Yes, sir. Celtics…you know?”
As it turns out, he did know, and we listened to the game on the radio as we drove to the bar. I felt dumber bringing my luggage into a bar than I initially thought I would. In fact, the moment I unloaded my luggage from the back of the shuttle in the middle of a decidedly non-residential section of town, I started getting some quizzical looks. The bar wasn’t very crowded when I arrived, but after a few shouts of “Scuse me, pardon me”, I had found my way to the back of the bar, where my fellow Boston fan was waiting.
In my head, I guess I had imagined that California = Lakers Fans. In reality, though, San Francisco = Golden State Warriors Fans, who hate the Lakers as much as we do. Irf and I had watched close to twenty Celtics playoff games at my condo in the previous weeks, attended Game 7 of the Cleveland series at the Garden, and oddly, there we were in California -- far closer to enemy territory -- to watch the guys in Green clinch the final series back in Boston…all while sitting amongst an anti-Laker crowd. It was sort of surreal.
After the game, I settled in at the House of Love, full-time residence of one Diana Bennett, sister of Julia #2. This was a loose enough connection that I tried to avoid explaining it to anybody. The H.O.L featured some aspects that reminded me of my fraternity, like each room having its own theme/décor going
Steve arrived late Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, so he was able to join Irf and I when we went to the Giants game. We scored some seats at the top of the upper deck in the left field section of AT&T Park, which proved to be very sunny. This was where I managed to obtain the unfortunate sunburn that I would later sport in most of the wedding photos. While I was busy baking, Irf was taking a nap – a fact that Steve and I could not ignore. We did our duty as dudes and commenced the “messing with the guy who fell asleep” phase. Look for this phase again in Part II. While Irfan was getting some shut-eye behind his sunglasses, Steve and I took off for the last row, which was A) out of the sun, B) out of Irf’s direct sight, and C) a vantage point where we could see the sleeping giant as he awoke, alone, in what would clearly be a confused state. Ten minutes later, after Steve and I giggled like school girls twenty rows
We were planning on going out near the water later that night, so I brought a sweatshirt with me to the game. I had put it in the seat next to me – a fact that I remembered at almost the exact moment I finished winding down the twenty ramps that lead out of the park. Irf and Steve waited for me on the street while I went up to grab my sweatshirt. Unfortunately, the game had just ended, so I was going “upstream” against the crowd on the way back to the upper deck. To my surprise, there was a huge team of people already hosing down the seats, just minutes after the final pitch. When I went up to see if my sweatshirt had survived the dousing, I realized that it was gone. I told the guys that I had left it there, so they directed me to the head trash-collector guy (his official title, I’m sure). The head trash collector told me that he thought he saw the sweatshirt, so he took me over to a giant portable trash bin and – voila! – there was my sweatshirt, sprinkled with beer and cheesy fries. As I pondered just how gross that was, another trash collector was going full-speed ahead for the bin that held my sweatshirt. He positioned himself to dump a huge trash barrel right on top of my defenseless hoodie. Luckily, head trash collector guy was able to call off the (hot) dogs before my beloved sweatshirt was violated any further. Good news: I got my sweatshirt. Bad news: I had to carry around a dirty sweatshirt all night.
We ended up going to a restaurant called Weird Fish, which featured catfish buffalo wings and the Suspicious Fish Dish, where they don’t actually let you know anything about the dish, other than the fact that you’re getting a full meal. None of us were brave enough to get it. Brian G. met up with us in time for dessert. He used to work at the lab with Steve and was also a frequent teammate of ours when we played some pick-up basketball in Medford. Even though he couldn’t make it for the meal, he still had plenty of time to tell us about how he was recently taken by medivac from a bike accident and briefly discussed his experience with melons. So I…uh, never mind.
Jack and Brendan showed up on Thursday night, just after the rest of us were treated to some fantastic treats from the resident pastry chef. They accidentally went to the very end of the subway line that they were supposed to take, which delayed their arrival by about…four hours or so. Yeah. Anyway, once they finally arrived, Jack and Brendan had to shack up in the same bed, and before Brendan could even get under the covers, Jack had already created something he dubbed the Double Dutch Oven. I would have laughed much harder had I not been delirious from lack of sleep.
The next morning, Irf and I walked over to the local Enterprise, where we had our cars reserved. We loaded up and headed down the highway towards the wedding locale in Paso Robles. Stay tuned for Part II.
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