Nothing like gout to bring you back down to earth.
We’re back from a hasty, almost dizzying trip to the Bay Area. On the way to San Francisco, we stopped to hike in two beautiful state parks we’d never visited, Henry Coe and Castle Rock. Henry Coe was vaguely familiar because I’d seen the Huell Howser segment about it years ago. A bee sting for David and poison oak for me were souvenirs of these hikes, but they were well worth it.
I saw my old friends Mari and Sue Ellen, both of whom I’ve known since 4th grade. Our visits are infrequent, but we picked up as if we’d seen each other just last week.
We got together with Christopher and Claire, touring the de Young museum Saturday for two brilliant exhibits: Kehinde Wiley and Ansel Adams. David and I saw Wiley’s “Portrait of a Young Gentleman” at the Huntington a few months ago, and we were suitably awed by this remarkable collection of his paintings and sculptures.
In the ultimate San Francisco experience, we careered around the city in a driverless car that took us from Christopher and Claire’s apartment in Pacific Heights to our hotel near Union Square. Christopher summoned the car on his phone just as you would an Uber or Lyft, except there is no one behind the wheel! Twice during the trip, the driverless car came upon a double-parked car blocking the lane. That seemed to throw it for a loop, and I wondered if it would start beeping “Does not compute,” or something to that effect. A message flashed on the screen: “We are helping your car move out of this situation,” and eventually it did. The ride was a great thrill.
I stopped to light a candle in this church, Star of the Sea. I’m no longer a churchgoer, but I still like this ritual.
This sign below the clock in The Little Shamrock in inner Sunset claims it hasn’t ticked since the 1906 earthquake.
Although clocks may halt, time waits for no one, so today I’m back to work on my project on gout. The fact-checking kept me focused, preventing me from dwelling on how fast the visit went and how long it might be until the next one. And, it also made me very thankful that I do not have gout.
The Green Side of the Grass 