Fisherman's Wharf

It's been ten years since I have been coming to San Francisco, and Fisherman's Wharf and the waterfront area has really changed. It hasn't lost it's character, but has really been enhanced and improved with shops and restaurants that have preserved its unique character.

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I wish I had more time to hang out here, but the advance of the Darwinians does not have the luxury of my dawdleling.

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You should never come here without having a crab cocktail and visiting Lou's Blues. Unfortunately, I only had time for the crabs.

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Off to Phoenix to advance the Darwin evolution. I have to golf in the desert today for the good of the company, then we'll be flying to San Diego tonight.

West Coast Road Trip

So Far, So good. Cingular is going to give the Darwinians a shot. That's all we need.
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Phoenix tomorrow.

San Francisco Morning

Get a call at 4:45 AM from Katelyn who didn't know I was on the West Coast. She and Jill are going to London and Paris for a week and they are psyched. She caught me peeing while I was on the cell phone, which normally I wouldn't do, but I don't have the strength to wake up in the morning and not seek immediate relief.
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So now I'm wide awake in the Marriot Courtyard watching the Chris Rock show.
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Chris Rock is also an unbelieveably funny comedian, but for a very different reason than Borat below. His honesty is so real and unvarnished that it qualifies as high comedy. He gets away with telling the truth because of his delivery, tone and facial expressions. I think he is very right of center, yet you never see him characterized as a conservative.

Borat Movie Premiers Nov. 3

Borat on Da Ali G Show is hilarious comic relief. It's not what he says, it's how he says it and who he says it to. He makes outrageous comments about women, minorities, and Jews that are so over the top and the funny stuff comes not from his words but from the reactions of the people around him.
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"I want to do a romance inside of you."
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"In Kazhakstan we have many hobbies: disco dancing, archery, rape and table tennis..."
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"If you come back with me to my country,(....) I will give you television and remote control..."
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"Englishman must have a hobby. Some like to collect the stamp or make jam. But the most fun is to kill a a little animal with a shotgun or rip him up with a wild dog."
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"There is land of opportunities in US of A. For man, construction work, taxi driving and accountancy. For woman, as a prostitute."
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"In America, women can vote but horse cannot! It is the other way around in my country."

Cattle Cars

Learned to utilize my extensive yoga training in my flight from Atlanta to San Francisco. Packed flight. It's hard to believe that the airlines are not making money with the amount of people that they herd onto a plane.

Blog Hog Ben

Ben in no way resembles a Penn State cheerleader, but I put him in the blog anyway.

Breasthook is Fitted

I was real happy at the way the Breasthook fitting went. This is a central focal point of the boat.
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Now I can plane and sand it flush with the gunwales and the stem, and the interior should start to set up, although this won't happen until next weekend when I return from the West Coast. Work keeps getting in the way of the important stuff.

Rock Climbing

Sunday was another awesome morning. Joanne and I had brunch at the Hale's Location hotel which is situated below Cathedral and White Horse Ledges.

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You can't see it by this photo, but there are some people climbing half way up Cathedral Ledge. I guess I can understand the adrenalin rush that people get by technical rock climbing, but I definitely prefer fishing.

Politics - the Massachusetts Governor's Race

If you read the bios of Patrick and Healey, they are both engaging individuals. The tendency for each to downgrade the other is debilitating.

There should be a rule in American politics that each candidate could only refer to their own background and ideas for policy and leadership. I don't want to choose a leader based upon his characterization of the other guy.

Cramming It In

Sunday shapes up to be a little busy.
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Get up in No. Conway - take a walk around the neighborhood with Joanne, then maybe break a sweat with a run through the woods behind the hospital afterward.
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Joanne is going to stay until Mon. Morn., but I have an 8:00 AM flight to Atlanta so I'll be heading out by 11:00 or noon to Marblehead. That gets me home by 2:30PM - plenty of time to organize the packing for next week. Darwinians will be in Atlanta, then SF, Phoenix and San Diego, returning Fri.
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The Herreshoff is falling behind. If I can get the breasthook installed tomorrow and glue the spacer blocks onto the interior gunwale rails, then it would be a semblance of progress. Today's sojourn along the Androscoggin and to Umbagog Lake gave me a lot ideas about trailering the finished Herreshoff and trolling around the White Mountain rivers and ponds next year.
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Problem is that a great day fishing here up north is a great day fishing around Marblehead. It's hard to choose.
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Probably no moose sightings tomorrow.

Football Fan

Penn State V. Michigan.
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Mike is fired up at the tailgate with Nathaniel and Ben after a long ride to Pennsylvania.
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110,007 fans packed Beaver Stadium for the primetime game between the Nittany Lions and Wolverines – the second-largest crowd in stadium history - but Penn State fell short, 17-10
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What is a Nittany Lion anyway? And why name a football team after one?

Moose and Margaritas

We cut short our trip to Pittsburg and went to Umbagog Lake in Errol, NH on the Maine Border in the Northern Forest.
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It was a frosty twenty eight degree morning when we left at 8:15 and the mountain views were as crisp as an HDTV plasma flat screen in a Circuit City showroom.
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Following the Androscoggin River on Route 16 past Berlin, we had to stop for a moose in the middle of the road. It casually lumbered into the woods and immediately seemed to be transparent in the background. It is still hard to imagine that something so big thrives in the woodland up here. Look at the right of the picture and you can see it before it vanished into the forest.
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Stopped at LL Cote in Errol and I bought a small Okuma spinning rig and some lures to wet a line at the Lake, while Joanne was in another part of the store. When we met up to leave the store, I told her that I bought the rod and reel for her as an early Christmas present, but I couldn't pull the story off.
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Joanne thought she was being set up, and felt that I had planned this trip solely to go fishing, so I promised her that I would only make three casts.
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After my tenth, I started to feel guilty, but the rig, set up with a small Kastmaster jig, was so much fun to cast.
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So I cast a couple more.
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When I felt I was pressing my luck, I got back into the truck and we went through the Grafton Notch Sate Park in Maine over to Bethel. I obligingly went into a couple of gift shops, then we deadheaded to Margaritaville in Glen for lunch.
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Two margaritas and one pulled pork chimichanga later, it definitely qualified as a Saturday morning to remember.