Chapter 4: A Bloody Misadventure (August 15th, 2009)
Last night Lori and I set off on an “adventure”. Since I had my excitement with skydiving, I wanted to make sure she had a special Saturday as well. When she got back from shopping, I gave her limited instructions – “Grab a sweater” – and at about 5:45, we hit the road. I could tell that she was mentally going through a process of elimination as we started out on Dixon Landing Road (“Is it Petsmart?”, “Is it Borders?”), then got on Interstate 237 (“Is it a movie?”, “Are we going to Rasputin Records”), then got on 101 (“Hmm, maybe Ikea?”), and then continued on 101 North (“The airport, nah, probably San Francisco”). As we got closer to San Francisco, I avoided letting on any additional insight. Things were going quite well…
My plan for an adventure for Lori had started a couple hours before as I looked on-line for things to do (In keeping with my new goal of not letting a weekend be wasted). What I found was an activity that started at 8 PM in front of the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco at the corner of California and Taylor Streets. A normal person who is quite unfamiliar with San Francisco, like me, and who has a history of getting lost in San Francisco, like me, would have probably taken the next step of looking for directions. In fact, with today’s GPS and Mapquest, there would be little excuse for a sane person not to do so. Those familiar with my self-deprecating ways can see where I am going with this…I did not look for directions. In our previous San Francisco “walk-abouts” I had seen a building that just had to be Grace Cathedral in North Beach, and that was where we were headed. I didn’t want Lori to guess anything so we looked for a place to park in the area. After pulling into the ticket lane in one parking lot, finding the ticket dispenser was out of tickets, and performing the tricky maneuver of backing the wrong way into one way traffic to try the next entry lane, we found ourselves parked.
As we left, the attendant pointed to a sign that said they close at promptly at exactly, precisely 10 PM (I suspect actually at 9:58). Crap! Lori’s “adventure” would not be done until 10 PM and that would be a problem. Since I was not exactly sure where else to park and Lori needed a drink (Okay, I can’t lie to my readers, we were in search of certain knee height structures of porcelain construct), we walked around to scout a better place and a bathroom.
I decided to let some intel slip and let Lori know we were going to the white church-like structure that I still thought (For the next half-hour or so) was Grace Cathedral. Based on that, we went back to the car (@#&%, $7 for 30 minutes of parking!), and looked for somewhere closer that would be open when we came back. We found a place that was close to the border of North Beach and Chinatown and after some “navigational errors” (Even Magellan had some of those), we were on our way.
My first hint that something was amiss was that none of the streets we saw near the place “formally known as Grace Cathedral” (In my mind at least) were named California or Taylor Street. Hmm, maybe the website was wrong? Then I remembered that everything on the internet was right so that couldn’t be it. Wait, I had called earlier to make sure that the activity was still on for tonight. Oh, that was from the house phone so I don’t have the ability to hit redial and explain my current situation and ask for help (Without going home, of course, which would make it hard to get back by eight seeing as it was now 7:30).
This is where my prior misfortunes worked out in my favor. During my previous extended tours of the best, and not so best, of San Francisco I had learned to call on the maps at the bus stops for reference (This doesn’t work so well by the way in Germany where every street name seems to be Burgeastrewquerunstrasse”). After locating a bus stop, we found California Street (Only several blocks away in Nob Hill…it starts with an “N” like North Beach), but no Taylor Street. This is where my past history of forgetting names plants a seed of dread in the back of my mind. Having few options and not ready to give up, we set off down Stockton Street for California Street and figured we would “get lucky”.
As we will learn later in the evening, there are plenty of popular conceptions and notions that are not accurate, but one which I can personally attest for is the fact that San Francisco has a lot of hills and this is rarely more true than when you are going from the lesser areas of the city to the finest areas like Nob Hill. Risking severe and catastrophic cardiac explosion, we trudged up the hills with a faint ray of hope because we thought we saw another church looking object at about the point we estimated California Street to be. Now Lori will never admit to this, but me being marginally psychic, I knew exactly what she was thinking about me during this rapid trudge upwards and suffice it to say, it cannot be printed here. Me, on the other hand, I could feel we were getting closer and when we hit California Street, I knew that it could only be a little further on the right. Lacking my unfounded optimism, Lori asked a door man along the way whether Grace Cathedral was nearby. Honestly at that point, I didn’t want to hear the answer – the cathedral was either going to be a block away where I was convinced it would be, or I was going to have a really awkward rest of the night.
As it turned out, it was there, and so was Taylor Street, but as we stood there at the intersection there wasn’t much indication that this was indeed the right place. By now it was only 7:45 (Not a bad pace from where we started to where we were, by the way) so there was a chance we were just too early (Please dear God, say that’s it). My anxiety was palpable and I can only imagine what Lori was thinking by this time. Keep in mind she had no clue what her “adventure” was going to be, but by now has a very good idea of how inept her guide was! Lori had decided that we were here for a tour of some sorts and pointed out some one near the Cathedral who looked like a tour guide (I'm not sure if that is something to feel good about or not) and I said I would go check it out. Now I would never ask for directions (Even at this point in this night), so this was clearly a ruse. I knew what I was looking for and figured that the elevation of the steps would increase my odds of seeing it.
And see it I did. Striding down the street was the lady in black with the candelabra: “Mina Harker” of the famed San Francisco Vampire Tour, Lori’s “adventure” for the night. Running down the cathedral stairs, I beckoned Lori to quit mucking about with her purse and we ran forward to meet our target in the cross-walk where our unplanned adventure ended and the planned one began.
Now, I don’t want to ruin the tour or spill the beans, so to speak, but suffice it to say that we had a very enjoyable next two hours learning about the Nob Hill area and its vampire heritage. “Mina”, aka Kitty Burns, was a charming tour guide who couldn’t have been any friendlier. My only regret is that my “temperature calibration” was off for the night, and I probably should have asked Lori to grab her warmest parka, and I should have probably not worn shorts and a T-shirt. As I stood there in suppressed shiver mode and watched the happy look on Lori’s face, I swear I caught a glimmer in her eyes, “Payback!”
