After spending a short night at Luke’s friend Matt’s house in Marina Del Rey, we woke up at about 7 in the morning on Friday to begin our weekend trip. We woke up early so we could pick up Rachel at Norm’s before hitting the road. We enjoyed a nice and awkward breakfast with Rachel’s grandparents, more awkward for me than anyone else because I had to sit between the grandparents. After stopping by the bus and Ralph’s we went to Pete and Tesha’s to pack up the car and head out. We were finally on the road with a messily 6-7 hour drive between San Francisco and us.

We eventually navigated our way through the city and were able to find a parking spot within walking distance of Rachel’s friend’s house where everyone but me was going to stay. We all unpacked the car and found our way into the studio apartment. Then I called up my buddy Matt Brandt whom I was going to stay with over the weekend. He was out on the town after work and told me to catch a cab to 19th and Folsom in the Mission District. I had no idea what all that meant but I flagged a cab down and acted like I knew what I was doing and $20 later I was there. (Thanks for the $20 Matt). We hung out at the bar for a bit and I got to know a few of Matt’s co-workers and whatnot, one of which was the coolest guy I’ve ever met. His name was Dutch and he was English. Matt, Dutch, and I left the bar and headed to Dutch’s house to chill for a bit. Now let me briefly explain how cool this Dutch character is; for those of you who’ve seen Green Street Hooligans then let me just say that Dutch was a member of the Everton Firm cross-town rivals of Liverpool, and for those who don’t know about the GSE Dutch is a guy who grew up in Liverpool, England and his main hobby in life was supporting his local ‘soccer’ team at any cost. Dutch told us many crazy stories about football matches in England but he also talked about his short career as an investment analyst and why he left that job and England to move to ‘The States’ to get involved in construction. Anyway, enough on Dutch, so we left his house after being double parked for an hour or so and headed back to Matt’s. Matt’s friend Julie came over and we just relaxed the rest of the night, see Matt is a pretty busy guy working 60 hours a week so he really values his relaxing time as he should.

On Saturday morning Matt’s friend Ashley came over to the house and we headed out on the bus to meet up with everyone at the wharf so we could get on a boat to Alcatraz. We met up with Julie, Luke, Rachel, Pete and Tesha at the wharf. We quickly found out that tickets to Alcatraz were sold out all day so we decided to buy Tickets for Sunday and spend the rest of Saturday doing as much tourist stuff as we could. First off was a cable car ride on the Powell-Mason line up and down the hills from the wharf to downtown. We walked around a bit, shopped a bit, and enjoyed the sites. Next stop was a walk through Chinatown. It was a long walk and everyone was getting a little tired so Matt, Julie, Ashley, and I headed back to Matt’s place to get some dinner and Luke, Rachel, Pete and Tesha headed off to do there own thing. I spent the rest of the night just hanging out with Matt reminiscing about the good old days as well as learning more about my new friends Julie and Ashley.

We woke up pretty early on Sunday and left again on the public transit to make it to the wharf in time to catch our boat to Alcatraz. Ashley couldn’t make it because of work but other than that it was the full group from the day before. I’ve been to the rock a few times but it is still very impressive and you should check it out if you ever get the chance. I’m sure we’ll have photos of it up in no time and you can get an idea of what it is like out there. We walked around the city a little longer and found our way back to the apartment where everyone was staying. We packed up the car and headed out of San Francisco at about 5 PM. We made it back to Malibu in pretty good time. I had a great weekend in San Francisco. Thanks to Matt, Ashley, Julie, Luke, Rachel, Pete and Tesha for a good time.

- Carson

This entry was posted on Monday, October 2nd, 2006 at 7:25 pm and is filed under Random/Crazy Adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.