This week, our younger two kids are on vacation, so I set aside a couple of few half-days to spend with them.  Since I work (remotely) on East Coast hours, but we live on the West Coast, a half-day off in the afternoon means I can stop working at 11:00 Pacific, which is 2:00 Eastern (or I could stop working even earlier if I could drag myself out of bed before 7:00 local time).  Out of the blue, Daniel asked me, "Dad, can we maybe go like, to San Francisco tomorrow?" and I was completely thrilled, because Daniel doesn't tend to venture very far away from his video games and his remote video game colleagues, at whom he screams in real-time as they play into the wee hours of the morning night after night.  But suddenly Daniel wanted not only to spend time with me, but also to make the 20-mile trek into San Francisco and experience something that doesn't involve pixels or teeangers who spend their time in front of pixels.  So I jumped at it.  

We drove to the Exploratorium - fortunatelyfinding a parking spot only a block or so beyond it on the Embarcadero.  Then we walkted to Chinatown - something he was very happy to do, since he likes working out now and he, like me, loves an "urban hike."  I took him eventually to Portsmouth Square, a park where older residents of Chinatown gather to play mahjong or just to talk, and then we went looking for dinner, and ate at a restaurant that he picked out - definitely not a tourist destination, since we were the only non-East-Asians in the place when we arrived.  The layout was simple, but the food was really great, and they brought it to us within minutes from when we placed our order - something that would make me nervous in terms of quality, normally.  But in this case, it was really delicious.

Then we talked through the tunnel from Chinatown to North Beach, taking in all the fish patterns adoring the walls, and we climbed a concrete staircase to move onto the Powell and California Street intersection, where we caught a cable car.  It was Daniel's first cable car ride, my fourth, but I was completely mesmerized by the architecture, the hills, the urban scenery, the cliff-like "back yard" behind one of the apartments - everything.  From the final stop, a few blocks before Fisherman's Wharf, we too Beach Street to the Embarcadero, admired the clumsy, fog-horn-imitating sea lions at Pier 39, I took a picture of him posing within a small cavalry of colorful sea lion sculptures on display, and then we drove about 20 minutes to Twin Peaks.  I had never been there before at night, and he had never been there at all, and we were both extremely impressed by the sprawling "light show" scattered across the metropolis.  

Then we stopped outside the Russian Cathedral, I said a quick prayer outside to Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco, whose remains are incorrupt - miraculously free of decomposition, as happens often enough with Orthodox saints, especially ones like St. John who are constantly working miracles.  The cathedral was long closed for the day, of course, since this was by now about 8:30 at night, but I said a quick prayer asking St. John for his intercession.

We then headed across the Golden Gate Bridge - something Daniel is not completely familiar with.  I pointed out some of the historical references as we passed a few landmarks.  Daniel eventually slept a bit in the car, and eventually we got home and he woke up and went inside, a little after 10 p.m.

***

Amy told me something quite wonderful once Daiel was out of earshot:  he told - tonight -  Amy that he wants to go to college in San Francisco.

Coming from Daniel, that's the most gratifying moments I might image, because until tonight, he has been saying that he wants to go to college in New York.  But suddenly San Francisco has booted New York out of Daniel's top spot for college prospects.  This is Daniel's roundabout way of letting us all know that he  really likes San Francisco now, and that he will give San Franscisco some priority as a place to stay long-term.  

...And he announced it right after I had shown him my version of the town.  

I'm very grateful that he enjoyed our venture into the City so much...

5 April 2025