13 posts tagged “san francisco”

Just after midnight this past Thursday, I get an email from my boss saying that my friend and co-worker Ron, was in the hospital with a broken leg.

Not good.

So, I start the wheels in motion to find out more and discover by the early morning that he was out on his lunchtime bike ride, just about home, when at 25 mph and all toe-clipped in, he hit some funky angled groove in the pavement that unceremoniously dumped him on his left femur snapping it. Fortunately, it wasn't one of those gnarly compound fractures where bones start poking out through the skin, but extremely serious nonetheless.

Best of all (if there is such a thing in these matters) was that it was along San Jose Ave in SF, which is a busy thoroughfare, had folks stop and dial 911 for him, and best of all, top-notch trauma center at SF General a short ambulance ride away.

I finally get a hold of Ron at the hospital in the morning, and he asks if I can bring some stuff from home for him and so I cruise by to grab his keys before he goes into surgery to pin his leg back together.

After driving over and finding his room, I get to him about ten minutes before he's about to get wheeled off to the cutting room, and get to see his un-repaired leg. There really wasn't much to see where the leg was broken, but it was the pre-surgery setting that was kinda interesting.

First, it's important to understand the nature of broken femurs. With muscles that go lengthwise from hip to knee, the bone is what keeps the knee from getting closer than it should to your hip. In the case of a broken femur, the fear is that you'll have some sort of spasm in your quads or hams that will cause them to contract, pulling the two broken ends of the bone towards each other, either doing more muscle damage (at best) or sever the femoral artery, which is often fatal.

What do you do about this? you put your leg into traction, which means that you pull the foot away from the hip and keep tension on it. So, my shock was when I got there and saw that they didn't just duct-tape something around his foot to pull it down, but actually drilled a hole through what looks like his tibia (shin bone), ran a coat-hanger type of thing through it and then hung a huge bag of water off the footboard of the hospital bed. Photo below....way below to protect the squeamish :)

I went by post-op on Friday and the coat-hangar had been removed and some half-kilo titanium bar was bolted to his femur. hmmm...just thought about how that will affect airport security.
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So, typical weekends seem to be primarily occupied with all the aftermath of working too much during the week and having the house be a wreck and the refrigerator filled with science projects.

So, my oldest daughter, being saddled with a school that seems to pride itself on overloading her with homework and the stress of finals, had bunkered down to go study and be ready for 250 years of American history, constitutional amendments and civil rights. So, since she was sort of committed for her weekend, I felt it a good idea to take the younger one out on a SF Tourist day.

These days are pretty cool, and not often enough taken. See, even after living here for 20 years, I still think some of my favorite days here are the no-agenda/wandering days that take you to places like Mario's Bohemian Cigar Store for lunch and Swenson's for dessert after walking up the hill.

So, Amelia and I started by taking the Muni downtown

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to start off at the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market where we went to seek out fruit, lunch at Taylor's,

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watch btrott go cruising by (that Penelope musta been hungry), and then to hop onto the F-Market towards Pier 39

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Pier 39 greeted us with the usual tourist schlock, but Amelia was ready for some tourist-y shopping.








From there, we went towards the Musee Mechanique where Amelia and I indulged in an assortment of fabulous pastimes of my youth such as skee-ball, pinball and all those first generation atari games.

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Of course Amelia's skills have been honed on more utilitarian skills:


From the Musee Mechanique, we felt the need to hit the candy shop to get our quota of taffy before taking the cable-cars to head towards home.






We did manage to see the newly restored car #25, which has just completed a 2-year restoration:

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But we couldn't wait for that one and got the last two spots on a car after waiting for 45 minutes at the end of Hyde St.

Worth the waith though. Amelia got the front outside spot which gave her the danger thrill of oncoming cable cars coming mere inches from her:

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See, the real impetus for this whole thing is that she was born here, but still had never been on a cable car. So, today was the day to correct this egregious error on my part as her father.

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Once we managed to get rid of some of the tourists on the car, a seat or two finally opened up and allowed us to sit. See...it was a pretty typical day, overcast, windy and pretty cold. Fun though.

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From there we managed to make it back down into the Muni  station and I decided to see if Amelia could figure out how to get us home. I figure these are sort of city-kid survival skills and she should learn all the good city-kid skills like negotiating the world of public transportation. She seemed releatively unconcerned/uninterested until I showed her how with relative ease she can get to places like San Francisco Center/Stonestown all from these same sets of stations.


Needless to say, the day was well spent and a ton of fun.



This was only to be rivaled by the following day's activities.

A friend of mine, Adam, just got his pilot's license last month, and he was looking for a 'first passenger' to log into his flight-log.

Many might think this to be something to fear, but I was really excited. See, I used to go flying all the time as a kid with my Dad, who used to fly bombers in WW2. It was always something I loved doing with him and since he died four years ago, there's kinda been this yearning to get back up there. So, date set, I met Adam at Oakland airport's Kaiser Air terminal where all the general aviation and non-commercial activity happens.

Plane: Piper Archer2.

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It's pretty cool. Even if the cockpit looks kinda daunting:

So, the plan was pretty much just to take off out of Oakland, fly to Colombia (no, silly, not the country), and head back. We were hoping to hang and have lunch and whatnot,but we ended up running out of time.

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Oakland Coliseum right after takeoff.



Turning into final approach at Colombia California:

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Cool airport. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and had to get the plane back to Oakland by 1330h (it was noon).






This is kinda cool: the video of the landing at Colombia:

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This was an interesting view of one of the reservoirs flying back...note the low water level:

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And the glamour shot of me flying:

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and the final approach back into Oakland

The final shocker of the day: refueling: 

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In all though, cool weekend. Haven't been flying in something like eight or so years. I think it was good for Adam too. Not to have a 'first passenger' that was all freaky to flying in small planes and who could actually help out with the flying of the plane, listening for traffic control squawks, and watching for other planes.

very cool though. Makes me want to pursue the pilot's license thing again, only it still seems a little rich for my blood. Maybe i'll find a way to treat myself...

    very un-san francisco-like sunset...but wow :)

Sunset

When you parked your car was right on my bumper, causing scratches.

You're an ASSHOLE

So said the note on my windshield, parked behind Whole Paycheck at 4th/Harrison.

I knew I was close, as spaces are tight parking on the street in San Francisco, but I didn't think I was touching his car. In fact, I went out and checked and didn't think I saw any contact, let alone feel anything. bummer.

But wait. Let's think about this a bit.

You're parallel parking in San Francisco downtown in uber-high density. Is it anywhere near reasonable to expect that your bumper will never get touched or scratched by another bumper ?

I mean, it's one of those nouns whose very existence is the result of a noun. I mean, in Baseball, would you expect a catcher to get pissed off if he was actually expected to catch something? Pitchers who refuse to pitch?

I may be an asshole, but I'm not really sure it's for this transgression :)

Oddly enough, the note was written on the back of a printed webpage of Isaiah 14:12. Not that this particular passage is damning, but just interesting that this judgemental view was pasted on my windshield by someone of the Christian faith. Ne Jugez point, afin que vous ne soyez point juges....

Went to Rickshaw Stop last night and for the cost of a couple of beers, saw Back Door Slam which is this trio of kids from the Isle of Man who play amazing blues rock, reminiscent of SRV or perhaps John Mayer.

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It's notable that the main dude, Davey Knowles, aside from being one of the most amazing guitar players I've ever seen, has this deep baritone, bluesy voice that  belies his young age of 19 (maybe 20...he wasn't old enough to get served in the bar at least).

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There's a ton of youtube footage of these guys around, but I also managed to upload a few videos that I took myself. It's just too much fun listening to this guy play and sing. Pretty nice and humble as well. Damn shame I missed him last month at the Utah...

Outside the living room window right now:

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spectacular last sunset of the year

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Tommaso's Coo Coo clams, which are baked in their wood fired oven. All the usual suspects: butter, white wine, garlic, parseley...consistently off the charts :)

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Met up with glee and Justin to check out Van Hunt at the Independent on Thursday nite.

Justin was just in for the pre-show cocktails and so glee and I carried on to a show of someone neither of had ever seen. I kind of like going into new bands live before I hear recorded stuff. Kind of like wanting the recorded music to remind me of how cool their stuff is live rather than 'concerts' that try and replicate their albums.

Amazing good time. I don't see too much new music out there (is it just me?) in the funk/rock musical vein. Think of music influenced by Prince, Marvin Gaye and the Meters. So, basically, I want more :)

Hell...here are some video snippets to check out for yourself: