Saturday, June 04, 2011

The Foggy City

The Cascades

Back in our hotel room after a 1,400 mile day, two time zones, a few buses, a cab, a street car and quite a bit of walking, my feet are tired but I have that early vacation feeling. Just getting acclimated to the city, oriented on a map and starting to the taste the delights this amazing place has to offer.

Knitting and waiting

We headed to the airport pretty early for our 9:30 flight but because of fog in San Francisco we were delayed by about an hour and half. No problem. Finally boarded around 10:30am, settled in our seats and watched all the other passengers file onto the plane. Joe and I both noticed a hipster gentleman in his thirties board the plane, wearing shiny white Ray Bans, a pseudo Fidel Castro hat, and trendy plaid shirt. I thought, "Hey that guy looks like the lead singer of Cake." Neither of us said anything except, "Look at that hipster."



And then when he sat down in the row across from us we both thought, wait a minute, Cake had a concert in Kansas City last night, Cake is from California, there is about a 80% chance that this is the lead singer for Cake. Then he whipped out some expensive noise canceling headphones that he proceeded to wear for the entire flight, along with his Ray Bans and we became 99% convinced it was him. Of course we both proceeded to listen to Cake on our iPads for the next forty five minutes and discuss repeatedly what his name was, which of course because we were in the air we couldn't google. Bummer.

But it was him. As soon as we landed Joe looked him up and the Wiki for Cake had his picture, wearing the same Fidel hat. Mr. John McCrea, lead singer for one of my favorite bands, a band I was bummed we didn't have time to see Friday night before our trip, well there he is, on our flight. After we landed and were grabbing our bags and heading out, Joe asked "Hey are you John McCrea?" Mr. McCrea looked startled, hesitated and then mumbled, "Uh, yeah." Joe said "Nice to meet you." I, in my best thirteen year old girl starstruck voice said, "We love Cake." He politely said, "Great, thanks." And kept on walking. For Joe and I this was enough to make the start of our vacation amusingly memorable. And we weren't even in the city yet.

Sutter and Kearney

We did a lot of other fabulous things today. But I'm tired and ready to chill and relax in our pretty hotel room. So I'll talk to you tomorrow. We are headed on a four hour Urban Trek walking tour tomorrow, meeting some old friends for Dim Sum and hitting City Lights Bookstore. Can you see the smile on my face? It's kind of big.





3 comments:

bethany actually said...

That's hilarious about John McCrea! I wouldn't have recognized him at all, let alone known his name, unless he sang something. :-) So good for you! The only interesting people I've ever randomly run into on airplanes are Brian Priesman and Sean Morrison, both of whom I went to high school with. I did take a philosophy class with Johnnie Cochrane when I was a freshman at UNL, though, and I didn't even know who he was or that he was famous till I passed him on campus one day and we said hello to each other, and the person I was with freaked out.

Have a fantastic trip! Say hello to Chealsea for me. (I assume you're going to see her!) :-)

Katrina said...

Sounds like an AWESOME start to your trip!! Hope you have a great time!

margherio said...

Nice, I know his name but not sure I would've recognized his face. Seems like you could have had him sign your boob or something.