Not another San Francisco adventure!… part 4… boat faces…

Posted on August 4, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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Yes, it really is… just a bunch of pictures of a few faces riding on a really really fast boat in the San Francisco Bay. That is my: ‘I am trying to look cool in this selfie, but I am having sooooooo much fun’ face.

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My daughter Mollie. I love that kid. She is so sweet. I love the tie dye sweater and new pink hair. She is going away to college in a few weeks… what am I going to do… besides turning her room into a music studio, I mean.

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Even when the boat was going slow, it was fun. I love boats.

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I think Mollie’s boyfriend, Dashawn, had even more fun than me.

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I may have gotten a little carried away with the selfies. The thing is… (hey, thing, where you been hidin’?)… that, when the boat was moving really fast, there was salt spray going everywhere. Especially during the crazy fast turns. So I don’t have pictures of me… or anyone else… during the craziest parts. Which is too bad.

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Ha… that face. My wife really was there, right beside Mollie. But she doesn’t want to be on the blog. It is amazing how many pictures I have to crop her out of, or not show here. Don’t worry, I save the family pictures somewhere else first, before I make her disappear.

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Okay, there is one taken during a little burst of speed.

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There are three iconic San Francisco landmarks between those two good looking heads… but they aren’t really in focus… so never mind.

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Oh yeah.

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I know, this isn’t really exciting for you to look at…

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And I have like two more blog posts worth of pictures… without the faces in them… (I just thought it would be funny to stick all the face ones together for some reason)…

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Maybe I will try to edit it down to one more post. So we can move on the the fog part of this adventure.

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Not another San Francisco adventure!… part 3… oh, what the heck, I am going to try posting the pictures of one of my adventures in order for a change… I mean, except for the ones in the two posts I already did…

Posted on August 4, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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A pretty good picture of the San Francisco waterfront, taken from our car, driving over the Oakland Bay Bridge… don’t worry, I wasn’t driving when I took it… for a change. Soon, we will be right down there, walking along the water.

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The new Sales Force… whatever that is… building, going up in the city, and dwarfing all the other buildings.

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I don’t know what that building is called, but our car has a sunroof, and sometimes, I like to just stick the camera  up and out, and snap some random shots… I did the same thing later, as we drove across a fog-shrouded Golden Gate Bridge.

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After lunch, as I said, we walked along the bay front. If you look carefully in the middle of that photos, you will the smoke from a large fire over across the bay. That is in the Berkeley hills, not far from where I take a lot of those sunset photos. It didn’t get too big, but did bring back memories of the big fire up there years ago, that wiped out a huge are in the Oakland hills.

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Mollie… still rocking the pink hair… and her boyfriend. Yes, they are looking at the big model of Alcatraz, and beyond that, the old Civil War canon that points more or less towards my mom’s house across the bay. If you remember this spot from another San Francisco adventure not too long ago… yes, the one that ended up with me and Big Johnny doing a bar hopping slog through the Haight Ashbury district… give yourself 500 bonus points.

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And there it is… the rocket boat…

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It started off slow… out of the little marina, and into the bay… Alcatraz island and the old prison floating serenely… and notice, there is still no fog as of yet.

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Mollie was a little nervous.

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Here you can plainly see that there is no fog anywhere near the Golden Gate.

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And then BAM… that boat started moving, and turning, and rocking, and it was freekin’ awesome! In the background, in the water, you can still see the wake from the boat, as we made a long, fast turn.

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Treasure Island.

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And then we were under the Oakland Bay Bridge, and past Treasure Island, and you can see the new part of the bridge on the other side of the island, and smoke is still rising from that fire.

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Not another San Francisco adventure!… part 2… the fog…

Posted on August 3, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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So yeah, some of us are still in the San Francisco Bay Area until Saturday. There are my younger daughter, Mollie, and her boyfriend. My wife is still here too, but she doesn’t want to appear on the blog… ever. My older daughter and her new husband are back in Arizona. My mother-in-law has gone back home. My cousins from Santa Cruz have also departed. We really just met up at my mom’s house for the Hamilton show.

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When you grow up in the Bay Area like I did, you know a lot about fog. But this was an interesting fog day.

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The kind of day where the fog has a mind of its own.

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It was clear and sunny and warm when we left my mom’s house and crossed the Oakland Bay Bridge to get to the city. Before long, we were going to be underneath this very bridge, having some crazy fun. I will get to that soon. I am trying to decide if I should do these photos in order after this, or just mix them up like I usually do.

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But right now, we are talking about the fog. That photo is taken later in the day. That big, dark, square object you see in the fog to the left is Fort Point, a Civil War era fort of brick and stone that nestles underneath an arch of the South end of the Golden Gate Bridge. You can’t see the bridge at all.

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It was the kind of day where little sail boats coast by like ghosts.

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The kind of day that makes the sightseeing boats post notice that you don’t get your money back if you can’t see the Golden Gate Bridge… or the city… from five feet away.

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This picture was taken even earlier in the day, after the boat ride. I was standing in front of the Ghirardelli Chocolate factory, close by Fisherman’s Wharf. See that fog bank over there. I swear, the Golden Gate Bridge is in there.

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It started off as a sunny day, and it still was in some parts of the Bay Area, but near the bridge, it was the kind of day where the pelicans stay close together so they don’t get lost.

 

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Not another San Francisco adventure!… part 1… the tease…

Posted on August 3, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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Wait, I hear you asking, why is the city obscured by foamy water spray?

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And how did you ever get a photo from that delightful angle?

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And… are you under the Oakland Bay Bridge???

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A railing and a big, fat wake… these are some serious clues.

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As is this unique perspective of Alcatraz.

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You might, by now, have surmised that a boat of some kind was involved.

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And you are correct… but it wasn’t just any kind of boat we went on yesterday.

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For now, pay attention to how sunny and clear the day was… because that is going to change soon… in an interesting way.

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Squirrel nuts, a snake, some dogs, a city, and some big, heavy balls…

Posted on August 2, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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Yup… that is a squirrel, hanging upside down on a palm tree… eating, what I assume, is some sort of nut. Now that we are all caught up on the Comic Con/Hamilton/sunset pictures, I can start to fill you in on some of our other adventures in the Bay Area… where we still are. Where did I spot that squirrel. you may well be asking?

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We went down to Oakland… Jack London square, to be precise. That is a nice view of San Francisco, over past the boats and the big cranes used to unload cargo ships.

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We met Willie, our godson, and his mom, Eva. Big Johnny was at work, and couldn’t join us. We went bowling, among other things.

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Between rolling the bowling ball, William practiced his light saber technique with Dashawn, my daughter’s boyfriend.

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There is my younger daughter, Mollie, still rocking the pink hair.

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If you look right above the red set of numbers, you will see that I bowled a respectable 156. One of my best scores ever, and considering the fact that I was drinking at the time, not too shabby.

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So, yeah, it was beautiful down by the bay.

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Willie… rockin’ the octopus hat!

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A statue of Jack London. You may have heard of him. He wrote some books.

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On the way back to my mom’s house, we stopped in Berkeley, once again by the bay. The fog was rolling in. It was windy, and we have a cool new kite.

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When you are looking up at a kite, remember to look down once in a while too. I almost stepped on a five-foot-long snake.

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I also met a cool old guy with lots of dogs. Yes… I met the dogs too… don’t be silly.

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If you are sick of all my sunset photos… it’s okay… these are sunrises…

Posted on August 2, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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Just some random photos of two separate sunrises, that I took while doing the long drive through California’s Central Valley. I have done that drive four times in the last two weeks or so.

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Celebrity spotting at Comic Con… part 5… the entire cast of Westworld!

Posted on August 1, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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If you aren’t watching this show on HBO, then you probably won’t care about this post.

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I am and I do.

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Ha… ghost head. Maybe you saw the original movie from way back in the… I want to say 1970s.

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If nothing else, this series of photos, as I made way slowly by the actors at very close range, show how well my tip… (in an earlier post)… for how to get close to the celebrities, actually works.

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And I do highly recommend this show.

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It’s science fiction… with android cowboys.

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To be more precise, it is about a vacation resort where people can live out a fantasy life in the Wild West.

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But a real dark, gritty, hookers and murder kind of a fantasy. I mean, you are only supposed to shoot the robots, which isn’t technically murder… but, hey, stuff happens.

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Oh man, that guy is such a good actor. He was awesome in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, as a prohibition era gangster.

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Notice how I am working my way along the front edge of the huge crowd of gawkers, but just behind the idiots who spent all day in line getting wrist bands so they could get an autograph. They missed so much other stuff. This strategy really pays off.

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You can almost reach out and touch the famous people.

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But don’t do that… especially to Ed Harris… he will bite your arm right off. See him over there, to the left?

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Once again, I was switching between my camera and my phone, so I could text the pictures to people.

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I know… but I hate to waste a good photo.

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Yeah, yeah, almost done… keep your pants on.

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Okay, just one more…

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Of Mr. Ed Freekin’ Harris!

 

 

 

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Celebrity spotting at Comic Con… part 4… Yeah, Steven Spielberg waved at me…

Posted on August 1, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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By this time, I had perfected my ‘slipping around the back, and squeezing my way into the front rows of the crowd’ scheme.

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As this series of pictures show, I got some good shots as I shuffled slowly by.

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I was so close that I took some of these with my cell phone, not just my good camera… so I could text them to my kids. I like the look on the face of the security guy on the right. I like a thoughtful security guy.

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Okay, I didn’t get an autograph, but I didn’t spend half my day in line, getting the wrist band, and then again to get the signature.

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And yes, maybe I am posting too many pictures of one guy…

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But come on… Spielberg…

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Eight feet from me…

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I mean, it was kind of cool.

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Okay, I’m almost done.

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There.

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Celebrity spotting at Comic Con… part 3… Chris Hemsworth… yes, I know, he’s hunky-dreamy…

Posted on August 1, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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I spotted him, doing a promo for an upcoming Thor movie. This was before I mastered my ‘slithering in from the side to get closer to the celebrities’ trick.

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But I still got some good photos, and one great hing about digital photos… you can crop them way down and still end up with a usable picture.

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I mean, I guess you could just take pictures of the overhead view screens, and tell people you were right next to him.

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But for me, I actually have to be close enough to visually identify a celebrity before I count it as ‘seeing’ them.

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All I know is that, on the day I was at Comic Con, when I text-messaged my family that I saw this guy…

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I got the fastest response ever from my two daughters… saying they wanted pictures… now.

 

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Celebrity spotting at Comic Con… part 2… I saw… uh… that girl… who, supposedly, is Supergirl…

Posted on August 1, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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Yes, I saw her… and no, I have no idea what her name is. I don’t watch Supergirl, the TV show. I could have Googled it and seemed like I knew what I was talking about, but I didn’t.

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I am just working my way up to the celebrities that I got really excited about. I like that picture. I don’t know what she is so happy about, but security guy number one has his eye on me, and security guard number two seems to be in a daze.

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I also saw these people… who are in the same show… I assume…

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But I really only knew they were in that show because of the sign above them… which had the blond girl in it… wearing a Supergirl costume…  beside the word ‘Supergirl’.

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Okay, see that crowd? I just remembered I was going to give you some more tips on how to spot celebrities if you ever end up at Comic Con. This really worked for me. Yes, you can stand in line for four hours to get a wrist band to stand in line for another two hours, just to get an autograph. That sort of locks you into a whole day spent trying to see one group of celebrities.

All you have to do is wander around, having fun. But make sure that every once in a while, you wander by the little stages set up by either Marvel Comics, or any of the big studios that make movies and television shows. When you see a crowd like that, with everyone holding their cameras and their phones above their heads, you know their are famous people in the front of that crowd.

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I don’t know who those people are. This is before I figured out what to do, and I was way in the back. But, while you try to figure out who those people are, here is the secret. The stages will consist of an outer ring of milling people getting bad pictures. Inside that ring is a double row of security people. Inside that is a line of people who waited to get wrist bands so they could get autographs.

Go to the isle behind the stage, where the line for the autograph people starts. Wiggle your way between them and the security people. Now, slowly start shuffling forward. You will be inching by right in front of the security guys, who will be telling everyone to ‘keep moving, take a photo and keep moving’. You are now in front of the big, milling crowd of people… like you see above…

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Before you know it, if you time your pictures correctly between the security people and the autograph seekers, you will be getting good photos of really famous people… like that guy… whom we will get to in an upcoming post.

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