BrokenDoll

San Francisco July 2008

March 21st, 2009 | Category: travel

[I am having to go off of memory here...haha since my site was not functioning back in July - so bare with me]

Back in July (2008) my friend Cynthia decided to celebrate her birthday in San Francisco. I was invited along with some of her other lovely friends for a weekend of fun and debachury. I decided to go since I had not been anywhere in so long.

So on Thursday July 3rd I got myself up at some ungodly hour, called a taxi and headed for LAX. Being the ocd type that I am I planned ahead for anything That could go wrong and arrived a couple hours ahead of time. I had already downloaded my bording pass so that was taken care of. I then went ahead and checked my luggage in since I wanted to keep my camera bag with me at all times. You can already tell there is going to be a disaster of some sort can’t you? Well we’ll get to that later.

I am not a good flyer. Infact flying terrifies me after a turbulance incident Brian and I expirienced over Florida in 2005. So I did what any other fearful flyer would do I decided to have a fabulous liquid breakfast. STRANGE. I don’t think I have ever purposly had a capecod for breakfast, but I was not alone. I met some really interesting people that were also calming their nerves and helped the time fly right by.

Once aboard and after the inital take off I was fine, not really even buzzed. I think I expended that energy upon take off. I have a total love/hate
relationshop with take off. Well anyway while on the plane the cutest little girl kept coming up to me asking me about my camera (I was shooting pictures out the window). Her mother asked me if I would take a couple of her on the plane, I politely obliged. She posed so cute and was so excited to get her pictures taken it was fun and made the flight really fast. Okay here is where the story takes a small but tragic turn.

As I was putting my camera away the octagenarian next to me awoke and stretched his arms out knocking over a full cup of coffee with sugar and cream into guess where???? Yes my camera bag. I froze, I sat there looking at this coffee just pouring into my camera backpack, trying to pull it out of harms way. At this point I was a mess with napkins and a towel etc. I know it was an accident, but the jag off could have said sorry. I clicked my camera and it seemed to be alright.

We landed and I got my rental car and proceeded to go the wrong way. Which I actually found humor in. I had to pull over and call my Mother to tell her what had happened. She called our insurance people and they said no problem that they would take care of it. One catch, they would go after the man to recoup the money. Now I found this really uber screwed up since I have been paying all my insurance through this company for years and have never put in a claim, plus hello it was an accident. I pay to have it insured and yet they wanna recoup, hello greedy insurance you have made more money off of my premiums for the house, pool, fire, flood, car et al. So anyway I just sat there and cried for a bit. I needed to release this negative energy.

I got to my hotel, checked in and took out all of my camera equipt to see how bad the damage was. The Camera was not working, it had soaked 3 lenses, my cables, cabless remote, Speedlight Flash, and various filters. I cleaned everything off again, but the sugar really made it not a good thing, plus liquid and electronics well need I say more? Okay some people are thinking oh digitals are easy to replace. Well We are talking about a Canon 5D set up with top of the line lenses etc. Google it and figure out the damage. We are talking several thousands of dollars.

I was kind of perplexed at what to do so I went for a walk. I stopped off and had lunch at a place just up the street from my hotel. I ordered a potato,
soup and a side of broccoli. Sweet Lord they gave me a whole crown of broccoli. It was good. I then walked around town a bit and went and bought some toiletries and goodies. I also bought a couple of things and put them in a goodie bag for Cynthia’s birthday. I also bought postcards, that I’m sure I didn’t send. lol.

Anyway I went back upto my room and watched tv for a bit then went down to the lounge and had a glass of wine and relaxed. I decided what I was
going to do the next day before my friends arrived. I was in bed by 10pm.

The next morning I went down to ritz camera and bought a Canon Rebel DSLR & compact flashes. I could not bring myself to by a point & shoot no matter how much I tried to convience myself too. I then spent the next hour aquainting myself with the new camera menu etc. I then set out on an on foot, trolley, bus adventure. I took some photos at various spots. Then met up with my friends for food and drinks. Later that evening when Cynthia and I were waiting for two of her other friends to meet up with us we had the lovely expirience of having a 180 lit off behind us by a store from by a bunch of kids. It scared the living crap out of both of us. LOL such wusses.

The next day was more of the same I took off and photographed and expirienced the city by going all the way down to the wharf and walking back
through Knob Hill. Then met up with the girls again for some great food and really fun little bar where we had great conversations and laughter. There
are a lot of fun little details that I have left out while retelling this story, but c’mon July was 8 months ago, haha. It was a great time!!!

The next morning (Sunday) after doing a bit of shopping I decided to head off down the 1 towards home. My goal was to drive down the coast and photograph it on the way home over a week.

Here are some of the photos I took whilst out and about in San Francisco. It was strange using a different set up and no polarizing filter, but hey atleast I
had a camera, right?

Make sure to let all the photos load before clicking on them for the full size photos.

Stuff: