Treasure Hunt!

Saturday morning, we watched a terrible espionage/romance/action TV show while we got ready to rock. Drank some horrible, awful, Maxwell House in the hotel room (but i ask you: is there anything funner than brewing a pot of coffee in your bathroom? i think not), and checked out at noon. While we waited in the lobby for the shuttle back to SFO (and BART), we chatted with a lovely woman who was in town for a fund-raiser for the Memphis Blues Association. She was soooo cute, and had the nicest smile you've ever seen... She was originally from the East Bay, like us, and was just visiting from San Antonio. As we said goodbye and got on the shuttle, a little part of my brain wanted to turn around and just tag along with her all day.

At the airport, i found a payphone so i could call my friend and have her meet us in the city around 3. There was a woman who was stuck on hold on a phone nearby; she had lots of luggage, and was obviously traveling (backpacking?) by herself. She gave me change for a dollar, and to return the favor Nat went to get her a soda because she couldn't leave the phone. Turns out she had been stranded here on her way to Hong Kong, and her final destination was Malaysia. i gave her the old "everything will be alright!" speech, and she said that yeah, she had slept with her crystals the night before, and tried to go with the flow, etc. It was pretty cute. Kind of an interesting karma exchange goin' on. We wished her happy travels and moved on to a delicious breakfast: pancakes, scrambled eggs, hash browns, grapefruit juice, and some seriously amazing coffee. Thanks, Lori's Diner! Because last time, you sucked.
Bought some nail polish and eye glitter at an airport cosmetics counter (damn them), and tried in vain to find a roll of film for my camera. Turns out every place i tried only had disposable, DIGITAL cameras. WTF? Thanks, guys. i know i'm behind the times, but seriously. Help me out a little here- i can't possibly be the only person who has an analog camera at SFO? Grr.
At the BART station, an adorable French family asked us for help with the ticket machine, so we showed 'em some moves. The woman ended up pressing the wrong button anyway, and had to ask the station agent for help. Since they were heading to the same stop as us, we decided to sort of hang around and make sure they didn't need any more help. Riding the BART through S.F. was melancholy, indeed. Miss that place so much it makes my stomach hurt. Got off the train a half hour later, helped the French family on to a good samaritan who said that he would lead them to the street that they were looking for. It felt very good to be of service, and again: it felt like karma was involved, somewhere... hmm!

Streetside, we headed toward Justin Herman Plaza (where we were meeting Addie in a half an hour for the Treasure Hunt), hoping to find a place to stow our bags until the evening. i knew that such lockers existed (like at the Port Authority in NY, and lots of train/bus stations around the world) but we hadn't had any luck yet Apparently, SFO had gotten rid of their lockers after 9/11 ::sigh::. Addie managed to spot us in a crosswalk before we could go meet her, so we all got our tickets from Will Call a little early and decided to check the Ferry Building for lockers. (oh p.s. this is right after the strap on my backpack broke, only hours after i predicted it. we had to jerry-rig it with some crap safety pins from Walgreen's. boo!) In the Ferry Building, we realized at once that there would be no locker storage here. It was just a very yuppy farmer's market/upscale shopping type of venue, which was cute and all but not what we needed. Two security guards shook their heads, but pointed us in the direction of the Amtrak building, right next door. On our way, we ran into the girlfriend of an old friend of mine, who waved us over to the fruit stand where she was shopping. It was nice to see her, especially since the old friend i mentioned has decided to be angry with me and not talk to me for more than a year now. I have no idea why, and she led me to believe that there was nothing wrong on his end, why did i think he was mad? Hm. Very peculiar. i'll have to deal with that later.

We sailed onward, and the Amtrak agent told us with raised eyebrows that storage was $3 per bag, but that we had to actually be travelling somewhere, wink wink. He said it looked like we really wanted to see Santa Barbara, right? i replied yes- i hear that it is lovely this time of year. Great, he responded, and filled out some fakey tickets while Nat and i wrote our names and addresses on the tags for our bags. i asked the guy if he had a special snack that i could bring back for him later, and he said No, but if you see a cookie out there, grab it. A man after my own heart. Beautiful.

Loads lightened, we headed back to the ferry building, where i took some photos of an amazing mushroom stand, and Addie stopped somewhere to get a sandwich. She was raving about the arugula, and Nat and i devoured a Meyer lemon cream puff there that was out of control... i felt like such a Yup! We sat at a tiny table with an elderly man who was in S.F. "just for the halibut", by which he meant of course, just for the hell of it. He was totally cute, out on his own personal Saturday Adventure, and his eyes sparkled when we told him we were about to participate in a giant treasure hunt.

Said farewell, and rushed over to the Plaza, where we watched some pop-lockers and breakdancers across the street while we waited for the Hunt to begin. Finally, a team wearing horns and some unnerving fake plastic butts won Best Costume (i get it, Year of the Ox and all, but- plastic butts?), and then we were off! 17 clues in all, and we were making good headway from the start. Sat down right away and figured a bunch out, where Nat would mark them on the street map, and then devise a tentative route. Honestly, he was our Nav Man every step of the way, and without him i think we would have been up shit creek. We were making great headway, and i began to think that on our 3rd time doing this, we might actually have a shot at winning!! It was truly thrilling...

Market street was alive with the Chinese New Year parade: laughing groups of children in traditional Chinese dress, camera flashes going off all around you, giant colorful floats moving slowly in the background, and everyone competing with the sound of the firecrackers, the shouting, and the drums... The smell of gunpowder was redolent, as we wove our way through the hordes and the throngs. Everywhere there were colorful dragons, and likenesses of oxen; shiny embroidered silk outfits; gaping bystanders and crying children, photographers wheeling around looking for that perfect shot. The moon was almost full, peeking out us periodically from between skyscrapers. We raced through the city, reading plaques and signs, writing down our answers and trying not to give away the location when we'd see another team nearby. Hey, it's a dog-eat-dog world, man!

Not even halfway through, we made a fatal error. It is always hard to get around the parade route, and we have had huge time losses in the past due to this. A couple with strollers was getting the go-ahead to cross the parade route from a police officer, who led them through, and the couple told us to just follow along behind them, like we were in their group. So we did!! It was so exciting! We thought we had finally had a stroke of luck, a way to beat the system! It was exhilarating.

However, it was also the beginning of the end. This is where everything started to go wrong. The reason we crossed was because we were heading for what we thought was the site for Clue #2 (they are not solved in any specific order), Square in Chinatown. We searched and searched, for about 15 minutes, but were coming up completely blank. Other teams from the Hunt were trickling through, eyes furtively reading signs and ogling every square inch of statues... we began to realize that we were in the wrong place. It was an awful feeling, and Nat decided to ask a couple of guys for help, which is often one of the best ways to find your way to the next place. Turns out we found the two biggest passive-aggressive dickheads in the entire city, one of whom basically called Addie and i stupid repeatedly while his friend "helped" Nat realize that we were far from being in the right place. On Asshole #1's recommendation (which seemed sound at the time), we headed many blocks west, and up a big hill, where we looked around us, and down at the parade, scratching our heads. There was nothing here... again, we were clearly in the wrong place. Where had we gone wrong? What were we missing?
i asked a man for help who was standing nearby with his 9 year old daughter. He took one look at the clue and parsed it out right there in front of me, as we looked down upon the scene from above. Duh. it all began to make sense. We were on the wrong side of the parade. We never should have crossed in the first place- we had been only a block or so away from the alley we were supposed to find, and heading right for it! Ah, well. We had lost about 45 minutes, which made me angry, compounded by the fact that i was still very upset because of the Assholes.

Leaving that one aside for a bit, we dragged our feet on the way to the next clue. i felt bad because i was in sort of a toxic mood and having a hard time making my way out. We still managed to have fun, though, and after heading up to North Beach and having a cup of coffee at Trieste (yum!), things started to pick up again. We were back in our game, and knocked a few more out of the park. Eventually, as it became later and later, we realized there was no way to get back by the 9 o'clock deadline, and that we were definitely just playing for fun at this point. But we only had a few left to get, so we soldiered on, helping some other teams out along the way, finding out that Clue #2 had fucked over more than a few of them. i guess that's life!

Got some more coffee (!), trekked down last-minute back alleys filled with dissipating smoke and tried to avoid the stumbling groups of drunks who were throwing loud Pop-Its on sidewalk. The City was winding down; the parade was over. Empty cartons of firecrackers littered the gutters and ragged signs blew in the strengthening breeze. People huddled up a little more into their coats and the police began the tedious business of re-opening the streets. We ended up getting all of the clues but that one (#2), because we weren't near that area anymore and we were running out of time to get back to the Amtrak station and pick up our bags. Unfortunately, i had forgotten to pick up a cookie for Carl, but we did have two delicious Mandarin oranges left from our on-the-go Bag O' Food that night. He accepted them happily.

On the way to BART, we realized that we had been running around for seven hours!! It was crazy. We decided to split a cab, just because. (Money grows on trees, right?) On the ride to Oakland, we learned from our cabbie that the only way to make money as a driver is to turn over your passengers basically as much as you can, because of the flag drop. It made complete sense, i had just never thought of it before. We'd always sort of assumed that if you had someone who stayed in your cab for hours, doing errands and having you wait at the curb, that was where the money was. Apparently not: he said that the ideal distance for a trip was about twenty blocks- not too short, not too long (this is assuming you can pick someone else up right away). Who knew?

Home to Addie's, where we ate cookies (sorry, Carl!) and watched Shoes a couple of times before bed (yes, i know- we're 2 years behind the times). Slept the sleep of the dead.