San Francisco

Oh, the places we went (without Siri)

~ MaryG ~ 34 Comments

What’s the best way to explore a new city?

I just gotta point out that before smart phones, “exploring a new city” was completely different. Young people have no idea.

First, if you were driving there, you could get completely lost just finding the city, because you had to rely on maps—fold-out paper maps or atlases (books of maps). There was no Siri, there was no Google Maps, there was no MapQuest or Waze. There was no phone in your car. There were road signs and your own God-given sense of direction.

In the olden days, the absolute best way to explore a new city, was to meet up with a friend (or a friend of a friend) who lived there. If you were lucky, they’d let you crash on their couch. At night, they would take you to some local dive bar where you met their friends and got a feel for what it was like to actually live in their city.

In the day, you wandered around visiting record stores and coffee shops and tourist sites that you’d heard of by word of mouth (talking to other humans).

My friend Julie and me kicking around San Francisco in 1988. We stayed with a high school friend of hers. We’d driven up from LA where we’d also stayed with a friend in West Hollywood. Fortunately, it was hard to get lost on that drive up from LA. We knew if we kept the Pacific Ocean on our left, we’d get there eventually.

Creature of comfort

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments

How much would you pay to go to the moon?

I traveled a lot when I was young and single. I took many trips to Florida and one or two to Southern California and Mexico with my high school friend Debbie, who was a year older. I also made several trips to San Francisco with friends and also with a boyfriend who moved there from Boston. (We visited each other a couple of times and then it was over.)

One year, shortly after college, my friend Julie and I flew to LA, rented a car and drove up that stunning Pacific coastline to San Francisco, staying with friends in both cities. I went to Jamaica and Colorado with boyfriends, and to NYC, DC, and New Orleans with girlfriends.

I liked road trips but I really loved going to the airport. It was so exciting getting on a plane in Boston and getting off somewhere completely different – with different weather. It was exhilarating. I prided myself on never checking a bag. I was really good at packing everything in my carry-on.

It’s amazing how much your feelings about air travel can change in thirty years. Now, I really don’t enjoy getting on a plane. I can handle the 3-hour flight to Florida, but anything longer than that is a real deterrent in terms of planning a trip.

So, this is all a long way of saying that I probably would’ve paid a few thousand dollars, when I was in my twenties, to go to the moon. I mean, come on, it’s the moon! The 3-day flight would not have stopped me back then.

Now, I can’t imagine being in an aircraft for that long. It sounds very uncomfortable. And how do they pee?

My friend Julie and me in San Francisco, with Coit Tower up the hill in the background, 1988