Friday, December 5, 2008

Heading out.....

Well we're off again! I'm supposed to be packing but since I HATE packing...... I'm procrastinating instead. :)
We're gettting ready to leave for San Francisco this weekend. Neither one of us has ever been there before so it should be fun and exciting. I generally tend toward the wild and unspoiled places, but Rodd was supposed to be attending a seminar so I thought I'd tag along. His seminar got canceled so now we're free to spend all week just goofing off.
I'm looking forward to doing some street photography. The places we generally go don't offer much opportunity for such things. I have to say, if I had been planning a "vacation" just for the sake of it, San Francisco wouldn't have even made the top 5 list. However, we're meeting friends from Michigan that we don't get to see but once every few years so that makes it extra special even if the city sucks.
We don't really have an agenda. Our typical MO is to play it by ear. That seems to be working well so we'll stick with it. We do have a few "must see" places on the list. We want to tour Alcatraz, visit Golden Gate Park and of course the bridge. I'm hoping to catch the bridge with dense fog at sunrise, but I'm probably not going to get that lucky. We also plan to see Chinatown and maybe Pacific Heights for the architectural appeal. We're booked to see "The Phantom of the Opera" at the Orpheum while we're in town. One of our friends is an avid actor and an amazing vocalist so we thought a show would be fun.
So, while we're looking forward to a packed week there are still the parts of traveling that really suck.....packing, flying, unpacking, flying, dirty public transportation, flying, bad hotel beds, flying......did I mention I don't care for flying? It's just such a hassle. It's especially inconvenient with all of my equipment. I bought a smaller camera bag for the trip and I'm going to see what I can scale back (yeah, right!!!). That's one of the reasons I love road tripping. You can bring as much stuff as you can cram in the car and then when it's full, you can start on the SkyBox!!! :)
Well, I suppose......I'd better finish packing and see what I'm going to have to weed out of my camera bag.
I'll try to get something posted shortly after we get home next weekend. I'm being lazy and leaving the laptop at home because I don't feel like lugging it around. It will be the first time in over 5 years that I've not traveled with a laptop. I may regret my decision, but it's just not worth the extra luggage.