Jet Set Wedding

Yesterday Michelle and I flew down to San Francisco to see a friend get married. A year ago, when we first learned of the wedding, we’d hoped to turn the wedding into a full trip to SF, but with the demand of Michelle’s job and the cost of buying a home, it had to be scaled in to what we now consider the coolest travel day ever.

This part calls for a video montage like you see in movies where the director wants to show a complex series of connections (usually including some sort of drugs or at least antacid tablets) with car doors slamming, jets taking off, landing, etc. Since I don’t have one of those, here’s quick summary of our travels.

4am – woke up, showered, walked the confused dog
5:30am left house for airport
5:45am entered security screening line
6:30am boarded Alaska Airlines 737-400 to SFO
8:10am arrived at SFO
8:20am boarded BART
8:45am changed BART trains at Daly City when a mysterious odor was cause for concern
9:10am started walking from 16th and Mission station towards St. Ignatius
9:30am stopped at a Safeway to pick up wrapping paper (forgot giftbag in PDX), grabbed a snack, wrapped present in parking lot below the US Mint.
10am started walking again
10:15am finally seeing the church from the hill at Webster and Haight, picked up the pace.
10:50am reached St. Ignatius, looked for bathroom to change in
10:55am both changed in record time in a small church bathroom with ice cold marble floors which felt nice because of heat and exertion walking 3 miles carrying a wedding gift.
11am were seated
11:10am ceremony starts
12:30pm leave for reception, walking through the deceptively large Golden Gate park with couple from Des Moines, WA
1pm arrive at reception at San Francisco County Fair building in Golden Gate Park
4pm: take 71 to Powell to pick up some work clothes for Michelle
6:59pm take BART back to SFO, grab some dinner, read some Half Blood Prince
9:30pm board flight back to PDX
11:20pm land in PDX
11:45pm arrive at home

Planes, trains and automobiles (plus some busses and walking). The wedding was cool, and the church was amazing. Easily the most ornate (yet tasteful) I’ve seen in the new world. Golden Gate park is similarly amazing, and I’d love to spend some time there among the pines and eucalyptus. Congratulations to Darren and Rosanna as well. I just have to ignore the pang of guilt about not spending much time in SF, but I’m sure we’ll get back, and we’ve both been there before, so it wasn’t complete treachery.