Did not lose my heart, but very nearly lost my mind

Getting from the San Francisco airport to our hotel, no problem at all. Checking out Pier 39, just part of the tourist experience. But now we must attempt to obtain the items on Mark's savenger hunt list. No pink pencil erasers, or matchbooks. This list includes: cell phone, computer, car, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, camping cooking gear, camp stove, dishes and cutlery, and anything else we didn't bring from home. Have the cell, with confusing buttons, nothing at all like our other phones and without predictive texting capabilities. The manual for it is very short, in 15 languages and mostly covers how to buy more minutes. Every thing else you should already know how to do. If you don't, why in the hell do you even have a cell phone?

We look like outfitters for Outward Bound.

The computer obtained from the only computer store we could find in downtown San Francisco comes from a shop called Computer Central which sounds like it would have all the computers and stuff for them that you could ever want. And it does, if you are willing to build them yourself. It is a collection of computer housings, motherboards, peripherals, cables, nuts, bolts, cables.......

And some laptops. So the light weight, sassy notebook I envisioned is morphed into the end of the line gaming laptop with heaps of memory and it's own backpack. What a back breaker this is.

So we now have to keep track of 8 backpacks during this trip. Did I mention that this trip is a camping adventure across the American West and all of our gear is in backpacks? We look like outfitters for Outward Bound.

The car is proving to be the nightmare all car shopping is for me. Mark relishes the chase and haggling and searching and mulling it over and talking about it incessently. I want it done NOW. So we are spending yet another day in pusuit of the car. Not just any car, but the only car in the Bay Area that meets our special needs (yes we are special needs people). This means traveling to the Oakland side of the bay regularly and walking many many miles looking at the one car selected today for our scrutiny. At the rate of a car a day I am now officially insane and wll never recover. Tomorrow we will have a car, or I will be institutionalized.

After that it's on to the other items on the list. These I have pointed out can be obtained in other places and we won't have to explore the alleys of San Francisco trying to find them. I think of it as a national list and Mark has focused his energy on San Francisco. The compromise is of course doing it my way.

So we have no pictures (except for the large fungus at the mushroom store). Haven't done any of the touristy tours (once again except for the submarine the USS Pamponia or some such thing). and only really explore the waterfront at night when every thing is closed, except for the bars. But though the weather is coolish, it has been great walking weather, the BART is fast and pretty efficient (once you get the homeless man to show you how to buy tickets). The streetcar is fun to ride around the piers (we haven't done a cable car of course), and the people have been very friendly and helpful.