ESCAPING THE HEAT

Anybody with a newspaper, TV, or internet connection knows that there's a big heat wave going on in the west.  It's not as bad in Sacramento as a lot of other places, but we've had five days in a row over 100 degrees.  And when you don't have air conditioning, and it doesn't cool off at night, it gets you down.  And then there's the embarrassment of friends checking on us to see if we're still alive, because we're those elderly people you should check on. 

But wait.  A mere 90 miles from here the weather is 40 degrees cooler.  In fact, you need a jacket if you're going to go there, and that's not even assuming you're going to an over air-conditioned restaurant.  Here's the picture that greeted us as we arrived.  The nice cool fog rolling across the bay. 

We really didn't have any plans for the day.  I wanted to go look at antique stores, and John wanted to see the Impressionists on the Water show at the Legion of Honor.  

We went to the museum first, since it is nearest the Golden Gate bridge.  Oh, I forgot to mention, BART is having a strike and we have been hearing that hundreds of people who usually come to work on BART are having to drive or find other ways to get to work.  Since BART doesn't serve the north bay, we figured there wouldn't be much traffic on the Golden Gate.  I don't know whether there was or not, but by the time we got there at 11 a.m., it was easy.  And then I got lost between the bridge and we had one of our big fights where I accuse John of not giving me the right directions and he accuses me of not listening to him.  Eventually after we drove around through the Presidio for 10 minutes, while I yelled at him for not looking at the map -- well, no point belaboring it.  We eventually got to the museum and there were no dead bodies by the time we arrived.  And we got a good parking place really close, and everything was good once again.   It was so pleasant outside, we even ate lunch sitting in the sun. 

This is a wonderful exhibit, by the way.  The America's Cup is starting July 5 in San Francisco, so this exhibit is of Impressionist paintings that have to do with boating or water.  I could try to pretend I'm a clever art critic, but I'm not.  I like to look at pretty pictures, and if they are bright colors and have pictures of water or boats, there's little that could make me happier.  John, on the other hand, likes to look at every brush stroke of every picture. 

We spent another hour or so checking out other exhibits in the museum.  I just couldn't get over this particular painting.  I swear the painter actually put a piece of burlap on the canvas in order to get the character of the rug and it's the only painting I've ever seen from this period (1600s) that appears to have this collage effect. It really makes a difference in the realism.  I've also been wondering when they finally decided to put the rugs on the floor.  I used to think that painters just liked the way they could show off their skills by folding and rumpling them and putting the on the tables.  But now I'm thinking that maybe there really was a period when they had them at least on the walls to keep out the chill.  I'm still not convinced about the tables. 

 I'm also enamored by this Egyptian collar necklace which looks like something I might see directions for in any of the million bead magazines I read. 

And finally, from the end of this visit, I was kind of creeped out by these paintings.  Somehow these childen doing adult things and with sort of different bodies, like Munchkins or something, just felt wierd.  I know that there's a long history of painting children to look like tiny adults -- with proportions that are wrong, but these don't seem to be that either.  So now that I've demonstrated how erudite I am, I'll move along.  We decided to go on over in the direction of the De Young because I thought there were some antique stores over that way, but by the time we got over there, the only thing there was time to do was go to the museum.  This turned out to be a good thing, because they were having a show of Diebenkorn's Oakland years, where he went from abstract work backwards into expressionism.  It was a very interesting show. 
I have no pictures of that one, because you're not allowed to take pictures of special shows. 

I convinced John to stay overnight, because it was going to be 106 in Sacramento, and not even cool off at night, and that meant we could go out to dinner in SF. 
I had read a story in a cooking magazine about someone who had started a restaurant in the ferry building, so we thought we'd try to find it.  We didn't, because I couldn't remember the names of anything.  But we did find a nice seafood restaurant where we got to have clams and mussels.  The mussels (which John ordered) were in a coconut milk sauce, and they were better than the clams which were in a ginger broth.  But the clams were good.  And then we headed over to Ghiradelli square where we had sundaes for dessert.  We hardly needed them, but they were delicious.  We didn't even split just one, but each had our own.  Oink.  And did I mention we got close street parking everywhere we went, and the only time we had to pay was when we went to the Ferry Building.  In San Francisco if you find three good parking spaces in a day, you should probably buy a Lotto ticket.

We stayed overnight in a Best Western in Corte Madera because I wanted to go to Book Passage
the next day, which has always been my favorite bookstore.  They used to specialize in travel books, though so many of those have been phased out by the internet, they seem to have more of the kind of books you'd like to read while you're on a trip.  But it's still a charming independent bookshop.  Anyway, this Best Western turned out to be really nice for us hicks from the valley.  Had a giant swiming pool, nice landscaped grounds, exercise room, front and back door to our room, wih a patio outside and with the complimentary breakfast delivered to our door in the morning.  I could have just stayed there all day. 

We planned to go to Stinson Beach, which is about 15 miles from Corte Madera, but the traffic was terrible.  I guess it isn't often that a sunny day on the northern coast coincides with a holiday (4th of July) and we ended up turning back before we got more than halfway to the beach.  This is how close we got to the beach. 

I campaigned to stay overnight another night, but John was anxious to get home.  We knew Lynda wasn't feeling well, and John was afraid our plants would all be dead by the time we got back. 

When we drove up at 7:45, it was still 102 and Tim was watering our plants. They were looking pretty pathetic, but he had rescued them.  We have the best neighbors in the world. 
By about 10 p.m., our good friend the delta breeze was back.  The temperature dropped about 30 degrees, and today, Friday, it only got up to 82.   Gave me a chance to do a decent length walk today, AND water the traffic circle and put another three feet of duct tape on the hose to try to repair it.  Since whenever we water it, we have to leave the hose out in the street for cars to run over it, it is now more tape than hose.