It has been interesting recently. My husband’s mother is very ill so he went back East to New Hampshire to help care for her and I have been alone on the boat. Very lonely but probably good for me to be away from him for a little while, we have been glued at the hip since this retirement thing started.
Fortunately nothing major has gone wrong on the boat since he left, but I have figured out how to do a few things that he always did and found out where a few things were kept that that I had never worried about (toilet paper!!!!) Oh and the tank just ran out of water , of course, while I was taking a shower. It is cold to switch tanks when you are soaking wet.

I have been making an effort to use my bike or take public transportation, just cause. I made an exception Wednesday night as I went to Oakland which I hear can be a little rough and wasn’t sure what kind of neighborhood I would be in. I went to the Awaken Cafe where there was chamber music. It is a very small venue . Several different groups played and I think we heard about 8 different pieces.

The oboist and the rest of the quartet.

The picture of the flutist is a little better .I haven’t figured out he art of taking pictures in the dark yet.

They were very good with a really fantastic oboist. At the end, as we were getting ready to leave , 4 of the players said they would like to do something else and site read a flute quartet. Pretty amazing for never having practiced it or practiced together.

Today I went on a walking tour of San Francisco in the Embarcadero area with a meetup group. ( If you have never heard of meetup.com you should look it up, the activities are lots of fun. )
Let me start at the beginning. I drove the car down to the BART San Francisco’s light rail system) with great expectations of being able to park at the station, it was Saturday and my boat neighbor told me that there was lots of parking now as they had just built a new multi- story parking lot. I got there and found a great hole in the ground!! It isn’t built yet and the old parking lot is gone as that is where they are building the new one. I was already a few minutes later than I had intended to be and now had to hunt for parking. I drove round and round with people behind me honking away as I tried to read all the little signs saying no parking, 2 hour parking etc . Finally I went down this one little street and the only sign I could find said no parking Tuesday from 6am-4pm, I took it. It was about a 2 block walk to the BART.Everything else went well and I managed to buy a ticket, use it correctly and walk the 5 blocks to the meeting place for the group walk.
The  title of the walk  was 5 free museums in San Francisco. We started walking at 10:30 and with the exception of 30 minutes for lunch we didn’t stop until 3:30. We did indeed see 5 free museums but we also wondered along the waterfront, walked through many hidden little gardens, and past lots of interesting pieces of art work and architecture.

Down near the water on a beautiful day

A tug boat

Cupid’s span with a little of the city in the background

We walked from the Embarcadero BART station all the way up to the Fairmont hotel ( at the top of the hill as those of you who know San Francisco know) and back down again.

Me at the Fairmont Hotel (at the top of the hill)

As it turned out it was the Chinese New Year. We saw many of preparations for the big parade so at the end of the walk, two of the other women and I decided to grab a bite to eat and stay for the parade.

Me walking through  China town as they prepped for the parade

We had a great time, the parade was beautiful.

It might eat me

We saw lost of dragons

Long ones

Scary ones

and close ones

Time to go home. I then remembered a comment made by the group leader, “I am going back now before it gets dark as I don’t want to walk in Oakland after dark.” Great!! ( At 7 pm it is very dark) I got off the train, put my backpack on so it was in front of me, put my car keys in my hand between my fingers, the only weapon I had, and reviewed all the self defense things I could think of, remembered I am a 1st degree black belt to help booster my confidence, and took off. Since I am writing this blog you can guess I made it okay but next time I think I will take the bus so I don’t have to push my luck and not listen to someone who never takes public transportation for advice about how to go about it.