An Atypical Day in the Bay

Today was Jasper’s, my youngest brother’s, first full day living in San Francisco. We woke up to a beautiful day in the Peninsula and ate breakfast overlooking the view of San Bruno and South San Francisco. It rained yesterday so waking up to this in April was atypical but it promised to be a very good day. I have no idea what normal weather patterns are anymore with the current climate these days.

After breakfast, we introduced him to the drudging long haul of driving into the city from the suburbs. The trek is always an expedition where we pack into the car with drinks and snacks to get us through the stop and go traffic we’re likely to experience. Our trips into the city always involve food so we’e usually hungry and if there are traffic delays, watch out. I’ll be in a bad mood and luckily, snacks will delay the sudden onset of emotional instability.

If we had to deal with the traffic on a daily basis, it would be tiresome but we typically take BART into the city for work and sometimes even on the weekends to avoid both traffic and the ordeal of parking fees and/or fines. We explained to Jasper that learning to master his way through public transportation in San Francisco was quintessential.

We got across San Francisco and made it in good time to Fort Mason for the Tulane University Annual Crawfish Boil. Not only was the weather atypical, our lunch was also atypical. We were about to feast on spicy jambalaya and finger licking crawfish. Being from New Orleans, Steve was looking forward to this day for about a month now. After filling our red cups, we were twisting heads, sucking and pinching tails.

I don’t know what it is about spicy, salty crawfish but they taste so good when they’re nice and hot. The cooks continued filling our tray throughout the day and even though we weren’t hungry anymore, we kept sucking and pinching. They were addictive and we really couldn’t stop. We tried but then they’d offer us another hot, steaming batch and someone at our table would yell out “YES” and then we’d have another 10 pounds.

It was truly a beautiful day in San Francisco. The sailboats were abundantly darting the ocean and the view between the trees from Great Meadow was fantastic. The only complaint was the wind but other than that, it was wonderful to be outdoors in San Francisco. Once we were stuffed, we headed down to San Jose for a BBQ. 280 South is always a beautiful drive with the rolling hills and San Jose is only an hour away. We brought along some extra crawfish from the boil and made the hostess extremely happy.

Today, our nephew got to play with some new kids and Jasper made new friends. Steve and I enjoyed a happy, lively day with all our friends and family. Crawfish under sunny skies in San Francisco with our friends and family followed by a nighttime BBQ is an atypical day in the Bay. Let’s appreciate them when they come.