After pulling myself away from Auburn (which was strangely difficult to do), I headed for the Bay Area. It was an easy drive, as I zipped past Sacramento on I-80. I thought about stopping and crossing off that state capital, but it was not meant to be yesterday. As I neared the Bay, carpeted green hills rose up on either side of me, rolling into the distance as the interstate stretched toward the sky above me. The sun blazed down through an almost cloudless sky. I wriggled through traffic on I-580 and I-880 and squeezed out in Oakland, where my friend Alicia lives.
First stop, though: Berkeley.
The Bair's Lair is a bar in the student union on the UC Berkeley campus. As such, it was closed because apparently it is still winter break. I ought to have realized this, knowing that they're on semesters and my sister Laura is just now heading back to her semester school, but ah well. If I recall, there used to be a cookie shop above the Bear's Lair called the Cookie Bear, which is where my mother worked as a student at Cal. As such, this is where my parents met. I really, really wanted to go in and have a drink in their honor.
I spent a few hours wandering around Berkeley. It was a perfect evening, a blue sky turning pink with sunset, the street coming alive with people. Berkeley is still Berkeley. The streets are lined with music stores, book stores, eclectic clothing shops, gritty restaurants. The sidewalks are populated with vendors hawking everything imaginable. Panhandlers and guitar-players alike crown every corner. It's rather magical. I walked around, basking in the Pacific air.
I rode BART (one of the country's first full-scale public transit systems) into San Francisco with Alicia, where we met up with another friend from college. The three of us explored San Francisco by night. San Francisco, too, is still San Francisco, always alive, equally vibrant with the nouveau and the rich past. We walked down Kearny Street, and again I thought of Kerouac as we passed the City Lights bookstore. The alley next to it was pleasing; a man juggled knives, while another mysteriously sprayed air freshener on everything and talked to any passerby would pause.
It was wonderful to reconnect with these ladies I knew in college. Over the years, we actually have become more of friends. One thing I'll thank social networking for is how it alerts us to people who are suddenly interested in the same things we are, and keeps us in contact long enough to learn it!
This morning Alicia and I went on a jog around a gorgeous lake in her neighborhood. I mused on how, arbitrary as state borders seem, you can almost always tell if you're in a different state, and which one you're in. I am definitely in California, and it isn't the license plates. There's something in the air, I can tell I'm further south, closer to the ocean - whatever it is, I am quite enjoying it.
Day 2 mileage: 110. Total mileage: 714.
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