Days 14 and 15

I'm absolutely exhausted. I've reached the 2-week mark and I can feel myself getting burned out. So! I decided to spend the night at the San Francisco Zen Center. It's as awesome as it sounds: people live there, and get up at 5am to meditate. When I checked in, the woman at the desk told me that I would be called to meals by a bell, and that I needed to be absolutely quiet after 9pm. That's fine with me - it means I'll get all my research of the gay bars done early! I don't like staying out late researching anyway.

I spent the day researching beautiful Palo Alto yesterday, then passed through San Francisco, over the Golden Gate Bridge, into the Marin Headlands, Sausalito, and beyond. I had to drive about 15 miles along the most spectacular coastline yet to reach the tiny village of Bolinas. Its residents clearly don't want to be found - there are no roadsigns indicating which turns to take, and if it hadn't been for Stella I never would have been able to stalk them out. Here are some pictures from the drive to Bolinas:

And here's how I felt about it:
Hooray! The wind was not making friends with my bangs, so I had to do an entire photo shoot to get a picture in which my face was not entirely obscured. That was fun. Another picture, for good measure:

Now, the reason I need the Zen Center so desperately is because after that scenic drive, I spent all day yesterday and today having brushes with death. They come in the form of redlights on the hills of San Francisco. Every street in the downtown area seems to be either on an impossibly steep hill or running perpendicular to one. That means that I encountered a stop sign or redlight at every block as I plowed upward in my trusty Focus. But after the first stop-and-go experience, I realized that Forus is not so trusty after all. Waiting at the redlight, I felt like I was chugging up the first hill on a rollercoaster - that's how precarious the angle of the street was. When the light turned green, I took a deep breath and slammed my foot on the gas. In the millisecond it took for me to move my foot from the brake to the gas, the car slid backward about a foot, nearly ramming into the huge SUV behind me. The wheels squealed like tortured cats, and I swear I left tire marks as I jerked forward... one block. Then I encountered yet another redlight, and the process repeated.
By the time I reached the San Remo hotel, my nerves were entirely shot. But there is one thing worse than driving up the hills of San Francisco: parking on them. I ended up parallel parking by making a 9-point turn, and each time I changed direction I thought my heart would stop. It didn't help that everyone else seems to know exactly how to do it, and had no patience for my sub-par maneuvering.

But it was all worth it when I entered the San Remo! It was the nicest place I've stayed so far. It's a guesthouse, not a hotel, so the bathrooms are shared, but they are classy. And the rooms are small but super cozy. The bed was cushy and comfortable, and there were massage chairs in the hallway, so before bed I sat in one for about 10 minutes. I needed it terribly - my whole body seemed frozen in the position I had assumed while hunching over the wheel, certain that death was upon me as soon as the light turned green. Here's the hallway of the San Remo. There's a skylight in the ceiling:

Now I'm going to park the car somewhere else (my 3 hours has almost run out), and plan my research of gay nightlife for the evening until the Zen people ring the dinner bell.