Viewing posts tagged vacation 2008
Saturday brought the fursuit parade, with a new record number of costumes, I heard. Granted, every year has a new record, as fast as the costuming gets more popular... This time the parade was lead by Chinese dragon dancers, which was a great idea. Later, guest of honor David Barclay presented the Outabody system, a motion tracking system for puppeteers. Very interesting technology, David is also a very nice guy to talk to.
Not so many fursuits outside official events this year, but maybe I was at the lobby at the wrong times. I watched the A Puppet Is Born SIG by the pawpet crew, went to another SIG where the panelist didn't show up (at least not within the 15 minutes I waited) and finally watched Alexander James Adam's concert. The sound was nearly perfect, Alec in excellent mood and his performance simply awesome.
Today, we went shopping. Found a Western hat, went to Walmart to look for stuff for the RV trip, afterwards drove to the Great Mall of the Bay and then to Fry's. I bought three T-shirts, two belts and a pair of cheap shoes at Walmart, and a fleece jacket and vest at the mall. My father bought a new digital photo camera at Fry's after realizing that nobody offers Smart Media cards anymore.
The USS Hornet CVS-12 is an unusual destination for Europeans on a US trip. However, the old air craft carrier is very interesting, history- and technology-wise. We spent there a couple of hours, being lead through the lower decks of the ship and being shown the bridge and war-room on the upper decks. The guides are old veterans who were on duty on the ship. It is hard to describe the atmosphere, but I recommend anyone who is interested in marine history to visit the ship.
We drove up to Twin Peaks today. Quite foggy (the radio tower was hidden in clouds,) but still a nice view of San Francisco. Next, we drove to the pacific and through Lincoln park. On the parking lot of a beach we met Lynard, Furvan and who else was with them, watching a towing service pulling an SUV (none of our vehicles, of course) from the beach. An SUV is not suitable for crusing through dunes, you silly townspeople!
The weather wasn't as good as yesterday, small showers during the day and pouring rain at night. In the morning, we went to Alcatraz. I didn't shoot many photos, but my father was filming quite a lot with my video cam. Seems he has a new hobby now :-)
We got up early, but it took a while to get started. After breakfast, we took the tram line F to buy some tickets for Alcatraz for tomorrow (I just hope that it won't rain all the time) and bought a three day Muni pass. Next, we went shopping at Border's. I bought some CDs and two DVDs for a reasonable price. Afterwards, we waited twenty minutes in line for the cable car back to Fisherman's Wharf and talked to a nice elderly couple from Michigan, I believe.
Arriving at San Francisco, Lufthansa called me to the customer service desk, apologized for the delayed piece of luggage and asked me where to deliver it tomorrow. You may remember what I had to do to get my luggage from Air France last year...