Last Day

Well, today is the last day of my vacation, and I'm going to be sad to go home. I'll have to write up on what I've done, but it's been a wonderfully fun and relaxing time hanging with friends and eating lots of good food.

It has been a bit crazy, with leaving my cell phone in San Francisco, not being able to contact people, and with the absurdity of speed with which plans change in NY. But all in all I've got all my lazy, crazy and fun vacation needs out of me, and theoretically I should be able to go back to work now.

More to come...

Okay, Vacation review (updated 6/1):

I slept about two hours the night before leaving on vacation, but left at what I considered a good time. Instead, I missed my flight to SanFrancisco and spent the day hanging out in the airport in Chicago. I was totally suprised when the woman at the ticket counter told me I missed my flight as I thought it was at 7:30 and it was actually at 7:00. So...I was totally distraught and the woman waved the $50 charge for ticket change and instead of going home, sleeping and hauling my crap around town two more times, I waited 10 hours for the next flight. I got to San Francisco and took a couple of trains and a bus to the house of the person I was staying with. After getting there the person I was staying with and another of his guests started talking about whether we should rent a car. Of course they determine that the other guest isn't old enough to drive a rental and that really we should get the car from the airport I just came from, entailing a trip back to the airport at around 9:30 that night (I got in around 7). That wasn't all that fun; it also meant missing a large portion of the evening dance, as we didn't get there (someplace in Oakland) until about 10:45. In between though we DID have some marvelous seitan Philly cheese steaks. YUM.

I had fun dancing that night and had Dave's roomie Paulo pimping me out as my dance agent--telling me who I should dance with and introducing me to people. I asked Steven Mitchell (Dance Legend) all on my own and had a decent dance with him. By the end of the dance I was pretty tired and ready to get some sleep before the next day's classes. So of course we went to a "late night" dance that ran until around 4AM. I didn't really like the DJing and wound up dancing with Beth, Haley and ....drumroll....Solomon (the only guy I danced with that late night). I turned down quite a few sleezy looking guys though before passing out on a sofa in the entryway.

I woke up a bit late the next morning and after ditching some bad directions found my way to the classes in Oakland I got there in time to watch the end of the second class and go out to lunch with a group of people. We went off to Oakland's Chinatown and hunted down some vegetarian food and bubble tea. We laid out on the lawn eating and enjoying it for an hour or so. I love the sunshine and stayed a little longer than most.

Afternoon classes included hiphop and tango: both really great classes with amazing instructors. I then hopped on the freeway to sit in traffic on my way back to SanFrancisco. I got there around 7 and we talked for a while about where we would go to eat. We kept talking and not deciding.I was exhausted and just wanted a nap. I was told I couldn't sleep that we had to go instead. I really just wanted 15 minutes of sleep. Finally we went to a sushi place (have I mentioned I don't eat sushi?) yeah.

The owner of the sushi place is friends with Dave and we got a special table normally reserved for family. She might have enjoyed our company a bit much, as our food seemed to take longer than anyone elses' and we didn't leave for ages. I was a bit hazy by the end and exhaustion was really overcoming me. I asked if I could go sleep in the car and was told it wasn't a good neighborhood to do so in. It was around 10:30 when we got back to Dave's place. At this point I was happy that I could sleep on the way to Oakland, but instead Dave decided to leave to pick up a friend of Haley's and I was forced to drive the rental PT Cruiser with 2 other people to Oakland. Thankfully I had my Muppets CD to keep me awake. We "Mnuh Mnuh-ed" our way across the bay bridge and to the dance. We didn't get there until 11 something and the amazing band we had all paid $25 in advance to see only had one more set.

Dancing has some amazing chemistry in me that manages to keep me upright despite my tiredness. Caffine helps too. I danced some really great dances with Jeff Watanabe and with Dave (of NY) and even danced with the former Chicagoan Brian that evening. I spent energy I didn't know I had.

(more tomorrow)
(Added 6/3)
Okay, so after the evening dance was (of course) another late night dance. At this point I declared myself incapable of driving safely. At this point Dave informed me that Haley's car was screwed up and couldn't idle w/out stepping on the gas. This meant having to stop while still holding down the gas and Dave worried that Haley couldn't handle it (but apparently he could). They tried to convince me to drive. I tried to convince them to leave her car and come back for it later. Finally they decided to let her try to drive her car while we followed. We made it to the evening dance, I went and paid my $10 and went back out to the car and slept for 2 hours.

I came back in about an hour before the dance ended, danced a few songs and then crashed on a couch. They woke me up when they were closing. I reluctantly agreed to drive back to SF. We made it back and I crashed.

I missed the morning class the next morning and then took a Zen movement class, a Tango class, a slides class and a "get noticed" class (the last two with Sylvia and Jason, some of my favorite instructors.) I was all set to dash back to SF to pick up the crew when I got a call saying they all had rides and I could stay. I went out to dinner at a little Mexican place with my roommate and two friends who had moved from Chicago to Berkley a couple of years earlier.

While eating dinner my legs started to cramp up. My calves were cramping and my quads started forming charlie horses and I would occassionally just stiffen up and have to flex my foot and massage my muscles for a minute or so. When we got back to the dance I tried stretching but could not stretch enough to loosen the muscles. Finally I located my friend Beth --who happens to be an amazing Iyengar yoga instructor. She stretched me out for 3 excruciating minutes until my legs melted. Once my legs were put straight again I was golden and danced the rest of the night with no cramping (unfortunately Beth couldn't provide extra energy and all the strength that was depleated, but everything has its limits).

There was no "late night" dance on Sunday, but oddly I was awake enough at Midnight to tell Dave that I was no where near sleep, and instead we stayed up until about 4 AM watching videos on Olde English cracking up laughing.

As part of our rental cost split agreement I had agreed to drive Brian (Dave's other houseguest) to the Oakland airport on Monday. From there I planned on meeting up with my cousin Adina and doing something.