Last week I went down to San Francisco for a few days of businessing then more days of touristing. The business part had me down just off the Embarcadero, a few blocks down from the Salesforce Tower and a quick walk to the Iterable office. Al flew down Thursday night and I moved to a hotel just outside the Chinatown gate for the tourist part.
The business part was good, but as draining as any onsite ever is. It was leavened with a great visit to Golden Gate Park and a wonderful evening around a backyard fire.
The tourist part was great. Al and I spent a lot of time just walking around. I think we walked down to the Embarcadero from Chinatown three times over three days, had several amazing meals, mastered the Philz mobile pickup app, finally managed the Alcatraz tour, and went back to Golden Gate Park for the botanical gardens, Japanese tea garden, and Academy of Sciences.
The change of scenery alone was worth it. Portland winters have always had a muting effect on photography for me, and for whatever reason the urge to get out and shoot didn’t really come back this year. I had the Fujifilm X100V along for this trip, and it was perfect. Easy to carry around all day long, small and discrete. There was so much to see — some things that I simply didn’t understand — and our repeated passages, night and day, meant I found myself coming back to things from a different direction or in different light. I bonded with the X100V on this trip.
Hard to feel anything other than grateful and a little humbled for the ability to have an experience like that. I wasn’t really raised with any expectation that I’d be doing and seeing the kinds of things I did – eating the meals I ate, carrying around a camera like that. It stopped me a few times. It’s been a good run.
