Timing Is Everything

The following weekend I was pretty beat, so I took it easy on Saturday and strolled down to Golden Gate Park for a big music festival called Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. And yup, you guessed it: the music was mostly bluegrass or some small derivation from it. Although I wasn't a huge fan of the artists that I heard, I have started to enjoy the bluegrass and jazz that Chris plays in the office at work. Anyways, the entry was free, so my roomies Nick and Anina were nice enough to join me on the trek. We stopped by each of five major stages, but we weren't overly impressed by any of the performances. Apparently (according to Chris) we missed the good ones by going in the middle of the day -- the best were in the morning or later at night. Oh well. And sorry, forgot to bring the camera, but imagine lots of hippies (I think the word "throng" would be appropriate) singing, dancing (yes, in groups dancing their heads off), drinking, smoking, and being merry. Good times.

Sunday I decided to head over to Angel Island, which is just northeast of the bay:

I took a 30 min or so ferry from Pier 39/41 and had great views of Alcatraz, the city itself, and the North Bay:

I had read that there were over 13 miles of hiking trails, so I was pretty excited to go exploring. My first (and turned out only) destination was to reach the top of the island. It was a pretty easy 45 min/1 hr hike on not very steep terrain:

Upon reaching the top, I ravenously ate a roast beef sandwich that I had picked up at Boudin Bakery (really good bread and very cool place) at the Fisherman's Wharf. I quickly hiked down, realizing that if I also wanted to take the perimeter trail around the island to see some of the old military sites, I would have to hurry:

Unfortunately, since I was a bit scared that I would miss the last ferry back into town, I took the next to last ferry and couldn't complete the hike around the island. However, I did learn about it's relatively interesting history as a military base (for Bay protection) and use for quarantining immigrants and military men suspected of having diseases. Back off to SF:

I got back to the city relatively early and made my way around areas of Fisherman's Wharf that I hadn't yet seen. Later, I met Mike Davitian '07 for dinner on Union Street and we stuck around afterwards at a bar to shoot some darts.

Oh! And the title of this post is appropriate for this reason: yesterday, a huge fire consumed most of Angel Island. Glad I hit that up before it went up in flames. Some people blamed the weather, but I would be more inclined to blame the large number of fighter jets going around the bay for Fleet Week (more on that later). Timing really is everything.