Night and Day(A Weekend in San Francisco)

As Stephen's black Honda cruises across the Bay Bridge and the wind blows heavily upon us, I cant help but hearing "Night and Day" by Frank Sinatra in my head. We were all silent and most likely thinking of this glorious and crazy weekend we just had in San Francisco. Stephen at the wheel, Jerry resting comfortably(or what seemed like comfort)in the back and myself in the passenger seat, we fly away from a city that has a special place in our hearts and gives us some small feeling of home. A place were we feel at ease every time we visit.

The original plan was to leave after Jerry got off of work around 11pm. Stephen and I would pick him up and be on our way. But like most things in the world, something happened to make us change up our plans. I got a text at work from Jerry saying we could probably leave early since he actually didn't have to work. This made me happy of course. So this meant leaving around 9pm or so(I was off of work at 8). As it turns out, this lovely trio did not touch the I-5 freeway until exactly 11pm for reasons that were out of this writer's control. And like predicted in the original plan, we didn't get to San Francisco until 1 in the morning. Our rendezvous point was my close friend Larisa's dorm at SF State. We would stop by to say hello, check out the dorm, and head over to our friend Caleb's apartment(the real reason why we were even there) But the delays started to happen, like traffic due to construction and Stephen's speeding ticket. This was slightly scary situation because we had certain things in our possession that wouldn't be good for us to have. Good thing, the police officer was very nice, bad thing.....well, Steve got a ticket.


The biggest delay would have to be when the three of us actually got to the city. I didn't print out directions to the school and assumed we would get them from either friend that lived there. We received directions from Larisa, but ended up passing up our exit and having to go all over South San Francisco to find the school(we had only been there once)After maybe an hour of being lost and trying to find ourselves and our friends dorm, we ended up on Font st. or in other words, right in the back of the school where we were supposed to be. We met up with Larisa and got to see where she stayed. The dorm or the little apartment looked amazing and very comfortable compared to other dorm rooms I had seen. After, we called up Caleb to find out how to get his apartment which was a thee minute drive and a ten minute walk away from the school; we had parking trouble until Caleb met us outside of another building to help us find a closer spot. After getting settled in, and meeting his roommate Sameet, we all went to sleep and awaited the next day.

Waking up from the hard wood floor was no hard task at all. Before we all went to sleep, Caleb, Stephen, and I planned to skate before he had to go to work in the afternoon. We quickly got ready, played the EA SKATE 2 video game and left Jerry behind to get some more rest. After getting lost(again) we finally find the Daily City skate park. It was a small park with things to do but like always, we mad the most out of it. Stephen has the capacity to eat at least 5 meals in one day and is skinnier than I am(which is real skinny), and luckily for us, Krispy Kreme and In and Out were up the street and we all gathered there after a good hour of skating. This would be the first of four meals Stephen wold have throughout the day and night time.

Upon returning back to Caleb's apartment, Jerry was just really getting up and energized. We all took showers one after another and got dressed to meet up with Larisa while Caleb worked. The train ride to downtown San Francisco was like any other ride; it was very cramped and long, but we got to see some places in the city we would have missed by taking the freeway. Larisa kept assuring me that it was better to take the train because of parking garage fares and after some thinking of how the city works with parking, I had to agree with her.

The Westfield Mall was amazing. It was the first time I believe either of us guys had been in there. The escalator that took you literally around the mall was a site to see. It felt like we were ascending to a shopping heaven every time we stepped on to it. After seeing what we needed to see and eating for the second time that day we headed outside to journey to more stores. My mind set and a hidden reason for wanting to go shopping so bad was buy a new pair of black jeans since my old ones were destroyed by bleach. The plan was to go to the Levi's store but Urban Outfitters ended up taking my money and supplying me with same exact jeans I was longing for. My day was complete. The four us walked all over downtown looking into interesting stores, singing and joking around on the way each and every one of them. I could not have asked for a more perfect day for hanging out with my friends.....well, maybe I could but I didn't need to.

When we returned back to Larisa's dorm, the eating machine we call Stephen was up for another meal once again. We all bought this fantastic pizza and returned to the dorm room to rest and relax from all the walking we were doing. Caleb's birthday party had started by the time we were finished eating but we were not at all, ready to go in anyway, or at least I wasn't. We ended being an hour "late" to the party but over the years, I have found it quite satisfying to be late to these things. It's more fun to me to walk into a party that has already started rather than being the first person there before you could even call it a party. And sadly, Caleb was not playing mix I had made for the party, so I guess I should have been earlier.

Throughout the night, I had to battle with some of the guests there who had musical preferences as they kept ejecting my ipod and putting in theirs; bringing chaos to my constructed mix. Luckily, we all had the same music tastes so It worked out, my only gripe was that the music they played was not music for a party in any way(The Wu-Tang Clan and Notorious B.I.G.) Caleb, the birthday boy, was for a lack of better words, destroyed that night and a couple of us had to calm him down and try to sit him down so he wouldnt do anything out of order. This was kind of hard seeing as we are all pretty drunk while doing this. As Jared and Cousin Hedzi tried to calm him down the party continued on and I got to meet a bunch of skateboarders who welcomed me and Stephen to come back to the city to skate with them anytime we wanted. This only made the night better and I settled into a complete ease floating around talking to whomever was willing to have me in their ear.

After calming down Caleb and getting him to sleep, Stephen and I went back to Larisa's to stay the night. Caleb's apartment was going to full many sleeping bodies on the floor so we figured we would make it easy on ourselves to sleep just a little bit more comfortable. This brought about Stephen's fourth and final meal. It was pizza once again. By this time, I was heavily asleep on the floor and actually quite comfortable as the others stayed up to watch movies and eventually went to bed themselves. This was the end to to a great weekend.

Caleb seemed perfectly fine the next morning and those still left at his apartment buckled down to watch Rush Hour 3 for a little bit. Unfortunately, the road was calling all of our names and without any real chance of hanging out more, we were split up yet again. Caleb had to work and so did Jerry and Stephen. We left Caleb's apartment in the same silence that occupied us as we drive home now. If only we could have stayed just a little longer I thought as we got on to the freeway. The new plan is to visit after we are out of school for the summer and I expect that we will get into even more interesting things the next time and the times after. And this is the part where I start to fall asleep, right before we stop to get Krispy Kreme donuts. Stephen was hungry again.