I just sort of ran.

After I was laid off, after Papa Joe passed on, and after my family returned to their jobs - that's all I could think to do. That's all I wanted to do. If a shark stops swimming, it sinks and dies - I had to keep going forward. A physical moving-on to stimulate a mental moving-on - that was my goal. I wanted to go and see the places I haven't seen as well as return to those that were long overdue for a visit. In general, I needed to get the hell out of the house and just drive.

I succeeded. Birmingham, Washington D.C., Orlando, Fort Walton Beach/Destin, Biloxi, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Dallas, and San Francisco/Bay Area. My car was a chariot blazing at 29 miles per gallon across this great nation in all but the last destination. I heeded the warnings of parking in San Francisco, so I hunkered down and took my first flight since 9/11 last year.

It was this last stop on my journey, the Bay Area, which really took me by surprise. After landing at SFO, my friends arrived to pick me up and take me into the heart of the city of San Francisco where they resided. At first, it was a bit overwhelming - not the population and suburban sprawl, but rather FOG. It's a most peculiar thing the way it can sneak in and sit down right next to you.

Aside from the strange air-water, the scenery in the Bay Area is nothing like I've ever laid eyes on. It sort of grabs you and won't let go almost like a magic spell. In speaking to my mom about it, she recalled that when Papa Joe came here decades ago, he claimed that the Bay area was the most beautiful place he had ever seen. I can understand what he meant now as well as intuit why there are so many people there.

After the two weeks spent in "heaven" (a nickname for this area that my friend painted), I was given consensus by my two temporary roommates that I had officially seen San Francisco and the Bay Area. I'm sure some would disagree, but after hitting every angle of the bay, the western ocean beach and numerous cities (some multiple times): Berkeley, Oakland, El Sorrito, Emeryville, Petaluma, Palo Alto/Stanford, Pacifica, Santa Cruz, and Sausalito....I think I covered it pretty well.

I'll be honest - I wouldn't mind living there despite the fear of an earthquake. The deciding moment was a late afternoon in Emeryville. I went with my two friends to look at an apartment they were considering renting. Instead of standing in traffic to get back over the bay-bridge, we tooled over to a public park on the water (large rocks for the beach), and essentially chilled out for a bit. What was to come, I couldn't have imagined. There were clouds toppling over us, so we weren't expecting a decent sunset. However, our doubts would soon be overturned.

Facing the cloud-shrouded San Francisco across the bay, we sat in awe. The mountains and clouds above the city effectively created an aperture for the sunlight to pass through. The light shaped and bent as it shot toward us perpendicular to the Golden gate bridge. As the sun started to set beyond the mountains, the angle of light was constantly raised setting fire to all the clouds above us. It went on forever it seemed, every minute a new pattern of inferno right above us! This wonderful canvas of sky was gorgeous. Even behind us there were streaks of cloud and sky that demanded attention, showing off their lavenders and navy blues as diagonal brushstrokes hanging in mid-air.

No photo can come close to what we saw that evening, however, the sheer color and progression can be represented by these photos (click for a larger image):

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