Giants vs. Diamondbacks; swimming again in Aquatic Park; SF Int’l Beerfest
My crazy Saturday actually started Friday when a pair of pretty decent tickets to the next day’s ball game were up for grabs, and grab I did. After some calls dug and I were going to see the Giants vs. the Diamondbacks.
We started at the 21st Amendment a brewpub a few blocks from the ballpark. The burgers were decent and their watermelon wheat was suprisingly subtle and good.
Then we headed over to the ballgame. We were situated at the end of the right foul line, still in the lower boxes. For a game where I wasn’t rooting for either team, it ended up being pretty entertaining. It ended with a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth, which is pretty sweet. This was immediately preceeded in the top of the ninth by some tremendous play in left field by not-Barry Bonds, including a game-saving catch of an otherwise-sure-to-be home run. Bonds wasn’t playing because, as far as I can tell, he’s weak and has had too many steroids. Honestly, I didn’t miss him too much.
I also took the opportunity, since I got my new new lens on Thursday to try my hand at baseball photography. Not surprisingly, even a 200mm lens from decent seats doesn’t get you close-up shots of much stuff, but it was definitely a new viewpoint on things. I definitely missed a couple great shots, including a tremendous Moises Alou diving catch basically right in front of us. It’s yet to be seen whether I did get any good shots.
After the game, I headed up to Aquatic Park to swim there for the first time since last July. Man, it was cold, probably close to 55. I’d forgotten how cold that is. A quick primer on cold water swimming (try this at your own risk): get yourself some silicone ear plugs and a Barracuda Hot Head. When you get in the water, you’ll probably go into panic breathing. This is normal. The best way to overcome it is to just start swimming. Put your fast in the water and swim, even though this the opposite of what your body wants to do; your lungs want to expel all air from them.
After that, I headed to gumbeaux’s place, only to walk back to Fort Mason (right next to Aquatic Park) for the SF International Beer Festival, which, get this!, is a fundraiser for a nursery school. Gums and I had a nice walk all the way down Fillmore, catching some awesome views of the city and the bay on the way. The beer fest was, well interesting. There was a lot of beer there, all of it measured out in 2-3oz tasting cups. Good news: there was a lot of good beer there. Bad news: most of the beers I liked, I knew already. It was still a good time. I don’t know why I thought differently, but it ended up that a lot of the patrons of this event were slightly grown-up fratboyz and sorority girlz. Given this, it wasn’t too surprising that I got about ten “go bosox!”s on my sox hat.
Definitely note-worthy was our experience on our way back from the beer fest. Gums and I didn’t want to walk the three-ish miles back to his place, so we decided to take the bus, the number 22 Fillmore, to be specific. We saw it circle around at the end of its route but we could figure out where it would actually stop given that there weren’t any bus stop signs nearby. We started to walk quickly and gums stuck out his arm to flag down the bus and it actually stopped for us. Then, realizing that it was $1.50, I said aloud to gumbeaux ‘I don’t think we have enough change’ (we thought it’d be $1.25) to which the bus driver responded ‘$1 is fine! Just $1.’ That’s right, we flagged down a bus and then managed to knock the price down 50%. The bus ride had its interesting characters as they always do, the least of which was the absolutely amazonian woman in the short skirt who showed no evidence of wearing underwear.
Wooo. Good times.