The trip started on an off note. When I got to the gate, the sign said Flight Canceled. But the gatekeepers put me straight. While it was true that there was no flight to SFO as planned, they would be happy to honor my ticket on a flight to Oakland. I leapt at the chance, realizing that Bart could connect the dots. Alaska even offered a coach to connect the dots. But the best offer came from Owen, who volunteered to pick me up in Oakland. This worked out well, for O & K took me out to a favorite Burmese restaurant in Alameda on the way home. Thank you, Kea.
Both my hosts had to work Friday, so I went with them to their usual coffee shop for their breakfast bites. This is a nice tradition they have. The staff and patrons seem to know each other passingly well, greeting each other on a first name basis. It seemed a gentile way to start the business day, a particularly useful buffer if the work environment one is preparing to enter may be less than gentile.
Kea dropped me back at their pad on her way to work. I hung out reading a book that Kea indirectly recommended called A Tale of Two Cities. I had read another novel by the author over 50 years prior and hadn’t been impressed, but accepted this challenge to kill some time.
In my usual way with fiction, I checked the opening lines and closing lines before settling in. All I can say is WOW. Where had this book been all my life. After the first bit, more densely written than perhaps necessary but nonetheless profound, it became a page turner. Kea loaned me an old copy to take with me.
I wish they had assigned me this book in HS rather than Moby Dick. My life might be different. The latter also began famously, but I could never finish it. Thus my life’s rule that both the opening and closing lines must be famous if I am to be confident of successful completion and an acceptable return on my reading investment.
Kea picked me up around one and drove me down to the book store on campus during her lunch hour. I hung out there until O picked me up at three and we walked the campus prior to settling in to game mode. Thank you for the tix, O. The weather held.
It was an overly exciting game, a classic American contest between blue and red forces, except this time the good guys wore red (actually black). The stands were just past half full, because rain was forecast and half the seats were reserved for the blue team. Their reputation for not traveling seems well earned. The red supporters in the stands made a lot of noise at the end, perhaps inspiring the team to find their fourth quarter gear.
The blue team had been accused of sandbagging in the prior week’s game, in order to get to play the same red patsy this week and then sucker punch us. Of course that is unprovable, but we should not have been entirely surprised that the blue team now dominated the red team for three quarters of the reprise game, controlling the line of scrimmage in a manner defying all memory of the week past. Only an interception, leading to a TD, kept the red team in the game. And that is right where the red coach wanted to be, still in the game at the start of the 4th quarter.
At the end of Q3, the blue team was doing their pre-victory dance on the sideline, ahead by a TD and blissfully unaware of their tenuous position; the red team had the ball and was on the move going into their destiny quarter. The red offensive skill players continued to make big pressure plays and the red D rose up with blue drive stoppers.
Red won the last quarter 10-0 and hence the Rose Bowl berth, where, you guessed it, we will face the cheeseheads again (deja vu all over again, recalling 2000, same opponent and style, but without a Heisman trophy in their backfield). Late News Flash: A few days after our game, the current cheesehead coach quit, so the cheesehead coach from 2000 (currently the cheesehead AD) will step back into the head coaching role for the Rose Bowl game, rendering complete our deja vu experience.
Kea prepared a great autumn meal for us when we returned: spicy pumpkin-squash soup with home-made bacon bits, green salad, and bread, good fare for a late dinner. M-m-m.
We decided to go to the City on Saturday, first to browse the Ferry Building for waffle and mocha at a boutique coffee joint, goodies at the cheese shoppe, and other small gifts. Then we moseyed on over to the Cow Palace to enjoy a stroll through the Dickens Faire. Owen wore his top hat, topcoat, vest, and ascot. Kea bought a pirate hat at the show to go with her TOTC scarf, and Owen upgraded his gentleman’s attire with several new custom-made pieces.
We stopped for lunch in Burlingame and then they dropped me at the airport. Alaska took me straight home without detour. The airport was nearly empty; there was no line at security, a first for me in the last decade.
Postscript: The blue team has been crushed by the green meanies from Waco in their humbling (painful) bowl performance, casting doubt on the red team's fate in their bowl game. Are we left coasters really that bad?
Post-postscript: The left coast red team was pushed by the underrated midwest red team (aka cheeseheads), but we persevered to win the Rose Bowl game, ending a great year.
