In which I hunt for a house

It’s 8am on Cinco de Mayo in Calgary, AB and it’s snowing. Andrina and I are, happily, sitting in the warmth of the international gates at Calgary International Airport. We’ve now been up since 5am and are just starting to come around to the fact that we are not home in our cozy bed. We’re off to San Francisco to look for a place for me to live, temporarily, while Andrina sorts out the remainder of her business obligations. We’re told that it’s 15 degrees Celcius in San Fran with a high of 22 today. With that news, our spirits definitely lift.

It's early and it's snowing.

Given that we know that Andrina and I will be doing the long distance thing for a few months, we know that this weekend is a good dry run for getting to and from the area in which we will live. It turns out it is going to be a giant pain in the ass. As the crow flies, or the plane as may be more appropriate in this case, it takes a little over two hours to fly to San Francisco from Kamloops. Unfortunately, there are no direct flights. So, a two trip turns into 6 hours and eats up the majority of a day.

Back in the Calgary airport, Andrina relays to me that comedy ensues in the ladies restroom. It would appear that half of the ladies room is closed for cleaning. However, no one is cleaning it. The cleaning staff at YYC have decided to block that side of the bathroom off and mop the open side. Just picture 15 ladies in heels or flip flops slipping and sliding around the cleaning staff while half of the bathroom sits pristine and unused.

The weather in San Fran did not disappoint. We arrived to 20 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.

Picked up our rental car and headed to the first place on the list of apartments to check out. Never having driven in the San Fran peninsula area, we got the GPS option whom we nicknamed “Sally the robot.” Sally was great. She didn’t steer us wrong once. I definitely need a GPS for my truck when I move down. Her pronunciation was even pretty good. She correctly pronounced El Camino Real as re’al and not ree-uhl. She also got Cañada right. However, she pronounced Oregon Expwy as ex-pwee and not Express Way. Hrm.

Pronounced kaˈɲaða which means glen or mountain valley.

We fell in love with Palo Alto and Menlo Park. The number of local/organic restaurants for totally reasonable prices was awesome. Great wine selections is the norm and not the exception and greenery is surprisingly plentiful. 

Downtown Menlo Park, my office will be on this street. 

And I can finally get my shoes cobbled.

We ended up choosing the first place that we found. It fit the bill perfectly. It’s an older concrete building so it will be quiet and the price is ok. 

The new digs

The units are being renovated. This one hasn't been.

With that taken care of, we became tourists for the weekend. That rental car got a lot of miles on it (yes, miles, they are long kilometres that don’t have any real [ree-uhl], predictable correlation to other distances in the imperial system). We spent a night in San Francisco at Fisherman’s Wharf, cruised the coast on HWY-1 (not the Transcanada), toured the beautiful Stanford campus, and of course we hit the outlet mall. Tourists.

The California Coast