Visa Quest part 1

On the flight back from LA, after having gotten my visa for France in San Fransisco, I journaled a bit to reflect on my day. In particular I focused on the people I met. I'll copy most of that in here for you to read, and my apologies if it's a bit long.

September 12, 2007

God has been very good; no, great to me today. I flew out of Spokane this morning at 6am and it looks like I'll be getting back (from San Fran & LAX) around 11:30 PM. Talk about a long day! But at least I got my visa & I'm ready to move to France. Well, mostly ready. God has been good in many ways to me today, but I want to write about the people I met today first before my memory fails me and their faces fade into a distant blur. This morning I ran into Ruby Palmer as she left for Peru, sad to see her go but fun to talk. I then met a manager for Shell who was flying back to Houston. My flight to LAX was fairly uneventful as I say by myself (although a bout with some gassy pains made things exciting at times).

Connecting in LAX I found my way to the American Airlines terminal, making aquaintances with a woman from Oregon on the bus ride. She talked about being glad to have moved out of Seattle, and how she was visiting her brother (who doesn't fly) in New York. They haven't seen each other in four years.

Attempting to find my flight, after it had been re-routed to a different gate for boarding, I met another exec of some sort. He worked for the Bank of the West. A fairly big guy, his dread for the looming meetings was as sizable as his shoes (which were quite ridiculous). While waiting for my flight to SFO (which had been delayed an hour) I ended up sitting next to this pretty Mexican girl & her mom.


I'm convinced they were Mexican royalty, as their English was decent and they wore some very sparkling jewelery. They were nice, and her mom found my folded/destroyed pizza about as humorous as I found it precarious. It's too bad Mexico doesn't have royalty, that would really be cool.

Boarding the flight I realized with growing levels of horror that my seat, distinguished in its row with the letter "E," was not in fact a window seat. Somehow the letters go A, B, aisle, D, E, F... not cool. It wasn't just a middle seat, but a middle seat between a rather large, bald, sunglass bearing white guy and a not-so-small lady (who had my dang window seat!).

Thankfully the guy was cool, it turns out his name was Bill. Few people named Bill are all that bad. Bill, as it happens, is from San Fransisco, or at least the bay area. It also just so happens that he's the trumpet player from Santana's band. In fact, I was kind of surrounded by band members (although the lady who stole my seat certainly was not in the band). We talked politics, music, about a lot of things really. Actually, he talked mostly which may be surprising to some people. It's true though, I learned a lot about him and band-life.

He's divorced, but has been married to his current wife about as long as he's been in the band. His only daughter didn't get into music, apparently his ex-wife made sure of that. She's an army translator. His current wife just started teaching choir at a middle and high school. I guess things are going well, though she has a few 'trouble kids.' It's kind of weak though because by the time we landed in SFO I felt too buddy buddy with the guy to ask for a picture. It felt like it would kind of ruin things, make it a celebrity/fan relationship. Not that I'm really a fan, I didn't know Santana had his own band until not too long ago.

He pointed me towards the BART station (kind of like a subway), and did a pretty poor job of it too. I found it eventually though, and after getting screwed out of $5 by the ticket machine I managed to get going towards the Montgomery station, and Bush street where the French consulate resides.

Two guys sat down next to me, and if they weren't batting for the wrong team they were certainly wearing the wrong jerseys. They were my first taste of San Fransisco hospitality, super nice guys. We chatted for a while as we rode the train. David, who currently works at fisherman's warf, has lived in California for well over a year now, but is new to San Fransisco. His buddy Craig was visiting, it sounded like he's a good friend as he's called in to visit friends and help them find houses, settle in, etc. They were cool, and shook firmly when they left. The Asian guys who took their place weren't as nice.

Something I noticed, as I mention "Asian guys," was how vastly multicultural that city is. I loved it! Everywhere I went were immigrants, tourists, and people who were just strongly contrasted from their surroundings. It was awesome! It makes me even more excited for Nice.

Getting off of BART, I had some troubles with my ticket to get out of the station (more a problem with my observation skills), only to discover that it didn't work quite the way I'd expected. Making some embarrassed conversation with what very well could have been a black dwarf (he was seriously four feet tall but didn't look mis-proportioned) he proceeded to give me some bad directions to the consulate. To his credit, he was super nice and naive to how bad his directions were. Thankfully a lady behind us came up and quietly told me to follow her, as she was actually from the area.

In walking with her for a few blocks, I discovered just about everything one could in such a short span of time. Of course, we didn't exchange names of all things. But it was her kindness that put me on the right track.


We walked up Bush together, and I asked various questions. She and her husband had moved to San Fransisco almost ten years ago after she had fallen in love with it while visiting. They had lived in Hong Kong for a while before Britain had let go of her possession of the city, and during that time she had traveled to San Fran for some business and had become enamored. I asked if she was Chinese, and she said no, her mother had been from Hawaii and was Japanese. Her father was very much German. Irony? The only Japanese she learned, however, were the few expletives and commands her mother frequently used while she grew up.


We parted ways as we found the consulate, and I continued on towards a very large French flag.

I'll finish the rest of it later, turns out this is ridiculously long. I must have been writing for a long time. Thus: TO BE CONTINUED...