A Perfect San Francisco Morning.

I haven't really had time lately to post anything or respond to a lot of e-mails I've been getting lately, mostly because I have been working long, long hours at the parking garage and Chris has been really sick...poor thing. If I'm not at work, I'm over at his place, and I feel kind of strange using his laptop anyway so I figure maybe sometime this weekend I'll be able to get some e-mails done.

One of the perks of working for the rental car franchise is sometimes I get to take some of the cars home for the night. I'm not really supposed to, but my friend Joey who runs the place says I work my ass off there and I'm more than entitled to take one, in his opinion. I'd never take one without asking, and definitely not one of the nicer "premium" rentals. This means I'll be seen cruising the streets of San Francisco not in a Cadillac Escalade, BMW Z4, or Porsche Boxster, but instead a Dodge Stratus coupe (what I had two nights ago) or a Jeep Grand Cherokee (what I had three nights ago). However, last evening I had to move some cars up to Marin County that were appearing in a photo shoot for a Volkswagen ad. I drove up a silver Mitsubishi Galant, a car I actually really liked and was kind of fun to drive. By the time we got back to San Francisco it was almost 9 PM, so Joey tossed me the key to one of the premium rentals, a brand-new Jeep Wrangler.

This car is FUN! And if you ever find yourself at driving up Rhode Island street at 19th in San Francisco, if you're going 39 MPH you totally catch air. There are a few corners like that, most notoriously Gough and Eddy streets...where Steve McQueen jumped the Mustang in Bullitt.

Oh yeah, the point of this whole blog. This morning.

So I left a feverish Chris (you have no idea how much it breaks my heart to see him sick) this morning, and hopped into the Wrangler to head back home to North Beach so I could change my clothes for work. However, since I didn't have to be at work until 11:00, I decided instead to grab a latte and croissant at Puccini on Columbus Avenue, and drive up to Coit Tower to enjoy the view and coffee for a bit. This morning was pretty chilly for July...about 59 degrees, a bit foggy, and overcast. I tuned the radio to AM 960, KABL, the local "standards" station. As I navigated the steep hills of North Beach up to Coit Tower in that bouncy Jeep, the voice of Frank Sinatra cut through the AM ether and warmed my heart along with that delicious latte. When I got to the top of the hill, the view was stunning, even in the cold and gray morning light. KABL was playing some really good stuff, too...Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66, Peggy Lee, and Horst Jankowski accompanied my breakfast croissant. Combined with the view, the coffee, and the cool car, it made for an Absolutely Perfect San Francisco Morning. Aside from a Chinese couple doing Tai Chi on top of one of the benches and a handful of tourists, it was pretty much deserted.

Too bad nobody was there to share the whole thing with me...but that's okay. Sometimes it's nice just hanging out by yourself, smiling at nothing in particular for no particular reason.