What a Full Day

This was definitely a full day.

We left here around 9 or so to head off to the city.  We expected to encounter lots of traffic because there was so much stuff going on.  It was Gay Pride day, for one thing, and one of the largest Gay Pride parades in the country was taking place.  We were going to a concert at the bandshell in Golden Gate Park, Stern Grove was having its opening summer concert, there was a performance of Magic Flute at the opera house, and over in Marin County there was NASCAR racing that, at the time we left the house, had tied up one of our possible roads by an hour.  We decide to chance it with the Gay Pride crowd and go over the Bay Bridge.  As it turns out, our decision was very wise because I have never seen so FEW cars at the bridge toll plaza before.

I love coming over the bridge on Gay Pride day because you can look up in the distance and see the gigantic pink triangle on Twin Peaks.

At the corner of Castro and Market, I loved seeing both the Rainbow Flag that is always there and the triangle behind it.

We parked at the park and found our little group, people from the old Lamplighters tech crew.  The nice thing about having a tech crew around is that they could be dispatched to go get benches and bring them up to the grassy area, under a tree.

  

I was happy to see Bridey there.

I'm always happy when there is a dog around, and Willa, whose dog died in November, was craving doggie interaction as well.  Bridey got a lot of attention.

Walt and I went and picked up some Indian food at the food trucks and I was tickled to see a bunch of people in line to rent Segos.

The concert was fun for the chance to hear Lawrence Ewing and Jennifer Ashworth from the Lamplighters do a couple of numbers...but the tempos of the park band were painfully slow.  Somewhere Gilbert Russak, under whom the conductor of this band played for years would have been turning over in his grave...if he had one.

Lawrence and Jennifer joined us after their first two numbers and we all had a nice visit

.

When it was time to leave, Walt and I went to a party for our friend Susanna, who was celebrating both her 25th birthday and getting her Masters Degree.  It's a Lamplighter family, so a lot of friends were there and it was so nice sitting around and chatting.

When we started home, I asked Walt to drive up to Twin Peaks so I could look at the pink triangle from above, but when we got there, a group was packing it up in big trucks, so we didn't stop, but as we started down the hill, we could see they were still removing pieces of it--it's made of big swatches of pink material.  I asked Walt to stop the car and I walked up the steep hill to get a shot of it.

After I'd taken the picture, I turned around and found Walt standing there with his mouth hanging open, amazed that I had walked from the car up the hill without stopping to take a breath.  I told him I figured I had to do it because we'll be walking all over Europe in just two weeks.

On the way home, we saw a sign saying there was a fire on the freeway and that traffic was backed up.  And was it ever.

It was like this for so long that the hour and a half drive took three and a half hours!!!  It was nearly 10 when we got home and the dogs were starving.

It was really a fun, full day (well, except for the traffic at the end of it!)