Back across the pond to San Francisco

Back at the end of September '08, we skipped a day on the calendar by flying overnight nonstop from San Francisco to Auckland. We left on the 28th and arrived on the 30th, and we'll never be able to say what we did on the 29th of September 2008 because it did not ever exist for us. On the 10th of June, 2009, we stole a doubly long day back in return, however, by flying from Sydney to San Francisco. Thirty-six hours from waking up, we were still walking around on the afternoon of that 10th of June, only now we were back in the northern hemisphere, figuring out how to get our Toyota and all the remaining possessions we'd stuffed into it out of the storage unit near the San Fran airport. Surprisingly, it was a very satisfying day, beginning as it did with a beautiful view of the Sydney Harbor and ending with good Mexican food (how we've missed it!) in Frisco. Maybe all days should be 40 or more hours long so indolent folks like us could feel like we'd actually done enough for a day.

The next day we spent celebrating our re-arrival in the States by browsing downtown. Mark could barely wait to get into the giant Apple store and ogle new tech. Sarah went shopping for jacket and retro snapshot camera. Somehow, we ended up most enjoying street scenes and an amazing art gallery where we took our first plunge together on a small investment in original art, buying three numbered prints for the house we don't own and shipping them to Mark's new office we've never yet visited. Ah, optimism! We were being Americans again, for sure.