Standing in your gallery with your tea-sigil in hand.

It's 6:45 am and I'm blogging from Toronto as our train chugs its way along toward Montreal, the City of saints and a hundred bell towers. Erik and Chris are snoring away, but I'm too awake from the remnants of my pancake/omelette leftovers and rather be typing away. The theme song for this post will be "Keep Your Shoes On" by the Scissor Sisters. No recaps on Canada yet, but this catches me up with everything up until we headed into America's hat courtesy of the New Yorker!

Six of us almost escaped from a magic show. We started bound to each other with cotton ropes, frantically did origami, unlocked briefcases, ordered mystical animal parts only to be foiled when we picked the wrong wires to cut on a magic bomb that sent us all to Limbo. I love these Real Escape games because they give a glimpse of what friends would do in crisis situations. Do people just buckle down and remain calm or do they just get flustered/lose their shit?

Splashing about after our tour of the immigration museum

I took my summer legal interns to Angel Island, and we all came out of it slightly lobstery from the sun, after having eaten entirely too many circus animal cookies and seen a sufficient amount of epic Chinese poetry scrawl. There's been a lot of beach time lately, but it really never gets old to wade into the Pacific and feel the cold sand surge past you. Pride Saturday meant that we woke with the livestock at 5:45 am to plunge into the slippery kelp fields of the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve.

One epic impromptu banana pancake breakfast courtesy of Chris later, we end up sprawled for naptime in the Dogpatch, waking only to haul ourselves to the outer Richmond for Shanghai Dumpling King. Erik got to play soccer mom all weekend, fetching water, doing quick little loads of laundry.



And then it was time to go back to the beach. We tried Fort Funston since I had fond memories of sandy valleys leading to the water, but Thornton Beach ended up being the winner for seclusion. The four of us scooted down compacted sand, traced our way through iceplant vales, and popped out on the beach right by a little cove just off the water.



I set to work making a Zen rock garden that radiated out from our blankets, and the sun plunged every furrow into deep shadow. We made tea with Erik's sigil, which prompted informal pantless yoga. A takeaway point from this adventure is that for Burning Man, I am definitely taking along some kind of thin blanket that is nonetheless swishy. I did pick up a keffiyeh from an army surplus store last weekend, but that hipster cloth is just a tad too small.

Draw me like one of your French girls.

As the day drew to a close and the ocean looked aflame, Chris and I donned our raiments, blue/gray pastel and military camouflage respectively. The summer breeze was enough to swirl fabric around us enough to give a ritual importance, and I came across my driftwood staff o' power. Tristan and I looked like two hobbits on a beachside frolic, at least until I became a minor diety of joy.

Pride Sunday itself was a ton of fun, and it was great to have friends and Lincoln join the ORAM contingent as we made our way down Market right behind the director for God Loves Uganda. After dispersal, we rallied with some Pho 2000 and then closed off the weekend overlooking the City at Bernal Hill.

Sad to have Tristan head off for good this time, but I'm sure we'll see him again sooner than a year. At least while he was here and we went rockclambering, I nailed my first V6 bouldering problem. I apparently need harder New Year's resolutions. It was an overgrade for sure, but I'll take what I can get.

Back to looking out the window at eastern Canada rushing by the train!