It was the beginning of a week of travel to various points and (little did I know it) a bit of tracing through my past lives. It began with a flight to Portland where I was served orange juice then fruit and a croissant and a vegetarian main course before I went to stay at the Hotel Lucia where the room was quite elegant in many views with a nice bathroom and a second nice bathroom (I wondered if that was to share with the neighbors) but a limited view of the city which, I suppose, could be best seen from this book because of the rain. They were nice enough to come welcome me with a note, water and chocolate and they offered great flexibility in pillows reading material and music.

Nonetheless, the next day I got up and headed to the airport where I had this bagel and coffee while looking back at the security people who had confiscated my wonderful Portland snow globe even before I could remember to take a picture of it. My next stop was a more standard hotel room in San Francisco with only one bathroom and otherwise pleasant facilities plus a nice view down tot he street. I went out for a walk and to find some lunch and saw the standard San Francisco street scene before ordering a bowl of vegetarian chili from this menu and then finishing with this dessert and taking a picture of the restaurant before getting ready for the evening event. I was so surprised at the attendees at the evening event that I forgot to flash but then recovered and captured this picture of Ron Stoltz from college years and Marc Dinkin from high school (and earlier) years who surprised me by attending the talk. I also posed with Ron and Marc to remember times long past.

The next day, I took one last look at the wine bottle they had given me after the talk (because it would not make it through airplane security) and then headed out tot he Golden Gate bridge (San Fracisco's other icon) with Jacobo who took these pictures of me against that backdrop before we looked out at Alcatraz and back at the city at the islands of Marin County and views of the bridge before we noticed that under this splash was a bird (the blue parrot) and after a final good bye to the bridge, we were off to the airport.

Once on my flight, I had this wine and nuts and salad and roll before pausing to take close photos of the labels and individual salt and pepper shakers and then having water a vegetarian main course and dessert before heading home where steaks were cooking because Janet (who took a few photos to focus) and Larry had arrived and so there was cheese salad and vegetables to amuse Suzanne Ben and me before dessert came.

But it wasn't long before I was back on a plane to have some more juice and see Mackenzie in Atlanta as she went for the phone and returned to sit with Jason and me and then to pose with Michelle as I had this southern meal of grits, sweet potato fries, fried green tomatoes and corn pudding and Michelle had this sandwich while we waited for Jason's meal to come. Michelle left me at my hotel where this was my room and the view and out of the darkness emerged the bathroom

As we got through our work, food from the Varsity arrived which had us excited and so Randy Bryant, Bob Constable, dpd and Hector Garcia-Molina posed in our Varsity hats and later I saluted Dick Lipton and Rich DeMillo and Dawn Williamson, our hosts.