Back in the City
I almost didn't make it to DIA this morning. I forgot they close I-25 on Sunday mornings and got stuck in detour hell. I made it to the counter mere moments before the 45-minute cutoff, but the printer for the baggage barcodes was broken. But I managed to board the plane, albeit grumpily and since I had been assigned a middle seat (18E, joyous) I put my backpack (contents: 1 17'' PowerBook, 1 copy MacOS X Internals both of approximately equal mass, although I'm sure the book would win in a fair fight) in the overhead compartment. A flight attendant came by and rearranged all the bags in the compartment, spilling the contents of the purse belonging to the woman next to me, and went on her way. About thirty seconds later there is a very loud behind me bang and the whole floor shakes. The drunk guys in the row behind me (it's 8:00am) start swearing. My backpack has fallen to the ground, mercifully missing them ("You get a free trip if a bag hits your head," one of the drunk guys chortles. He puts my backpack back in the bin ("Keerrist, that was heavy"), and I get to spend the rest of the plane ride pondering the fate of my screen and thanking my lucky stars that I backed up my subversion repository the night before. The screen's fine, and no troubles with the hard drive, so far. Fingers crossed.
It was my first time flying into SFO in years (for previous WWDCs, I've driven) and my first time on the new AirTrain and SFO BART extension, which are both pretty fucking cool. I was expecting to have to take CalTrain into the city and schlep through SoMA to my hotel, but BART has a station half a block away. Riding into the city, ducking below and above ground, the train speeds past neighborhoods I only know as stops on the map. The southern suburbs of San Francisco are densely covered with two and three story white buildings. The urban landscape always reminds me of Jerusalem, although surely that should be the other way around. I think of how pitifully provincial and homogenous Denver feels in comparison. San Francisco has three separate commuter train systems (CalTrain, BART, and MUNI Metro) while Denver has only get beginnings of one. At each stop loads of people, all colors, all ages got on and off the train, talking and laughing in a hundred and one languages. Denver, at least Denver proper, is split, roughly equally, between three ethnic groups each of which keeps its distance from the others. I envy Scott, who is moving here later this week. Forget Boston, San Francisco really is the shining city on the hill.
I pick a random direction to walk in as I leave the the Powell Street BART station. I'll need to see a couple more street signs to get my bearings. But for once in my life, I've chose the right direction. Fourth and Market. I'm almost there.
I'm staying at the Mosser, a quaint boutique hotel a bit more than a block from Moscone West, where WWDC is being held. The Mosser is an odd hotel, with many cheap, albeit ridiculously small rooms. I didn't get my act together to reserve a cheap room with a shared bathroom, so I'm paying through the nose for one with a private toilet and shower. But its still cheaper than anything else this close. The bastards charge for internet access, but WWDC is not a good time to be cut off from the net. You can tell there's a mac conference here -- iTunes shows more shared music libraries than I'd ever seen before.
I'd planned to spend the day in tourist mode, maybe walking through Chinatown and across North Beach, maybe take CalTrain down to Stanford and see what's what. Instead I fall asleep on the bed. When I wake up, its too late do anything special. I walk down the street to the Metreon and catch Superman Returns in 3D. I really liked the movie, and had waited for months to watch again in an Imax theater. Verdict: the 3Dness sucks, but it's a damn fine movie, now matter what anyone says.
And now its time to go sleep. We'll see what tomorrow brings.