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Days 141 to 145 - San Francisco and Stockton

I went in to San Francisco one weekend to visit Chris, a friend from college. Chris had recently taken a year off work to travel through Africa and Central and South America. Two other friends from college had also recently taken sabbaticals. Travel is cheap and time is short-- every one who can take time off for a "big trip" should. 

Chris lives in the mission district. We walked to this park for charming views of SF. 

We walked down to the docks and saw this acrobat performing for the crowd. He was very entertaining and represented the youthful expression of this new city. 

We walked further along the bay to a park overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.   Sublime. 

I really enjoyed reminiscing with Chris and learning about the startup and tech scene in SF.  The vibe here is young, energetic, future-optimistic, but you do get a feeling that the hotness of tech is fueled more and more by greed not by invention. 

The next few days were spent playing with Anderson, Carrington and Grayson, but also finishing meal planning for the John Muir Trail, a 200-mile hike through the High Sierra mountains. Bobby Massengale, my best bud who I've known since kindergarten, is flying in to hike this 18 day trail with me, starting in late August. Bob ordered bulk dehydrated foods online for shipment to my sisters house, but they didn't arrive until one day before I had to leave her house, so I had to rush to divide out the ingredients and ration everything out into two buckets for shipment halfway along the trail. I finished the job at 230am and mailed the buckets off the next day. We wouldn't starve in the mountains. 

Here is our food for the first seven days,  overflowing the bear canisters.

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