Approaching Descent

Hour 264 finds me in the window seat of a Virgin America flight about thirty minutes before we land in San Francisco.  As my descent approaches¹, with it comes dissent and my return to life known and comfortable.  If I could, I would step off this plane and right onto another, not much caring where it was headed.

But that’s not how this story ends.

I took a cab from the airport, partially because I was still a bit food poisoned and partially because I wanted to see my fair city reveal herself to me.  And, as the cab driver crested over the highest arc of the freeway, with the sun just setting, there she was.  This was home.  In the past two hundred and sixty four hours since I left her, she hadn’t changed much.  Yet, what I know of San Francisco, she changed a hundred times over during my adventure.

“Work was impossible. The geeks had broken my spirit. They had done too many things wrong.” - Hunter S. Thompson

Tomorrow, I am supposed to effortlessly slip back into my routine and back into the office where I will return as a slightly more tan, more bruised and scraped up designer of digital experiences with more questions than answers and a liver that could probably use a break.  I will be returning to issues unresolved and problems both real and imagined.  All of which appear to be a thousand miles away and a thousand hours in the past.

Travel teaches us things about ourselves and the world.  Here are some of the things I’ve learned:

Not having a working cell phone is not cause for alarm.
Cabbies everywhere are a bit crazy.
You can’t have a barbeque in Kensington park.
Language is not a barrier unless you’re trying to buy beef.
Juan still has the frisbee.

And, of course, that the world is a bit smaller and a lot more fascinating than it was before.  I am not more or less lost than when I started out, but filled with more hope than I had prior.

I would like to thank the cast that made this trip worth every hour spent:

Michelle Acton-Bond
Paul Carr
Robert Loch
Scott Rutherford²
Alan Eyzaguirre
Zoe Margolis
Jason Santa Maria

With digital cameos by: Aza Raskin, Michael Lopp, Dave Elfving, Jina Bolton and Brad Smith.

Stay tuned next time for the sequel: 48 hours in LA.

1. I couldn’t have timed it this well had I tried, and there was even a spreadsheet involved. [↩]
2. The above individuals also known as: The Beauty, The Writer, The Legend and The Brains.  All rong in their own right. [↩]