After sleeping on a variety of futons and couches at the VS house, I headed back home on Wednesday evening. BART still wasn't running, which made the trip about 3x longer than it should have been. After I left the VS house with my big duffel bag, I took a bus downtown, then walked to the Transbay Terminal. The next Transbay bus wasn't leaving for another 40 minutes (of course), so I decided to try my luck with the casual carpool section of the terminal. People just stand by the road and wait for some strange person to pull up in their car and offer them a ride across the bay. It's a win-win - the drivers can use the faster commute lane and the riders get a free ride over the bridge. It sounds super sketchy, but doesn't seem to be dangerous. I didn't see any white unmarked vans driven by creepy men with rat-tails, anyway... So I stood there for about 10 minutes and a lady pulled up and offered to take me across the bay. People have been super nice about the whole "Oh, yeah, I see that you have no car and the unions are on strike and you need to get across the bay but BART isn't running because unions, so just hop in my car and I'll drive out of my way to get you where you need to go!" So after taking 40 minutes to drive from the casual carpool to the on-ramp of the bay bridge (approximately 6 blocks, no kidding), and 20 minutes to drive across the bridge to a BART station (approximately 8 miles), Ben picked me up at the station and drove me home. Total elapsed time - 2.5 hours. It was kind of terrible.
Like I said before, I had off for the 4th, so Ben and I went into town at noon to go to the VSers potluck barbecue. I was going to buy sweet corn at Safeway, but all they had were a few gap-toothed ears. Disappointment. There was a lot of food though, so it was ok. And a lot of sun. And the Madison VS unit!!! The boy, Ted, knows Jonathan, and the girl, Taylor, went to Bethel and lived with Alyssa. It was good to see another Bethel face. We just sort of sat around and talked and got super sunburned (or maybe that was just me). There were hamburgers and hot dogs and plenty of cider and plenty of no-bakes that slowly melted in the sun. It was a great barbecue.
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| Alyssa, Nora, Ted, Jonathan, Taylor |
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| Alyssa, Ted, Jonathan, Taylor |
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| No bakes! |
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| Lemons don't grow in Madison backyards |
We left around 6 because we wanted to be across the bridge before all the festivities started in the city. Festivities + no BART = traffic congestion like you wouldn't believe. Around 9, we tried to go to the Berkeley Marina to watch the fireworks, but that was a no-go, so we headed up to a high place in Berkeley to watch instead. It was thickly crusted with a solid layer of humanity, so it was less than ideal. And the fireworks were 7 miles away in the city, so my pictures are terrible and I didn't keep any of them. Disappointment. That night, I got like zero hours of sleep because my neighbors were lighting firecrackers and I was freaking out about having to take the casual carpool on Friday to get to work because BART STILL wasn't running. I woke up at 5:15 and gave myself 2 hours to get to work. Guess what. I didn't need it. So I sat in the hospital cafeteria and read Harry Potter for an hour before work.
Work was crazy - all of my dispatchers were on vacation except for my director, so he and I ran the office. And then two of our four Spanish interpreters called in sick, and somehow a really long Russian assignment was missed, and there wasn't enough coverage for any of the languages that we offer and all of the departments were frustrated with us because of it and it was just hectic all day. After work, my director gave me a ride home, we talked about Mennonites and Guatemala on the way, and then I took myself out to eat because Ben wanted to go to a house party in the city but I thought I'd be pretty pooped if I tried to do that after getting zero hours of sleep. So now I'm doing laundry and planning to go to bed early. Cuz that's what the cool kids do in Berkeley on a Friday night.
I'm not sure what we're doing on Saturday - Ben emailed me and told me to pack a swimsuit and plan for 60 degree weather. I don't think those two things go together. Guess we'll find out.
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