Its Wednesday, I am having breakfast at a trendy cafe on 18th and Guerrero, called Tartines. A week of this and my weight will normalize! The only healthy choice here is to order a Brioche Bread and Butter Fruit Pudding and leave out the brioche, bread and pudding (double cream custard). Picture appended.

And another thing, navigating across the Golden Gate by foot is becoming more dangerous because added to the cyclists are Segways. As always there are grandmothers on roller blades in the mix.

Chrissy Fields is a grassy park with Palm trees and cycle and walking routes on the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge. A quiet cool oasis on a hot sunny day. The field was the site of the landing of the first transatlantic air postal service. It was also an early airfield for the US MIlitary.

Sadly, as is the way with early aviation, the field is named after the military pilot lieutenant Crissy who crashed and killed himself on one of the earliest, if not the first flight delivering transatlantic mail.

The Waterfront and Pier 39 area is a very tourist orientated but this is America and so despite my initial reaction to avoid it…. I must experience it. Further more the place is seething with men in uniform as its “Fleet Week” and huge naval warships, carriers and ancillary craft congest the harbour. It’s also the week that elimination races are starting on the harbour for the America’s Cup.

If you delay moving off in your car when traffic lights change to green in the timeframe it takes for one vibrating atom, you will unleash a cacophony of horns! I document this as I have just experienced it first hand and had to go back to hotel to change underwear!

Tuesday I spent in the Museum of Modern Art, which on the first Tuesday of the month is free. Great museum. As well as “conventional” museums, I am always drawn to those that relate to interactive displays, science, technology, modes of travel. Finally I seek out museums of the performing arts, audiovisual, theatre, cinematography. In all of the countries travelled to date, I have visited the museum of cinema and TV.

At the museum of Modern Art there was an area devoted to experimental theater over the decades including a 60 minute Italian documentary from the 1960s in which a panel of 3 catholic priests conducted an audition of 12 young men called “Casting Jesus” . Moreover the audition was held in a beautiful church to add to the overall ambience. It was at times very funny! ( not by intention) they were all dressed in robes, head shawl, sandals and predictably all were bearded. Each individual then had to show an emotion or act a set piece: serenity, anguish, pain, suffering, break and eat bread. They had to recite a set piece, they were asked to wear a crown of thorns, demonstrate agony on the cross and finally “die”! The natural reflex of course is to collapse to the ground, but to mimic this when you are standing, arms outstretched, “nailed” to the cross, it does take considerable talent to crumple a little bit but not enough to give the impression that your arms are being ripped out of their sockets! The young man chosen in the end did not match by choice!

I had an email from my other Cathay Pacific pilot, Leigh, who was flying in Tuesday! So we caught up and had dinner together. Leigh flew in and Jake flew out on the same plane. Both have passed First Officer exams. If you are coming to SF and like seafood, then the Sotto Mare in Green St. is THE place to go!

I have a box seat to the San Francisco Opera tonight – Bellini “The Capulets and the Montagues” – In other words Bellin’s take on Romeo and Juliet!

Should be a little cooler today, the 3 months holiday has panned out as a weather “sandwich”! Hot-cold-hot.Almost makes me want to go back to Ireland! …. Just kidding!

Plan to drive to Napa Valley tomorrow.