on BART to Berkeley

 I had been missing my friend Pamela and so yesterday I took BART to meet her and we had a lovely lunch out in the garden (above) at La Note on Shattuck. Lots of catch-up and good food and then she drove me over to Vine Street to visit my friend Julia at her beautiful store Pot-Pourri. I'm happy to report that there were a lot more people on BART and in downtown Berkeley too. It appears that they are working on the sad homeless situation there as we are here in SF. In any event, it looked and felt cleaner and better than it did two years ago. A full and really nice day for this traveling (ahem) woman.

the extent of my travels

 BART is almost empty again and feels very safe during this latest Covid outbreak. So off I went to beautiful San Leandro yesterday to have lunch with Julia and Meriel. We had a nice time, but of course it is a long day for me with the to/fro walk to my BART station and the ride itself. But it beats the hell out of driving, that's for sure. Hermit Day today is my reward.

the mall ~ over and out

 Much as I dislike the suburbs, I loathe malls even more. But yesterday I hauled ass on BART to go to Sears at Tanforan in San Bruno. Big mistake. Sears and half the other stores and restaurants are gone and my big treat was a turkey sandwich from Subway. It was a semi-holiday for Indigenous People and Columbus, so what I noticed was all the fathers there in the food court with their kids. I could not wait to get back on BART and return to my city. We won last night's ballgame by one point. I can't take this...

BART with bleak

 The glory that is Oakland. Yesterday's ride to San Leandro was boring and I was able to do a lot of reading to/fro. Nice visit with Meriel and Julia, sitting outside in Meriel's garden. These days BART is spotlessly clean and not very crowded and thank god everyone is masked.

back on BART

Yesterday I had a lovely lunch outdoors with our friends Joha and Mary who live in the Oakland Hills. I took BART to the Rockridge Station and wow, what a change. No homeless, spotlessly clean, everyone in masks and spaced appropriately. It was a delightful day and I did not need supper last night.

once is enough

The BART bus bridge

Bart is repairing tracks on the weekend so we all piled out at the West
Oakland Station and took buses to the 19th Street Station and that was
a drag, even though I was prepared for it. "How well organized," I thought
at first, trying to stay positive. "How icky and crowded and awful," I
came to realize vowing never to try this again. It added about 30 to 45
minutes to the usual smooth trip.

But once I got to Walnut Creek, Carlini took me for a delicious Bento Box
Japanese lunch and then we walked to this delightful coffee shop with all
these lovely sayings about KINDNESS. The name of the coffee place is
Bondadoso which means kindness, as you might have guessed. So I was
feeling mellow for my trip home until the young man in the bus bonked
me 13 times with his back pack. Grrrrrrr.