Filed under: daily digs
My weekend trip to SF was busy, tiring, fun, too short–but was well worth every dollar and minute spent there. I worked for most of Friday and then caught a flight that landed me in Oakland at 5:30, just in time to BART it over to the Glen Park Recreation Center for the bulk of Friday night’s capoeira workshop. After carrying a large backpack uphill–and being pretty nervous about the workshop–I arrived at the rec center totally sweaty. I immediately said hi to mestre–after six long years–and was greeted with a loud “Toyota!!” and a hug. He then said, “I heard you speak Portuguese now” and the dove into a Portuguese explanation to a visiting mestre about who I was. He then shooed me off to change and join the workshop.
Omulu’s cord (belt) system goes like this: Beginners start with a white belt, then white-yellow, then full yellow, and then yellow-orange (where I am) and so on for many more levels. I’ve been a yellow-orange for six years but certainly do not feel like I have improved over that number of years. As such, I felt intimidated to be put into a group of other yellow-oranges in the workshop to practice certain sequences. I felt thrown off, having rushed over from my flight, and didn’t feel warmed up and mentally ready at all. So I was super relieved when our little practice groups dispersed, and the entire group trained together.
It was such a relief to see familiar faces from Seattle–my new capoeira family, with whom I feel so comfortable. They had all been there for at least a day or two already. It was also nice to see a couple of familiar faces from the old days. A few of them now have kids, so it’s odd to think that we were all a lot younger before–and now, we were “real” adults (whatever that means). I had started training capoeira when I was 20–my last semester in college, so the bulk of my time with the SF group was during my early 20s.
The workshop was good and tiring; the batizado was long and (for the most part) interesting. I forced myself to get into the roda at least once, mostly because Na and Christopher were there and wanted to see me play. Since I was neither getting “baptized” nor graduating, my only opportunity to play was when full yellow cords graduated to yellow-oranges, and current yellow-oranges were called upon to play with them in the roda.
Sadly, I can’t really say the highlights of the weekend were capoeira-related. Saturday morning, Mel (Matt’s co-worker who trains capoeira with me) and I had breakfast at Wing Lee Bakery (YUM), got Marco Polo at Sweet Delite (double YUM), and then walked around Irving before we had to help set up for the batizado. Jennifer was nice enough to drive us there, and sadly, we didn’t get a whole lot of time with her, but it was nice to see her even for a short time.
I always seem to run into people I know in the most unexpected places, and this trip was no exception. I was in Wishbone on Irving, and ran into some people from Sacramento! One woman used to be in the college group at church when my mom was a counselor, and another was a high school student when my parents taught the high school Sunday School class at their old church.
It was super fun to regroup with our Seattle folks for the batizado. Mel and I were like the Doublemint Twins–two shorties, wearing pigtails, in matching white tank tops from Joanns. After the batizado, we hung out at someone’s training space–we had hoped for some impromptu dancing which didn’t happen, so the Seattle group busted out with some funky moves–salsa, as well as some really cheesy, corny moves that the SF group refrained from joining in on. Then for about an hour, the SF group taught us how to flick bottlecaps, saying that it was a California thing until I told them that I grew up in Sacramento and never did that. So apparently it was a Bay Area thing. After a few people got hit in the eyes with caps (some by their own doing), the activity fizzled out.
At one point, some of the visiting mestres came in, and the mood of the room totally shifted. Everyone quieted down, I noticed someone began hiding the empty beer bottles, and people joked about how it was time to go home. Meanwhile, Mel, another girl from Seattle, and I were in the corner creating something called “funky capoeira”–incorporating epileptic-like movements with capoeira moves. It was ugly–but hilarious, and yes, all without a drop of alcohol. Frankly, I think the mestres wanted more of a party–after all, they ARE human–and they soon disappeared. They supposedly took some phone calls outside, but probably used that as an excuse to leave the lame party.
At 2:30 a.m., after I started going around asking people about getting a ride home or getting dropped off at the MUNI station, the party broke up. It actually was dying long before. Some of us had been slumped against the wall, talking quietly, trying to keep each other awake, waiting for our rides to leave. Mel and I got a ride from one of the most sober people there, made it home safely, and went to bed around 3:30. I can’t remember the last time I had been up–and out–that late.
Sunday, we woke up disgustingly early for getting to bed so late, but I really wanted to make the most of the last day in SF. We hung out with Na and Christopher the whole day–went to the farmer’s market downtown, ate at Lori’s Diner on Powell Street (near Blondie’s Pizza, where Annette used to take Trish and me during our visits when we were still in high school), and shopped at the Haight.
The end of our trip was quite hectic. Jennifer wanted to take us to the best boba place, in her opinion. And since she and I were quite passionate about our boba reviews back when we worked together at Canon, I just had to try out this place. We had some trouble finding it, so this all took longer than expected. We arrived at the Embarcardero BART station at 5 p.m., and our flight was at 6:30–but we still had to take the train to Oakland, and then a bus from the BART station to the airport. We arrived at the airport at 6:05 p.m., and were told by the ticket agents that we weren’t allowed to check in less than 30 minutes before our flight. Could we get to SF airport for an 8:30 flight, they asked us. Are you kidding me??
They called someone at the gate who said that we could TRY to get on our original flight. But seats were not guaranteed–and we had to run. RUN, they said, emphatically. So run we did—two shorties, with large backpacking packs on our backs and smaller daypacks strapped to our fronts. We were laughing the whole time, but I was praying inside that we’d make our flight. We stood in line at security, fidgeting like we had to pee, and then dashed through as soon as our bags were cleared. I didn’t even bother putting my shoes all the way back on. I ran to the gate with my toes in the shoes and my heels just resting on the ends of my shoes.
We got to the gate, and the gate attendants said there was still plenty of time. What the….?! We were assigned seats and were able to board the flight. What a crazy ending to our weekend. And to top it all off, Mel and I both caught colds the day after we came back. But like I said before, it was all worth it.
