Gary Larson

DULLES, Va. – I was planning to write the last post on this blog before I left Oakland last night. I composed the whole thing and was about 30 seconds away from posting it when the flight crew said they had shut the door and all electronic devices needed to be turned off.

I set my computer to Sleep mode so that I could finish the post in the morning, closed the monitor and went to sleep almost immediately after takeoff. But because of that, I never saw that my computer had never actually gone into Sleep mode, and was still running. When I woke up, the battery was dead, the computer was off and my post was gone.

So I have to start over completely. Almost exactly eight hours before I started writing this post, I was walking out of the Borders at 3rd and King in San Francisco and starting to head to the airport. As I walked past AT&T Park one last night, I felt two conflicting emotions: melancholy that the trip was finally over and urgency to get to the airport as fast as possible.

Between then and now, I’ve taken two trains, a bus, an airplane and one of those funky Dulles Airport mobile lounges, and I’ve slept just enough to write write something cognizant this morning. Now I’m sitting on another bus, one that will take me from the airport to the Metro in downtown D.C.

Although building with concrete hasn’t been fashionable for a while, the Eero Saarinen-designed Main Terminal still stands as an architectural masterpiece.

With floor-to-ceiling glass and steel bisected by soaring, curved concrete columns, Dulles harkens back to the time when air travel was a pleasure, not a burden. Walking through that kind of space on a sunlit morning definitely cheered me up a bit.

Yesterday seems long, long ago at this point, even if technically the day only ended five hours ago on the west coast. It began with another CalTrain ride into San Francisco, this one starting in Mountain View instead of San Jose.

Though it took the same amount of time to get there from where I was staying as it did to get to the CalTrain station in San Jose, Mountain View is half an hour closer to San Francisco and therefore is a cheaper ride.

(Of course, I didn’t figure this out until the last chance I had to do so.)

After arriving in San Francisco, I dropped my suitcase off at a bicycle garage next to the CalTrain station. The guy behind the desk was happy to take the bag; it certainly seemed like I wasn’t the first person to have made such a request.

From there, I headed to Embarcadero Center. It’s an open-air, but covered, shopping center that is broken into four parts by the city street grid. I walked through the whole thing, then ended up on Embarcadero Plaza. The centerpiece of the space is a big concrete sculpture that includes a number of waterfalls and a stone path under them. So I walked through the path to take some pictures.

From there, I headed across the street to the Ferry Terminal building for lunch. The terminal has a great market inside, and while it’s higher-end than Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia or Eastern Market in D.C., there’s still plenty of good food.

I almost never got inside, though, because there was a farmer’s market outside and seemingly every stall had free samples. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen as incredible a range of amazingly tasty fresh produce. I probably sampled six different varieties of peaches, four kinds of plums and three kinds of tomatoes, as well as some grapes, hummus, kettle corn and almond brittle.

Tomatoes and onions and greens, oh my!

It was almost enough for an entire meal, but not quite. So when I finally got inside, I went to the Imperial Tea Court and got a dim sum platter. It did the job, and in what I consider a minor upset of the odds I was able to eat everything with chopsticks.

I wasn’t as fond of the Chinese version of iced tea, though. The lychee flavoring gave it a kind of sweetness that I didn’t quite like, and it had a creamy foam on top. I’m sure a lot of people really like it, but I’ll take the Diet Snapple I bought for the plane ride instead.

After lunch, I walked along the Embarcadero for a few blocks, then cut across town to the TransAmerica building to take some more pictures. That was followed by a MUNI ride to the Mission District, where I visited a bakery that a friend recommended. The line was really long and slow, but everything looked very good and I could tell why the place was so popular.

When I got back downtown, I decided to check out Union Square. In addition to having a really nice public park, the area is full of high-end shops and department stores. I went in the Nike store and Macy’s, albeit just to look instead of buying anything.

By that time, it was getting close to dinner – and closing time at the bike garage. So I went back to King Street, and spent the rest of the evening over there.

After getting a bite to eat and picking up my suitcase, I spent an hour recharging batteries at the Borders. Then it was time for one last ride on the MUNI and BART, and finally the flight back east.

It’s hard to believe the trip is over. These last eight days have been an incredible whirlwind of sights, sounds and the full range of American cultural identities.

It started with the rolling green West Virginia countryside, then turned into the majestic Chicago skyline that rises so magnificently along the Chicago River. Endless flat rows of corn and soybeans in Iowa led to soaring panoramas in the Rocky Mountains and small towns across the Nevada desert.

And finally, the Sierra Nevada redwoods rolled down into Sacramento and on to the Bay Area, with San Jose’s sun-drenched office parks and San Francisco’s laid back, post-industrial chic.

Yet as great as the scenery was, the real meaning of the trip was found in the people I spent time with. I got to visit a number of people I hadn’t seen in a long time, and got to know some very interesting fellow travelers on the train.

All of us who use social networking tools on a regular basis know that they help us create a cyber-manifestation of ourselves that can easily become the person that we want to be instead of the person we really are. These tools are all useful, and are often enjoyable as well.

But I value real, face-to-face interactions a lot more. Sure, we’d all probably rather be something other than what we are in reality. But that reality is what we have to face in the present tense, so we might as well embrace it and make the most of it.

Just after I took the photo at the top of this post, my camera said the memory card was full. It was a fitting way to draw this amazing journey, as well as this blog, to a close.

Writing this blog has been a blast. And the truth is, pretty much all of you know the reality-based version of me. So you know how much I was looking forward to the trip, why it mattered to me so much and why I so dearly wanted to write about it.

I did struggle through one period last night where I felt too tired to get on here. But I decided I should at least try to say something, and suddenly I hit a groove and was off and running. That’s just the way it is sometimes.

I thank all of you so very much for reading along over the last week. Perhaps some day, I’ll have an opportunity to do something like this again. Until then, I’m headed back to the real world, for better or for worse.

I’ll see you there.