Camerasutra

Nobody makes better coffee drinks than Greg…nobody.  Greg loves to get angry in the morning and yell, “This coffee grinder is worth more than your life!”.  The abuse is worth it though.  It is a delicious cup.  Greg is actually very friendly.

After an amazing homemade breakfast of softboiled eggs, delicious bacon, and Lizano potatoes, Jess and I got in Dodge Avenger to head back to the city only to find a chink in the Avenger’s armor.  The front right tire was completely flat.  As I was already late for rollersoccer in the city, Greg and I did our best Nascar style tire change.  The fantasy of being on a NASCAR crew team was cut short the moment that we pulled out the mini-jack.  It took a good 10 minutes to jack up the car, a few minutes to change the tire, and another 10 to put in back down.

With our cute gimpish wheel, we headed back down to the city at a steady 55mph.  As we arrived in North Beach and rounded the corner of the North Beach playground, I saw the RollerSoccer game going on.  I can’t describe how giddy I was knowing that I was going to play for the first time in 8 years.  So many of the people that I used to play with were there.  It was pretty surreal to be back.  The only skates that they were able to get for me to use were a bit too big.  This was fine for the first hour and a half, but the final hour was spent fighting off incredible pain as every stride made the blister on the side of my foot grow larger.  By the time I finally took the skates off, there was just a giant flap of dead skin flappin’ around on the arch of my foot.

Jess hung around and watched some of the game, but she met up with Susu in Union Square to do some shopping, which left me free to do my own thing after Rollersoccer.  As tradition demands, we headed over to Rico’s Mexican Restaurant for the post game meal.  I immediately remembered the voracious hunger I used to experience after Rollersoccer games.  On Wednesday nights I would down burritos the size of a football and wash that down with an entire bag of tortilla chips.  I would still wake up the next morning about 2 pounds lighter.  Now I’m in my mid-thirties, so 2 tacos and a few chips was going to have to do it for me.  You know what they say, a moment on the hips…forever on the lips.

Kwame and I hung around after the meal and had a few Tecate beers while watching the Mexico vs. Costa Rica qualifier.  He relayed stories of previous Rollersoccer World Cups.  For the past 7 years there has been an international tournament somewhere in the world.  The past three years it was in Germany, then Paris, then San Francisco.  This August we are taking 2 teams from the US to Brussels to play against 16 other teams from 12 different nations.  I’m seriously contemplating joining them.  After 8 years off, I was not as good as I used to be, but I was much better than I thought I’d be.

On my way back down to Dan and Susu’s house, I stopped off to see David and Ali one more time.  Dave was pulling back up to his house just as I arrived.  Carter seemed to be doing much better, so its looks like we’re going to have a full recovery.  I am so happy for her and for David and Ali.  I couldn’t not imagine something happening to Sadie…it would break my heart.

Dan had planned out another amazing meal tonight.  He would be treating us to BBQ’d pork tenderloins, candied carrots, vegetable rice pilaf and the cutest individual cornbread cakes I’ve ever seen.  These of course are my names for them and I apologize to Dan because I know what we ate had much more refined names.  Dan is an absolute artist in the kitchen and I learned on my trip that you cannot rush art.  Jess and I freak out if we don’t eat by 8:30pm, but Dan is usually just getting started at the time.  I was seriously afraid they were going to have to wake me up for dinner.  The meal was served about 11pm and I must say that it was completely work the wait.  It is a real pleasure to get to eat from the kitchen of someone who is so passionate, knowledgeable and skilled with food.  Thank you so much Dan for feeding us such amazing food while we were there.  You and Greg are in a very contentious tie for the best home chef I know.