Most people who haven’t known me for long assume that I have only lived in two states, Washington and Florida. But there was a time when I lived in the San Francisco area.<\/p>\n
I’m not sure if I can really count it as living in another state. It was somewhat brief. Still, I did give up my apartment in Bellevue, put a lot of stuff in storage and moved the important stuff down to the Bay area. So, what else could I call this?<\/p>\n
Madness perhaps? That’s a great word for it. But I didn’t really think it was at the time. I had just left my job, I had met what I thought was a great girl in the Caribbean, we were doing the commuter relationship back and forth up and down the west coast, so it just seemed natural that I would run away from my entire life in Seattle and move to Florida, I mean, San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Looking back, I’m not sure I should ever be allowed to go on trips anywhere tropical unsupervised by at least one responsible adult. I have ended up in more mischief there than anyone can dream off. I just seem to go “island” when I’m there, losing all my senses and sensibilities, chasing off after seemingly exotic women with reckless abandon.<\/p>\n
This only occurs to me as I write this, but that’s how I ended up with Faith, Connie and Michelle… all trips to the tropics where I simply lose my mind.<\/p>\n
I had met Connie, the psycho girlfriend in Cayman. She was living in Texas at the time, was always “fixin'” to do something or other. As such, she was fixin’ to move to San Francisco. How much better could this be?<\/p>\n
After dating for about six months, I decided it was high time that I give spend more time with her. She had a job, I didn’t, so it was hi-ho, hi-ho, off to San Francisco I go.<\/p>\n
I loaded up my car with everything that would fit. The poor Accord was sagging under the weight. I had a wonderful going away party with my friends, and off I went. Eighteen hours later, I ended up in San Francisco, well, San Mateo to be exact, which is where her apartment was.<\/p>\n
I had planned to start a new life there. I had a pretty solid resume with five years in public relations\/corporate communications and I wasn’t really that far from Silicon Valley. This is, however, before the days of the Internet, so job searches were still done the old fashioned way — look through the paper, send out some resumes, write pitch letters to employers — the usual.<\/p>\n
I got a couple nibbles, but I always seemed to be on the wrong side of the tracks, or should I say, Bay. The interviewer would ask where I lived, I would tell them, then they would say, “Oh, you don’t want to be making that commute” and they’d hang up. Interview over.<\/p>\n
I, of course, became a bit despondent. I tried to perk myself up. I was living in the Bay area after all, the beaches, the famed San Francisco waterfront, the Golden Gate, and Napa Valley just beyond. How would I not like living here?<\/p>\n
I also had a girlfriend. It wasn’t like I was alone. But I felt very, very alone. So alone that I started to slip into a depression. I didn’t really notice it at first, until my psycho-ex asked me one day when I was going to change out of my bathrobe and maybe take a shower. Seven days had past and I didn’t even know it.<\/p>\n
I was in the depths of despair, no doubt about it. Trying to remedy the situation, I took a shower, my first in a week. But soon I found myself back in the throes of a depression. And I was back in the robe.<\/p>\n
That’s when the earthquakes started happening. I was sitting in the bedroom one morning when something they call “swarms” arrived. These are traveling quakes, that start in one area, and move up the coast. I was watching the news in Santa Cruz, south of us, when the studio started shaking. Then, moments later, the waterbed I was laying on started to wiggle, then gyrate, and then the San Francisco newsroom would start to shake on the television.<\/p>\n
This went on for about an hour. It was mesmerizing and a bit disconcerting at the same time. I don’t like earthquakes. Never have. And here I was in a part of the country where they not only occurred with some frequency, but had become my primary source of entertainment for the day.<\/p>\n
I had had enough. I had to move back home. Exactly one month had passed since I packed up my whole life and came to San Francisco to start a new one. I was already done with it. Bad idea.<\/p>\n
My psycho-ex was not happy. But I assured her that it wasn’t over between us. And, unfortunately, it wasn’t. We would continue to torment and torture one another for another two years. But as always, that’s another story.<\/p>\n
I headed back north once again. As I have done many times before and since, I started all over again. I got a new apartment in White Center and a new job at Pacific First Bank. And in the intervening summer before the bank job I engineered a mutiny with the Seafair Pirates, starting up a new group taking their most prized and senior members with me.<\/p>\n
Not a bad four months. Oh, and I got to go to Tahiti, well Moorea, which is the island next to it and far better. I think I will save that for another day, too. It was the price I had to pay for leaving psycho-ex momentarily in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Out on the Treasure Coast, dreaming of exotic Polynesian women and giant cockroaches of death,<\/p>\n
– Robb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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