In San Diego I chose the supposed “downtown” location, and ended up 2.5 miles away from what I would really call downtown, spending most of my savings on parking.

Hotels in the Boca Raton/Delray area are expensive, so the $91 I paid Sunday night for th “3-star” Boca Raton Bridge hotel was a good deal–less than half the posted rate at all the other places I looked.  Location was decent, but the hotel was decidedly less than advertised.

I noticed the first bad sign early, when I looked at my room key:

Not quite the way I imagine room service in a fine hotel.

You know your’e in trouble when they buy their amenities at Costco:

Not exactly Evian.

Supposedly there was high-speed wireless internet.  In actuality, there was low speed wireless internet, but it took me over an hour to connect to it in the evening and it was impossible in the morning.  Something about re-setting the routers in the north of the building.  Or the south.  Or both.  Whatever the problem, the service sucked.

The soap was good, though. Hotels get their soap and shampoo from companies that pay for the chance to have you sample their products, and I really liked this stuff.  Florida had an Orange County before California was a state, I think, and the orange is pretty important around these parts.  The soap and shampoo are strongly scented with orange oil, and I was like a walking orchard all day.  I loved it.

The best part of the hotel.

Not just orange, but “Sicilian Red Orange Extracts”.  If it’s Sicilian, you know it has to be good.

I don’t much recommend the Boca Raton Bridge Hotel, but I sure like their soap.

Of course, it was a Coast Guard certified passenger vehicle, so it had all the necessary safety equipment.

Sophisticated safety systems for out continued good health.

Carefully designed financial systems.

We’re in sunny Florida, so it’s always warm, but it can be a mite breezy on the waterway, so we came prepared.

Susan stays warm at all times.

We were bottom fishing–looking for bass and grouper and catfish and whatever else live low in the water.  Captain Tom was an expert at handling hopeless all-thumbs amateurs, baiting our hooks, casting them out and taking the fish off when we got one.

And get one we did–we caught a lot of fish today.  Every last one of them too small to keep.  I laugh at Lorin Waxman for catching trout and then throwing them back, but all we did today was catch little fish and not keep them.  Which I suppose is just as well–what would we want with these silly fish, anyhow?  I doubt that they are good eating and we don’t need pets.

Enjoying a bright and sunny day

With just one of the many monster fish we caught. Real fishermen use ones this size for bait.

Looking relaxed.

Gail caught the cool fish of the day, a puffer fish.  As the guide held him to de-hook him, he puffed up to 3 times his original size to scare us off.  It worked, too.

Check out the teeth on this leviathan.

Although Gail got the pufffer, the big fishing rewards went to Susan.  It seems that last week, a woman got a fish on the hood and got so excited she let go of the rod, dropping it deep in the water.  Susan, somehow, inexplicably, magically, “caught” it today, pulling it up from the bottom and bringing it back in.  Anyone can catch a fish, only SR can catch a fishing pole.

Heading back, calm and satisfied with a good day of fishing.

We had contracted for a 4 hour trip, but 3 hours was all the fun we could handle, so Captain Tom pointed the little flat-bottom boat back to the base and we went home.

Gail and Susan started playing bridge online, Karl opened some wine, and I packed a bag and got in the car for the 3 hour drive to Boca Raton, where I am taking a photo workshop in the morning.  I found a room on Priceline for $79 in a supposedly 3 star hotel, the Boca Raton Bridge Hotel.  The hotel isn’t much and it took me over an hour to get the internet connection working, but it’s only 1 night and I’m out of here at 7:30 am, so who cares.

Tomorrow the big workshop with my photo idol, Rick Sammon, then the 3 hour drive back to Orlando.  Lots of stuff happening, stay tuned.

 Former presidential candidate Herman Cain endorsed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for the Republican nomination for president on Saturday night in West Palm Beach, Fla.

“I hearby officially and enthusiastically endorse Newt Gingrich for president of the United States,” said Cain, who saw his own candidacy dissolve amid accusations of unwanted sexual advances.

Gingrich is in a tough fight in Florida with Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor. Florida’s primary is Tuesday.

Makes sense to me–Herm’s at least still married to the first wife.  Newty makes him look like a choirboy.  Not so much an endorsement as professional cheaters courtesy.

Lo! How the mighty have fallen.

Well, we’re here.  Started too early, but that’s life.  The flight was easy, a short layover in Dallas to change planes and about 2 more hours to Orlando.   SR has been telling Gail since Thursday that she was already waiting at the airport, so she had no problem finding us.  The luggage came off the belt faster than ever, and off to the downtown condo we tootled.

Susan and Karl are wine snobs.  We had dinner tonight with their wine snob friend, Tim, and spent much time discussing how well some bottle of fermented grape juice had “opened up”, how this one had a “very light nose” and that one had “excellent structure”.  My diet coke was just fine, if perhaps a trifle impertinent.

But they drink red wine.  Rich, dark, mouth-puckering red wine.  Gail drinks white, and we were in for a tremendous surprise when SR opened the cupboard to get Gail a glass—not just the glass but the wine lives in the cabinet, in a bright yellow box that looks like it should hold corn starch.  Is this what passes for wine snobbery here in the land of the pink plaid bermuda shorts?

SR was dressed in her official “530 on the 18th” chef’s coat:

Susan, aka "Chef Margarethe", preparing dinner

The wine may be from the wrong side of the tracks (and it may not–screw tops are now acceptable for fine wine, why not paper boxes?), but the dinner was first rate.

A 3-rib prime is perfect for the 5 of us.

Prime rib of beef, baked potato and Yorkshire Pudding, preceded by a pear salad.  Tim, who is a big shot banker in real life, is a baker in his dreams, and he brought a loaf of home made ciabatta that was superb.  The only thing this Orlando feast needed was our friend Frances, and I hope we’ll see her before the week is out.

Sunday we are off on an adventure–no grass growing under anyone’s feet around here.  We’re going out on a fishing boat, which is slightly odd since none of us is a fisherman, but if your in Florida, do as the Floridians and it was either that or stay home and watch the incessant political ads on TV, and the ads smell worse than the fishing boat.

I’m headed to Delray beach to take a photo workshop on Monday. One of my favorite photographers, Rick Sammon, is teaching and I’m hoping to get a lot out of it. He’d better be good, to justify being up this darned early.

———–

Now we’re in Dallas, changing planes. They give out the gate assignments for connecting flights just becore landing and I think some poor schnook got up for our pre-dawn flight to DFW only to connect to a flight right bak in the same direction going to Honolulu. Another insane routing.

A couple more hours and we’ll be in Orlando and the debauchery will begin. Stay tuned.

Sunrise over the Sierra from the plane window.

Lorenzo Pisoni performs his one-man show about growing up as the youngest member of the Pickle Family Circus. Production photo by Chris Bennion.

Last night we saw Humor Abuse, a one-man show, at the ACT theater in the City. It was mildly interesting, quite funny in spots, but not something I can give an unqualified recommendation.

Lorenzo Pisoni, the star, author and protagonist of this 90 minute one-man one-act opus, was born into the Pickle Family Circus, and started performing when he was 2.  A lifetime of experience shows not only in his unabashed acrobatic, juggling and clowning skills, but in his incredible comfort onstage–he just belongs there, and he knows it.  The Chronicle revue says that his “Arrow-shirt man” good looks limit his ability to be funny, but that certainly didn’t seem to be a problem last night.  He’s both great looking and hilarious.

If the evening had stuck to funny as a theme, it would have been great.  Pisoni is a talented clown and could easily have kept us entertained the entire show.  Sadly, it turns out that he only uses the clownery to stitch together the story of his life, and his sad, unhappy relationship with his father, Larry Pisoni, also known as Lorenzo Pickle, the founder and beating heart of the Pickle Family Circus.

Lorenzo grew up in a house where Dad was a clown, 24 hours a day.  He was performing at 2, had a steady gig as his father’s stooge onstage from 6 to 10, and went off with the circus without his parents at age 11 for 4 years or so.  He worked with his father onstage and off, lived with him, ate with him, and still never had the relationship he wanted.

I absolutely couldn’t work up any emotion to care.  It’s not like my family was perfect, not hardly.  It’s not like other theatrical productions have been unable to make me care–I can’t watch Field of Dreams without tears when Kevin Costner’s father says “want to have a catch?”, or The Promise when Rod Steiger starts to talk to his son for the first time.  This play simply doesn’t grab my emotions at all.  It only sounded like so much new age whining to me.

Pisoni seems hardly the worse for his upbringing.  Coming off the road in his early teens, he attended an upscale private school in San Francisco, then went to Vassar.  After college he worked as a ringmaster for the Cirque du Soleil and as a serious actor in New York. Not a bad life, overall.

Humor Abuse will be a the ACT theater for another week or two.  It wasn’t awful, and the slapstick is tremendous.  I wish I could say more.

Unfortunately, we get about 3 weeks of winter here, it seems.  It isn’t even February yet, and spring is already bustin’ out all over.

To wit: I was looking out my back window this afternoon, and this is what I saw

The first robin of spring is here in my yard

The trees are still bare, but the birds are back among the buds.

I want more winter!!

But the robins are nice, too.  They migrate up to Canada for the summer and are just passing through.  We’ll see them again in September or October as they head south for the winter, short though it may be.

We went to a party at the live/work space of Zannah Noe, in an area near Potrero Hill known colloquially as Dogpatch, at roughly 20th Ave and Tennessee.  Zannah is a painter, as well as a professional cook, who splits her time between the City, Santa Fe, NM and the East Coast.  She’s also gorgeous, but that’s just a side benefit.

Zannah in the loft area, where she sleeps surrounded by art.

Looking out from the loft across the living space to the 2nd loft she just built.

The entire space isn’t very large, which is why she built the second loft space.  It works well for an oil painter, who doesn’t need a particularly large studio.

Looking down on the living area.

Lofts tend to have small efficiency kitchens. Artists tend to decorate them well.

Zannah and Gail leaning over the loft railing. Mike on the stairs.

Steep stairs save space.

The studio, and a commission she is working on.

Everyone needs a computer center.

It was pouring rain, and the dog had to go out.  Strangely, this dog doesn’t like rain, so they bundle him up in a rain coat and a sweater for his very long neck.

We were there for a party–Zannah is leaving for 2 months in Santa Fe, and then a protracted road trip on the East Coast, and wanted to say goodbye to all her friends.  People kept arriving, carrying food and kids and dogs.  A work crew was mounting a box atop Zannah’s van (a 1983 relic named “Foxy Brown”) so that more stuff could be crammed in.  Music was playing. There was no football game, because there was  no television. The hallway outside was stacked with items to be discarded unless somebody wanted them–Art in America magazines, an old computer, a DVD player.

There is a myth that artists sit around and discuss philosophy and the meaning of art and life.  Ain’t so.  Artists discuss galleries and contracts and the methods and materials of their art.   They talk about the best schools for their kids and where real estate prices are going. They don’t have to argue politics, since they are almost uniformly of the very liberal persuasion, but then this is in San Francisco so that’s no surprise.

Gail and I agree that it would be lovely to have such a place as a pied à terre, to spend weekends in the City visiting galleries and museums and theater.  It just wouldn’t be $600,000  (or more) worth of lovely.  But it sure was a great way to spend the afternoon.

So we went to the Taj Campton Place Hotel, on Sutter near Union Square across the street from the Hyatt.  It was raining and I’m lazy, so I pulled right up in front and gave the car to the valet.  More about this later.

The Campton Place is a small, luxury, boutique hotel, catering to the people who don’t like bit chains like Hyatt and Hilton.  Personal service, and lots of it, is their hallmark.

The dining room is hushed and understated, except for the large chandelier which is either a genuine Dale Chihuly or something very Chihuly-esque.

Chihuly or Chihuly-lite, it's pretty impressive in either case.

The food is, as one would expect, impressive.  I went for the classic breakfast–eggs, potatoes, sausage.  It comes with  a glass of the best fresh-squeezed OJ ever.  The basket of toast is just right.  The little plate with softened butter and three dishes of very good jams was a delight.

The four of us shared a malted walnut waffle.  I’m not usually a waffle guy, but this was exceptional.  Michael had house made hash, Gail and Harry enjoyed the salmon benedict.  The food is every bit as good as you would expect.

At the next table, under the chandelier, I saw a kid with the greatest looking pancakes I’ve ever seen:

What can I say but "WOW"

That’s the good stuff–great looking room, great food.  The bad stuff–service was absurdly slow.  We had to ask twice for coffee, three times for Gail’s champagne.  The waffle took forever to come out of the kitchen.

The prices are the usual big-city insane.  My eggs and potatoes were $23.75, but that included the OJ and the iced tea. You don’t go to this place if you just want a quick, cheap meal–that’s what Denny’s is for.  This is all about gracious dining, excellent food, and perhaps on a better day, fine service.

Now here’s the best part.  After we finished, we took a little walk to do some shopping and then returned to ransom the car.  They never really parked the car, just moved it 10 feet forward into the red zone on Stockton Street in front of the hotel–the cops are properly greased and the hotel gets to leave the car where it would cost you or me a $100 ticket.  I was fully prepared to  have to pungle up an absurd amount to cover the parking, and was utterly stunned to be charged SIX measly dollars.  You lose some, you win some.