Meet the cavers!

Tuesday evening, Will and I met the local cavers and they seem to be a nice bunch!

Unlike our cosy weekly meetings with Spekul, SFCB (San Francisco Bay Chapter Grotto) members only meet every fourth Tuesday of the month. Admittedly, they seem to live much more geographically separated. For us, getting to the meeting took us an hour and 20 minutes by public transport!

We met them first at a pre-meeting dinner in a hamburger restaurant. Arriving at the restaurant we saw a huge table of young guys sitting all together, while none of the other folks looked, behaved or were present in numbers that would suit a thriving caving club. After some debating (we felt a bit intimidated, especially because there were no seats left around the table) we did go in and ask the group if they were the cavers. They turned out to be a football team ... Pfwieuw ...

The cavers we found hidden in a more secluded area of the restaurant and as in Europe, they turned out to be of all ages, some of them looking somewhat gruffy, an estimated 42 % of them female and all of them rather welcoming and very talkative ... ;-) Many people of the club seem to be (rather distinguished) geologists or other scientists, so we might learn a lot.

The meeting went well, although very different from what I'm used to at Spekul; so much more formal, but with a kind a humour that felt very familiar ... ;-) I've tried to sign up for a caving weekend for 7-11/11,- that is - if they have an opening ... They seem to have limits on how many people can go on a trip and also seem to insist on having a trip leader, a job which not too many people seem to want or can take upon them ... (first impressions ...) Will wouldn't be able to come that weekend since he "volunteered" to go to work that Saturday; they'll have a "hack day" at Metaweb or something the like ...

Yesterday, Will and I had a fun and very relaxed evening. We met after work to take a ride on the cable cars, went to Embarcadero - which luckily wasn't as touristy as during the day - paid another little visit to our friends the sea lions, had a nice view of the lights of SF, went to a book store and took the cable car back getting of at a small Italian restaurant where we had a late dinner.

Tonight we plan to visit the SF MOMA (Museum of Modern Arts, they're open almost until 21.00 h on Thursdays) and on Friday we'll give the California Academy of Sciences another try. Hope there won't be such a crowd on a weekday as last Sunday. On Saturday then, we'll finally be moving out of the Gaylord suites and into the house at Balboa Park! Looking forward to that!