I'm Pretty Sure I Left it Here: Looking for My Heart and a Parking Space in San Francisco

You are more likely to find an Emperor Penguin with a camelback full
of ice-cold Gatorade in the Mojave Desert than affordable gasoline in
Southern California. The way Sedona's poor little Mercury Tracer is
sucking up the fuel pulling the U-Haul trailer, I may have to start
selling my body to Japanese businessmen just to get home. Now, I know
what you're thinking--"Start?"

We decided to have one last hurrah before heading home, so we took a
little detour into San Francisco and, like everything else in
California so far, it cost us dearly. Toll into the city pulling a
trailer: $6. Parking for the car and trailer at parking meters for an
hour and a half: $8. Trying to find two adjacent parking spaces we
could pull the car and trailer straight into in downtown SF:
priceless. Obviously we didn't glean anything from our experience in
Nashville, where we learned (and as U-Haul Inc probably notes in their
rental agreement), you can't get the trailer into a parking garage--it
has something to do with violating the laws of physics. Actually,
considering the chutzpah it took to even attempt such a foolhardy
feat, we did pretty well finding said parking--except we were outside
of our desired goal of Chinatown with no time to get there via public
transit. Playing the hand we were dealt, we wandered around until we
found a promising Chinese Restaurant, called, oddly enough, Canton
Restaurant. Despite the fact that the place was enormous, the
proprietor sat us next to the only other people in the restaurant--a
college-aged girl, her boyfriend, and her very Russian parents who, by
the sound of their accents, were fresh from the motherland. As we sat
and discussed Sedona's just-ended relationship, we stopped to listen
as the Russian mother listed the things that were most important in a
relationship to her daughter. "Love," she said in halting English,
"love is the most important thing." Sedona and I smiled--I think
she's going to be OK. Our meal was quite good and, breaking our
streak rather than the bank, was quite reasonably priced. As we were
leaving, our waitress, a middle-aged Chinese woman wearing a red Santa
hat said, "Happy Holidays." "Happy Holidays to you too," I said
smiling.

Next up: Homeward Bound.