On Saturday morning, I did something I'd wanted to do for a long time, and watched the sunrise from a hilltop in the Marin Headlands. The Headlands are just beyond the Golden Gate bridge - protected parkland overlooking the Pacific. Catching sunrise there is more difficult than it sounds because for probably 300 days of the year the Headlands are coated with fog in the early morning. If there's anytime during the year when you can hope for a clear dawn it's in the Fall here where we get periods of a week here and there where the fog stays mostly offshore and we experience real Summer-like heat.

As I left home the sky looked clear and promising, but, once on the freeway, when I took my first site of the ocean, the fog was lapping at the cliffs of the Headlands, so I wasn't sure if my own private hill would be in the fog or not.

There's a small hill midway through the Headlands which I like to think of as my "private hill" because, for some reason, I've never seen anybody up there whenever I've gone up there. So I'm always fairly sure I'll have it to myself. I've gone up there with friends and ... well... a couple of dates, and it's a special place for me. You can just sit and look out at the vast blue Pacific. It's so peaceful, particularly now, in comparison to where I live in San Francisco, which is anything but.

Going over the bridge, the top down on my jeep, the sun was breaking the horizon, but not reaching me on the bridge, and there was a little bit of a chill to the air. I took the exit for the Headlands, passed through the tunnel under the freeway, and headed up the hill. You go up and up, round and around, past the bridge again, until you reach the top of the two-way road, maybe 1500 feet above the Ocean. Then the road becomes one-way, and curves suddenly around a bluff while simultaneously descending, and you get an enormous sense of vertigo, as if you're diving into the Ocean - it's one of my favorite spots. A couple of bends in the road thereafter, I saw my hill - and it was free of fog, despite the fog still clinging to the cliffs below!

First sight of "my hill" (to the left) - free of fog!

After I'd hiked up to the top of the hill, the sun was starting to hit some of the higher hills in the distance, and with the fog, and the red glint on the distant hills it was quite beautiful.

Dawn begins to break out over the Headlands

As soon as the sun started to reach the hilltop, the temperature began to climb, shooting a delightful warmth into my bones, and the fog began to miraculously recede back across the ocean. I lay there a while just enjoying the morning sun, before heading home. All in all, it was a wonderful start to the day.

After working out at the gym, where I did okay despite Cecilia's (my trainer) continued absence on vacation in Italy, I drove over to Nob Hill to go to a "roof" party which Hunter, a new friend from work, was throwing in honor of Fleet Week. It was a hot, beautiful day by now, and from Hunter and Jimmy's rooftop, the views were teriffic.

At the roof party with our hosts Jimmy and Hunter

Fleet Week is some kind of city celebration of the Navy - I'm not sure I know the details. But there was a great big aircraft carrier in the Bay, and everyone was expecting the aerial display of the Red Angels overhead. Many of the nearbye rooftops were similarly populated with people hanging out and drinking beer - a peculiar, only-in-San-Francisco kind of thing.

Other parties nearbye, also awaiting the Red Angels

The aerial display itself was exciting, particularly since at the very start, the first we saw of the planes was when one of them shot by something like 150 feet away (didn't have my camera switched on!)

The Red Angels

In the evening, I met Brett at the Metreon Center for dinner and a movie - "Three Kings" - which we both loved. That makes three consecutive movies we've seen on three weekends which we really enjoyed, "American Beauty", and "Mystery Alaska" being the first two.