Rugby and Sea Lions

In this post, I am in the second stage of the holiday; between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe.  I get to see the Rugby 7’s and quite a bit of the city whilst wandering around the shops with the pups.

The  beautiful copper covered Zoetrope “flat iron” building in North Beach https://www.cafezoetrope.com/introduction

Following an amazing few days in Yosemite, we high tailed it out of the park and away from the smoke as more and more of the area burned.  At the time of writing, some four weeks later, the fire, which is now referred to as ‘the Ferguson fire’ has only just been brought under control and over 94,992 acres burned.   The situation was so bad, the fire actually grew by 8,000 acres in one day alone.  Sadly, parts of the Yosemite national park were also closed for several weeks to tourists according to the National Park Service.  But, at least we got to experience a small part of the park.

The size of the fire, with half dome – the location of our campsite at the 2 o’clock position

After barely time enough to return the hire car and do the laundry, we were into the San Francisco 7’s.  My friend Alan is the rugby fan and not only used to play but can also hold a sensible conversation with other people about tactics and comparing the individual players.  Sadly, it’s all I can do to remember the beer order and transport it back to the stand without spilling it.  This is my first return to watching 7’s rugby having been the subject of a domestic ban following the Hong Kong 7’s some years before.  It wasn’t so much that I had been badly behaved, but some photographs of me looking rather dishevelled had appeared on social media and it was felt that I had better not go again.  I had no serious expectations of avoiding a similar expose this time, but I was in slightly more polite company and I felt that the rugby might feature more largely than the partying.

The matches, which are 7 a side and last for 7 minutes per side are fast and furious and are watched by a surprisingly large number of fans who travel around the world to watch the series.  The San Fran 7’s was held at the AT&T stadium at the home of the San Francisco Giants, the local major league baseball team and their stadium is located right on the bay in the south beach neighbourhood.

Approaching the stadium and feeling very excited.

As you can see, the ball park doesn’t look too bad and during the baseball season the yachties sail right up to the stadium and try to retrieve any balls hit right out of the park and into the bay.

Taking a quiet moment to contemplate how much I love beer on the edge of San Francisco bay 

Having unsuccessfully played ball sports at any level, I am always impressed by anyone who has reasonable hand eye coordination and can chase a ball without falling flat on their face. Don’t get me wrong, I can shoot a running rabbit or a flying pheasant, but can I hit a ball with a stick or catch one whilst on the run? Nope, not a chance.

As you can see, the 7’s is quite well attended…

Rather like at the Hong Kong 7’s, there are a number of characters who all vie for the cameras eye and to end up on the giant screen.  They generally dress up and play up and I was pleased to see that there was a ZZ Top looking cowboy in assless denim chaps.

He got rid of the chaps later and happily danced around just in his denim jocks, becoming more and more sunburned as the day went on.

But not for this cowboy I suspect…

There was hugely muscular bare chested Samoan with long crimped hair and a flower behind his ear, doing a traditional dance every time his team scored and a bare chested man in an avocado suit with his pot belly representing the seed wandering around.  I’ll spare you pictures of them.

The one thing you don’t want to do at the 7’s is fall asleep in the stands.  One  tired and emotional young man, who had been drinking the ‘almost beer’ that some Americans drink and he had a power nap.  Graciously, the crowd had a whip around to find empty beer cups to keep him company.

By the time he woke up, the tower was three times as high and he received a huge cheer from the crowd.

Australia was out pretty quickly unfortunately, but England made it to the finals only to be beaten by New Zealand (33 to 12) clearing the competition out of the way, NZ also won the womens 7’s after beating France.

The next day, the pups took the train back in to the city and I hired bicycles so we could ride up the waterfront and on to Pier 39 to see the Sea Lions loafing around in the sun.  The original intention was to ride up and over the Golden Gate bridge, but we struggled to fit that in with various shopping requirements- there’s a great Levis shop there…  Apparently the Sea Lions  arrived just before an earthquake in the bay area in the late 80’s and have stayed, in fluctuating numbers ever since.  They make a lot of noise and are pretty smelly, but everyone loves them.

No sun screen needed, just throw fish…

Lake Tahoe came next (or thereabouts) and courtesy of our lovely friends, we had somewhere special to stay.  More later.

Jerry.