When the weather is hot and muggy like it’s been for much of the summer in New York, it’s immediately invigorating to enter the optimum and consistently cool and dry air here in San Francisco.

The weather is like a broken record. Mid 60’s by day with powerful sunshine. At night, breezy, refreshing mid 50’s

Day 1 of my stay in the city by the bay took me to Giants/Mets at a sold out AT & T. I took the number 30 bus from near my hotel. The fare was $2 and the ride due south lasted fifteen minutes.

I entered the ballpark when the gates opened and watched BP from behind the Met dugout. Unlike at CitiField, the ushers let you get close to the bags for the 90 minute warmup session.

Giants GM Brian Sabean could be seen embracing Met third baseman David Wright before the game. The two engaged in lengthy conversation. The fraternization caught my eye because I wonder whether Sabean may someday try to snag Wright away given the Met money woes.

Wright was rested and left out of the starting lineup Tuesday night. He ended up striking out as a pinch-hitter with the bases loaded in the seventh inning. D-Wright’s knees buckled on a 2-2 curve from the Freak and home plate ump Bill Miller called strike three. Inning over. Rally over. Giants won 4-1.

Tim Lincecum (pictured above) has had an awful season but looked good last night despite being unable to muster anything faster than 94 mph on his heater. Other cities would have turned on Lincecum but Giants fans pushed a lot of positive energy Timmy’s way from the outset of this contest. The strikeout of Wright ended with a small fist-pump by Lincecum.

Met rookie Matt Harvey made his second MLB start and pitched well too. Harvey works very fast. His delivery is very compact. It appeared to me that some kind of elongation of his motion may serve him well.

Pacifico from the stand in center field was my beer of choice. I sat in the left field bleachers for the first couple innings. When I was displaced, I found a good standing room spot along the third base line. My assigned seat was somewhere in the upper deck. I never made it up there. The ticket cost just $10 plus fees from Stub Hub. I’ll do the same routine the next two games.

I took a bus back to the hotel after it was over. The line for the #30 was too long so I jumped on a bus that simply said “Market Street” on the marquis and it seemed to cover the same route.

My reasonably-priced lodging spot at the corner of Bush and Powell is next door to a theatre featuring performances by male go-go dancers. The Cornell Hotel de France is situated on a street loaded with independently-owned businesses.

When I checked in, the clerk asked me to sign a registration card. She then escorted me to my room and informed me breakfast would be served the next morning starting at 7:30 AM. She handed me a ring containing the room key plus a key to the hotel’s front door which is locked in the evening.

My room is set far enough from the street so that city noises are barely audible. You can hear screeching cable cars with ringing bells in the distance.

This hotel is similar in character to the King George just a few blocks from here. Jeff D and I stayed at the George a couple years ago – and I nearly ended up there this time. A slew of positive comments on Trip Advisor steered me to the Cornell however and I’m glad I’m here. The breakfast was excellent. A fancy basement dining room was the setting for a complimentary choice between eggs served any way or french toast.

The hotel’s location is excellent. It’s a few blocks up a large hill due north from Union Square.

The walk from the Montgomery Bart station with a heavy suitcase after a train ride from the airport was a bit taxing because of the steep gradient up Bush from Montgomery. But now that I’m walking without a load, the hills aren’t as imposing.

I had Wednesday lunch with Paul from the Ft. McHenry Roosters of the World (fantasy) Baseball Association at Taqueria Cancun on Mission between 18th and 19th. The pollo asada burrito was excellent. After more than a decade of participation in fantasy sports leagues with Paul, it was great to finally meet him.

Tonight, it’s Niese vs. Cain and then if I can stay awake, I’m gonna try and hit the Pierced Arrows show here in town.

It sure beats going to work.

Greetings from San Francisco, CA. I’m out here in advance of this weekend’s Woodsist Festival in Big Sur.

Luck has the Mets visiting the baseball Giants this week, so I came a few days early.

Tonight’s it’s Harvey vs. The Freak.

I ended up with a seat on Tuesday’s 6 AM non-stop out of Kennedy. The ride was bumpy. There were no severe drops or jolts but the turbulence was enough to spill plenty of drinks during the breakfast service. The Boeing 757-200 that completed the coast-to-coast journey in five hours and thirty minutes has a wide wingspan and nicely absorbs airborne potholes. Better than a 737, for example. While there may be the same tossing about on the 757 vs. the smaller models, there’s an on-board feeling of sounder footing on the 7-5.

Since I’ve not posted here in a while, I should catch up on a few items of old business.

I went back to the Midwest last week to celebrate my Mom’s 70th birthday. I don’t think she’d mind me revealing her precise age. Her four grand-children helped blow out candles on the cake served at her day-of birthday party in Glen Ellyn, IL. Not that she needed any help. She has plenty of breath left in her.

During the singing of Happy Birthday, my nephew Sam incorporated the phrase “cha-cha-cha” into the lyrics. It works somehow. My Mom thinks it’s funny. It kinda reminds me of how fans at Shea would add the low-toned “uuuh” into the “Let’s Go Mets” chant.

The day before my Mom’s party, I met my folks up in Wisconsin for a night at their escape-from-reality getaway in Oxford, WI. We had dinner at a rural supper club surrounded by farmland. I had the broiled walleye, a salad and a couple of Miller High Lifes. It was all delicious. A large female deer darted in front of our car after dinner. My Dad was ready for the surprise.

Before boarding a flight earlier that day out of Newark, I bought the three major New York newspapers at a newsstand at the airport. Each of the papers had prominent front-page photos of Colorado shooting suspect James Holmes. As I prepared to pay for the papers, the clerk remarked that images of the orange-haired young man with bulging eyes were all around her. “He’s everywhere. He’s everywhere you look,” she said.

“It looks like he hasn’t slept since the shootings,” she said.

“It appears to me that he might be medicated,” I responded.

“Medicated?” asked the clerk rhetorically to set up her summation on the subject.

“Yeah. He’s gonna get medicated all right!” While cackling loudly, the clerk simulated the administration of a lethal injection into her left arm using her right hand to form the shape of a hypodermic needle.

I walked away and later wondered when and if this country’s political leaders will ever wake up and stop the legal, easy sale of firearms manufactured to massacre and maim large numbers of humans in a short time frame.

It should be so easy to learn from these repeat tragedies yet the two candidates running for president are more worried about electoral votes. Both believe gun enthusiasts and the political factions that are aligned with them are more important than simple, sane limits on weapons that belong nowhere but a battlefield, if that.

A Times editorial dated 7-24-12 bemoaned the apparent lost opportunity by this country’s next President to speak common sense on the subject. “When he was campaigning for office in 2008, Barack Obama vowed to reinstate the assault weapons ban that had expired in 2004. That would have prohibited the AR-15 rifle used in the Colorado shooting along with the 100-round magazine attached to it. But as president, Mr Obama has made no attempt to do so. Mitt Romney banned assault weapons as governor of Massachusetts and undoubtedly saved many lives, but now he opposes all gun control measures.”

–TSR Radio returns with a thirty-minute program airing this Friday at 9 AM in the west, 12 PM in the east. I’ll discuss the trip so far. You can tune in live on the web or listen later to the archived recording.