Last day of work, Bay to Breakers

I'm sitting in a BART train leaving San Francisco and even though I rode this to work everyday, I think this is the worst smelling car I've ever been in. I just dropped off the rental mini-van my family and I used for the last week to go to Yosemite and then around the Bay Area. Lately I've been using it to haul used up cushions and disgusting kitchen wares (among other things) to a mysterious dumpster that happened to appear this week 2 blocks from my flat. My apartment is cleaned out except for my motorcycle helmet, which is sitting on the entrance steps, I'm meeting my almost former landlord in 2.5 hours for the final walk through. He said it would only take 5 minutes but I'll be lucky if I get out of there in less than 45, he is so neurotic when we moved in he gave me a 3 minute lesson on how to use the dimmer switch. The walk through could take a while.

I've had a busy 2 weeks. I've known for about a 8 months and in general terms almost a year that my mid-May to mid-June 2006 would be some of the busiest weeks of my life and its strange to sit here with no perspective, tired and unshowered. My last day of work was Friday May 19. My co-workers gave me a big sendoff including a superman backpack filled with all the school supplied any 5 year old would need for their first day of kindergarten. I'm going to grad school. We had the requisite drinks on the Thursday before I left, talked about the funny people that work at the hotel and the funny things we've seen. We talked about what our first impressions of each other were as we left our last impressions. They ordered pizza in the board room and then at 11:30, as is the ritual for every birthday, pregnancy or agreeable resignation, Rachel came into my office and said that our General Manager needed to see me in the board room and that he seemed upset. About 3 steps out of my office I remembered what day it was and started to chuckle. It's a nice gesture and the backpack was a great laugh, the real gift was the overly generous visa gift card.

Ending work on good terms is stressful, I gave about 6 months notice to my boss and 6 weeks notice to my coworkers, so there was no mystery about it, but since everyone knew I was leaving I couldn't just clean out my office and go, I had to tie up the lose ends. In some ways, knowing that I'm going to be doing this entire move-and-ride-across-the-country process in advance has made it that much more anxiety inducing, just like leaving work. It's like slowing pulling the band aid back instead of just ripping it off, there are steps to everything. I need to contact these people by the end of this week. I need to pass these things off to these people by this time. I need to move out of my apartment by this day, then with a friend for this day where I leave this bag, then another friend, then pick up the bag to go to the next thing. Eventually I'll get home.

After work on that Friday I was out with my former coworkers from the previous hotel. It's amazing to me what a group of people we had there, such great personalities and characters. I sit here thinking about it and I don't know if I'll ever work with a crew like that again. The tradition in hotels is that when you leave on good terms they give you a framed picture of the hotel and everyone signs and writes their good wishes on the frame mat, it's like a high school year book and it's not the only thing about the hospitality industry that reminds one of being a teenager. I didn't leave the last hotel on such good terms, I told them I was putting in my 2 weeks and that I'd accepted a job at a competitor. They had me leave that day. I didn't get a picture. But I think that had more to do with the hotel than the urgency of my exit, my dear friend Lisa who left with weeks (if not months) of notice on great terms the year before didn't receive a picture and we've always been bitter about how we were wronged. So she presented me with a picture of the former hotel, in matting, that everyone out that night signed. I was really surprised by the gift and kind of touched, it was just so fitting for a million reasons. The more recent hotel is also working on a picture that they'll be mailing to the east coast for my convenience.

That Saturday I was trying to pack but got almost nothing done. I had what I had been referring to a "garage free" but in hindsight, since I don't have a garage, calling it a "garage sale" would have been only marginally less accurate. I thought I got rid of a lot that day but looking back on it, it was only the tip of the iceberg, the low hanging fruit. Sunday was Bay to Breakers which I was determined to make more sane than in years past. The past 2 years I've gotten up early, started near the beginning and imbibed the next 7 miles across San Francisco to the Ocean. This year, I played it cool, watched from my neighborhood, had a couple beers and enjoyed the party for a brief moment. I wasn't wearing any kind of costume this year but I did wear the superman backpack. Standing near my house watching the party go by seemed great while it was going on but when the party had passed us by, we felt like we were just beginning and now street sweepers were bringing us down to normal-Sunday status, a place we didn't want to be after being at a huge moving block party for an hour. We thought we could take a cab and catch up with the walkers but we only found the field where the actual runners were hanging out after actually running the 7 miles. That made street sweepers look like fun, at least they were there to clean up from a party, not basking in the glow of accomplishment of which I had not partook.

As I'm pulling in to the Civic Center station, I'll wrap this up and continue in a (hopefully not too distant) future entry.