Tuesday, April 05, 2005

California, Day Three - Mt. Tam to Spirit Rock


Well, I obviously got one technical difficulty fixed, I found a card reader so I can upload pictures from my camera, but now I have a conventional problem (as in, a problem concerning a convention), namely, someone I have fallen a day behind in the blog. Today is actually Day Four of my California trip, but I am only now blogging about what I did on Day Three. I guess that I messed up on April 3, which was actually Day Two, but I called it "Day One" because it was the first entry discussing this trip.

Anyhow, yesterday, Day Three, I went to Wolf Camera (I didn't know they had Wolf Camera stores in California - I thought it was a Georgia chain) looking for a USB line for my camera. They didn't have any, but they did have this neat multi-card reader with a USB plug that can accommodate my XD and Compact Flash memory cards, as well as SM, SD and MS cards should the situation ever arise. With this new toy, I was able to upload the picture for my April 3 entry, as well as April 4's photo essay (of events that occurred April 3).

After that, the day consisted on a trip up to the East Peak of Mount Tamalpais with my sister, followed by lunch at Stinson Beach. We picked up her three-year-old, my nephew, at 2:30, and then took him to feed the ducks at the Academy of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and since that entailed two trips over the G.G. Bridge, the prerequisite Golden Gate pictures.

As night approached, my sister and I went over to Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, Marin County. According to their Vision Statement, "Spirit Rock Meditation Center is dedicated to the teachings of the Buddha as presented in the Theravadan vipassana tradition." The Theravadan teaching really reinforced the Mahayana inclinations in this stubborn old Zenster, and I'm looking forward to going to an afternoon service at the San Francisco Zen Center's City Center, hopefully tomorrow (Day Five, but it probably won't get posted until Day Six the way things are going). I did get the chance to go and introduce myself to Jack before the service started, and he was very generous with his time and attention, even as he was getting ready to strike the gong to start the session.

That may not sound like a lot for one whole day but by the time I got home, I was exhausted . . .

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