Ah, youth.

New York doesn't seem real when you look at it from a distance, and therefore it was no surprise that the New York City skyline looked as fake as ever as I took off over it. Oddly charming and definitely real, the "Welcome to New York" cut out sign with an apple in the middle that someone laid along side the runway reassured me. It was supposed to be white, but of course was the gray of New York winter filth, and it's crude innocence appealled to me. That was probably because I was feeling sentimental, leaving behind my family, friends and time zone of choice.

Taking off in a plane is always a good time to reflect on death and dying, and not just because of the mortal peril one faces by flying. The gradually receding arial view of the ground is filmic shorthand for death, and watching it always makes me feel as if I am floating away. Which of course I am, though floating isn't really the word for it, as I can barely hear my walkman with specially chosed California songs over the roar of the jet.

Besides, why focus on death and the life I leave behind, when that is only half the equation of change. Tonight, Pacific Time, I will rent a car, drive to my new city, and do my best to begin a new life. At least I'll try and get some sleep so I'll be rested enough to get going on my new life tomorrow. Certainly tomorrow, going out with Robbie, my realtor, is a new beginning. I have brought along Heart of Darkness to spur me on, and also reading Conrad makes everything seem smarter.

Speaking of smart, I went to the wrong airport to depart. This mistake was of course mine, though it was partly to blame on my idiot travel agent, who had first booked the tickets on the wrong day, and when I called up and got him to change them, managed to switch airports on me as well, and never bothered to mention it. Still, my bad.

Part of the consequence of this misunderstanding is that my flight, rather than going direct, instead had to make a stop in Dallas Texas. If you think going from New York to Dallas to San Francisco is not a straight line, you are correct. Though it added on about three hours to my trip, it did put me over a most remarkable landscape, that looked like a chocolate moonscape. I don't know what state that was, but it must have been either Texas, Utah, Nevada, California or New Mexico, according to my calculations.

By the time I got off the plane, I was nursing a bit of a head cold, but stepping out into the dazzling sun I was confident it would go away quickly, melting away like all my put-on East-Coast darkness. I was really feeling the adreneline as I picked up the rental car and headed up the 101, now cranking my California CD and singing along to California Here I Come. Which lasted about two minutes until I hit standstill traffic for an hour or so.

Thinking quickly, I took an unknown exit and decided to thread my way to my destination using only my internal compass, and a map. Needless to say, I got very lost, but as darkness fell, I reached my hotel.

I had no idea that San Francisco was so cold. It is about mid 60s every day, pretty much, but at night it goes down to the 30s and sometimes even breaks the freezing mark. This was something I learned as I lay shivering in my hotel room all night, which was unpleasant but did give my cold a chance to blossom.

Even though I was feeling less than tip top, it was Friday morning, and that meant, it was time for a shpotzir, do or die. So I went off with my stuffed head and sneezing, and walked the streets, vainly looking for a likely candidate. Finally I settled on a cyber cafe, which was lame but the best I could do. I sat on the filthy couch eating a Clif bar and letting the juice sour in my stomach, listeing to three pre-teen nubiles enthuse over how bad Michael Jackson's 20/20 documentary was. They all seemed to agree that he was totally a child molester.

Feeling quite ill, I walked down to the waterfront, where I saw, for the first time, the magestic span of the Golden Gate. All around me asian men in Lycra were jogging.

Although I was dragging, I had an appointment to keep with my turbo charged hyper caffinated realtor, Robbie. It came as no surprise to me that she was from New York, since she didn't seem to fit the laconic stereotype of the locals, though to be fair she was from upstate, which hardly counts. So we zigzagged all over town, her talking a mile a minute, while I sat looking, and feeling, like a cadaver. She sized me up after about ten minutes, offering an unrequested by mostly accurate summary of who I was. She had been doing real estate for 22 years and was clearly a pro, and her banter about Daniel Steele's ten kids and five husbands and love affair with the very tan George Hamilton were all part of her schtick.

Most of the apartments I saw were 1900 era, which meant nice moldings inside by grim 70s carpeting in the halls and bad bathrooms and kitchens. I did see a really dramatic one, with a ball room and fainting room and giant bathrooms, which was twice my price range but still struck me as the kind of place it would be nice to live. While that was the best, the worst was a low-ceiling, shag carpet suicide box, shown by a mysterious older asian man who said his name was Victoria and kept one hand inside a plastic sandwich baggie.

I ultimately found a place, close, I was told, to Nicolas Cage.

I had a social call that evening, to a friend of a friend, which I was in no shape to make. But I decided it might be just the think to shake off the awful cold I had, and plus I had nothing else to do. Actually, I did have something to do, which I did, which was pick up my keys, though that didn't go too well, as my building manager had locked herself inside her apartment and the doorknob had come off.

Anyway, I paid my social call, all doubled over and green, and they were very nice, going so far as to offer me a zip lock bag with chamomile tea in it. Which was very nice of her. I staggered out and into a local super market, where I wolfed down fistfuls of Cheerios straight from the box, based on the idea that I needed to put out the fire in my belly with whatever pressed sawdust they make Cheerios out of. And it kind of worked. Back at the hotel, I had the heat cranked up to sauna levels, plus I had an extra blanket. And it was a warmer night out, so it was pretty steamy in there, which came as a consolation to my Ratso-Rizzo lung rattling cough.