Phil Mercer

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Pilgrim

 

It's not often that I get a gig quite like this.

My friend Helen-Ann is about to become the Bishop of Waikato (that's in New Zealand).  It's rather surreal.  It never occured to me that in my life I would get to know people with proper responsibilty but I suppose I'd never really thought what being a grown up might entail!

So originally I'd tried to work out if I could get to New Zealand for HA's big day... but as usual the finances didn't line up.  So I'd resigned myself to not getting that far and planned for other things.

Nico popped up with the option of a trip with him to San Francisco, so I jumped at the chance. 

In the meantime my boss spotted my official invite to HA's consecration and - blow me over - he said that it might be possible to get me to it!   After a couple of weeks of tooing and froing (are they real words?) the big boss said yes and I began to reorganise my life.  I added in a couple of other NZ based stories that I could cover while here, including the annivesary of the Christchurch earthquake.  The plan, a bit of a tour.  I was already going to SFO so would continue on from there.  And as it was cheaper I could come back a different way.  So the plan.  San Francisco.  Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch then on to Melbourne and Hong Kong to see Darren and Gareth.

First stop.  San Francisco.

I have been once before.  When I was a lot younger on a family driving holiday.  We stopped for a day and did the main touristy things, so I missed out on the real reason I would want to go to The City!

This time round I corrected that!  Nico knows the place really well... so he took me on a pilgrimage.  We paid homage to the Castro and I even had a chance to walk up the steps of Barbary Lane.

It is amazing how at home I feel here.  I realise I'm on holiday, so coming at it from a relaxed point of view.  But I loved the friendly people.  The bars, the views, the whole atmosphere.  The visible poverty and homeless problem is so in your face, but even that didn't really change things.  (On second reading that last statement feels a rather callous, but not sure how else I'd cope if I took everything like that personally!)

Could it be I've found kind of a spiritual home?  I realise 4 days is rather too short to tell...   I think I will try and come back.  Just to be sure!

Labels: USA, World Tour

# posted by Phil @ 10:01 pm

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