One of those nights

Last night was one of those San Francisco nights.  I got off work and did a quick ride over to 901 Columbus for a little art show of a friend of a friend.  It was all photos of great white sharks from a trip to South africa.  Pretty good show.  The real feature was the $1.50 beers though.  Anyway, when I first arrived I noticed this dude, kinda shabby looking.  Like traveler shabby, borderline no home shabby.  I noticed him not because of his shabbyness but because he looked exactly like he could be the younger brother of Tyler and Clavey Wendt.  On a side note, the Wendt family are the ones who started OARS, the company I rafted with for 6 years.  

Well eventually we some how, I say some how but really mean that I got toasty and finally had to introduce myself.  So his name is Hugh Morrow.  Hugh is from Iowa.  He's, or was, a stock broker.  He moved to China for business.  The interesting thing though is that he quit.  He said eff it and he joined a Chinese sailing crew.  He is sailing around the world over the duration of 16 months on a hand made Chinese Junk ship.  He is the first white guy to do this on the first traditional Chinese Junk ship to cross the Pacific in lord knows how long.  Anyway, so it's Dempsey, this guy, Brett, Julia, and the photographer and some of his friends all just hanging out talking trash and drinking cheap beer.   Eventually it's just Hugh, Dempsey and I.  The show is closing, we are getting the boot.  Suddenly the photographer walks buy with two cases of wine and is like, 'james, dempsey, you guys coming over or what?'  So we rally.  It's now Dempsey, Hugh, Me The photographer, a few girls, and some other guy.  We drink and talk and drink and talk and laugh and almost go skinny dipping and....well, you get the point.  

I woke up at 7:30 this morning.  Not planned, just too hung over to sleep.  I hop on my bike and head to aquatic park.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that this is Hugh's last night in the city.  He is sailing down to SD and then to Australia and then to who knows where.  So I head on down and with a little luck find their ship about ten minutes before it pulls out.  I said goodbye and got some contact info and then watched them chug out towards the gate.  Dempsey met up with me just as they were sailing away.  We took photos and talked about what an amazing night we had just had.   Here are some pics of his boat.  Not shot by me.