Ahoy, mateys!

Salty adventures were calling September 15 and 16 for entries #10 and #11 on my 50 for 50 list. First up, a tiki bar crawl with die-hard tiki bar aficionado Greg Seagler and his partner Jeff Donaldson-Forbes from Portland. I’ve known Jeff for almost 15 years since putting on a show of seven short plays up in Bozeman, Montana, so I was thrilled to share a #50for50 experience with him and Greg.

We were first lured to the Luau Lounge, a hidden tiki bar at the very end of Pier 39. Next up, Pagan Idol, the hotspot SF tiki bar that made amazing drinks (though not quite as good as the flaming ones at hands-down #1 Hale Pele in Portland; see pic below!). Seeking more rum, we hit Smuggler’s Cove, with another friend of Greg’s joining us. A cool place but too tight a space for my taste. We then tried to round off our tiki tour across the bay at Forbidden Island in Alameda, but alas it was closed due to a nasty sewage problem you could smell upon arrival. Worse than the bird poop smell the next day at the Farallons!

For years I’ve been meaning to get to the Farallons, a set of islands and sea stacks just 30 miles west of San Francisco. My friend Kathi has actually been on the islands — one of the few humans to do so — thanks to her ocean research and volunteer efforts. She arranged for a group of us to join a boat tour, an intrepid crew of kayak volunteers for ETC, an awesome organization that makes it easy for people with disabilities to take on outdoor adventures. Kathi, Doug, Monica, Oren, Alex, and I had an amazing day with picture-perfect weather, low swells (definitely not usually the case), and many whale sightings, including humpbacks lunge feeding, which I had never seen before. We even had three whales surface right next to our boat. Thanks ETC friends for making my first visit to the Farallons one to remember.