If you've got an afternoon in a city you don't know well, what do you do?
San Francisco. Downtown, that's a hard one.
SOMA? What's SOMA? Where's the bay? Which way is North?
All exacerbated by having just landed and not having your data deal sorted or not wanting to get your smartphone out and look like a tourist unable to work out where you are. Is it OK to do that in this area or is this one of those blocks where someone's bound to come up and snatch it out of your hand.
But this is why your here. It's a little journey into the unknown. Walk, look, take it in, see what cultural references ping things in your brain.
So yeah SF is hard the first time. Manhattan is hard the first time but for different reasons. Once you get the block system around midtown and Central Park, you're OK, but plonk me down in Brooklyn or Queens and woah Nellie! London? I don't know it's so long since the first time I came to London and then I wasn't on my own, I was being dragged around in the family group. And one minute we were walking through a park and the next, you look up and there's Big Ben and it's fucking real, made of stone and glass and it goes BONGGG!
This is why you're here, remember that, feel that. This little journey into the unknown is representative of the whole of life. Life is a journey into the unknown. We might try to control and structure and predict, but really every day could be anything at all. And today is just one of those days, anything at all. It just happens that you're in a new place without the usual props. But there are props here nonetheless. There's the position of the sun in the sky, that gives you some idea of orientation. Most American cities have a NS-oriented block system or a number of mini-systems. Then there's the chain stores and restaurants. Getting into a Starbucks does wonders for calming the I-don't-know-which-fucking-way-is-up feeling. Walgreen's a little less so, but your mileage might vary.
Walgreens. Yes, paracetamol, ibuprofen and melatonin all offer splendid jet-lag treatment for the boiled brain. But no more caffeine probably.
Can you find someone who can help? It's rare to go somewhere where you can't find anyone. In SF in 2011, I realised this was a chance to see Citizen Space, get down with some co-working buddies. But after a shout on Twitter, I found no-one was around for the three hours I happened to drop by. Nonetheless, there's a seat and wifi and power and nobody trying to fill you up with bad coffee.
Transportation, that's the next thing. How do you get from here to the Caltrain? On foot. No car. Um, it looks like it's the other side of that big road that might be a freeway, why do they have freeways in the middle of cities?
No wonder we get tired, even accounting for the jetlag.