World Series champion parade!

So I went to the parade on Wednesday!  All I can say is what a blast!  Getting there and back was quite an odyssey too! 1.5 million Giants fans all squeezed into downtown San Francisco was quite a sight to behold.  The atmosphere was fun and the scene was amazing!

The whole idea to attend the parade was my cousin Rob's.  He sent me a text message before the start of the World Series that said: "You gonna be able to go to the parade when we win the World Series?" I told him I would figure out a way.   I was a little worried since I only had one day of PTO left but I figured the Giants would win in a way that would be all I needed!

When the Giants won on Monday night and the parade was set for Wednesday it guaranteed that I would be able to get to the parade and get back down to Palm Desert in time for work at 6 AM on Thursday morning.  We would just have to leave Tuesday night, drive up to Sacramento to pick up my uncle Paul, go to the parade in S.F., drive back to Sacramento to drop off my uncle, and then drive back to Palm Desert.  My cousin, who lives in San Diego, would still have another 2 hour drive to get home after dropping me off.

Rob got off work at quarter to 5 and shot up to my house from San Diego.  He got to my place just after 7 PM.  I was ready to go. But my 3 year old wasn't ready for me to go.  He had been sick all day but now he had been crying for the last hour and complaining that his stomach hurt.  We weren't quite sure, but there may have been a trip to the emergency room in his immediate future.  His mom was freaked out enough as it was, but the thought of her having to take my son, who just would not stop crying and our 4 year old daughter to the ER by herself for untold hours were really frazzling her.  I decided I would take our daughter with us and drop her off at my grandmother's before the parade since I really didn't think that lugging a 4 year old around San Fran with hundreds of thousands of people around would be the best idea in the world.

We got to Sacramento around 3:30 AM.  Enough time to get some sleep before we got on the road at 6:30.  My cousin wanted to drive into the city but my vote was that we should take BART.  The deciding factor was when Rob talked to his brother and heard that all of the parking garages in the city were closed already at 7:30 AM.  We decided to take the BART train at the Del Norte station.

I used to live in San Pablo and had a class in San Francisco that I had to attend for a week,  I rode into SF on the BART from the Del Norte station so the fact that the parking lot was full at the station wasn't that strange to me.  We had to park up the hill from the station a little bit and walk.  As we were heading to the station we got our first idea of how long this day was going to be.  A lady, who was walking back up the hill, asked us if we had our BART tickets already.  We told her no and she said: "It's an hour and a half wait."  We thought "Bullshit" and decided that even if it was there was no stopping us from getting to the city

Well the scene at the BART station was one I had never seen before and I rode the BART train during times when the Bay Bridge was closed!  There had to be at least 2000 people in line at the station.  We got in line and waited for about a half an hour before the BART officials announced that we would be allowed to ride the train for free.  Even though the officer said to stay where we were and we would all get on the train there was still a mad dash to the gates.  We stayed back because we figured we would get there and it wasn't worth potentially getting trampled.  This was also the first of many times that I was glad I left my four year old in Sacramento with her great grandmother.

The train ride into the city was uneventful.  We got off at the Civic Center BART station because we got into the city after the parade started.  We decided we would go straight to Civic Center and watch the speeches at the end of the parade.

Once we got out of the BART tunnel it was a scene you never would have expected.  I had a little bit of an idea because I had been checking my phone and seeing pictures that people were posting on Twitter from all of the office buildings along the parade route.  But Market street was wall to wall people.  they had the road blocked off and people just walked down the middle of the street.  We walked down to UN Plaza and they had the farmer's market going on and there were thousands of people swarming the Plaza.  They weren't bums either!

We found a good spot on the grass at Civic Center and stayed there for the rest of the festivities.  It was an unreal scene.  people were climbing on top of the elevator housing for the Civic Center parking garage (I really thought we might see that thing collapse), there was so much pot smoking going on you would have thought you were at a reggae concert or that prop 19 actually passed (take that Josh Hamilton), above all everyone was excited and happy to be there.  From the chants of UUUU-Ribe, to the Boos for Arnold Schwarzenegger, to the chants of MVP, MVP, for Edgar Renteria.  It was awesome.

The trip home wasn't quite as arduous.  There were still crowds everywhere and the BART train was just as crowded.  We left the city at 2:00 and if you throw in the normal Commute traffic we didn't get back to Sacramento until 6:00 PM.  We picked up my daughter and headed for Southern California.  I got home just in time to get ready for work!

So out of 57 hours from the time I got p on Tuesday until the time I went to bed after work, my cousin and I were awake for 54 of them,we traveled over 1200 miles (my cousin put in more like 1500), we got mentioned in the Sacramento Bee, and we witnessed one of the coolest things we have ever seen.  1.5 million Giants fans celebrating the WORLD CHAMPION SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS!

Here are a few pictures and videos from all the fun: