The rain came down all day long and into the night. Sometimes it just sprinkled, sometimes it rained hard, but it kept on raining. It was wet and cold all day. We didn’t care. We are on vacation and in San Francisco. As we walked up Columbus Avenue towards Chinatown for dinner, Carol looked at me and said, “This is incredible. Can you believe we didn’t come back here before this?”

When you are here, you can’t forget that San Francisco is a Pacific Rim city. New York City’s Chinatown looks like an immigrant enclave, but Chinatown in San Francisco is as much a part of the city as any other neighborhood. We walked along, dodging other people’s umbrellas, looking at the foodstuffs for sale along the sidewalks and in shop windows: fruits and vegetables piled up in bins, carcasses of cooked birds hanging in windows, a tub full of entrails and sweetmeats. Pastries were neatly arranged in the windows of bakeries. Fish swam in tanks waiting to be sold.

I have never ridden on a cable car, because I have always been unwilling to wait in line and cram myself on with all the tourists. As we walked back to our hotel tonight, a cable car swept past us, splashing through a puddle. The car was empty except for the conductor and the operator. It looked cold, bleak, dark, and unromantic. I was not tempted to ride it even if it were empty of tourists.

We are enjoying what I consider to be perfect California weather on our vacation: mostly cloudy, mixed with rain showers, with the occasional touch of blue sky. Everything is green, the fruit trees are in bloom, the daffodils are blooming. I overheard someone today talk about how cold it is, and thought about New Bedford where the water temperature in the harbor is the thirties and when you walk down by the waterfront the damp cold gets into your bones.

We took a long walk this afternoon, and in one place an orange tree hung over the sidewalk, with dozens of ripe oranges in the glossy green leaves. Carol reached up and picked one, and peeled it open, and the smell of orange faintly perfumed the air around us as we walked. “Mm,” she said, “it’s so sweet.”

And in the middle of all this, I’m reading Anthony Trollope’s novel Can You Forgive Her? with its long gentle conversations that slowly reveal the personalities of the characters — the pride of Alice, the passionate nature of Lady Glencora, the dissipation of George. Trollope’s finely honed moral distinctions cause me to pause periodically, put the book down, and think through the little moral decisions that the characters make. Its slow pace makes it a perfect book for reading on vacation.

Car radio: “This is the anti-debate show. No talk of the theatre of the absurd that passes for public discourse.” 10:12 p.m.

A rainy drive into Connecticut. Red maple leaves stand out in the grayness. 11:12 a.m.

Wet road. Red sports car doesn’t stop at stop sign. Brakes. Skid. Miss by inches. 8:00 a.m.

I’m back on the New York State Thruway, sitting in the rest area that’s nearest Buffalo. This is one of those rest areas where they put the fast food joints and the toilets in a big complex in the median between the eastbound and westbound roads, so you cross a pedestrian bridge to get from the parking area to the toilets. A few days ago, I was sitting just a few tables away from where I am now. This place is pretty depressing — vaguely dirty, crowded, ugly, two lonely picnic tables on this little grassy area next to a huge parking area — a sad contrast to the lovely rest areas in Ohio and Indiana.

When I was last here, I finished my lousy coffee and greasy French fries, closed up my laptop, and walked back to my car. I got in the car, rolled down the window, and was about to start up the engine when a man walked up.

“Did you lock your car?” he said. He was about my age, accompanied by two kids who were about ten or twelve.

“I think so,” I said.

“Because there was this gang of kids stealing stuff from cars,” he said.

I looked at the seat beside me. Everything was just as I had left it. “It looks like everything is here,” I said.

“They stole a purse out of our car,” he said. “Guess they went from car to car trying doors. A bunch of other people got hit, too. Someone saw them taking off in a black Mercedes.”

“Wow,” I said. “Business must be good if they can afford a Mercedes.”

“Yeah,” he said. “All we have is an old minivan.”

“All I got is this old Toyota,” I said. “Geez, rest areas can be pretty rough places, but you don’t expect something like that.”

“Well, we called the state troopers. And here they come,” he said, looking down the ramp from the interstate, where a brown state trooper’s car was pulling in to the rest area.

“I’m really sorry this happened to you,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, starting to walk away. “Thanks…” His kids followed him, silent, just following their dad.

• Shetland sheep: small, very fuzzy, friendly, very cute. #
• We’re off to the Indiana State Fair. Woo hoo! #

• In Ohio: Trucks with cows mooing inside, a horse peering out of a trailer, and a small trailer with alpacas. #