Right this Minute

I took these photos today on the Filbert steps. If you have not yet seen The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, you really must. It is a wonderful documentary about these beautiful birds living in this lovely neighborhood. We went to see the Amgen Tour of California bike race prologue. We BART'd to the Embarcadero, wandered through the booths set up at Justin Herman Plaza, watched a little BMX bike demonstration, then walked to Coit Tower via the Filbert steps. In case you were wondering, the steps were MY ultimate destination, but the rest of the family also wanted to see Levi Leipheimer and George Hincapie do this 5-ish minute uphill time trial. So we did that, but we also got to hang around for the birds. The documentary watches them hang out in trees at the Greenwich steps one block over, but the whole area is their playground. Si and I snuck down from Coit Tower a little early to watch them some more, but just as we were getting some good photos, Si spotted a hawk right about the same time the parrots did, and boy did they scatter. Mr. Hawk decided to stick around awhile, so that was the end of our parrot-watching for the day.

If you're interested in going to see the parrots, plan to spend some time just chillin' and waiting around. If you're interested in going to the Amgen Tour, on Monday it goes from Sausalito to Santa Rosa, Tuesday Santa Rosa to Sacramento, and Wednesday Stockton to San Jose. Then it moves on to central and southern California.