I've decided to recount the story of my Three Week Tour of All The States In the Union with a Disney Park in bite-size portions, rather than a linear day-by-day kind of way. Today, we're going to start with the down note.
Last year at Comic-Con, I met a nice gentleman who worked at Pixar. After the obligatory gushing about Up and holding back the tears, he said "Hey, if you're ever up in the Bay Area, come on by, I'll give you a tour."
After that, it was my goal to get to San Francisco. I've heard Pixar is a 
great place to work, but this guy might have left for another job and he was my only contact there. I wanted to jump on this as soon as I can.
Enter Airfarewatchdog and Southwest. Southwest was having a crazy-low sale on flights within the Golden State. For $90, I could fly from Burbank to San Francisco and back the same day. Ninety bucks! I would have paid that to take a tour of Pixar if they were across the street from me. I figured it was totally worth it.
Later, at Comic-Con, I mentioned to some friends that I was going north to visit Pixar the next Thursday. One of them said "Hey, I have a friend who works at Industrial Light and Magic. I bet he could get you a tour, too." Turns out, he could. The only catch at all was that ILM's Friends and Family Day was Friday. It'd be better if I could stay over that one day and extend my trip. For the chance to be one away from the geek trifecta (sadly, Steve Jobs and Apple never called to complete it) it was a no-brainer.
So, I now needed a place to stay in San Francisco. I went to Hotels.com and found a cheap hotel (one whose name I'm withholding for now, as they're investigating the problem). It was $49 to stay about six blocks from Fisherman's Wharf. The hotel had a number of bad reviews, but there were more than a few good ones, most of which said that the place had been recently remodeled and was much better. Plus, I've found that sometimes people complain about hotels not because it's not a good place to stay, but because it's not the place they wanted to stay. Kind of the "Can you believe this Motel Six didn't have a workout center or an in-room whirlpool?" variety. So I gambled on it.
And the hotel was exactly the hotel I expected. It wasn't the kind of place you'd take your significant other on a romantic weekend, but it was totally the place you'd take her when the concert she wanted to see was only playing in San Francisco and you had a day to plan. It wasn't the hotel you wanted, it was the hotel you needed.
Except for the bedbugs.
Friday, I woke up and my right arm was itchy. Briefly, I thought that I might have developed a new allergy to chocolate. (Fortunately, this was not the case. I tested it several times over the rest of the trip.) Then the bumps started to appear, all up and down my right arm, and a little bit on my right leg. By the time I landed in Orlando on Saturday, I knew they were bites. Apparently they're often underreported and misdaignosed, and I didn't go to a doctor to be sure, but I'm pretty sure they were bedbug bites.
Still, the trips to Pixar and ILM, and the obligatory side trip to Ghirardellii's (one of three I made it to on this trip which was a different kind of trifecta), was totally worth it. It just would have been more worth it without.
That's it for now. Don't worry, I'll talk about the tours and the rest of the trip later.