There were these large coops built where the birds lived, and a man who was turning them loose in groups, or flocks or coveys or whatever. The thing is, they would fly like hell around and around and he would stand in the center of the coop area and whistle and call them till they would shorten their circles, swooping lower and lower per cycle, getting closer and closer with every swoop, sometimes even pulling their wings back as if they were coming for a landing just to flap back into one more circle or maybe two, then finally they would alight to the low whistle of the wrangler. Then he’d turn loose another batch of birds. Or at least that’s the way it looked to me.

I was told that the way these races were run, the birds would be turned loose in maybe Pittsburgh or somewhere, and they would time how long it took for them to get back to their home coops. I know that this is terrible description of this complex racing procedure, I’m just saying what I know so far. Jeff said that the winner of one of these races made very very large money. So, ok...

Anyway, at this place seemingly all day long you have large flocks of birds circling low over your head at regular intervals. It’s sort of beautiful. You can hear their wings cutting through the air, like a flutter that goes with the racing shadows....as you can see in the photo above, they flew so fast that I only caught the stragglers.

Had a very nice time there with Jeff and Al and the racing pigeons. The gig was fine, though like most all of the shows lately there weren’t many there. Great crowd though, if you can call them a crowd.

Pulled out late morning headed to San Francisco and a night off. I checked into the old Commodore on Sutter (which I remembered as soon as I walked into the lobby!), and had dinner that night with our dear friend Dawn Holliday, over in North Beach at the L’Osteria Del Forno, one of my favorite little restaurants in the world. I had the roast pork, per usual, and Dawn had the beef. Afterwards she walked me over to this bar, dark and dusty and full of pirate ghosts. She knew the barkeep, in fact employed the barkeep on the other nights of the week at her place Slim’s, and as a result she didn’t charge me a penny for several large glasses of Laphroaig. God loves her for that, of this I am sure.

Next day I marched up and down the hills of town, back and forth through China Town, had dinner with Dawn, Warren Helman and his wife Chris, and then Dawn led me over the bridge to Mill Valley and a place called Sweetwater, where I opened for a young popular bluegrass band called King Wilkie. You know, it was a night off anyway, and it got me in front of a different crowd. I quite intentionally kicked ass. Met Maria Muldaur too.

Today I’m leaving San Francisco, heading to Felton. More later....