We had everything worked out. We’d start with margaritas and a spicy bloody Mary at Sam’s in Tiburon. After a brunch of crab cakes Benedict and a fresh-shucked oyster and bacon omelet, we’d drive to the Golden Gate Bridge and park at the north end to avoid the huge crowds coming to see the big boat sail under the pretty bridge.

On the way, a terrific idea came to me. I thought I’d position myself on the Golden Gate Bridge directly above the path of the huge ship, with my camera’s intervalometer set to take a shot every 10 seconds. Then I’d mount the camera to my monopod, hang the whole thing off the side of the bridge and shoot straight down. Here’s the good part – I planned to stitch the resulting images together to create a perfect panorama of the Queen Mary II from directly above. Wow! Would that be cool or what? Of course, my plan turned out to be too good to be true.

First of all, once on the bridge, a rumor circulated that the bridge would be closed directly above the ship. (This was evidently true.) Second, my monopod did not extend far enough to get a clear shot straight down. Finally, my calculations never considered the huge shadow cast by the bridge. So – we moved on to Plan B.

We hiked the full length of the bridge and searched for a spot in the headlands on the west side of the bridge where I though the light would be best. We walked along the coast for a while, and eventually realized that we would not get the view I imagined until we were near Baker Beach. Since this was just too far away, we settled on the location Kelly had suggested from the very beginning – the south side of the bridge above Fort Point. I’m pretty sure this was one of the best spots because some dude with an 8×10 view camera set up his big rig directly below and in front of us – territory off-limits to normal people with smaller cameras. (I’d assume the guy was an employee of the cruise line or something.) Too bad it was a 4 mile round trip from our car to this spot. The long walk proved to be worth it though, because the weather and the view were splendid. And the ship? Well, it was really, really huge.

Anyway, the Queen Mary II – on a fully-booked 80 day around-the-world tour will be in the bay area for 24 hours, where it’s well-heeled passengers are expected to spend 1.2 million bucks shopping. (The cost for this round-the-world excursion ranges from $36,000 to $180,000 per person.) I don’t suppose many of them will make it to my beloved Oakland. Pity.