San Francisco Treat
May 5-8, 2005
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I drove up to San Francisco on Thursday, May 5. I was meeting my friends Frank and Kathy from Ohio there. Kathy was in town for a conference earlier that week and she and Frank were staying through until Sunday morning.
I left a little after 4 AM and encountered a lot of drizzle and rain along the way. I took the 101 all the way. There are a couple of scenic stretches and you always have the mountains on one side or the other, but mostly it is a long, boring drive and I was pressing the search button on the radio trying to find something good to listen to. Around San Luis Obispo I found a station that was taking calls on a trivia question. They were asking what bodily function it was that you cannot do in outer space. After listening to a bunch of stupid guesses (eat, sleep, walk, etc), I thought I would try calling in and making one, too. Isn't that what cell phones are for? Somewhere in the back of my head I seemed to remember seeing something on the Discovery Channel once that said astronauts did not hiccup in space. I must have tried calling a couple of dozen times, getting lots of busy signals, of course, but it did ring through twice. I guess I must have been at the bottom of queue, though, as they never picked up until the third time, and by then they had a correct answer. Unfortunately I never did hear what that answer was. There is a point to me telling that, by the way. More on it later...
I arrived at the hotel where Frank and Kathy were staying around 10:30. Kathy was still in a meeting with a work associate. Frank and I did some catching up and then we headed out for an afternoon on the town. We took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, i.e. the subway) down to the Mission District, where we planned on having lunch at this Mexican tapas place that Frank had read a great review on. Unfortunately it was not open for lunch. We ate a a Vietnamese place instead. We were wondering what we should go see when I asked those guys if they had actually been to the mission for which the Mission District was named. They had not, and neither had I, so we walked several blocks and finally found it: Mission Delores. It is one of the original 21 Spanish missions and the oldest standing structure in the city as it was one of the few to survive the 1906 earthquake.
From the Mission we started walking down towards Market Street and then planned to go to Union Square and catch the cable car to the waterfront. Along the way, we stumbled upon the U.S Mint and United Nations Square. I joked about going up and asking the guards at the mint if they held tours and gave out free samples, but they did not look very friendly so I thought I better not even take any close-up pictures. It really makes you think about the state of the world today when just a few blocks down is where the U.N. Charter was signed after World War II and there are several monuments to the ideals of peace on which it was founded.
Finally we hopped on the cable car and started down to Fisherman's Warf. By the time we got there it was almost 7, I think. The guide book in the hotel had talked about night tours of Alcatraz so we were planning on trying to catch the ferry but the last one sailed at something like 5:20. So we just walked around the waterfront a little and I took pictures of Alcatraz, the sea lions on pier 39, Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill, and the Golden Gate Bridge, of course.
After sunset we made our way back to the Mission District and that Mexican tapas place. Tapas for those who do not know is where you order a variety of appetizer-sized dishes to share. I think we started out with 7 dishes and then ordered another 3 or 4 more. Most of them were very good.
The next morning we drove across the Golden Gate (it is free to head out of the city, you only pay going back in) and several miles north up into the hills and mountains behind Sausalito to a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area called Muir Woods. We hiked around Muir Woods for several hours, gazing at the giant redwoods trees and the other flora and fauna.
After that we drove back into the city. I tried to give the toll booth attendant at the bridge $5 for the fare but to my confusion he just motioned me through. A moment later Kathy said that the sign read that carpools of 3 or more were free. From there we headed to Pac Bell Park, or whatever the nom du jour is for the place where the Giants play baseball, although I missed some signs and ended up taking a very round about way there. Frank had gotten us tickets (scalped via stubhub.com) in the third row in rightfield. We got there just as batting practice was winding down. I had brought my glove just in case, but there was only one batting practice home run hit our way and it was not close enough.
As the grounds crew was getting the field ready between the end of batting practice and the start of the game I explored the stadium. It was very nice, with an area for the kids behind LF that had some big tube slides in the shape of a Coca-Cola bottle. It looked like fun and I was tempted to give it a try but there was no else above 10 years old in line so I decided not to get in their way. I was hungry, anyway. There was a wide variety of food to choose from. I decided to go with a traditional polish sausage and bratwurst. It was good, but not as good as Milwaukee. I got back to my seat just as the game was starting. The outfielders would throwing back and forth between innings while the pitcher warmed up. The centerfielder for the Giants would toss the practice ball into the stands when they were done. He threw a couple of balls our direction but none of them found their way to my glove. The Giants ended up losing the game to Washington.
Saturday morning Frank called and got us booked onto the last ferry of the evening to Alcatraz. We drove down and parked near Fisherman's Wharf and then rented bicycles. We rode over to the Golden Gate Bridge and I took these pictures along the way.
Frank and Kathy had already gone out on the bridge earlier in the week, so we decided not to ride it again. Instead we rode through the Presidio and along the Pacific coast side of the city towards Golden Gate Park. Along the way we stopped at The Legion of Honor, which is one of the art museums. We did not go in but instead checked out some of the sculptures around the courtyard, including a Holocaust Memorial where many flowers had been laid in observance of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp.
We biked through Golden Gate Park, then back down the east side of the Presidio and along the waterfront to Fisherman's Wharf. We covered at least 20-25 miles. There were many picturesque sights along the way but my camera batteries were not holding much of a charge anymore and I wanted to save some shots for Alcatraz.
We boarded the ferry for the quick trip to the island. We walked around a lot of it and read a lot of interesting stuff about its history. Like I had not known that it started as a military outpost just after the start of the gold rush or that it had been occupied by Native Americans for a couple of years in the late 1960s as a protest. One of the aisles between the cell blocks was named Michigan Avenue, which I assume was in reference to the Miracle Mile in Chicago. There was another area called Times Square. I managed to make my escape by blending in with some tourists. The alarms were sounding as I made my way down the dock, and I thought for a moment I might have to swim for it, but the boat pulled away from the dock before they could catch me.
We ate dinner at some fancy Italian place near along the wharf. We ordered a lot of food as it had been a long day of biking and walking, and it was pretty good. By the time we were done eating it was after 10 and Frank and Kathy were really tired. Their flight Sunday was at something like 6AM so they were going to have to be up early. But I was driving and it seemed like a nice night so I took them back to the north side of the Golden Gate for one last look at the city. You could see the skylines of both San Francisco and Oakland and the lights reflecting off of the bay. It was a nice way to end the trip, I thought. On the way back across the Golden Gate Bridge I pointed out to the attendant that we were a carpool of 3. She said that was nice, pay her $5 and come back Monday. I guess it is only free during the weekdays.
I made up for depriving those two of a little more sleep by getting up at 4AM again myself so that I could take them to the airport. That was too early for the hotel shuttle to run and I did not want them to have to take a cab. I went back to bed to try to get a couple more hours sleep, but I think I just ended up laying there without every falling back asleep. So I showered and packed and stopped to get some breakfast and then hit the road.
I had thought about taking route 1 along the coast and through Monterrey and maybe stopping at Hearst Castle, but since I was by myself and because the weather was dark and drizzly again I decided to just head down the 101.
I guess we were lucky weather wise because it only rained on the trip up and at the start of my trip down. It had be cloudy and cool at times during the three days there, but it did not really rain while we were in San Francisco. As I got a couple of hours south that Sunday morning it became sunny and clear. I made good use of the drive time by calling my step-mom Mary to wish her a Happy Mother's Day.
I did stop at this one place on the 101 between Solvand and Santa Barbara called Gaviota to take some pictures. I am not sure if this is the railroad trestle that is in the one scene in the movie Sideways or if that is one further up at the state beach, but thinking about the movie and how it is about two buddies on a road trip made me realize what a good friend Frank is and what a good trip it had been and how I am happy that Frank found a wonderful woman like Kathy.
Oh, and that trivia question thing.... As we were walking away from the mint I tried taking a drink of water and it went down the wrong way so I started coughing. As I was trying to take another drink to help clear my throat, Frank yells "That's what you cannot do in outer space!". I started laughing so hard that water came out my nose. Moments like those, that's what friends are for.