8. San Francisco

2114 3100.3 $5.00 Golden Gate Toll 59F

From there it was just a few minutes to the tollbooth at the Golden Gate Bridge. We paid an attendant the five dollars and crossed over. John would now direct since he knew the way to the hotel.

2140 3105.3 Holiday Inn Express room 354 62F

“Don’t take the first exit.”

We didn’t. We took a subsequent exit. I had no idea where we were, which direction we were going, or what we were looking for. Last time we had been here was in a Super Shuttle type van from the Oakland Airport in 2003 when we had come out to join Wilda’s ship, for a three day “Tiger Cruise” to San Diego. We had stayed somewhere near here by a driver who talked non-stop about San Francisco history, mostly the scandals, the whole time.

Now I was driving. “Try going two blocks over that way.” Negotiating traffic made up of people who knew where they were going and were in smaller more maneuverable cars, we went “that way” a couple of blocks. “Now keep going this way.” We would come to something he thought he recognized but not be able to continue in the direction he knew due to a one-way street.

Then we came around a corner and there it was, the Holiday Inn Express. This was the place. My big antenna drug on the ceiling in the pull-in. We stopped and went in.

Did they have any rooms? Yes, if smoking is OK. ….

It was expensive here. Accustomed to around $100/night this was going to be more than twice that. Tourist area. High real estate values.

Valet parking. Oh, that would be $32 a day extra.

We went out and unloaded our hotel stuff onto a cart, took down the big antenna, and checked the van in with the valet. I didn’t want to see it anymore, not tonight anyway.

There had been no dinner yet, I had wanted to get to the hotel … before dark, or as soon after as possible.

As soon as we were in the room we walked down towards Pier 39, the shopping mall, arriving shortly after ten p.m. Everyone was rolling in their wares and locking up. No eating places were open. We walked onto the pier and looked at the closed or closing shops. People were still in restaurants but they weren’t taking new customers this late. We went all the way to the end then around the west service road of the pier. We heard the sea lions barking in the dark. Other people were standing around there for this attraction.

Johnny Rocket’s $28.00

Back on the street, there was one place still open: Johnny Rocket’s. We went in and sat at the counter. It wasn’t clear that anyone noticed us. Finally a young Armenian waitress did. She took our order and nothing seemed to happen for another long time. Suddenly the guy running the grill was bringing stuff. Our order came in three or four pieces, from nowhere it seemed.

It was near closing time, the guy at the grill was shutting it down; the waitress was on her cellphone. Two couples on a hot date came in; they were treated the same way as us. It seemed normal to all of them.

We paid and walked back to the hotel in the dark.

2006 August 14

When we got up a bill had been slipped under the door. Looked like they thought we were checking out today. Not this again! I went down and straightened it out.

7/11 Ice $4.31

Fearing for the contents of the Igloo, we walked to the nearby 7/11 for ice first thing. On the way back I noted the Tuscan Inn just across the street from our hotel. That was where John, Katy, and I had stayed three years ago when we had come up for that Tiger Cruise on the Bonhomme-Richard, Wilda’s ship.

About 10 got the bikes out of valet parking. Rode to ferry tickets place, got a map/schedule, rode to the bridge, walked the bikes over mostly. Nervous about edges.

We took this ice down to the van in the basement valet lot of the hotel then got the bikes out and walked them up the ramp to street level. We were planning to ride them across the Golden Gate Bridge and John knew how to go about doing that, but I thought we might return on the ferry, so I was looking for information about that too.

Plan A was to go to the ferry ticket office, perhaps even buy tickets, and get directions. We rode to the ferry office and were given a schedule by an attendant. The schedule included a very rough map, not suitable for navigation. “Buy tickets onboard,” he said.

There were several bike rental shops along these streets, most of them had package deals where you rented a bike that came with a map attached to it, rode across the bridge to a ferry dock, and came back.

I got a brief camera movie of street music playing in time with the loud pile driver between Piers 39 and 41.

Plan B was to start towards the bridge and follow people with the rented bikes and maps to a ferry dock. It looked like there were lots of them.

Just getting started from this point, I noted that my speedometer / odometer wasn’t working. The magnet on the spokes was turned away from the pickup. I fixed it immediately, but had lost half to a quarter of a mile of “the record.”

It was about 6 km over to the bridge. We rode at first along the street our hotel was on. This seemed to be mostly industrial, business, and tourist with steep hills, trolleys, buses, and traffic. Then, we turned towards the bay and came to an area of parkland and parking lots. Next we were on a hiking/biking trail paralleling the road through this parkland. There were other cyclists, runners, and walkers, and occasionally a tour bus would pass us on the street.

The bridge appeared before us and gradually grew in size. I took pictures. We passed a marina. The road turned gradually north and started up a hill. John pointed out that the bridge could not be at water level. Of course not….

After several more blocks, we were off on a road not much traveled. The main bridge traffic was on the freeway ahead. People driving to the bridge or riding in busses would go other ways. Except for a few locals on short cuts, this was hikers and bikers only. At one point on this climb I actually overtook and passed another cyclist who was younger and appeared to be in better shape than I. This was unusual.

At the east corner of the south end of the bridge there were historic monuments, displays, and the ever-present gift shop. We stopped here and studied the display about the main cables. They were large enough that if they had been tubes you could nearly crawl through one. Made from multiple cables, they had been manufactured in the Midwest and shipped here for construction. There was also a statue and the story of the man behind this grand idea. Another tourist was telling the story to his family-group that some had thought that such a large bridge was impossible. It did seem, to me, a majestic undertaking.

From here it was a short climb up the walking / biking path to the entrance to the bridge itself. Everything there was very tight. After all, the bridge right-of-way was only wide enough for the six lane freeway and we would be on the walkway along the east side. All of this traffic had to enter the structure in one small space. Right at the chain link fence and gate were multiple signs and telephones. One described the pedestrian and cycling rules for the walkway. Another was for the suicide hotline. A sign said, essentially, “No matter how bad it seems there is hope. Call us before you jump!” Another sign said to be careful; it was a long fall to the rocks or water below, usually fatal. Another indicated that the bridge was open to pedestrians around the clock.

We passed through the gate and started riding up the mild incline towards the first tower. The ground below dropped away immediately.

At first there was a ten-foot security fence along the walkway topped with razor wire. Before long this diminished to a chest-high railing. Up on our bikes with the ground so far below, we were a bit nervous. Not to be outdone, a maintenance worker was in a small-looking basket about half way up one of the suspension cables on the other side. Other workers were monitoring his progress from below. It wasn’t clear what he was doing, maybe just learning to run the lift.

The walkway was crowded. Cyclists and pedestrians had informal conventions that seemed to change from span to span. Cyclists who knew what they were doing would weave among the walkers, maintaining maybe ten miles per hour. We weren’t up to joining them, nor did we want to go as slowly as the average group walking four or five abreast in the usual staggering, leisurely gate. After passing, inspecting and photographing around the first tower, we got off and walked.

Cars and big trucks zoomed by on our left while the vast emptiness stretched out to the right. Once in a while someone would go over to the chest-high railing and take a careful look down. A flock of birds was wheeling along below us. There were a few recreational boats near the bridge. They were small and far below. Alcatraz and Angel Islands were prominent in the backdrop beyond.

As we progressed the big main cables came lower and lower until they were only five or six feet above the right-of-way, nearly too low to see around. This was the middle.

John and I had argued last night and today about whether or not the bridge was symmetrical. I was convinced that it was, indeed, had to be by physics. He thought not, but was beginning to think at this point that I might be right.

Tourists passed going both ways. Cyclists passed in a hurry, as if on a workout. Some people were out in the occasional vestibule-like stick-outs, taking pictures, taking in the views. We continued on across, unwilling to mount up and go any faster.

As vehicles went by, the bridge would ride up and down a bit, not as much as the motion of being high in a tree in a little wind, but enough to remind you that you were suspended….

After a lot more walking we were at the north tower. The water below was shallow, nearing land. There were structures out on the spits, still far below us. Even though we were just as high as before the tower, John mounted up and started riding towards the north end. I got on and followed, and had a little trouble keeping up.

At last we were at the end, the place where the great cables come down behind the tower and were anchored to the earth. This, I told John, was where all the strain was that held the bridge up. I knew this because once I had built a suspension bridge from tinker toys with monkey sticks as the ropes/chains. It had been five or six feet long and would not work without the back stays, which I’d had to build in just as carefully as the main span, and counterweight carefully to get the right-of-way, HO gauge train track, to be mostly flat. It had been an interesting and educational experiential project, not assigned, just done from curiosity. That bridge, which lived on top of the upright piano for months, also swayed and heaved a bit with traffic.

Just beyond the end was a vista point pullout, clearly where we wanted to go. This was the point at which it became important to know where we were going. The choice was to find the ferry, somewhere downhill ahead, or to return as we had come. We even discussed returning as we had come, just so we could say we had done it, then coming back to the ferry. After discussion it was decided that three crossings would be too much.

We stayed in the vista area, studying the maps and taking pictures for something like half an hour. I thought I had figured out what we should do – go down those stairs over there to a road far below and ride along the waterfront into Sausalito. John had another idea, follow those bicycles with maps. We did it his way.

This meant an “exhilarating” downhill. It started as a bicycle trail, but was soon just a narrow shoulder on a two-lane road with occasional automotive traffic. A group on cycles with maps clearly knew where they were going, but were taking it slow on this downhill. Doing something unusual again, I pulled out and went around them. How many destinations could there be down there after all?

John was behind me, I was doing over 20 miles per hour. I held the camera over my shoulder, aimed it about like I thought it should be and clicked a picture of John a few car lengths back. This was one of the better photos from the ride. I got way ahead and took a sequence of John approaching, then some pictures of the local architecture. Soon we were back on level riding near the waterfront, to our east this time, and in the city of Sausalito.

7 Seas Pizza 33.00

2 Ice Cream $6.00

After riding through a little downtown shopping district, we came to a parking area and the ferry dock. That was easy. We had over an hour until the next scheduled ferry, nearly an hour and a half actually. We locked the bikes up and went back into the shopping district to look for lunch.

John didn’t want Mexican; he wanted pizza. The first pizza place we came to was called “7 Seas.” It was a nice sit-down restaurant with Italian and other things. And, yes, pizza. It was somewhat crowded around this lunchtime. We were nearly at elbows with the next table in patio seating. All were polite. Remembering the Shanghai Gardens and Wall Street Pizza experiences, I restricted the order to one medium. This was just right.

Well, nearly just right. They had ice cream for sale on the way out the door. I spent more money and we went off back to the bikes with dessert.

In the parking lot were two signs declaring the positions of this city.

“Welcome to Sausalito, Nuclear Free Zone.”

This reminded me of New Zealand. I wasn’t sure what it meant, though.

“Cholesterol Free Zone.”

Only in California….

Ferry fees $17.00

The ferry arrived. People started lining up, many with bikes, many without. Someone asked me details about how the ferry worked. I told her what I thought, “… but I’ve never been here before either,” I concluded.

The guy had said to buy ticket onboard so I was just going to walk on and see what happened.

I shouldn’t have hurried my ice cream and thrown away the last fourth of it. The line didn’t start moving for a very long time. They had to pull the boat up, secure it, and put down the ramps before starting boarding of the front of the line. The back of the line didn’t start moving for quite another while after that. We found a place in line, eventually started moving. I took my Merazine.

The attendant was letting bikes on in groups and non-bikes on in other groups. They just wanted them all to get on together because there was different routing. When I got to him, he used us to start a new bike group. Pedestrians went on by. “Don’t show me your tickets, put them away or you’ll lose them and you will have to buy them again,” he was repeating.

Our group’s time came. We walked down and rolled our bikes onboard. This was much like the big three-level ferries that went to Catalina and in this case, instead of luggage, all the bikes were piled up in two rows downstairs, all facing out so they’d be easy to move when we got to the other side. When this was done, we were free to move about. We went to the top and sat there.

Alcatraz

The ferry pulled away, we were crossing in front of Alcatraz. Before he dozed off, I asked John if he wanted to go on an Alcatraz tour. “I’m good,” he said. Translating (again) back into late 20^th century usage, this meant, “No.”

An obnoxious tourist, I took lots of pictures of the islands, the skylines all around, the bridge, of course, the wake, other boats, a cruise ship, the Bay Bridge, buoys, the pile driver still running (movie), the gang plank leaving the boat, everything. I got a shot of a container ship going under the Golden Gate Bridge. The shot wasn’t much good but it reminded me of having gone under on the Bonhomme-Richard that day three falls ago.

The boat was pulling in; we still didn’t have tickets. You had to have a ticket to get off. A few people were milling around the snack bar on the lower deck. This is where you bought tickets. I got in line.

Back to hotel – threw bikes on top, Nap

1:49:05 8.3 45.5 15.14 27.96 4743.7

Back on land, we rode the bikes back to the hotel basement, threw them in the back of the van on top of everything else, and went up to the room for a nap.

The mileage (“kilometerage”) shown here is a bit short, as noted above. The whole trip was about ten riding miles. I was having a little shifting and other mechanical trouble with my bike. It had been a long time since it had been tuned up. Ideally I would have done it for this trip, but as we ended up doing less than twenty miles of riding, and we were back now without major breakdowns, it hadn’t made any difference.

1700 go out again

Ghiradelis $17.00

I woke up and got John moving again. There were still other things on his San Francisco agenda. Doing the rest of the day on foot, we hiked west and found Ghirardelli’s chocolate factory and outlet. Bought gifts there, then turned north to the waterfront and back east towards Pier 39.

[editing note: Notice that “Ghirardelli’s” is nearly impossible to spell. 2/20/2010, cbd.]

Post Cards, camera backup battery $11.92

Most shops had lots of merchandise out on the sidewalk. I stopped for post cards. This would have been about a dollar except the camera batteries caught my eye. Ended up buying a non-rechargeable for our camera, just in case we got close to running it all the way down again. No, we didn’t need any flash chips, we were offloading to the computer every day or so. Most tourists who didn’t have a computer with them were starved for memory by now.

Penny smash $0.51

John seemed to be collecting commemorative pennies and so we collected one for The Bridge. At the end of the trip, though, he gave them all away as he thought appropriate.

Pier 39

Shirts and Jacket $58.56 M/C

Chocolate heaven $13.50

Clam Chowder Place $16.90

And so we came back to Pier 39, avoiding any more expensive shopping.

All the way at the end was a clothing and nick-nacks shop. We went in and bought T-Shirts with ultraviolet sensitive coloring. At night or indoors, they were white, but out in the sunlight the colors would come on, changing the scene. I bought the barking seals, John the pirates.

I also got a hooded pullover. As had been noted before, I had only a heavy jacket and everything else was short sleeve. I needed something in between for the cold evenings such as the one coming on right now.

We stopped in at Chocolate Heaven for more gifts, just to make sure all were covered.

We stopped into Houdini’s Magic Shop and watched a couple of the demonstrations. The only way they could sell anything, it appeared, was to demonstrate simple tricks then sell the kits, and the secrets, for $19.95. I didn’t see anyone buy anything, well not the tricks anyway. They also had videos of famous magicians. Tough crowd.

At Chowders we ate the clam chowder out of a bread bowl. This is what we would have had last night if they hadn’t been closed already, at ten. I took a picture of my meal, for the record.

Street Show donation $5.00

Walking back we got sucked into a street show. A guy (from New Orleans who repeated his name all the time, though I quickly forgot it anyway), was swallowing fire and walking on broken glass, but mostly talking, joking, and strutting around. And, then after maybe an hour of this all building to a finale where he would lay, bare backed, on broken glass while a man stood on him, he hit us up for money. No one charges for this… but he had a big sack. “For those of you just walking up, I’ve convinced all these people that money is evil and I’m collecting it all to burn.” Or, “Get out your wallet, take out a twenty for yourself, then throw it (the wallet) in the bag. No one did this.

He was entertaining. I sent John in with a $5.

For our last stop on the way back to the room, we looked in the window of the bakery that makes bread shaped like alligators and turtles and other animals. Sure enough.

2006 August 15 Tuesday

New Flight of the Phoenix – turned off.

The next morning John got up and turned on the TV. It was Dennis Quaid playing the pilot in the remake of Flight of the Phoenix. The old Jimmy Stewart version was one of dad’s favorites, but I’d not seen this one and didn’t really want to. We watched through the crash in the desert then I ordered it turned off so we could go eat.

Busy Continental Breakfast – showing that “Pit” movie.

Down in the lobby, the continental breakfast was a big production, larger than anything we had seen before. Even around 9:00, usually considered late for hotel provided breakfasts, there were 50-75 people eating, milling about, making messes. We had cereal and fruit.

The TV was not playing CNN, it was playing that movie about the factions in college. We had watched much of this movie at a previous stop, but I didn’t know its name or any of the stars. There was this frat house on campus known as “The Pit.” They were trying to save it from being lost to the conservatives on campus, who had no house. They threw a rave, everything went wrong, George Clinton had accidentally shown up, and performed. That made the day but there had been other problems. We had joked about this on and off, “That’s it folks, the 9:30 show is completely different from the 7:30 show,” one lead character had announced after another had made a fool of himself. The line I always remembered was when the house leader said, “I don’t think that has happened since my third sophomore year.”

1055 3105.4 90866 62F leave SF

We took our things down to the basement and prepared the van for travel then went and checked out. The rates were already high and, by the time you added “city tax,” “parking,” and “parking tax,” it was nearly five hundred dollars! I had expected this but it was still pretty steep. I will not plan to retire here!

Finally, we went out and got our keys from the valet. When leaving, they just told you where it was (that we already knew) and you just went and drove it out yourself. We had been using John’s keys for access when we hadn’t wanted to go through the valet.

1137 3115.6 90876 62F San Mateo Chevron

$58.20 = $3.119 X 18.660