Covering SF: Monday April 13th: In the End

Now, for the semi-exciting conclusion to the coverage of: San Francisco 2009

Getting Up

Once again, decided to wake up without an alarm clock since I didn’t have anything concrete planned for the morning. I had toyed with going to the Cable Car Museum, which is something I really wanted to do but it didn’t open until 10am and I needed to leave for the airport at about 10:40.

Instead, I went to Mel’s Drive-in for the final time. The experience was horrible. They never refilled my drink and were fairly rude in general. The food was still good but it sucked that the last two times I went, the service was poor.

I hung out in the hotel, watching television. Storms were going through Atlanta and I was concerned that it might cause airport delays.

Getting Out

I left for the airport at 10:45 and I thought I could get to Powell Station but my knee was hurting so bad, I had to keep taking breaks on the way down the steps. I missed the train, though it didn’t end up mattering. I still got to the airport in plenty of time. I checked in, went through security and got to my gate.

My flight was delayed 10-15 minutes but I was concerned that this was only an initial delay and that more delays might be on the way. My girlfriend was supposed to pick me up from the airport at around 8:45. She was going to have to get up at 4:30 to go to work the next morning and I was concerned that the we wouldn’t get back to my place until 9:30-9:45 (and we’d planned to watch ‘24’ on DVR that night), meaning she probably wouldn’t get but about five and a half hours of sleep or so…and it could be worse if the delay was any more than 10-15 minutes.

Mom suggested having my dad pick me up from the airport since he was going to be downtown late. I called Michelle at work to see whether the delay (and potential for more delays) made her want to change plans but she was really set on picking me up.

(Side note: Michelle sounds completely different at work. Her tone of voice, everything. Not bad, just different. Completely different.)

Getting Home

It turned out that the plane wasn’t delayed any more than the originally stated 10 minutes. Aboard the plane, I bought a sandwich for lunch, listened to podcasts, watched onboard television and, of course, played trivia.

I was kicking everyone’s ass until JAAACK showed up. It was the same guy who was so great on the flight out to San Francisco. We shared the flight to and from San Francisco, which is a crazy coincidence. JAAACK wasn’t quite as strong on the flight back though. San Francisco must’ve really tired him out or something.

While up in the plane, I was able to watch the vast majority of ‘Pardon the Interruption,’ which was really cool.

As for landing, we made up a good amount of time in the air and landed at 8:45pm as expected. The plan was for Michelle to hang out in a bookstore on Camp Creek Parkway until I landed. I figured that I’d text her that I’d landed and the time it would take me to get off the plane and to the front entrance would be the same time it’d take her to leave the bookstore and arrive at the south gate.

And it worked perfectly. We got back to my apartment without any problems and were able to watch the parts of ‘PTI’ that I had missed on the plane and the episode of ‘24’ that had aired.

Thoughts on the Trip

Looking back at the planning of the trip, I clearly had three concerns. First, I wasn’t sure whether my side would be 100% by April and when it became clear that it wouldn’t be, I was concerned about how it would affect the trip.

Second, I felt that I would probably never get the chance to go to San Francisco again, so I wanted to do as many things as possible as quickly as possible so that I didn’t leave anything out. This issue was made more difficult by concern number one.

Finally, I hadn’t been on a major trip like this in a long time and I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to go on a trip like this again. I had this feeling that ‘I better make this count.’

As a result of these three concerns, I created a massive plan designed to both fit in as much as possible with the understanding that my side might prevent me from completing the plan in full. What ended up happening is that the plan became a job and the things I wanted to do became tasks.

While the plan was extremely flexible and the flexibility was needed, not because my side but because my knee, there was too much information. The list of alternate bus schedules was a waste and never used. The listing of all bus routes was barely used and kind of unnecessary.

But it wasn’t that the plan was too big, it was that the creation of the plan was bigger than the trip. When I was younger, I remember how going from one event to another to another limited the fun. I always wanted a vacation where we could just hang out and not feel like we were running from place to place to complete ‘a plan.’ What’s the purpose of a vacation when it’s just a different kind of work?

On my trip to Colorado, my plan consisted of things I wanted to do and addresses. I used my GPS to get from place to place but most things weren’t really nailed down. I felt like I really was able to get away and just have a good time. The fun factor was missing on my trip to San Francisco because I was too caught up in the details.

I think adding to that a little was my purchase of the City Pass, which at $59 is still a great deal. The Pass gave me free use of cable cars, buses and street cars and it saved me an estimated $43 in fare. It allowed me to take part in the Blue and Gold Cruise ($24 regular price), the Aquarium ($16 regular price), the Modern Art Museum ($12.50 regular price) and the de Young Museum ($10 regular price). That’s usage worth about $105.50 for the cost of $59, a savings of at least $46.50.

But here’s the thing: Would I normally go to the museums and an aquarium? Probably not. I felt like I couldn’t cancel those things because they were already paid for and it put added pressure to ‘have’ to do those things. I mean, the City Pass still worked out overall because I would’ve done the cruise anyway and the transit stuff, so it would’ve paid for itself but I wasn’t impressed with either art museum.

Writing the coverage of the trip has been extremely tedious and tough to slog through but it captures the trip pretty well. It was a series of ‘turn here, turn there, get here, get there’ rather than enjoying the experience.

I wonder how much of an effect my knee getting hurt Friday morning played on the trip. Obviously, there were some things that were cancelled because I just couldn’t keep going. If my knee wasn’t hurting the way it was, would I have been so focused on the minutiae of the trip? Or was I focused on the minutiae because of the way the trip was planned?

I’d like to think that once I got out there, the plan would’ve become a guideline and less task oriented if my knee wasn’t hurt. I began viewing the plan as something to get through. ‘Will I be able to get through X, Y and Z before having to stop?’

I don’t know the answer to that. What I do know is that my side only seized up three times. Twice on the plane flight out there and once at Buena Vista Park on Friday. My side was completely a non-issue. I think in part because of the trip, I have greater confidence in my side and haven’t worried about it as much since I’ve gotten back. It’s not been a problem overall since I’ve gotten back and I’m very thankful for that.

I had planned for about 12 miles and I thought that was a lot. But because of getting lost, not counting the amount of walking I would incur during events and forgoing the bus because I thought walking would be easier (since the two points just seemed so close on the map or because I couldn’t find the bus stop), I wound up walking almost 28 miles in five days, 15 miles on Friday alone.

As for traveling while out there, I was glad that I didn’t rent a car. Parking was so bad out there, that it wouldn’t’ve done me any good anyway. The transit system is the city’s strongest asset, especially important given that it was insanely hilly, much worse than I could’ve pictured.

The weather was much better than I’d expected. Thursday was overcast and dreary but by late Friday afternoon, it began to clear up so that my Golden Gate pictures were shot against a mainly blue sky.

I ended up talking on the phone more than I'd expecting, running up a bill of $210. Since a good portion of my trip took place during a weekend, I either racked up a bunch of minutes on Friday (when I was walking everywhere an taking knee breaks) or I was in a roaming area and didn't realize it. I knew my bill would be higher but not that much higher.

The biggest victory to me though was the way I was able to always stay on East Coast time. While I was always aware of Pacific time, I kept waking up and going to sleep on an East Coast schedule, meaning I was in bed by 7 or 8pm PDT and awake by around 5am PDT. This made adjusting to my home schedule fairly easy.

Final Thought on the Trip

In the end, I’m certainly glad that I went. I’ve never been to a place like San Francisco but I think that I over-planned it because I was putting too much pressure on the trip, turning it into a job and robbing it of the fun that I could’ve had.

Upcoming Entries

The goal is to write my NASCAR experience and post it on Thursday and post my best and worst movies on Saturday. Then I’ll see where I’m at after that and hopefully the blog can get back to being something less boring and a little more funny.

Obituaries

I saw that Dom DiMaggio died on May 8th. Obviously it’s impossible to mention Dom without mentioning that he was the younger brother of Joe DiMaggio. What gets forgotten is that Dom was one of the best centerfielders of his era who finished his career with a .298 batting average. And while his brother had the famous 56 game hitting streak, Dom hit in 34 straight in 1949. The streak ended against the Yankees in a game in which Joe made a great catch to rob his brother of a hit.

But what I remember most about Dom is his book ‘Real Grass, Real Heroes,’ a story of the 1941 season in which his brother had the 56 game hit streak and Dom’s teammate, Ted Williams, batted .406. (Also in described in the book: Lou Gehrig’s farewell address, the first televised baseball game, the Mickey Owen World Series and Lefty Grove’s 300th win).

The book shows current fans what the game was like back then. The travel. The camaraderie between teammates. What it was like to play baseball as America’s involvement in World War II grew near. As a backdrop, the book also portrays what America was like during that time.

‘Real Grass, Real Heroes’ is an incredible book about an amazing season in a transformational year in our country and is definitely worth reading.

Dom passed away at the age of 92 of pneumonia.

Covering SF: Sunday April 12th: Piers of a Clown

And the recap of the trip to San Francisco continues with Sunday. I was disappointed that I’d been forced to cancel the trip to Chinatown and Pacific Heights (among other events) as a result of my knee hurting. Now the good news was that the swelling was at least down a bit and the discoloration was not quite as bad as it had been. But it was still hurting.

To Breakfast

My first event wasn’t until 9am so I didn’t bother setting the alarm. I went to Burger King, which was right near the start of the cable car route that goes straight to the Wharf. Fisherman’s Wharf is the most touristy part of San Francisco and most of the places I’d been weren’t filled with too many tourists.

On the Cable Car

The cable car I was on broke down and couldn’t get up one of the many hills in the city. It turned out that the gripman had released something to go down the hill faster and when he tried to reengage, the car had derailed from the track. So we were stuck until a truck could come out and fix everything. Even so, I still was at the Wharf an hour early.

Celebrating Easel in San Francisco

One concern I briefly had about the trip was that certain things wouldn’t be open on Sunday, being that it was Easter. But this was San Francisco and with the exception of the Cable Car Museum, everything was open that would normally be open on Sundays.

My mom sent me a text, “Do they celebrate Easter in Sodom.” I replied, They don’t have Easter in SF. I asked and they said, ‘For Art?’ And I said, ‘No, that’s an easel.” Mom responded, “Happy Easel to them.”

I meant to post on this site before I left a funny Easter clip but I didn’t because I forgot. Here’s the clip now, over a month late:



Playing Battleship

I was going to tour the Jeremiah O’Brien, which was a WWII battleship. The plan was to wander the deck mumbling, ‘You sunk my battleship’ over and over again.

The website advised allotting an hour and a half to tour the ship but I needed to be at my next event at 10:15. The battleship shared a pier with the USS Pampanito, a WWII submarine and I would’ve loved to have hit both back to back but due to time, I felt that was unrealistic.

The gate blocking the pier though didn’t open until 10 minutes after 9am. I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to get through the entire ship in time before I’d have to leave. Making things more difficult was that my knee started to really hurt and going up the ship’s steps made it hurt even worse.

I went to the engine room, which is where parts of ‘Titanic’ were shot but I couldn’t go all the way to the bottom because I was in too much pain. A little after 9:30, I decided to leave. I had seen the majority of the ship and I couldn’t stand to walk much more. The only part of the ship that I didn’t see was this room that apparently had a French diorama. I figured if it was French, it couldn’t’ve been that great.

On my way out, the ticket seller stopped me and said that I didn’t spend much time up in the ship. I explained that my knee was hurting and the narrow, metal steps was making it worse and I just needed to sit somewhere. He told me that he was sorry and that if I brought my ticket back later in the day, I wouldn’t have to pay again.

On a Submarine Without a Sandwich

As I began to walk toward where I’d seen a group of benches, I wondered whether I might be able to squeeze the Pampanito into the 40 minutes I had remaining. It would save me time walking from one pier to another if I could knock out both the submarine and the battleship back to back. So I decided to give it a try.

The booth for ticket sales was empty, so I went to the gift shop for the submarine. The girl there said that she didn’t sell tickets and that I would “need to go over there” as she pointed toward the empty booth. I explained that there was no one there and she replied, “I don’t know when they start selling tickets.”

This is the gift shop for the submarine. How can you not know when ticket sales start if you work there? It was like: We’re in no way affiliated with the Pampanito…now buy some submarine stuff. That was crazy to me. What was crazier was that I saw a couple people walking on the sub and they were clearly tourists. How did they get in there?

I sat on a bench and this guy walked past and asked if I wanted to go on the submarine. He told me that the guy that manned the booth hadn’t gotten there yet but if I put something in the donation box, he’d let me on. I put some money in the box and went on the self-guided tour.

What I was really struck by was how tight everything was. There wasn’t much room for one person to get around and I couldn’t imagine an entire crew working in a place like this. The ‘doors’ from one part to another weren’t like normal doors. You had to lift your leg up and squeeze through to the next part of the sub.

There wasn’t much to see though and I was able to get through the tour pretty quickly. When I got out, the guy had finally arrived at the ticket booth.

Halfway There: Living on a Pier

I wasn’t exactly sure where the pickup spot was for the movie tour. I walked up and down the Wharf looking for the spot but I couldn’t find the correct pier. I was supposed to go to Pier 43 and a half. The Pampanito was on Pier 45 and the next pier seemed to be number 41.

On the way to Pier 41, a guy yelled something at me in a foreign language. I figured he was a beggar and my general policy is to not make eye contact with people like that and certainly not to respond to them yelling at me.

When I realized that at Pier 41, I must’ve passed 43 ½, I turned around and had to pass by foreign man again and like before, he yelled at me in a foreign language but this time when I didn’t respond, he shouted, “Don’t ignore me!”

Look, here’s the thing, if you’re going to beg for something from me in my country, at least speak my language or don’t be surprised when I ignore you.

(Full disclosure: I would’ve ignored him if he’d yelled at me in English too)

And what if I’d been deaf? That guy didn’t know that I wasn’t deaf. But what was I supposed to do? Go back and engage this moron in some meaningful conversation? ‘Oh, I’m sorry. When you yelled at me in a foreign language, I didn’t understand what you were saying or that you were actually speaking to me as opposed to being on the phone or responding to one of the voices in your head. I hope you can forgive me, you dirty bastard.’

There were a lot of homeless people in San Francisco and there were a lot of beggars but let’s be clear, the two aren’t necessarily the same. The homeless people were scattered around and for the most part, left people alone. The beggars were primarily in the touristy areas, like the Wharf. Not all homeless people are beggars and certainly I don’t believe most beggars are homeless.

On the Movie Tour

I was able to find pier 43 ½ by 10:15, in time for the movie tour bus to arrive. Here’s the stunning part…the bus was virtually filled. I knew that they offered a couple pick up spots around the city but I figured most people would meet at the Wharf. Instead, I was one of three people (of about 20) at the bus’ final pickup spot. I was also able to take the last available window seat, though there were little star stickers on the outside of my window, partially blocking the view and making taking pictures even more difficult.

The bus tour was in many ways the best part of my trip out to San Francisco. I was able to get a good tour of the city on an air conditioned bus and we saw clips of movies that were shot in SF as we passed by where they were filmed. It was actually a lot of fun. There were several places along the way where we were able to get out and take pictures instead of always shooting inside the bus.

Most of my bus shots didn’t come out all that well but the outside pictures were pretty good. On the tour, I was able to see the Presidio, Grace Cathedral, Alta Plaza, Pacific Heights, Bank of Canton, Chinatown and several Victorian houses. It felt like that made up in some way for what I had to cancel the day before.

The halfway point of the tour was the Golden Gate Bridge. There was an extended break for 15 minutes and I had a choice between going to the bathroom (which I had to do pretty bad) or take more pictures of the Bridge. Guess which one I chose.

I was able to visit Fort Point (which I wasn’t able to do on Friday because of my knee) and shoot from almost directly under the bridge. At one point, in order to get a better angle, I stood up on the top of the Fort, wind whipping around and my knee hurting and I took pictures that came out decently good.

After about two hours on the tour, I did start getting a little antsy but I think a lot of that had to do with having to go to the bathroom. I was starting to actually feel sick to my stomach.

The tour went by LucasFilm, which didn’t allow visitors inside on the weekend. I took a couple pictures through windows that came out alright. There was a Yoda fountain that I still need to remember to send the picture of it to my brother.

Freaky Man’s Wharf

The tour dropped us off in the general area of Fisherman’s Wharf, though not at the exact pickup spot, so I was a little turned around. At the beginning of the tour, I saw a billboard for In & Out next to a Hooters. It seemed appropriate that it was like that.

I’d never been to In & Out, so I headed in that direction. The sidewalk was crazy crowded and extremely loud. I don’t do well in crowds and I hate getting bumped around by people.

I got to the restaurant but it was closed. And I mean closed like it might not be coming back. Ever. This meant I had to turn back around, retrace my steps toward the heart of the Wharf again.

I didn’t want to go to McDonalds again and while there was a Johnny Rockets, they take too long and I wanted something faster. I was doing good on time because I’d already knocked out the Pampanito earlier. I only had the Blue and Gold cruise and the Aquarium by the Bay left.

Along the way, there are street performers everywhere, like a carnival. Mimes. Dancers. Musicians. I mean, they’re all begging for money really but at least they’re doing something. When you see a street performer with a sign asking for money and then you see a guy just sitting on the curb doing nothing begging, it really points out his own laziness. At least be a mime. Anyone can do that. And it’s so much easier to ignore a mime. You know, because they’re quieter.

One guy I saw appeared to be wearing a bed sheet draped around himself but not like a toga. It was like he took a bed sheet, cut a hole for his head and wore it. At one point the wind blew and he was completely out there. And no, he wasn’t wearing underwear. One might ask, ‘Why’d you look down.’ To which I’d reply, ‘Because it popped out.’ It’s not like you couldn’t not look. Wind blows. Sheet moves. Mr. Johnson says hello. You try not looking.

I found a public bathroom but the line stretched for miles and it was at a glorified porta-potty (which I have a story about in a future entry). Another point that’s important to mention, and I might’ve written it in a previous segment of this series but most fast food restaurants in San Francisco reserve their bathrooms to customers only. There’s a key and you have to have eaten there to get the key. I feel that I’ve eaten at McDonald’s enough in my life to deserve a lifetime exemption into their bathrooms but SF franchises disagree.

I ate at Boudin’s, the outdoor version, which meant a shorter line but no bathroom. I had a hamburger and these organic potato chips that tasted funny. Not bad but just odd.

To the Famous Pier 39

I went to the Blue & Gold Cruise but I missed the boat for the next tour. It was just as well though because I really needed to go to the bathroom and I was betting the Aquarium had a good one to use.

Both the cruise and Aquarium were off pier 39, which is the epicenter of the Wharf. That’s where it’s the most crowded, loudest and filled with the typical tourist ripoff attractions. One thing that I was sorta looking forward to were the sea lions.

I don’t know what I was expecting. It turned out that it was just a bunch of sea lions lying around. It wasn’t very exciting. I took a couple pictures of them but there weren’t doing anything and they smelled terrible.

At the Aquarium by the Bay

I could see the bathroom when I entered the Aquarium but it was blocked from getting to it. I’d have to go through the entire series of exhibits before I could get to the bathroom.

Maybe I’m spoiled because the last three aquariums I’ve been to have been ones in Atlanta, Chattanooga and Baltimore (though I feel like there was one more somewhere). The three that I clearly remember were impressive. This one wasn’t. There were a handful of fish in tanks, the obligatory Nemo exhibit all aquariums have since the movie ‘Finding Nemo’ came out.

One of my favorite pictures I took was from the aquarium. I’m fascinated with jellyfish. They don’t look like anything else really. They’re completely bizarre and I love taking pictures of them. The problem is that it’s dark so the camera wants to use the flash. Of course, the flash would bounce off the glass, ruining the picture. Shooting without the flash could cause blurring and I don’t have a tripod. So I tried to keep my hands as steady as possible and ended up getting a couple really good shots of the jellyfish without any blur. I was really excited about those photographs.

The biggest attraction is also the biggest letdown. It’s called ‘Under the SF Bay.’ Basically, you walk in this tunnel where you’re surrounded by water to your left, right and above your head. The Atlanta Aquarium has this too but since this one’s called ‘Under the SF Bay,’ I kinda figured that I was under the SF Bay. Uh, no. I wasn’t under the Bay at all. As small writing revealed on this one sign, the fish in the exhibit are like fish that could be found within the Bay but I wasn’t actually underneath the Bay.

Perhaps they should’ve called it, ‘Fish from the SF Bay’ and avoided the potential confusion. Not that the biggest issue was the name issue. I was really feeling sick to my stomach and I just wanted to get through as quickly as I could so I could get to the gift shop’s bathroom.

I sped through the tunnel and the exhibit where you could pet a sting ray. I was able to get to the bathroom after 3+ hours of holding it in.

Under the Bridge

I went to the entrance for the Blue and Gold Cruise, my last event of the day and I knew, more than likely, the last of my trip. The big feature of this tour was that it went directly under the Golden Gate Bridge and allowed me to get pictures from the other side of the Bridge.

The boat featured this crazy narration that reminded me of those little puppet features at Six Flags. The voices talked in a crazy Old West accents and it was really strange. The narrator would tell stories but you could only understand a little bit of what was being said because the speakers weren’t the best in the world.

I stood on the front of the boat and it was extremely windy. I was leaning against a rail, holding the camera tight with both hands because I was scared I’d drop it into the water. I didn’t feel very secure on the boat but rather than move into a safer position, I stayed where I was because I thought the pictures would turn out better.

I got a few good pictures from the tour but nothing as great as I was imagining when I signed up for it.

I could tell that I was getting sunburned, so I went inside for the rest of the tour, since all we were going to do next was circle Alcatraz, and I had more than enough pictures of that.

Back to the Hotel

I took the Historic F Streetcar back to the hotel. On the ride back, this German guy was marveling at how amazing San Francisco was. He was saying that it was so much more advanced than the rest of the world. I don’t know about that but they certainly had a lot of Walgreens.

I stopped at the closest Walgreens to my hotel to pick up some more Gatorade and then I went to Mel’s Diner for a slice of cherry pie. The pie itself was good but the service was fairly poor and they didn’t seem quite as cheerful as the previous two times.

It was around 5pm and I really wanted to go to a movie but the theater that was nearest to me wasn’t playing anything I wanted to see. And the theater that was playing ‘Observe and Report,’ was located somewhere along Market Street but I never could figure out where.

I ended up just going back to the hotel and hanging out and icing my knee. I had walked 3.7 miles over the course of the day bringing the total for the trip up to 26.7 miles.

And that was how I spent my Easter. The next day, walking was going to be kept to a minimum as I packed up and flew back home on Monday.

Upcoming Entries

In the next entry, I’ll go through Monday and provide some final thoughts about the trip. I also still need to put out my best and worst movies of 2008, which I keep forgetting to do. And of course the story of my first (and quite possibly) last NASCAR race.

Final Thoughts

A Seattle Bar is putting on a ‘Hot for Teacher’ night hosted by Mary Kay Letourneau, a teacher who made news several years ago after engaging in a sexual relationship with a 12 year old student she would later marry. The bar’s owner said it’s supposed to be in fun but just a thought: If it was a male teacher and a female student, would they be having the same type of an event?

Natalie Cole was given a kidney by one of her fans who had died. Good news: Natalie Cole has a new kidney. Bad news: Her one fan has died.

This article talks about ‘classic’ groups that are teaming up to go on tours and put out singles. Bands like REO Speedwagon and Styx joining forces isn’t that much unlike Italy joining forces with Germany. The Axis of Shit. They’re on a tour called, Can't Stop Rockin'. Of course they can’t stop…they never started.

Headline on CNN.com: Man sucker-punches blind woman on bus. But I mean, you can hardly blame the guy. She was sitting in her seat being all blind and all. How was he supposed to resist? Are you telling me that you wouldn’t’ve punched her too?

The last time I considered buying the PX90 system (which some people insist on telling me is actually the P90X as if where the X goes matters to me) was during Spring Training because Matt Diaz used it and he’s completely awesome. If I’d started back then, I’d be two thirds of the way through the program with two thirds of the results, which would mean I’d have two thirds of a six pack...a four pack!

Covering SF: Saturday April 11th: In Jail

I’ll be honest, I’ve really lost interest in continuing to write this blog, especially the San Francisco recap. It is unbearably boring and I hate getting halfway through and quitting, so I’ll try to wrap this up. I’d like to think I can make it more interesting but…

Waking Up

Saturday morning, I didn’t need to get up until 5:30am, so I knew I wouldn’t have to set up my alarm. I went to Mel’s Drive-In, and once again, the service was extremely good. Everyone seemed happy and the food was very good.

On the Cable Car

I went to the spot where the cable car begins its route and the car was parked a half block ahead of the stop. I didn’t know whether that’s where we got on, so I went up and asked the two workers how and where do I board. The one guy pointed toward the other worker, who said that I needed to go wait behind the rope. I asked when it would leave the stop and they said they didn’t know but probably in five to ten minutes. I’d expected the cable car people to be friendly and during my time out there, they really weren’t.

About five minutes later, it moved in reverse toward me and a couple other waiting passengers. I got on and at some point, one of the workers yelled something and I thought he was telling us to get off, so I got off. I don’t know what he actually yelled but I realized that while some passengers got off, most stayed on and the car continued its route.

I was heading toward the part of Lombard Street that’s known as ‘The World’s Crookedest Street.’ I thought about walking but my knee was really hurting and while I’d read that San Francisco was hilly, it was nothing like I’d pictured. The degree of the hills were much, much steeper than I’d imagined. It was really something else.

The walk would be nearly a mile from where I was to Lombard Street, so I instead walked to the nearest cable car stop, and caught the next one that came by. Walking up hill wasn’t too bad on my knee (though it still hurt), nothing was as bad as walking downhill.

While on the car, a worker asked to see my pass, and then asked the passengers next to me to show them their pass. While both passengers and the worker were Asian, they were having trouble understanding each other. Turns out they didn’t have passes and had to buy one from the worker. I wound up having to ‘translate’ between the two.

The Crookedest Street

I hopped off at Lombard Street. The street was so steep that several switchbacks were put in place to make it safer for cars, which makes it a very crooked street. When I was little, I remember seeing a picture of the street in the Guinness Book of World Records and I really wanted to take the same picture I’d seen.

I wasn’t able to get that picture for several reasons. First, the flowers weren’t in bloom and second, I couldn’t get the angle right. The pictures I took were a bit of a disappointment. Off to the right of all the crookedness was a pedestrian walkway straight downhill and I was in a great deal of pain walking down that stretch. I’d taken the pain pills but I was still hurting a lot.

Getting to Alcatraz

I had a bit of trouble finding the bus stop to take me to the Fisherman’s Wharf. By the time I’d gotten there, I’d missed the bus. It wasn’t the biggest deal in the world since another bus was about 20 minutes away but my next event was Alcatraz and I needed to be at the gate by 8:30am to make sure I was able to board at 9am so I could get back in time to get to AT&T Park by 12:30pm for the ballpark tour.

I arrived just before the Alcatraz tour closed off allowing passengers for the 9am tour. If I’d been just a little bit later, I would’ve had to wait for 9:30, which doesn’t sound like a huge difference but this was only time in the entire time I was in San Francisco where I had reservations for back-to-back events.

I sat out on the deck on the ferry to Alcatraz and took pictures of the island, the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. The best pictures though were of the downtown skyline. I had really wanted to get good shots of the buildings, which is why I tried to go to Twin Peaks and why I went to Buena Vista Park but the best pictures were from the boat to Alcatraz.

It was extremely sunny and while it wasn’t hot, I was concerned about getting a sunburn. I probably should’ve put on sunscreen but I don’t like doing that, so I didn’t.

In Alcatraz

Alcatraz is extremely hilly and I was concerned about the amount of walking I’d have to do. They offered a tram to get you to the top but it was designed for handicapped people and I felt funny about asking to be given a lift so I walked.

I sent a text message to my mom, brother and girlfriend saying that I was in jail. I thought that was funny since I was in Alcatraz. My girlfriend sent back two texts: “What??” followed shortly by “You better be messing with me”

Alcatraz itself was fairly dingy and not all that fascinating on the inside. I liked the story about how Native Americans claimed it as theirs as it was declared surplus property by the government but seeing individual cells and empty mess halls isn’t that interesting.

I wandered around the outside of Alcatraz looking at the birds and the Bridge until I was stopped by a worker tending to the plants. She asked me if I was a “S-P-I-E,” attempting to spell out the word spy. I didn’t know what she was talking about and she pointed to my bag and asked what was written on there. It was a bag that I’d been given that had the word tour written on it. She looked disappointed and said, “Nevermind.”

No More Pictures

While taking pictures of birds, I ran out of room on my memory card. See, when I was in Colorado, I was shooting some of my pictures on medium quality and others in high quality but when I got back and loaded the pictures on the computer, I’d forgotten which ones were which. In an effort to eliminate that, I decided to shoot all of them in the highest quality: Large, Superfine. (Though for some reason, all my first pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge were taken in medium)

Because each picture took up more room, I had less pictures I could take, which is why I brought a cable to convert my pictures to my mp3 player for storage. I thought about doing the conversion that morning but thought I could get through the day okay. I was wrong.

I started deleting some of the pictures that were clearly duplicates and started shooting on medium quality. Doing this picture dump to clear up memory gave me a chance to rest my knee but then I realized that there was about to be a departure ferry back to the city. This would allow me to leave 30 minutes earlier than I’d planned, giving me time to possibly go back to the hotel and dump the remaining pictures onto my mp3 player. It also would give me a chance to go to the bathroom, since I hate using public restrooms.

Escape from Alcatraz

The problem was that I didn’t have much time before the ferry left and I’d have to hurry. With my knee hurting like it was, I debated whether I should even try. What if I hurt it worse? And still didn’t make it in time?

I decided it was better to hurry because the alternative meant taking more shots in medium, so I took off moving as quick as I could (which still wasn’t all that quick).

The guy who was letting people onto the ramp that led to the boat hollered toward me asking if I was wanting to get on the boat. I replied that I did and he told me I could slow down that he’d let me on. I was the last person onto the boat and it left just after I boarded. My knee was absolutely raging. Instead of hanging out on the deck, I spent the ride back inside, continuing to delete pictures and just trying to rest. I’d walked around two miles so far that day.

To the Hotel

I caught the ‘Historic F Streetcar’ to go back to the hotel. I’m not sure what’s so historic about it. Every time I boarded that streetcar, it always said it was bought in the 90s. Not all the historic.

In front of the Federal Reserve, there were several protestors walking in a circle carrying signs. Mostly they appeared to be homeless people who were given coffee by the organizers. One had a sign that read ‘Tim Geitner, You’re a funny guy, now get out.’ Another had a sign, “Socialism is the only cure for War, Poverty and Racism.”

You know, I’m not sure Socialism is the horrible evil some portray it as but it certainly isn’t the cure for war, poverty or racism. There are enough Socialist governments to be able to verify that.

I got back to the hotel and I searched through my bag and while I found two of the wires needed to convert pictures to my mp3 player, I was lacking the third piece, which meant I’d hurried down Alcatraz for nothing and I was going to have to shoot most of the rest of my pictures in medium. If I’d known that was going to happen, I would’ve short more in medium earlier and maybe only shot the Bridge shots in the highest quality or something.

I still had some time before I needed to leave for the ballpark tour, so I iced my knee to try to help with the swelling a little. Thankfully, it wasn’t quite as ugly as it was the day before but it was still pretty bad.

AT&T Park Tour

I took the bus to the ballpark and hung around waiting for the tour to start. I asked one of the workers where the tour started and she said she didn’t know. I asked another worker and they said, “It’s over there somewhere,” as they pointed toward one section of the Giants Team Store.

I was able to figure out where the tour began and we were led into the dining area for the ‘special’ ticket holders. I’ve actually gone to a game twice with ‘special’ tickets but I still feel a certain level of derision toward those ‘special’ ticket holders. They get to have ‘special’ food and get to have the ‘special’ seats with ‘special’ parking and they get ‘special’ service. And it seems like every ballpark tour starts with showing us common people what the ‘special’ people enjoy.

The one consolation is that ‘special’ tickets (at least the two stadiums I went to with them and no tour has indicated otherwise) don’t allow holders access to frozen lemonade. So at least we common people have that to hold over those bastards.

Back to the tour…

AT&T Park, despite the frequent name changes (previously PacBell and SBC Park) in its short history, is actually a wonderful ballpark. The food was good, the sight lines were good and the transit to the park was great. The tour was awful. It’s the single worst tour I’ve ever been on for a stadium.

The tour guide knew little about baseball. She knew Willie Mays’ name and number but when asked whose numbers had been retired and were on display in one section of the ballpark, she knew Mays and that one of them was Juan Marichal. One of the people in the group pointed out Willie McCovey’s number. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a tour guide not know the names of the retired numbers.

When the tour started, she gave us a 5-10 minute bathroom break. And almost everybody actually went. That’s crazy to me, both that there was a break and that people went. Here’s the thing, it’s advertised as a 90 minute tour. Don’t most people go beforehand? Do they really expect a bathroom break will be offered?

Once everyone was out of the bathroom, she asked what we expected to see on the tour. The standard answers were shouted out: The field, the clubhouse, the dugout, the press box…hold on…She said that the press box wasn’t something we’d visit on this tour because there wasn’t enough time. Of course, maybe if we hadn’t just taken a 5-10 minute bathroom break, there would’ve been time…

After looking at the ‘special’ people’s dining area, we went into the room where player’s do their press conferences and we watched a 10-15 minute video about the stadium. I’ve never been on a stadium tour that’s done that. We then had to wait so people could have their picture taken in the press conference room. Almost 30 minutes into the tour and we hadn’t hardly seen anything.

We saw the visitor’s clubhouse, which was standard stuff and the field, where we were given the obligatory ‘keep off the grass’ line and the home dugout. Other than that, it was almost entirely general admission stuff. We walked around in the cheap seats and saw various views of the park, all of which I’d seen a couple days earlier. It was a complete ripoff.

Oh, and we saw the suites and got the standard sales speech on how to rent one, something every tour has.

In all, it was an extremely lousy tour, especially for how great the park is.

Stopping for Lunch

After the tour, I went to McDonald’s to eat lunch. The cost of the meals were a lot more expensive in San Francisco than they are in Atlanta. I think I might’ve mentioned that before but these blogs are so boring, I don’t really want to force myself to look through what I’ve already written and find out if I’m repeating myself.

While at McDonald’s, this father and son that had been on the tour came up to me and we started talking about baseball. They were from Cincinnati and they were nice at first until I asked them what other stadiums they’ve toured and they named some stadiums they saw games in and then acted like I was pestering them. They were weird.

Getting to Coit Tower

My next stop was Coit Tower. I was going to take the bus to the Filbert Steps, which was supposed to be a bit of a hike but worth it because how pretty the walk is. I had a little trouble finding the bus stop for the bus number I needed. I kept walking north toward Coit Tower so that I was at least moving in the right direction.

I walked almost a mile before getting to a bus stop that (I thought) was clearly marked for the bus I was waiting for. And then when I saw the bus, it passed by, and as it did, I could see the bus driver waving at me. I was infuriated. I walked a couple blocks north to another bus stop and caught the next bus that came by.

I later learned that I was standing at a dropoff spot for the bus, not a pick up spot and that’s why the bus didn’t stop. Still sucked.

While on the bus, the driver yelled, “Did you see that!” at the passengers. We looked out the window and some police had their guns drawn at this guy who had his hands up. Honestly, I was hoping for gun shots but nothing like that happened. The driver said that the city was on edge because of the recent killings of some officers in the Bay Area and that police are probably going to be quicker to draw guns and perhaps fire on criminals than they normally would be.

Up the Filbert Steps

I got off a stop earlier than I should have in retrospect. I was going to walk up the Filbert Steps, and looking back on it, I was simply insane. My knee was hurting so bad and walking up a few steps was difficult. Going up these steps amounts to about a quarter of a mile total and according to some sources on the Internet, include around 400 steps, though I didn’t bother to count them.

There were times when I thought about quitting on the way up but (a) I didn’t want to have to go back down and (b) I kept thinking I was almost to the top. The reason I thought this is because when you go up a set of steps, you then have to go right or left to the next set and so you can’t really see the ending. People say how beautiful those steps are with the gardening and the supposed parrots that live there but I say the steps hurt.

The steps are in between the homes of people so you’re just a few feet from someone’s window or door, which means even when you see a bench, it likely belongs to someone and I didn’t feel like I could sit at it and rest.

When I finally did get to the top, I saw a bus pulling up. The map with bus routes that I had didn’t show any bus going to the top of Telegraph Hill. I kicked myself for not having taken the bus, especially since there was a page in The Plan that showed that Coit Tower bus.

My knee was killing me and it took me a lot longer to get up those steps than I thought it would. On the map, it looks like three blocks. I figured somewhere between 7 and 12 minutes. I didn’t time how long it took me but it was a lot longer than that. (Based on phone records, my estimate is about 35 minutes)

At Coit Tower

I read one report that I had discounted at the time, that advised allowing two hours to visit Coit Tower. I thought there was no way it could take that long. But if it did, I wouldn’t be getting to my next event until almost 6pm and by that time, the places would be closed and because I wanted to be back at the hotel by 7pm each day (10pm EDT), Coit Tower would be my last thing.

The line wasn’t going out the door. Because Coit Tower is circular, the line can wrap around the inside base. I figured that I’d have to wait 30 minutes or an hour at worst. The line was barely moving though. The elevator could only take about 11 people at a time. The elevator was slow. It seemed to take forever.

And when I finally got to the top, there was a substantial line of people waiting to go back down. That really hadn’t occurred to me, that there’d be a line to get down. In fact, of all the people up at the top, only a handful were looking around, the rest were waiting in line.

When you get off the elevator, you have to walk up these thin, narrow steps and each step was extremely painful with my knee hurting the way it was. All I could think of was getting back in line so I could get down. I took some pictures but my heart really wasn’t in it.

I quickly got back in line to go down. I’m not sure if I already wrote this but the iPhone was everywhere. In line, two of the four people in front of me had one. So I kept staring at it, coveting it. I wanted it so bad. On Monday, a person left their iPhone on the MUNI and another passenger picked it up and yelled out to the person who left it behind. You know why they didn’t steal it? Because virtually everyone in SF has an iPhone and so there’s no need to steal them.

(Actually, for everything negative I can say about San Francisco, they appear to be really good about returning things that someone lost. They’re just not very good with directions or knowing where exits and entrances are)

As for the pictures I got while up in the Tower, they were decent. I got a good one of the TransAmerican Building. The view wasn’t as disappointing as the St. Louis Arch, which had two directions you can look out of: east and west but I wound up spending nearly 3 hours (including travel time) on Coit Tower.

Additionally, I’d walked almost four and a half miles when I’d planned to walk less than three miles. According to plans, I was still set to walk just over a mile and a half.

To Stop or To Keep Going

After I finally got to the bottom, I waited for the bus to arrive and I ended up getting out at Little Italy. I needed to transfer to another bus but I was a little confused about where I was and I ended up walking in the wrong direction and had to double back.

By the time I caught another bus, it was too late to go to the cable car museum and Grace Cathedral (though I could’ve stopped by outside and looked at it). And because my knee was hurting as bad as it was, I really didn’t feel like walking through Chinatown. So I decided to just go back to the hotel.

This meant that I wouldn’t visit the Bank of Canton, Chinatown Gate, Pacific Heights, the Haas-Lilienthal House and Alta Vista Park. I was disappointed but I was just in too much pain to keep going.

What I really wanted to do was just lie down for a bit and maybe go to Mel’s Drive-in for strawberry shortcake or cherry pie. Of course I also really wanted some Gatorade. I truly wanted some Gatorade. Gatorade.

To the Hotel...And Gatorade

On the bus, I sat behind a couple that kept arguing and then would start making out, go back to arguing and then would continue making out. It was very bizarre.

Behind me, I heard one of the funniest random lines of the trip. A girl was talking to her friends and explained to them, “I’m a ho but I’m a good ho.”

When I got off the bus, I went to Walgreens for bottled water and two Gatorades and I got back to the hotel. And while I had every intention of going to Mel’s, I was too tired and just fell asleep. I’d walked almost five and a half miles during the day and 23 miles for the trip

I woke up a few hours later because next door there was this arguing couple that kept screaming at each other. It was extremely loud and I wondered whether they were making out in between the angry exchanges.

And that brings Saturday to a close…blessedly. I just have Sunday and Monday to get through and this awful blog slog will end. I also have a story about the first NASCAR race that I went to that I’d like to include in this but I don’t feel like writing any more right now.

Final Thoughts

A CNN Poll asked: Do you trust the US banking system? And who sponsored the poll? Bank of America

Manny busted for using female fertility drug. He said it was for personal medical issue. What? Was he trying to get pregnant? Have a bunch of little baby Mannys running around?

Covering SF: Friday April 10th: Lots of Walking

When I last left you, I was telling you about my first day in San Francisco. After the baseball game, I went back to the hotel and because I went out the wrong exit, I got a little turned around and ended up having to walk a lot further than I expected to walk. I caught a bus and went back toward the hotel.

At Walgreens

I did stop off at Walgreens to pick up some travel size toiletries because I didn’t bring any with me. I don’t like having to pack my liquid/gel items in Ziploc bag to present separately to the TSA agent. I’d rather buy the travel items out there and then throw them away when I’m ready to leave.

The Walgreens was dominated by Asians and they were all very small. The biggest thing that surprised me initially about San Francisco was that there were a lot more Asians than I’d expected. I assumed there’d be a large gay population (though I didn’t really see anything that yelled ‘We’re here, we’re queer’ in most of the city) but I was a little surprised about the strong Asian population.

While walking through Walgreens, I was wearing my red jacket and my side-bag, and an employee told another one to ‘watch the one in the red jacket for shoplifting.’

I couldn’t find travel sized items. I couldn’t find a separate section for travel items nor any travel items alongside larger/normal sized things. I asked an employee (not the one following me around) and he pointed toward one of the store’s four corners. I went to that corner, went up and down the aisle until I finally saw a small grouping of travel size items. The selection was horribly poor but I picked out a couple things and checked out.

Watching TV

I was going to watch ‘The Office,’ which was airing at 8 and 9pm, with ‘Parks and Recreation’ in between. I watched the first episode of ‘The Office’ but I cut off the second show half-way through because I was too tired to stay up. Looking back, I’d walked just over two and a half miles Thursday, a mile longer than I’d estimated I’d walk.

I thought I’d set my DVR to tape the debut of ‘Parks and Recreation’ but I didn’t. Thankfully it re-aired on Bravo the following Thursday and I was able to see the rest of it.

Sleeping

One thing that was weird about the hotel room is that I could hear everything outside. Horns were constantly honking, even at night. There was a lot more horn honking than I’d expected. I viewed California to be all laid back and I wouldn’t’ve expected to have so many horns honking.

The other difficulty with sleeping is that the bed faced the door directly. This might not sound strange but if you think about it, most hotels have a little hallway where the closet is on one side and the bathroom’s on the other and then the bed/beds are on the other side of the bathroom. This means that for the most part, you can’t see the door from the bed. I guess all hotels have the hallway lights on but I’ve never thought about it much because it doesn’t bother me.

Well, the light was coming through the door and it bothered me a little bit, not so much on the first night but later nights. And it wasn’t just from beneath the door but it was all around it. It was really annoying.

Friday Begins

I woke up at 4:30am, which was fortunate because my cell phone alarm never went off. I got ready to go and went to Denny’s, where I’d planned to have breakfast at least two times while I was out there.

On the way to the restaurant, I was walking and I didn’t realize that the sidewalk came to a curb, so I missed the step kinda and sorta twisted my knee. I didn’t think it was too bad and kept walking.

A guy behind me was also walking and suddenly began running. I panicked a little because I didn’t know why he’d started running and it was dark still. I kept walking and the guy just ran past me and nothing happened. But I did feel a bit of panic for a moment, wondering if I was about to be attacked.

Denny’s

I entered Denny’s at about 5:30am and there were no customers there. There were probably about eight employees milling around, none of them cleaning or anything, just wandering about.

One waiter led me to the table, another took my drink order, still another took the food order and the original waiter brought out the drink and a different waiter brought out the food. This led me not to really know who my waiter was.

I ordered a Coke but I was told they didn’t have Coke and that I’d have to choose between orange juice and coffee. I chose orange juice.

My food was very rubbery and no waiter came by to refill the drink. The service really sucked overall.

When the check was brought over, it was a lot more expensive than I expected. That’s one thing I saw over and over again: Things cost more out there than they do in Atlanta.

My experience at Denny’s was bad enough that I decided I wouldn’t try to eat breakfast there again while in town.

On the Subway

After breakfast, I went to Powell Station to use my MUNI pass for the subway for the first time. I couldn’t picture how exactly to use it. When I first got there, I swear I saw a police officer around the entrance. No one was in the MUNI booth, so I didn’t know who to show my pass to.

I walked around the station, which isn’t all that large but I couldn’t find anyone. There was someone in the BART booth. The BART shares the station with the MUNI but that’s it. I needed a MUNI employee.

This strange looking guy was staring at me as I searched for a MUNI representative. He yelled out to me, ‘Hey!’ as he began moving toward me. It freaked me out a little and I couldn’t see that police officer I thought I’d seen earlier. I left the station and waited for a little bit before going back in and at that point, a woman was in the booth and I simply showed her my pass and she let me in.

Twin Peaks

The first place I was visiting was Twin Peaks. It supposedly has one of the best views of the city but I knew there’d be a good amount of walking. I was estimating that I’d have to walk just over 5.5 miles during the day.

When I got off the subway, I was turned around and started walking in the direction I thought I was supposed to go. It was hard to tell directions because it was cloudy and I couldn’t see the sun. I walked for almost a half mile, uphill, before realizing that I was headed in the opposite direction. I turned around, retracing my steps downhill, before heading uphill in the correct direction.

I could tell my knee was bothering me but I still felt it was relatively manageable. My side, the big concern for the trip was feeling fine.

I couldn’t find the trail that was a shortcut to the top and instead had to rely on the street way, which is longer. I could see a bit of an overlook toward the city and it wasn’t tremendously impressive. I came up to a sign that warned of a curvy road ahead for the next mile and a half.

So at this point, I’d seen a preview of the shot that I’d get, I was going to have to walk an additional mile and a half, and I still might have to walk more to get to the top. With so much walking still left in the day, I was concerned that I’d do serious damage to get a pointless picture and be unable to finish out the day, which I was hoping would end with a visit to the Golden Gate Bridge.

I decided to pack it in and head back to the MUNI station after having walked just over 2 miles (I found a bus stop and took the bus back to the station). This was the first planned event that I didn’t go to and I felt a bit free from the schedule in a way.

Looking back at it, I would’ve gotten to the top if I’d walked an additional .7 miles (as well as the .7 miles on the way back. Whether the shots I’d’ve gotten would’ve been any good is unclear.

To Castro Street

I took the subway to Castro Street and it’s stereotypical but when I passed the subway exit for that stop going toward Twin Peaks, I assumed that everyone who got off at the stop was gay. Is that wrong? Probably but anyway…

When I got off at the stop, my bag apparently was a little open and one of the two bottles of pain pills I had on me fell out and I didn’t realize it. A guy behind me on the escalator yelled out to me that I’d dropped something and he, thankfully, picked it up and brought it to me. I thanked him several times.

The first impression of Castro Street: There were gay pride flags on every light pole and a massive rainbow flag on this one building. When I’d gotten out of the Powell Street station, there were homeless people and beggars everywhere and here, it was much nicer and less packed.

I saw the famous Castro Theater, which had a sign announcing the end of the ‘Mamma Mia’ sing along. There were several sex shops on the street and on one post, there was a flyer for ‘Cock Wars.’ It featured two men and they both were facing away from the camera, but their faces were turned around so you could see them both. You could see the one guy’s ass and you could tell what he was doing to the other guy’s ass and from the smiles on their faces, they were both loving every minute of it. It freaked me out a lot and I wish that I’d taken a picture of it.

I basically just walked up and down the street, taking pictures of the Castro Theater. I saw a couple record stores but one didn’t open until 10 and the other 11. It wasn’t worth hanging around so I tried to find a bus stop. I couldn’t find the stop that I was looking for, so instead I just took the only bus I could find to Haight street.

Buena Vista Park

My knee wasn’t feeling great at this point and so when I came to Buena Vista Park, my next stop, I wasn’t sure I could walk the trails, which were uphill all the way, to get to the top of the peak. I really didn’t want to cancel two of my first three planned events, so I went ahead and started up the trails.

The trail was only about .3 miles but it was steep and it was mostly steps, which made it more difficult. I got to the top, took a handful of shots, one or two worth taking and after resting for a bit, I started back down the trails.

On the way down, my knee REALLY started hurting. I couldn’t really bend my knee and every time I put any weight on it, it really hurt. As I was walking, I could hear these people screaming and howling and it freaked me out a little bit. I tried to speed up but it just made my knee hurt worse.

I looked through the trees and I could see the Golden Gate Bridge, the first time on the trip I could see it. I took two pictures of it and kept walking until I got to the bottom. I rested on a bench, one of three that were around. This woman came up and sat next to me and immediately lit up a cigarette.

While in San Francisco, I noticed a lot more smoking than I’m used to seeing here. I didn’t expect that. Throughout the city, there are warnings that state: It is known to the State of California that cigarettes cause cancer. Call me crazy but I thought the warnings were funny. It’s as if California has some inside information and they’re sharing it with us.

This was the first time I started using the pain pills but they were for my knee, not my side, which is why I had them on me. I got up off the bench and began walking, my next stop being Haight-Ashbury.

A Picture of a Sign Post

Generally, I don’t like taking pictures of signs but I couldn’t visit San Francisco and not take a picture of the Haight-Ashbury sign.

On the way to the sign, I noticed that all the stores opened late. One record store only opened on the weekends, another didn’t open until 12pm. I was really expecting to see some great record stores and it was clear that I wouldn’t get that chance.

I did see a store called ‘Cannabis Company.’ I would’ve gone in to see what they sold but they wasn’t open either. There was one store front that had a giant pair of female legs (I assume but it could’ve been a guy wearing stockings and a skirt) sticking out of a window.

While taking the picture of the Haight-Ashbury intersection, a girl walked by and I took a few steps toward the intersection (for the angle on the picture, not because she walked by). She said that I didn’t have to move and that “this is Haight-Ashbury and we should share everything.” She then asked what I was doing later in the day. She was very strange.

Lost Around Kezar Stadium

I knew I could take Haight to Golden Gate Park but I didn’t bother pulling out a map. Instead, I just walked west on Haight, figuring I’d run into the park and there’d be a sign pointing me to the Conservatory of Flowers.

It was a good plan…except I should’ve taken a right on Stanyan instead of a left.

While on Stanyan, I passed by this store and a three guys came out and before the door was even closed, they asked if I had any money to give them. As always, I avoided eye contact and kept walking. They yelled at me again and I just kept walking, trying very hard not limp.

I thought about what it must be like to be them. When I exit a store, I don’t think about asking the first person I see for money. He didn’t know anyone would be outside when he came out the door. His first instinct when he saw someone pass by was to ask for money. I can’t really imagine asking strangers for money. There’s a certain hurdle you have to cross to beg random people for money.

I realized at some point that I wasn’t heading in the right direction. I saw a McDonald’s and I thought about stopping to eat but there were five or six guys blocking the exit with signs begging for money, so I just kept walking.

I came to Kezar Stadium, which I didn’t think anything of. It was like a high school field, you know, with a lot of space in the middle and a track around the outside. I later found out that it was at Kezar Stadium where that scene was shot in ‘Dirty Harry,’ the one where Callahan shoots Scorpio in the leg and starts rubbing his foot in the wound. Had I known that, I would’ve taken a picture.

The stadium also marked 5.7 miles of walking during the day (not that I knew that at the time, I just knew I’d been walking a lot). That was more than I’d expected for the entire day and it wasn’t even half over yet. In addition to getting lost multiple times, I also was walking from stop to stop without getting on a bus. I had used the bus less than expected up to that point.

I consulted my map and finally got going in the right direction.

Conservatory of Flowers (or Plants)

I felt like I was going to fall over, so I stopped at this bench in front of a large patch of grass dedicated to ‘lawn bowling.’ I have no idea what lawn bowling is but I thought it sounded funny.

I must’ve sat at that bench for 30-40 minutes. I was hungry, thirsty and I just didn’t feel like walking anymore. I got up after the long period of sitting and my knee still wasn’t feeling any better. In fact, it felt a little worse.

I got to the Conservatory of Flowers, and the building was pretty cool looking. In front of the building, there were three sets of flowers and it looked nice. I took several pictures, purchased a ticket and went in. The first few exhibits contained virtually nothing but plants. There’d be a flower here or there but that was it.

Not just that but the humidity was so high that the lens kept fogging up and I couldn’t get any pictures.

Overall, it was a disappointment. I’d planned to spend an hour and a half there but I spent just about 30 minutes, most of which were in the final exhibit, which also had nothing to do with flowers. They built a mini-version of San Francisco with trains and trolleys running around famous city landmarks.

Skipping Academy of Sciences

There were some places that were scheduled because City Pass had coupons to get in free and Academy of Sciences was one of them. I was okay with going but I wasn’t really excited. And when I saw the line, which was just short of forever long (like it was Space Mountain), I didn’t feel too bad about passing on this one.

Instead, I went to a bench across from the Academy and in front of the De Young museum, which I was about to visit. While I sat, I could feel my knee tightening up. I took another pain pill and tried walking but it was hurting unbelievably painful and I kept feeling like I was going to fall over. I sat back down on a different bench before going into the De Young.

Inside the De Young

I still wasn’t used to how I was supposed to present my City Pass to gain admission into places. The Modern Art Museum had me go to the ticket window and exchange the coupon for a ticket. The line to the ticket window was really long and I was concerned that what if I stood in line, got to the front and it turned out that I just needed to get the coupon ripped by the admissions person?

I asked an employee walking around but he told me he didn’t handle those issues. I asked another person and they said that I needed to stand in line. She told me that there was another ticket line downstairs that didn’t usually have a line.

I walked down the stairs and it hurt really bad. I couldn’t walk normally down the stairs, instead I had to put my right foot on a step and then my left foot on that same step. Pause. Then do the same thing for the next step, so I was always standing on each step.

Sure enough, there was no line downstairs. There were also no exhibits and so when I got my actual ticket, I had to turn right back around and walk upstairs.

And literally, there was nothing interesting in the museum. They were going to have King Tut there in a few weeks. But I’m not sure that’s all that interesting either.

Skipping Another Thing

Despite getting lost, walking slow and resting on benches a lot more than planned, I was still making great time, primarily because I skipped Twin Peaks and the Academy of Sciences and spent far less time than expected at the Conservatory of Flowers and the De Young Museum. This is important because if I had enough time, I wanted to be able to go by the Golden Gate Bridge.

Physically, my knee was hurting and it obviously wasn’t something I’d planned on but my side was feeling good. It had seized up on the plane twice and once at Buena Vista Park but that was it. The pain pills I’d taken were for the knee. During the rest of my time out there, my side would never seize up again and was never an issue despite that being my number one concern.

I passed by the Japanese Tea Garden but because I didn’t want to pay $5, I didn’t go in. First of all, I hadn’t seen anywhere that the Tea Garden cost anything. Second, I was disappointed by the Conservatory of Flowers and the Cartoon Museum (both charging around the same amount) and for some reason I had linked the three.

The Botanical Garden

So I went straight to the Botanical Gardens. This didn’t speed anything up, time-wise because I had assumed that I would walk through the Tea Garden, take a couple pictures and keep moving. I didn’t expect to spend more than five minutes there

At first, the Botanical Gardens were disappointing. The lake was okay but mostly it was a collection of plants, uninteresting plants at that. As I went through though, there were some nice flowers and more interesting looking plants. I was enjoying everything until I realized that I didn’t know how to get out. There were no signs that indicated where you were or how to get out.

I didn’t think it was a big deal (yet) because I still was taking pictures and just wandering around. I saw a blue jay and a couple squirrels that were very close and being surprisingly still. I liked the pictures I was getting of the plants but at some point, I did want to leave.

I was so turned around, I didn’t even know what direction I should start heading in. Every time I saw what appeared to be a way out, there was a fence keeping me in. I felt completely trapped. I asked an employee but she said that she didn’t know where the exit was and said she thought I might be able to go out that way (as she pointed off to the side). So I walked that way. Did I get out?

No.

I did find another employee…two of them. So I asked and the guy said that he didn’t know the official exits but that there were holes in some fences and if I went through the hole, I could get out. The woman didn’t say anything. And where were these holes? Of course, he pointed.

And I followed the direction he pointed. It was bizarre because here were three employees and none of them seemed to know how to get out. I wondered if maybe they weren’t employees at all. Maybe they were former visitors and they couldn’t get out so they just began working, planting stuff in the ground. Maybe this would happen to me. I don’t leave but I learn that I have quite the green thumb.

I didn’t find any holes in the fence but after nearly a half hour of walking around with the sole purpose being to find an exit, I finally got out. Looking back on it, there are just two exit points. The way I got in and the way I got out. That’s it and there are no signs. Looking back on it, I’m amazed I didn’t become an employee there. In total, I managed to cover 1.6 miles in the Botanical Garden with the help of another pain pill.

Stow Lake

I saw an entrance to get into Stow Lake, the next place on my list but it was straight up hill and it looked like on the map there was another way in, so I continued further before realizing that there wasn’t another way in on that side and so after walking all the way out of Golden Gate Park, I turned around, retracing my steps, went to Stow Lake.

The purpose of Stow Lake was to get some water shots and, most importantly, a picture of the waterfall. But see, I didn’t exactly know where the waterfall was. The entire route around Stow Lake is 1.1 miles. I didn’t realize that then and for some reason, in the plan, it seems that I assumed that I would be able to go straight to the waterfall and then leave without having to circle the entire place. But I couldn’t.

I got two pictures of the waterfall, some duck shots and photos of a few turtles. There was also an interesting gazebo that I kept trying to frame with some shots in the foreground that didn’t turn out quite as good as they appeared in my head when I took the pictures.

Streetcar Adventures

Because of the time I’d spent walking around Stow Lake and Botanical Gardens, I was no longer doing as good on time as I was earlier. Still good but just not as good. I’d walked 10.9 miles so far during the day, just under twice what I’d planned for.

I thought about stopping for lunch/dinner but I really wanted to make sure I got clear day light pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge. The sky was starting to get a little brighter and instead of the cloudy/rainy pictures I feared, I thought my Bridge shots might come out okay.

To get to the streetcar to take me to Queen Wilhelmina’s Windmill, I had to retrace the steps that I’d already walked twice after having left the Botanical Garden.

I saw the street car stop and I crossed the street to get to the stop, which was in the middle of the median. I didn’t know if the streetcar would be going east or west for this stop but I was betting west.

It was going east.

I decided to take it anyway figuring that this streetcar going east would get me closer to the one that was going west. Looking back, this logic makes no sense. Why didn’t I just get out at the next stop and wait for the one going my direction? I don’t know. If I said I was delirious because of the pain or maybe because of the pain pills, would that make sense? I don’t know.

I continued through several stops, watching the west bound car pass by at one point before getting out. And again I thought about getting something to eat but now I was doing just about even with my time expectations.

For some reason, I decided that instead of standing at a streetcar stop, I’d walk east to get closer to an oncoming westbound streetcar. Again, I realize this makes no sense. But then I couldn’t find another stop, so I turned around and started walking back to the last stop I knew I’d seen. As I did that, a streetcar arrived. People were getting on and there was no way I’d be able to get to the stop on time the way I was walking.

So I attempted to run, a hobbled run, and even then, I knew I couldn’t make it to the front of the car. The back exit was open, so I jumped into it just before it took off toward the next stop. While my knee was hurting, it was a dulled pain but my knee was extremely swollen. I was able to put both hands around my right knee but when I tried that on my left knee, my thumbs were about two inches from meeting.

The next two miles were spent on the bus and when it came to the last stop and everyone was ordered off, I didn’t feel like moving but I got off anyway because that’s what I do. I leave when I’m told to get off the bus.

In Search of Windmills

The next thing I was looking for was Murphy’s Windmill. I had printed out nothing on the place, partly because I thought a windmill would kind of stick out and if I walked on the road by the windmill, I’d see it.

Well, I didn’t.

I searched up and down the road, went down paths and trails and I couldn’t find the damn thing. I finally found windmill but it was Queen Wilhelmina’s Windmill, which meant I’d crossed the entire width of the park, in a circuitous fashion and completely missed Murphy’s Windmill and found the other one I was looking for. Rather than turn around and search for Murphy, I decided to forget about, take pictures of Queen Wilhelmina and move on.

The thing about the windmill is that I realized my first few shots weren’t really showing how gigantic this structure was. Finally, I found a shot that had some cars in the picture that really showed how gi-normous this thing is.

The Beach

Across from the windmill, was a beach and it was the first time I’d ever seen the Pacific Ocean. I walked along the beach taking pictures. It was very difficult to walk on the sand with my knee and I was glad to get back on the sidewalk again.

How to Get to the Bridge

The plan here was sketchy. I wasn’t sure if my side would be up to going any further from here when I was first making the plan, so everything at this point was optional. It was about 4:30pm and I was a bit ahead of schedule. The other thing I didn’t know when putting the plan together was how easy the bus situation would be.

As it turned out, my side was fine to go further but my knee wasn’t. So instead of going to Baker Beach and Seal Rocks and then on to the Bridge, I decided to go straight to the Bridge. The problem was that I didn’t have a scenario for that.

So I looked at the bus routes, found the closest one that would get me to a connecting bus that would go by the Bridge.

The Bridge

As much as I was hurting, I was excited to see the Golden Gate Bridge. It really had cleared out and while not perfect, it was good enough to get some decent pictures. The problem was that for some reason, the camera was set on medium. The plan was for all the pictures to be shot in large/super fine mode. Instead all the Bridge pictures from Friday were medium/fine. This means that while the pictures will look fine 4x6 and passable at 8x10, there’s no way they can be blown up past that.

Keep in mind that I’d eaten breakfast at 5:30am. I had one glass of orange juice because they wouldn’t refill it. I never at lunch and now it’s just before 5pm. I never ate or drank anything during this period of time and had now walked just under 15 miles during the day.

There was a little café near the Bridge and a gift shop. I figured that the gift shop would close at 5pm, so I decided to go there first before it closed and then I’d eat. I left the gift shop and got to the café right at 5pm and it had just closed. A café that closes at 5pm? How weird is that?

I thought about walking on the Bridge but my knee was hurting too bad and I decided to go back to the hotel, eating dinner around the corner at Mel’s Drive-In. I never did end up walking on the Bridge, which I would’ve loved to have done but I just wasn’t up for it. I felt like I was about to collapse at this point and just wanted to eat, drink and go to bed.

At Mel’s

In ‘American Graffiti,’ the big restaurant was Mel’s Drive-In. I wish this had been the one they filmed it at but apparently that one’s gone. Still, it was cool to have been at this one. They had a bunch of pictures of the movie everywhere.

The waitress came by and I made sure they had free refills and I probably should’ve just ordered water but you know when you haven’t had a Coke and you really, really want one? Well, that’s what I felt like. Another waiter brought me a small cup of water and I drank Coke after Coke after Coke. If a waiter passed by and saw I was getting low again, they’d get me another one, even though they weren’t my waiter.

The whole staff was extremely friendly and very quick and attentive. I ordered a cheeseburger and fries and I ate as quickly as possible.

But then I started feeling a little sick halfway through the hamburger. I almost felt like I was going to throw up. I asked for some more water and tried to focus on not vomiting. My head started hurting and I began feeling a little dizzy. I decided to stop eating and get back to the hotel.

With my receipt, they gave me a ‘Use it or lose it’ coupon for 15% off my next order for the next day. I was going to have breakfast there on Saturday morning, so I made sure to hang on to the coupon.

Back to the Hotel

I got back to my room at 7:30pm I had brought some prescription-strength ibuprofen with me on the trip but I didn’t carry it in my bag because I didn’t want to have three bottles on me. I took a couple pills and iced my knee. The top of my knee was ghostly white with a dark red ring around it and a little purple mixed in there too. It was very swollen.

I looked through the pictures I had taken and was disappointed there were no ‘money shots,’ pictures that I could say, ‘This is why I came here.’

I looked through my plan for the next day, which thankfully called for a lot less walking. I didn’t realize it then but looking back, I walked 15.1 miles on Friday, almost 10 miles more than I’d expected to walk. I’d planned to walk about 12 miles for the entire trip and in my first two days, I was already over 17 and a half miles.

The Next Day Plans

Saturday, I was planning to go to Lombard Street, ride the cable cars for the first time, tour Alcatraz, AT&T Park and the Cable Car Museum, as well as visit Coit Tower, Grace Cathedral, China Town and Pacific Heights. I expected about 3 miles of walking.

One Last SF Trip Note for the Day

I sent in five pictures to the AJC’s Weekend Away and they posted all five. Mine are pictures 27-31 and can be found here.

To be honest, most of the other people’s pictures suck. The South African ones are good but some of them could’ve been taken anywhere. A couple of them were pictures of people in what appears to be a restaurant. It makes me wonder if AJC just posts whatever you send them. I’ve never had a picture rejected that I’ve sent in. Am I that good or are standards that low?

In Current News

My lease is up with my apartment complex and I was notified that on April 21st, there’d be a pizza party renewal thing. I’d expected my lease to go up at least $20, maybe up to $40 more than what I was currently paying. But the notification advised that if I signed by Tuesday, it would be at the same rate, plus I’d have my choice of a $200 gift.

The three gifts were: a $200 coffee maker, a $200 carpet cleaning or $200 off the first month’s rent. The coffee maker wouldn’t be worth it unless it spit out two $100 bills on its first use. I’m okay with my carpet how it is. I could always go for $200 off rent. So that’s the one I went with.

After signing everything, I saw that my next door neighbor’s renewal is also up. And because I’m nosy/curious, I looked to see what their rate was and they were paying almost $100 less per month for the same size apartment and everything.

Final Thoughts

I’m going to Talladega on Sunday. I’m looking forward to what kinds of pictures I’ll get but I’m concerned what I’m going to do for the next two and half hours of cars racing around a circle. I’m thinking about pretending I’m deaf for an hour and going up to people saying, “What time is it?” in that crazy deaf person’s voice and when they answer, I’ll reply, “I can’t hear you. I’m deaf.”

I saw a Chevron sign that read: Now we open 24 hour. I thought about going inside the store to see if it was run by Asians.

I saw ‘Crank 2: High Voltage’ and while it’s not going to be confused with a great movie, I had a lot of fun during it. I was funny. It’s good when you can say funny stuff to someone and not be shushed. I also enjoyed the drive home and trying to think of any demographic groups the movie didn’t offend. It pretty much went out of its way to offend most groups.

I’ve decided I’m not going to become a song-writer, which means anyone’s free to use the following line: You don’t know what you say when you say what you say. It might well come from a real song but if it doesn’t, feel free to use it. If you could just mention the blog in the liner notes.

Is there a way to make these San Francisco recap posts less boring?

Covering SF: Thursday April 9th: Art, Planes & Baseball

So…it’s been a while. Let’s catch up for a minute. How are you doing? Everything well? I know, this weather’s been crazy. Are the Braves scaring you as much as they’re scaring me?

I got back from San Francisco on April 13th and I kept meaning to write about what happened out there but it was going to take too long and I kept putting it off. I’ll break it into separate entries to make it easier to go through.

Have I mentioned that I’m writing this on a different computer? Does it look different? My right arm feels funny while writing on this computer. I wonder what that means.

When I first left for San Francisco, I was writing down notes in my cell phone to remember and then transcribing them into a journal that my girlfriend gave me before the trip. But then pretty soon, my notes and everything became less detailed and you’ll see why once I tell you what happened.

Converting Audio Files

When I left you little Droogies, I had learned that all those audio books I’d downloaded wouldn’t play on my mp3 player. I’d found a conversion program but it would only convert three minutes at a time unless I paid for the full version. Since it appeared to work and the initial tests showed that it would play on my player, I paid the extra $20 to get the ‘key code’ and start converting.

The conversion took forever. I had 13 files and I ended up going to bed with it still converting and when I woke up at 5am, it was still converting. I was able to get 12 of the 13 files completed and on my player for the flight out there.

Waking up Thursday

I struggled going to sleep Wednesday night. I was thinking about the plan, the conversion process and about different things that I needed to remember. I fell asleep around 12:30am and I kept waking up through out the night off and on. I probably slept about 3 hours all together.

At 5:50, we left for the airport and I was hungry but I thought initially I would just eat something at the airport. But then I couldn’t wait, so we stopped at Chick-fil-a. Turned out it wasn’t open yet. I swear that I’ve seen Chick-fil-a restaurants open at 6am but this one didn’t open until 6:30. So I thought we could stop at one on the way.

At Hartsfield

I expected traffic to be heavy but moving. Instead, it was really moving and we made really good time on the way up there and arrived at the airport around 6:30, so I never stopped and ate anything first.

There wasn’t a line for the initial security check, so I breezed through that and there were only a handful of people waiting to take their shoes off and go through the metal detector. That went pretty quick too. I was already at the gate by 6:45 and my flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 8:30 (and didn’t leave until 8:45). I really didn’t plan on everything going so easily, leaving me two hours to just sit and wait.

All the vendors that served real food weren’t open yet, at least I didn’t see one that was open. There was a newsstand like place that sold candy but that wasn’t what I was looking for.

On Wednesday, Pardon the Interruption was on ESPN2, so while I saw the episode, I missed ‘the big finish’ that airs during SportsCenter. I was able to download that part of the show on video podcast and I watched it at the gate along with several video MLB podcasts.

The biggest annoyance at the airport were those beeping carts that carry certain people to their gates. Why do those people get a cart for and why is that beeping sound so high pitched. There’s something about that tone that drives me insane. I could’ve bit one of those cart people.

And those cart people. They looked so smug up there on their cart. Glancing around at the rest of us who were born without the privilege of a cart waiting to take us from gate to gate. The repetitious beeping probably didn’t even bother them. They grew up with it. I bet they miss the beeping when they’re not on the cart. Bastards.

On the Plane

Once I got on the plane, I looked around to see if there were any Arabs on board. Is that bad? Should I not admit that? And whenever there are Arabs on board, I always feel a little better when I see a couple soldiers dressed in army fatigues. It’s like I think that those soldiers are used to battling Arabs overseas, fighting them on a plane should be second nature (even if the soldiers are flying in from serving on an airbase in Germany, never seeing any combat in Iraq).

Well, there weren’t any Arabs on the plane and I felt relieved. You know, that sounds bad…I think…maybe.

I was so tired and I was on the plane and I wanted to go to sleep but I knew I wouldn’t be able to. I flew first class from Las Vegas to Atlanta on a red eye and I still couldn’t fall asleep. If you can’t sleep on a flight like that, you can’t sleep on any flight.

The two people next to me were boyfriend/girlfriend, or a really handsy brother/sister. The guy wouldn’t shut up. He just kept babbling about what the weather is usually like in California and how much better the West Coast is. Thankfully, once we were in the air, they both fell asleep.

When the flight took off, my side began to seize up. When we started to descend, it seized up as well. I was concerned since the next day would be my major walking day with at least five miles of walking.

Playing Trivia

Each seat had its own television screen and you could watch television, pay-per-view movies and make CD playlists. But the best thing they had were video games, most notably trivia.

I love trivia and I’ve been on flights where they have trivia. Those flights will show you a question, give you a few seconds to think of the answer and then it reveals the answer. This one, though, was interactive and you could play against other people on the plane. I won the first several games that I played, my main competition coming from a passenger named JAAACK. He was pretty good and one a few while I was playing.

Sometimes I would take a break from playing and watch television, or one of my podcasts but every time I’d go back to trivia, JAAACK was still at it. He was my rival. He was like Lex Luther to Superman or Martin Luther to Charles V.

While on the Plane

The other thing you could do on this screen was track where the plan was as it flew across the country. What struck me most about flying over America was how different each area was. You had the long stretches of plains, then mountains, then reddish mountains/canyons, followed by desert. It was pretty amazing.

They served food on the flight but the menu was weak. Because it was morning, there was the choice of a bagel, a croissant (a word I refuse to say), and a fruit plate. They also had Peanut M&Ms and Pringles for sale and the standard peanuts and cookies that were free.

Additionally, I had a bag of Reece’s Pieces that my girlfriend had given me for the flight (two bags actually, one for the flight out there and one for the flight back). I started with the cookies, followed by the Reece’s and I ended with two bags of peanuts. And that was my breakfast.

Arriving in San Francisco

I landed in San Francisco at 10am (Pacific Time) and the airport was right on the water, so it looked like we were going to land on the water and it was kinda freaking looking. The airport was smaller than Hartsfield but was very crowded and there wasn’t a lot of room to walk without running into someone. It felt like I had to walk around half the airport to get to the BART, the system that takes you into San Francisco.

It wasn’t raining, though it was clear that it had been raining and might start raining again very soon. It was windy and while I was glad I had my jacket on, the heat was jacked up very high in every building I went inside of.

At the Visitor's Center

From the airport, I went to the SF Visitor’s Center to pick up my City Pass. My first concern of the trip was that the pass would have some loopholes on it that would keep me from visiting the places I wanted to go to or would have some cap on how many times I could ride the buses or something.

I’d scheduled several minutes at the Visitor’s Center because I was going to ask several questions about the city and the City Pass but it was clear that the guy at the counter didn’t really want to answer any questions.

I asked how the MUNI pass (within City Pass) works and he said, “I’ll answer that when I explain how the pass works.”

All he said was how long it was good for and that I’d better not remove the coupons myself or they’ll be voided. I really didn’t know how I was supposed to get on the bus (and especially the subways) with the pass. I figured I could just ask the drivers or someone at the station when I needed to use the pass.

I was turned around and asked Visitor Center Guy where the Mosser (my hotel) was. I wish I could reprint his directions because they were the most convoluted set of instructions I’ve ever been given, especially when I realized where the hotel was. I knew I was only a block and a half away but he said ‘turn here’ at least four times. Instead, he could’ve just said go up the stairs and turn right at Old Navy. I looked at my map and got to the hotel without a problem.

At the Hotel

I was concerned I would be allowed to check in so early. I’d packed so that the bag I’d carry with me out in the city was inside the luggage bag and if they wouldn’t let me check in, I could either carry my luggage bag with me to the Modern Art Museum, Yerba Buena Park and the Cartoon Museum or they might let me check in my bag up front. If they did that, I’d unpack the luggage bag, and take only what I needed that day with me in the smaller bag I’d carry around with me.

As it turned out, they let me check in without any problems. I was on the eighth floor and while the hotel was old, it wasn’t dirty or anything. It was just very small feeling. The bed was about 6 feet long and 4 feet wide and reminded me of a coffin. There wasn’t much space between the bed and the sink.

The restroom was in the hallway and there was a men and women’s restroom, though both simply had a single toilet in them. There was just enough space for the door to open without hitting the toilet. At first, I couldn’t figure out how to turn the light on. There was no light switch to be found. So when I got there, I closed the door and peed in the dark. I mean, I’ve been using the toilet for a lot of years and if I just aim straight, there’s no reason I really need light.

It turned out that there was a button that you could press for the light and depending on how many times you pressed it, the light would stay on for a certain amount of time. For instance, if you pressed it once, it would stay on for five minutes, twice would be ten minutes.

The bathroom was also in the hallway and the light worked much the same way. It was a bathtub with a shower and like everything else in the hotel, it was small.

When I’d checked in, they gave me the option to upgrade to a bigger room, one presumably without shared facilities but the cost was $25 per night. I didn’t really think it was worth $100 to upgrade, especially when I wasn’t sure how much bigger the rooms would be.

The room did have a television, and it was mounted up high in the room near the door like it was a hospital. There was no air conditioner and initially the room was hot but there was a fan and it worked okay enough. While there was a closet, there wasn’t a chest of drawers. Each morning, I just kept repacking my suitcase, except for my shirts, which were hung up in the closet.

I never did figure out how to work the clock radio. The only time I could set the alarm for was 7:30am. I kept trying to change it to an earlier time but I couldn’t do it. The first night I used my cell phone alarm but it didn’t work either. The rest of the trip, I just woke up when I woke up and thankfully I never overslept.

To Yerba Buena Park/MOMA

After reconfiguring my luggage so that my smaller bag that I’d carry around with me would have everything I needed that afternoon, I walked to Yerba Buena Park. On the way there, I saw Mel’s Drive-In and Denny’s, both places I’d planned to eat at on my trip and they were both a half block or so away from the hotel. Also nearby was the Metreon, which housed a full movie theater that included an IMAX screen.

The Park wasn’t far from the hotel either but it was much smaller than I’d expected. I only took pictures of a waterfall and the front of the Modern Art Museum but there wasn’t anything else worth taking shots of. I spent a lot less time in the park than I’d expected.

Seeing Art

The Modern Art Museum (or MOMA as it’s called) was the first test for my City Pass. I took it to the admissions desk and they ripped out the coupon and gave me a ticket. I walked around the museum and…well, I saw stuff. Nothing really worth taking pictures of (though I’m not sure we were supposed to take pictures of it or not).

I feel funny about taking pictures of art. In many cases, someone saw something, took a picture of it and then drew a picture of what they took a picture of. So I’m taking a picture of a picture they drew of a picture they took.

Of course, many things in the museum weren’t drawings of anything. They were splashes of paint on a canvas. I don’t know how you determine if that piece of art is good or not. How do you judge that art?

I’d look at those sorts of pieces and move to the next one but I wasn’t going to spend a bunch of time trying to figure anything out. But there were those who were more than willing to spend time with each piece. Staring at it. Left hand against his chin. Pondering. Awaiting some sign that would give him a supernatural understanding of that piece. Just what were those seemingly random lines trying to convey. He just kept studying it. A certain look of self-importance. He was going to understand this piece. They weren’t just random lines. There was a meaning.

I found starting at him more interesting than the pieces themselves. He was wearing a brown suit jacket with dark blue jeans. And sandals…with socks on (did you have hafta ask if he had socks on? Of course he had socks on).

But he spent too much time with each piece and I had to keep moving. One canvas had four squares drawn within each other. It was called Homage to a Square. That is not art. It’s a faithful rendering of a well-known geometric shape…four of them inside each other. Not art.

I did see a Jackson Pollack painting. Can’t really say I was impressed but it did make me think of Ed Harris and in a couple of days I was going to see Alcatraz, which was in the movie ‘The Rock,’ which also starred Ed Harris. Ed Harris is good.

Seeing Cartoons

I got through MOMA pretty quickly, all four floors of it and I moved on to the Cartoon Museum. It was very small and I had some misgivings about even going inside of it. I mean, I’m not a cartoon guy. Part of what intrigued me though is that it said that they also had the history of political cartoons and I thought that sounded interesting.

When I was putting the plan together, the website for the museum listed a cost of $4. When I got there, it was $6. It’s not like it’s a huge difference but I checked the cost of everything a couple days before leaving. The website was update again on 4-14, the day after I got back to Atlanta and it lists a charge of $6.

The museum was small and they didn’t allow photography. I debated whether to pay the money or not but I decided to go ahead anyway.

Mainly it was a museum about ‘Watchmen’ with a couple other cartoon strips. And I mean that literally. There was a cartoon strip of Dennis the Menace and a couple from the Peanuts. There was no cohesive story or history being displayed. A couple of sketches from some well known artists but mostly it was just ‘Watchmen.’ Some of the displays appeared to come from the movie, you know, like props but others appeared to be replicas of props used in the movie. I wasn’t sure what was from the movie and what wasn’t.

There were some original sketching for the comic (excuse me, graphic novel) but there wasn’t much of an appeal in that. I’d planned on taking pictures of those things and sending them to my brother who would at least be interested in those sorts of things.

There was a constant video running of the making of ‘Watchmen.’ I watched the part about Dr. Manhattan. Somehow I was able to make it through the rest of the trip without visions of a blue penis dancing in my head, which is especially impressive considering that I was in San Francisco.

As for the ‘history of political cartoons,’ there were three or four cartoons. That was it.

Seeing Baseball

My next stop was AT&T Park to watch the Giants play the Brewers. This was my first chance to use my City Pass to ride the bus and I was a bit nervous about it. At the art museum, they ripped out my coupon. Was the bus driver supposed to rip out this coupon? Maybe giving me an actual MUNI pass instead?

I stood and waited for the bus and I got on, showed the driver the inside of the Pass, turned to the actual MUNI pass page but he said that he needed to see the date it was validated, which was April 9th. He seemed to say that it was only valid for that date. I was confused and he told me to just sit down, which I did.

I followed his path on my map so that I could get out at the right time. I got out on the corner of 3rd and Townsend and walked the rest of the way to the ballpark, past a McDonald’s and a handful of scalpers. (Those the park was at least a third empty at its peak, so I don’t know how much any scalper could make off a game like this)

I was concerned that the stadium officials would let me in with my bag, which is a bit larger than regulations allow. But when I went in, I had it opened, the guy peered in and let me through.

It was cold, though not unbearable…until I got inside the stadium, above right field where homeruns count as ‘splash hits.’ It’s right above the bay and the wind ripped through and it was VERY cold. I had my jacket on but I’d taken the inside lining out so it was basically nothing more than a windbreaker. And that was fine through most of the day but it was difficult during the game.

I noticed the flags were flying at half-mast and I wondered who had died. I took a picture of the flags to show how hard the wind was blowing. I took several pictures around the stadium, most of which would’ve turned out better had the weather been better.

The tarp was on the field when I got there and I wasn’t sure whether the game was going to be played or not. I’d gotten to the park a couple hours early, in hopes of seeing batting practice but the players were warming up inside instead.

Meeting Manson

I went to check out where my seat was and I was pretty sure I could find it without help but an usher asked if he could help. The usher was wearing a large dark green jacket with his hood up and he had ungroomed looking beard, and he reminded me of Charlie Manson. I told him I was looking for section 327. He said ‘It’s all around you. Be more specific.’ I said, “I’ll be sitting in row 5 seat 5.” And he pointed behind me and said, “It’s up there.” He turned away, mumbling, ‘Thank you for that.’

And that’s something I would notice a lot in San Francisco. If you asked for directions, most people would point. There was a lot of pointing going on. The funny thing is that at the Visitor’s Center, when pointing would’ve actually helped, that’s when I get the long drawn out instructions that were impossible to follow.

It’s not that the usher pointed though. I mean, row 5 seat 5 was right that and there’s no directions you can really give for that. It was the strange mumbling that I found odd.

I went and bought a hotdog and drink and went back to my seat to wait for nearly two hours for the game to start. The cup was like the one I got in St. Louis. It was really cheap and I don’t think it’ll last very long before it starts breaking down.

While I was sitting in my seat, a person mentioned that the flags were flying because of a player who’d died. I couldn’t hear everything, so I checked my cell phone (which now had no bars of battery power) to see what had happened. Angels’ pitcher Nick Adenhart died just a little bit after having pitched six shutout innings against the A’s in his season debut, with his father in the stands. He was hit by a drunk driver who’d run a red light. The driver was driving on a suspended license due to a conviction for drunk driving.

Over the next few days, I kept thinking back to Adenhart’s death. Especially because the game he’d pitched in was against the other Bay Area team and the news in the area was covering it every day.

Almost Winning Money

Around the fifth inning of the game, a woman was selected to play Concentration on the big board. Her job was to match each card in under 30 seconds and her row would win a $20 gift card. I was barely paying attention but she won and the woman behind me slapped me on the shoulder and said that I’d just won $20 because she was in my row. She offered to switch places with me and I just laughed.

Then the woman who’d won the game came back to her row and when they checked her ticket, it turned out that while she was sitting in row 5 and on the big board stated she was sitting in row 5, her ticket was for row 6, meaning I didn’t win anything and the woman behind me walked away with the $20 gift card.

Leaving the Game

I left the game in the sixth inning because it was really cold and I was nervous that I might get sick since it was also misting a little. I went out the wrong exit and wound up having to walk the entire distance around the stadium, which was made worse when a street was closed because of player parking. I had to walk through the marina area to get to a bus stop.

I got on the bus, and this time I just showed the front of my city pass and was waved on by the driver without a problem.

I got back to the hotel by about 6:30. The goal was to be in bed by 7pm in each night so that I could stay on East Coast Time. I was very tired and I knew I’d have no trouble going to sleep.

I watched a little bit of television before checking my plan and setting my cell phone alarm for 4:30am.

Next Entry

The next post will cover what I did Friday, when I visited Castro Street, Golden Gate Park and Haight-Ashbury. But the biggest thing that happened Friday is I twisted my knee that morning, which would impact the rest of my time out there.

Final Thoughts

At work, they’re planning a Biggest Loser, weight loss challenge. They’re also putting together a snack day for each week. Hmmm…

If you get a chance to watch ‘Thrilla in Manilla,’ an HBO Documentary about the third Ali-Frazier fight, watch it. Even if you aren’t a boxing fan, it’s worth watching.

If you get a chance to watch ‘Flash of Genius,’ starring Greg Kinnear…don’t watch it. While it does eventually end, it’ll feel like it’s been the 10 years the movie covers.

To the person getting married for the third time: You know what they say, ‘The third time’s the first time after the second time.’