I wish I had typed this out yesterday, when the events were still fresh, when I was in a different frame of mind, before the events of today had occurred. But I didn't, that's the story of the next entry, and such is life. Maybe reviewing the great day I had yesterday will help with perspective on today. I took what was essentially a rest day yesterday in San Francisco, which I paid for with the 80 mile trek today, but it was totally worth it. It was such an amazing, jam-packed day.
I woke up early, ate my leftover pizza, and got around quickly so I could leave before 8 alongside my host. I decided to walk down the steep driveway and road to the main street. Traffic was crazy. I ended up waiting around for awhile in a parking lot until the morning rush had died a little. I was able to mostly follow bike trail all the way to the bridge. At one point I realized I had somehow neglected to put the caps back on both my inner tubes when I had hurriedly pumped my tires with my host's floor pump. Oops. That's why I've been carrying spares; I knew it was bound to happen eventually.
I reached the bridge at a perfect hour of the morning. I got all the obligatory photos, selfies, shots by others, what have you, then headed across the bridge itself. It was a long bridge, but there's a separate pedestrian and bike path across, so as a cyclist your biggest concern isn't getting hit by a car but not hitting the people walking as they ooh and awe and pay no attention to you. But that wasn't difficult going at a reasonable pace.
As soon as I crossed the bridge I felt overwhelmed, as if I'd entered some foreign country. Through the wonders of GPS I navigated the Presidio and then the short ways through town to where my highschool friend was putting me up for the night. But I made a quick stop at a nearby bike/skate store first though, wanting to have the guy check my derailleur, after the issues I'd had. I happened to see a downed cable from a cable car on the way, with an official doing his best to stop traffic and shift the cable out of the way with a log, which was interesting. The bike shop guy gave my gearing a look over on the stand and said I'd already adjusted it just fine. Though he asked if I wanted my brakes adjusted. To which I said sure, why not, since they were lose after all. We chatted about my trip and such as he worked. He told me I'd arrived in San Francisco at just the right time, hadn't I? I expressed my ignorance to what he meant, and he reminded me it was 4/20. In San Francisco that means hordes of stoners all over Golden Gate Park, being left to light up as they please. Apparently he figured coming from Seattle I was obviously there to participate.
I arrived at my friend's apartment, followed the instructions she gave me and got into the garage. I found myself tapping the button trying to get the garage door to shut with no success, right as a blue haired Russian woman bursts in to the garage, tells me she's the owner, and demands to know who I am. I explain nervously, and it abates her concern only slightly, and when she realizes the door won't close, she goes into a frenzy. I awkwardly worked my trailer in through a door into an angled hallway that couldn't open a full 90 degrees, while listening to her yell in Russian on the phone. A short time later I got a message from my friend to discover that her landlady had angrily called her and she was now getting a sub to come teach her class so she could come deal with it. I was mortified. I sat on the curb waiting for her to show up, feeling terrible. She arrived, told me "Welcome to San Francisco," I explained what had happened, she fiddled with the garage mechanism briefly, and just like that it was suddenly working again. She dealt with her landlady while I chilled in her apartment. After the fiasco was fixed, she insisted not to worry about it, and that she had to go to work, but wherever I wandered to she could come meet me there.
I was thus left to explore San Francisco. And since this was my rest day, I was doing it by foot. I wandered to Golden Gate Park and saw the stoners amidst the many other wonders it had to offer. I've never seen a park so large, well tended, and with so much going on, natural areas, gulf course, rose garden, trails, ponds, museums, just something else around every corner. You could easily spend days just properly exploring the park I imagine.
But I only had so many hours to wander the whole city, so I headed off through the rest of the city toward Chinatown. It was fun not having my helmet, my bike, my trailer, all the things normally identifying myself as both a cyclist and a foreigner. I felt incognito, disguised as a local, which with the casual dress of the city, there's no reason for someone to think otherwise. I had a lady ask me to carry some groceries up her stairs for her as I passed, which I did happily, and felt inwardly that it meant my disguise was complete.
Along the way to Chinatown I stopped at the house from Full House because...I don't know, it felt like a thing to do. It's been repainted, and it's nothing special. All the houses in San Francisco are so strangely compact, such unique architecture unlike anything I've seen anywhere else. Chinatown had far less of the Asian art and style I had grown accustomed to in the International District in Seattle, but was bustling with way more businesses and crowded with foot traffic in the manner I have heard China's urban centers are. It was interesting and well worth the visit, but I found myself not wanting to linger as I do poorly with crowds.
I then headed over to the Embarcadero and wandered my way past the various piers. I asked my friend if she could meet me at Pier 39, a big shopping and entertainment center I had interest in seeing. It was a cool area, full of neat specialty shops from a chocolate store (that had chocolate coated twinkies I just had to try to say I had) to a magic shop to a hat store with a model of the sorting hat and other such silliness. I even sat down and watched Frisco Fred perform a rather humorous and decently skilled performance. His fire juggling, card tricks, and stage performance were all very good. Though he did botch his Houdini style straightjacket escape a little. But with grace that made no feelings of failure about it. I threw in a couple dollars to his tips basket at the end. It was hard not to with his well given, well humored speech guilting us all to give. I ended up staying at the Pier for quite awhile, ducking into different stores to avoid the chill wind, as my friend got stuck in traffic thanks to 4/20 and all the stoner convention stuff happening.
She ended up finding me though in the evening and taking me out to a truly fabulous vegetarian restaurant called Greens. As her treat, I ate an exceptional meal as we got caught up with one another, having not seen each other for closing on a decade. She's traveled and done magnificent things while also having grown up into a real adult, with a real job teaching robotics and physics to high school kids at a fancy private high school. I haven't. I haven't done any of that. I'm still a childish vagabond. Though with both our very different lives, we can agree that it's hard to be stable, hard to be okay with being comfortable, hard to not have some goal or destination of "what's next?" She's mastering it, I'm doing the vagabond thing.
After dinner, it was late and fairly quickly to bed from there, too exhausted to make an entry after my full day exploring just some of what San Francisco has to offer. It's an amazing city with very much a character all of its own. I feel I shall definitely have to come back and spend more time there some day.
But a day later, I'm already here 80 miles on in Santa Cruz, which leads to my next entry...
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