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Pics for the day
Spent the morning helping Dan out with stuff. Mostly getting his rental car. I was supposed to meet some family friends for a late morning coffee, but had to postpone and ultimately delay it. Seems the rental company was in the midst of a nationwide software update, so computers were down for the day at every rental location. And they didn't have his car ready at the small out-of-town rental location where it was supposed to be. And the larger, even further out-of-town rental location was backed up. They were supposed to send a driver over with his car, but it was taking forever. And I think I sort of understood from what the guy was saying that there was only one driver at that location, and she had a number of other drop-offs to do. So we drove down there, figuring it would take less time. Which it probably would have. But the big location was hugely backed up. (And there nearly no room in the glorified driveway that served as a parking lot for me to park or turn around. Managed it, but ended up staying with this huge SUV double parked in the back of the lot with just enough space next to me for the - fortunately professional - drivers to squeak in and out of the car wash/car prep area.) The whole thing took hours, not to mention the driving time back to town and then through town...
But we managed it. And I headed into San Francisco to see what I could see. I knew the friends I was supposed to meet had a lunch engagement, so I decided to hold off calling them for a while. Hit more traffic going across the bridge into the city, and then bumper-to-bumper delays going through Golden Gate Park (which wasn't so bad, because it gave me a better chance to see the sights, even though I'd planned to park and walk around). Friends called me back while I was in the middle of that. Turns out they were heading in for the lunch thing late, but that I could join them (not their first choice, but not that bad, and really the only option if we were going to get together, since I wanted to be out of the city and on the road by mid-afternoon).
The lunch thing turned out to be a farewell picnic for a friend who was moving overseas. Put together by a fair-sized group of friends. It was held in Dolores Park, in the middle of the city. I programmed the GPS (we got one for my dad for Father's Day, and he let me borrow it for the trip - turned out to be very useful, particularly after I split off from Dan to explore the country on my own) to take me there, headed across town, and then looked for parking.
There were no spaces, particularly nothing large enough to fit the oversized SUV. Everything that did look like a space turned out to be a driveway or hydrant or something. It was as bad as trying to park in Manhattan, and I didn't know the streets of San Francisco. And I was pressed for time. Then, as I got to the corner of the park (after having tried a side-street which turned out to be a narrow dead-end), I noticed a likely-looking space around the corner. Big enough to fit the SUV, right near the park... it seemed too good to be true. I checked the signage, but the only one posted was about weekly street cleanings on a completely different day. Looked around, didn't see anything else to indicate a problem (sidewalk normal, curb not painted, etc.), parked. Got out of the car, which meant stepping into the road, and hurried down to the corner to get away from oncoming traffic as the light changed.
Spent an hour in the park. Saw the friends. Ate the food (it was a potluck collective), but tried to keep the portion modest. Offers of payment were refused. Took my insulin, but cut back a little since I'd held back on portion size. Returned to the car just in time to find an officer writing me a ticket. The first ticket I've ever gotten (for parking or anything else). Turns out there was a big gaping garage door right next to where I'd parked. It'd been closed when I'd parked, and was painted the same color as the rest of the building. Completely unremarkable. I told the officer I hadn't seen it. "What, don't they have driveways where you come from?" she snapped in response. Finished writing the ticket and drove off. There was an address on the back of the ticket for appeals. I wrote the story up and asked that the ticket be forgiven. Haven't heard back yet. We'll see, I guess.
Oh, and it came up that one of the people there (a school principal, no less, IIRC) had never heard of Free To Be You And Me. It's an absolute classic. My big sister loves it. She's been giving the CD to all her friends. And now, realizing that her kids, while they enjoyed the CD, didn't really get into it until they saw the DVD, she's been giving that out. Highly recommended to anyone with small kids.
But there's a song included that's been on my mind since. I laughed the first time I heard it, then thought it was cool, but then developed an association with something very different. Now, every time I hear it... (I'll put it under a spoiler thingy. Highlight only if you're willing to take the risk of forever associating a beloved childhood classic with something icky from SNL. The song is "Parents Are People." (Lyrics are here, among other places.) It starts out with the declaration that "Mommies are people..." And now, every time I think of it, I can't help but hear Phil Hartman desperately shouting out, "Mommies are people! They're made out of people!!!." Thanks, of course, to the SNL skit about Soylent Green (video, transcript.)
Anyway, from there I went to see the Golden Gate Bridge. I wanted to do that much before leaving the city behind. Parked nearby and went to walk through the park (Crissy Park, not Golden Gate Park, as it turned out) to get a view of the bridge. Here's what I saw:
A little disappointing in one respect, but pretty cool in another. Was less fun to drive through that, though. Maybe 30 feet of visibility. On a bridge. With a fair amount of traffic. Though the effect as the support towers rose gradually and majestically out of the fog was pretty cool.
I also got a nice view of Alcatraz from the park... and, in front of it, the International Kiteboarding Championships:
It was about then that I noticed I was feeling shaky. I realized that my blood sugar was going low. I looked around for a concessions tent, figuring there had to be one with so many people gathered, but the only one I saw was selling t-shirts and water bottles. I went up to explain the situation to them and ask if there was somewhere I could get something. Turns out I'd just about passed the building with the cafeteria in it on the way over from the car, but there were people handing out free sports drinks. They gave me a bottle they'd collected earlier, which I gratefully sipped on my way over to the cafeteria. Got myself an overpriced but pretty good muffin, waited until I felt a little more stable, and got back on the road. Drove over the bridge, as mentioned, and then out along Route 101.
I'd originally planned to take the highway up and cross over to 101 further north. There was a nice cutthrough that went through the middle of what the AAA map said was state and national park land (though Google Maps doesn't seem to agree). A couple of things I was interested in possibly seeing along the way, too. But I also wanted to take the Golden Gate Bridge, just for the experience of it (and I'm glad I did)... and that leads directly to 101. Going to I-5 would have been out of the way. And, looking at the map, 101 seemed at least a relatively major road.
It turned out to be more local than I'd expected, but it worked out. I called from the road to secure a room, but the place I'd selected was booked solid. I tried a B&B a little further down the road. It was more expensive than I'd hoped for, but the woman on the phone sounded really welcoming and hospitable. And my call had come at the end of a sudden and unexpected flurry of activity - they only had one room left. So I decided to splurge a bit and go for it. They gave me directions to the hotel (many GPS systems were known to have the location off by several miles) and to the Avenue Cafe, a nearby pizza place which was sort of on the way, highly recommended, and open late. That turned out to be pretty good, with good food, very friendly service, and really reasonable prices.
I got to the Myers Country Inn after the lobby was technically closed, but (once the owner came to unlock the door) had no trouble checking in and getting settled. He insisted on helping with my bags, taking several of the heaviest ones up the stairs and down the hall for me.
It was a beautiful little place, and the hosts could not have been nicer, friendlier, or more welcoming. For once, I had a workable wireless signal, too... until the router went down at 10:30. I decided not to disturb the hosts. So I flipped through the maps and guidebook for a while and went to bed.
Spent the morning helping Dan out with stuff. Mostly getting his rental car. I was supposed to meet some family friends for a late morning coffee, but had to postpone and ultimately delay it. Seems the rental company was in the midst of a nationwide software update, so computers were down for the day at every rental location. And they didn't have his car ready at the small out-of-town rental location where it was supposed to be. And the larger, even further out-of-town rental location was backed up. They were supposed to send a driver over with his car, but it was taking forever. And I think I sort of understood from what the guy was saying that there was only one driver at that location, and she had a number of other drop-offs to do. So we drove down there, figuring it would take less time. Which it probably would have. But the big location was hugely backed up. (And there nearly no room in the glorified driveway that served as a parking lot for me to park or turn around. Managed it, but ended up staying with this huge SUV double parked in the back of the lot with just enough space next to me for the - fortunately professional - drivers to squeak in and out of the car wash/car prep area.) The whole thing took hours, not to mention the driving time back to town and then through town...
But we managed it. And I headed into San Francisco to see what I could see. I knew the friends I was supposed to meet had a lunch engagement, so I decided to hold off calling them for a while. Hit more traffic going across the bridge into the city, and then bumper-to-bumper delays going through Golden Gate Park (which wasn't so bad, because it gave me a better chance to see the sights, even though I'd planned to park and walk around). Friends called me back while I was in the middle of that. Turns out they were heading in for the lunch thing late, but that I could join them (not their first choice, but not that bad, and really the only option if we were going to get together, since I wanted to be out of the city and on the road by mid-afternoon).
The lunch thing turned out to be a farewell picnic for a friend who was moving overseas. Put together by a fair-sized group of friends. It was held in Dolores Park, in the middle of the city. I programmed the GPS (we got one for my dad for Father's Day, and he let me borrow it for the trip - turned out to be very useful, particularly after I split off from Dan to explore the country on my own) to take me there, headed across town, and then looked for parking.
There were no spaces, particularly nothing large enough to fit the oversized SUV. Everything that did look like a space turned out to be a driveway or hydrant or something. It was as bad as trying to park in Manhattan, and I didn't know the streets of San Francisco. And I was pressed for time. Then, as I got to the corner of the park (after having tried a side-street which turned out to be a narrow dead-end), I noticed a likely-looking space around the corner. Big enough to fit the SUV, right near the park... it seemed too good to be true. I checked the signage, but the only one posted was about weekly street cleanings on a completely different day. Looked around, didn't see anything else to indicate a problem (sidewalk normal, curb not painted, etc.), parked. Got out of the car, which meant stepping into the road, and hurried down to the corner to get away from oncoming traffic as the light changed.
Spent an hour in the park. Saw the friends. Ate the food (it was a potluck collective), but tried to keep the portion modest. Offers of payment were refused. Took my insulin, but cut back a little since I'd held back on portion size. Returned to the car just in time to find an officer writing me a ticket. The first ticket I've ever gotten (for parking or anything else). Turns out there was a big gaping garage door right next to where I'd parked. It'd been closed when I'd parked, and was painted the same color as the rest of the building. Completely unremarkable. I told the officer I hadn't seen it. "What, don't they have driveways where you come from?" she snapped in response. Finished writing the ticket and drove off. There was an address on the back of the ticket for appeals. I wrote the story up and asked that the ticket be forgiven. Haven't heard back yet. We'll see, I guess.
Oh, and it came up that one of the people there (a school principal, no less, IIRC) had never heard of Free To Be You And Me. It's an absolute classic. My big sister loves it. She's been giving the CD to all her friends. And now, realizing that her kids, while they enjoyed the CD, didn't really get into it until they saw the DVD, she's been giving that out. Highly recommended to anyone with small kids.
But there's a song included that's been on my mind since. I laughed the first time I heard it, then thought it was cool, but then developed an association with something very different. Now, every time I hear it... (I'll put it under a spoiler thingy. Highlight only if you're willing to take the risk of forever associating a beloved childhood classic with something icky from SNL. The song is "Parents Are People." (Lyrics are here, among other places.) It starts out with the declaration that "Mommies are people..." And now, every time I think of it, I can't help but hear Phil Hartman desperately shouting out, "Mommies are people! They're made out of people!!!." Thanks, of course, to the SNL skit about Soylent Green (video, transcript.)
Anyway, from there I went to see the Golden Gate Bridge. I wanted to do that much before leaving the city behind. Parked nearby and went to walk through the park (Crissy Park, not Golden Gate Park, as it turned out) to get a view of the bridge. Here's what I saw:
A little disappointing in one respect, but pretty cool in another. Was less fun to drive through that, though. Maybe 30 feet of visibility. On a bridge. With a fair amount of traffic. Though the effect as the support towers rose gradually and majestically out of the fog was pretty cool.
I also got a nice view of Alcatraz from the park... and, in front of it, the International Kiteboarding Championships:
It was about then that I noticed I was feeling shaky. I realized that my blood sugar was going low. I looked around for a concessions tent, figuring there had to be one with so many people gathered, but the only one I saw was selling t-shirts and water bottles. I went up to explain the situation to them and ask if there was somewhere I could get something. Turns out I'd just about passed the building with the cafeteria in it on the way over from the car, but there were people handing out free sports drinks. They gave me a bottle they'd collected earlier, which I gratefully sipped on my way over to the cafeteria. Got myself an overpriced but pretty good muffin, waited until I felt a little more stable, and got back on the road. Drove over the bridge, as mentioned, and then out along Route 101.
I'd originally planned to take the highway up and cross over to 101 further north. There was a nice cutthrough that went through the middle of what the AAA map said was state and national park land (though Google Maps doesn't seem to agree). A couple of things I was interested in possibly seeing along the way, too. But I also wanted to take the Golden Gate Bridge, just for the experience of it (and I'm glad I did)... and that leads directly to 101. Going to I-5 would have been out of the way. And, looking at the map, 101 seemed at least a relatively major road.
It turned out to be more local than I'd expected, but it worked out. I called from the road to secure a room, but the place I'd selected was booked solid. I tried a B&B a little further down the road. It was more expensive than I'd hoped for, but the woman on the phone sounded really welcoming and hospitable. And my call had come at the end of a sudden and unexpected flurry of activity - they only had one room left. So I decided to splurge a bit and go for it. They gave me directions to the hotel (many GPS systems were known to have the location off by several miles) and to the Avenue Cafe, a nearby pizza place which was sort of on the way, highly recommended, and open late. That turned out to be pretty good, with good food, very friendly service, and really reasonable prices.
I got to the Myers Country Inn after the lobby was technically closed, but (once the owner came to unlock the door) had no trouble checking in and getting settled. He insisted on helping with my bags, taking several of the heaviest ones up the stairs and down the hall for me.
It was a beautiful little place, and the hosts could not have been nicer, friendlier, or more welcoming. For once, I had a workable wireless signal, too... until the router went down at 10:30. I decided not to disturb the hosts. So I flipped through the maps and guidebook for a while and went to bed.
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