Wednesday, August 29, 2007 -- Slept in much better than you’d expect. I guess staying up 21 hours will do that to a person. We both woke for a bit about 2:30 local time (about 6:30 NC time, which is still sleeping in for us) and went back to sleep until about 6 local time. Had to get up because we’d already booked tickets for today’s events.
We caught the Muni subway to go to Embarcadaro Street, which is the one that fronts the water and goes along the piers. We were going to tour Alcatraz on the 9:30 ferry. After we got dumped off the Muni, though, we still had a ½ mile trek to the right pier and weren’t able to figure out the busses sufficiently that we felt comfortable climbing on one. That was going to need more study, lest we find ourselves half-way across the county in the wrong direction.
Once we got there, we found there was a coffee shop, so all was right with the world. Fresh bagels and coffee on board, we were ready to see “the Rock,” so named because of the absence of native soil, vegetation or fresh water.
The Ferry over there holds 499 people, although the count for our trip was only 373. There are also all kinds of warnings about this being a national park, uneven pavement, etc. – and, to our amazement, a surprising number of people were wearing FLIP FLOPS. This is topped only by the woman in Rome that was on the same tour of the Coliseum as us who was wearing stiletto heeled boots. Absolutely insane.
Alcatraz was great. They have a wonderful audio tour to go through that explains a lot and gives you a real perspective on the place. Not somewhere that I’d care to live for an extended period of time. Interestingly enough, the longest resident was also the only Canadian to serve time there, 25 years 1 month, and was the ONLY person actually arrested by J. Edgar Hoover. What are the chances of all those stars lining up?
Alcatraz was interesting, but in reality, about an hour and a half was all you need to see everything significant and listen to the tour. We caught the ferry back (fighting off these little seaweed flies that want to climb on you and bite while we waited) and were in SF by 11:30. On the way back, we decided to take the advise of one of the guys that owns the B&B and rent bicycles to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge into Salsalito.
Overall, it wasn’t a bad ride. With insurance and the ferry ticket back and everything it was $88.00 for both of us, and it took up the entire rest of the day. They have great bike trails, as you would imagine, although if a person hadn’t been doing some type of workout I don’t know that they could have made it up those hills to get to the start of the bridge. About an hour and a half was all it took to do the entire trip.
Here’s another little comment on human nature. Why is it that some people just mosey on down the middle of the sidewalk / bike path / street like nobody else needs to use them? On the Golden Gate Bridge, especially, there are fences on each side. You’ve got about 10 ft. total for traffic in both directions, with cars whizzing by on your right hand side at a much higher rate of speed, and then here’s someone casually wandering down the dead center path.
It’s also interesting to me that these people tend to be women – 40ish to 60ish – who are shall we say “full figured”. Like some enormous cruise ship of flesh that moves only slowly and deliberately, they weave from side to side creating a wake of havoc behind them, apparently oblivious to the problems they create. The gender and age thing isn’t universal, of course – couples that insist on walking side by side, or pushing the jumbo-sized SUV baby stroller fall in the same category, as do those people who thought it was a bright idea to step around the corner of the tower, where the path circles around and leaves a sort of a blind spot, to decide to have someone take their picture. The venturi tube principal doesn’t work on flesh; we don't go faster through the narrow spot -- instead, it just creates a pile-up on the pathway.
A light lunch in Salsalito followed by a quick jaunt down the main drag put us back in line for the ferry across the bay by about 2:30. Then you had to wait in line until the ferry actually left at 3:20. In the sun. Which isn’t supposed to shine here, but which hasn’t left for even a moment since we got here. Incidentally, those jackets everyone warned about needing have been somewhat useless, too -- they've had record breaking heat every day thus far.
While you’re waiting, of course you have your bicycle. In fact, lots of people have them because they all rented them from one of the 3 bike places that exist for this. When the boat came, they put the people with bikes on first, packing them in like so many sardines, handlebars alternating from left to right, on the lowest level of the ship. Mind you, they all look alike. There are no license tags. They’re all the same colors. And there were about 100 of them in a 15 x 25 area.
The reason they put the bikes on first is because when you finish the 30 minute ride across the bay, they put the pedestrians off LAST. We were curious as to how smoothly the disembarkation was going to go, but amazingly enough when people paid attention it went surprisingly well. Most everyone who came in last knew to be there first to move their bikes and get on out the door.
Of course, there were a few slackers in the bunch. They were undoubtedly the ones that stopped for pictures on the bridge, too, or rode 3-abreast in a one-lane bike path. There were about 6 bikes ahead of ours that weren’t moving, so we just leaned them together in a pile and got ours out and the process kept right on moving.
We’d also thought ahead and went straight back to the rental place, which was about 100 yards from the ferry dock. Those 100 bikes, probably 70 of which were from our place, all had to be checked in and we could see a considerable delay there. We were lucky, though, got straight in and were out in 15 minutes. Time then to grab a cab back to the hotel (since the public transportation would have been another hour and a half and we were starting to fade already) in time for a nap before cleanup and dinner.
