July 16th-18: Leaving! Going home to Adelaide.

On this day I had to travel from San Francisco to Adelaide, Australia.

The plane journey was: San Francisco -> Los Angeles -> Christchurch -> Adelaide.

I think I needed to be at the airport in San Francisco at something like 2pm. I had to throw out the watch I bought in London because it had stopped working.

The train to the airport worked fine. I think I was a bit panicky because I couldn't figure out where I needed to be in the airport. It was confusing. They always seem to have five different lines and a very cryptic, minimalist description for who each line is for.

I eventually figured out that the airline didn't check anyone in by people anymore. You had to go to a computer and do it yourself. I was nervous because I'd never done that, and if I made a mistake somehow, then it's an expensive ticket to have to replace. Eventually a guy had to help out anyway because I had luggage that needed to be dealt with. I don't think he even really weighed the luggage, because they had nothing there to weigh it with... it was strange, but I was happy about that. And the ticket at least said my name and that it would take me to Adelaide so I was then feeling good about it all.

First time I'd seen this one in print, after a 6 or so year wait. I was tempted to buy it, but my bag was crammed with stuff already.

On the plane to Los Angeles, half of the back of the plane was filled up with Chinese people on some kind of tour. I sat next to two of them. The lady who demonstrated what to do in an emergency was kind of obnoxious. My two chinese buddies weren't listening; maybe because they couldn't understand anything she said. So she came over and was very upset at them and then spoke to them like they were babies, in a sing-song voice. I felt ashamed.

I talked to those people pretty much for the whole flight. I found out that they were here to learn some of the language and that they didn't really know the other people in the group but that they have lots of these organisations in China that take people over. The girl was a maths student and she was pretty happy to hear that I did the same. The guy was asking me what computer games I play.

When we landed, they gave me a small souvenir. It looks to me like a small wooden bucket attached to string. I don't quite understand it. Maybe it's a good luck thing? But I thought it was very nice of them. I felt bad that I didn't have anything to give them. We exchanged email addresses but I haven't emailed them. I don't know what I'd say.

On getting to Los Angeles Airport I decided to get to the next place that I needed to be as soon as possible, even though I think I had 6 hours or so to wait.

People say that Los Angeles Airport is the worst airport in the world, and I think I probably agree with them.

To get to the next place where the plane takes off I had to walk outside, walk down an ordinary looking road with no signs, find a place where a bus would pick me up, that was marked with some strange hieroglyphs, and then ride it over to some other quadrant of the airport. I couldn't see any signs saying this stuff, and I was lucky that after standing around very confused for 20 minutes I was able to spot a single airport person who rushed out the directions.

At this next airport place, after the bus, you find yourself in a very long empty building. You walk all the way along the building, through stages of doors, until you find some people and security gates, which you guess must be where you need to go through. So you do that. Along the way you overhear some New Zealand people saying that they're stuck in this horrible place for 12 more hours because their plane got hit by lightning.

Then you go up some escalators and find yourself in a tiny closed off section of the airport with about 4 obscure shops. That's where you need to stay for the next five hours, unless you want to take the strange bus again and explore any of the other small isolated fragments of airport and get yourself lost.

This photo and the next one pretty much cover the entire area of this place where you need to stay for five hours. I think the whole airport is made up of lots of these little things, all detached and secluded.

If you sit up here then you can almost get wifi connection from the VIP lounge which is nearby. You can also brush your teeth a few times because you've been sitting on a plane and loitering around for hours. It's luxury.

Luckily there was a place in here that sold pizza! It's alright for airport food. Quite expensive though I think.

Eventually the plane showed up and I got on. It was all normal. I think I got an aisle seat. Aisle seats on long flights are great (especially if it's at night when there's no view). I think the lady next to me was weird. I probably watched a few movies, slept a little, and went a bit crazy. I think I watched a Louis Theroux documentary where he goes to live with the West Borough Church again. It's a good documentary.

The plane took off at something like 10pm Los Angeles time on 16th July. We would land in Christchurch, New Zealand, in the early morning on July 18 because we'd pass the +12/-12 GMT point. I've forgotten how it works, but I think there was just a small amount of time when it was July 17, which is my birthday. So I had a birthday somewhere above the Pacific Ocean for maybe just a few minutes.

We landed at Christchurch and it was very early in the morning. When we got in, the line to get through customs was chaos. I noticed that some people next to me had connecting flights that were leaving in only 10 or 20 minutes, but they were still far back in the line. They didn't seem to be heaps panicked though. I didn't understand that. Maybe it doesn't matter too much.

I got through and then I just had a little explore of the airport. Then I sat down and a guy from Chile sat near me. He asked me if I spoke Spanish. I didn't. He told me that he's an exchange student and is headed to Brisbane but his plane has been delayed by 10 hours or so. He was kind of worried because people were supposed to pick him up but he didn't speak english well enough to call them and explain. So he asked me to call them. So I did. I felt kind of weird about it because it must have been about 3am in Brisbane at that time. I asked if they had a mobile phone number so that I could sms them, but he didn't know of one. So I just called them and left a message, and then the person answered half way through the message and was slightly annoyed, but that was because I was calling them at 3am, and she was happy that she could then sleep in for longer. It was strange. Chile guy thanked me. He was a nice guy. I think we exchanged emails.

A lady left $20 on a table. I was going to let the Chilean guy have it if she didn't come back. But she did, and she was heaps thankful when we gave it back.

I stayed talking to the Chilean guy for a bit too long. He was quite bored I think, because he had a long time to sit. Then I realised that I really should get to the next plane.

I rushed off and along the way asked an airport information person if there was any security check along the way, because I really didn't want to be delayed. He asked, slightly jokingly "why? you don't have a gun do you?" He was happy that I didn't, and made a joke about Americans all having guns or something.

I got to the plane in time and then we flew to Adelaide.

Adelaide Airport.

Tired, and kind of not ready to be back.

A friend made me a birthday cake, with tim tams,...

Got me an awesome hat,...

and we had my favourite pasta dish for dinner, with enough parmesan cheese.

July 15th: wandering around a bit in San Francisco

I'm writing this really late again (1 November, 2012). These things happened on July 15th 2011.

After the bike ride the day before, I was extremely tired when waking up. I'd planned to take the bike back to the shop at the earliest possible time, since I was supposed to take it back the day before but couldn't because they were closed. I was a bit worried that they'd charge me a lot for having the bike overnight, and for doing it unexpectedly.

But when I woke up my back was very sore. Then something in my spine got into the wrong position so that the tiniest movement was extremely painful. It happens sometimes, and since I rode 60km the day before, after not having been riding for years, it's not really an unreasonable result. So I just spent a while lying down on my bed hoping for it to get better. It was good to have the excuse to lie down.

I also had planned to try get a ticket to Alcatraz Island. They were booked out for the next couple weeks, but if you wake up early and line up for a ticket people say that you'd usually be able to get one. The early lining up thing didn't happen, so I'll just have to go back to San Francisco someday to do that.

Eventually my back got better and I managed to ride over to the bike hire place. The time was probably close to 11am. The guy at the shop was really nice about that I was returning the bike 15 hours late. He didn't want any extra payment. I was really thankful.

I got quite sunburnt the day before. I had no protection at all and was out in the sun all day. So I got some sunscreen from a sort of 24/7 type store.

This was my last day in San Francisco so I decided to see a couple of places, although I was exhausted and (even though I'm sure there must be lots of cool things to see in San Francisco) I couldn't really think of much, at that time, that I wanted to see.

I decided to head over to the Museum of Fine Arts thing. I had no great reason for doing so. I think I caught a bus over there. I think there may have been some chaos on the bus where a family of people didn't realise they had to hold on, so ended up falling over. I can't remember exactly what happened. This is what the gallery thing looked like:

It looks pretty cool. I think there must be an inside section somewhere. I didn't feel like going inside.

Then I decided to catch a bus to the golden gate park, or whatever they call it. Again no great reason for heading there.

So I found the place for the bus and waited there. I couldn't work out if I needed another ticket, so I asked a guy who was also waiting for the bus. He helped me out and said that he was going in the same direction so he'd tell me which is the right bus etc. He also decided to tell me his life story. He was an artist who could have been really big but wasn't for some reason because San Francisco isn't innovative enough like the other cities are. He also doesn't pay very much for rent because there are laws governing how much they can increase it by each year which are really conservative. So he lives right next to that windy street and pays pretty much nothing for it. For almost all his sentences, the subject was preceded by "the so called...", as though its name was in question. He also liked using the "quote unquote" phrase. He also went to Australia once when he was quite young, but because he's of chinese descent, people there were rude to him. He said that they yelled rude things to him when he was in a restaurant.

We got off the bus at the same stop just a block or so to the east of the golden gate park. He was headed to a record store that had all the best music, he said. He told me to go in with him and then he gave me a bunch of random local newspapers which say what kind of local events would be happening around the place. He was very enthusiastic. I didn't really get a chance to tell him that I was leaving the next day so the newspapers would be pretty much useless to me. I said seeya later to that guy and headed on.

I found a pizza place and bought a slice.

It was alright. On the wall there were lots of photos of celebrities who had been to the place.

I headed towards the park. Mcdonald's proved to be the saviour with the providing of a public toilet again. Although the restaurant was the filthiest I've ever seen. And the people inside looked like they were from the ghetto.

I got to the edge of the park. I started walking in and a guy asked me if I could sell him some drugs. I didn't have any to sell him. I think he was singing a song quite loudly as well.

I realised that I didn't really care about the park. I was just there because people say it's something you should do. It's also really big and I was too tired to bother with that.

I walked back away from the park and realised that there were a few Thai restaurants and that I like that food. I was also exhausted from the day before and I've realised (finally) that when holidaying you should eat a lot whenever you can. So I went into one. I bought this from there:

I've forgotten what it was. It had a strange spice in it though that I wasn't heaps enthusiastic about. But it was pretty good.

Here's me getting into this "tipping" thing. I don't know what I would do if I didn't want to tip anything and I only had a $10 note... It would be awkward.

I decided to walk up a small hill they have near here. Most of my knowledge of the city is based on computer games like Grand Theft Auto. I've ridden up this hill many times on a dirt bike and stuff like that, I think. So I just wanted to check it out. It was really just a hill with a view.

Once again I was being the weird person who's walking up the hill when all the normal people drive up. Sorry people!

At the top there were decent views across the city, but there was also quite a bit of fog. The fog would disappear and then reappear as soon as I got the camera out.

I walked back down.

I saw this on the way down. I don't understand it. On the ground there were scattered photos and letters. And it looks like a partial wreck of a car. But if a car crashed here, then why is the crash up in the air on that wall?

I walked through the gay area, with all the rainbow flags and stuff. Starbucks provided the toilet again. Hooray. I went through the awkward sequence of "hello, what would you like to buy?" "I'm not sure yet..." before quickly taking advantage of their facilities before anyone can stop me. I figure that the most they can do is suspect that I'm not going to buy anything, but then, by definition(!), before they can know for sure and therefore do something about it, I'll be gone.

I walked through a spanish area after this. I didn't take any pictures for some reason.

Then I decided to catch a cable car back to the city. It was very late in arriving. One must have broken down. The driver said that no one had to pay. It was either to speed things up or because he just didn't care anymore. I stood near the front and there was a guy with a guitar who started playing. After a little while the driver asked, in an irritated voice, if someone was playing guitar. The guy owned up, and the driver said "don't do that...".  The guitar player was obviously quite hurt. At the next stop he got off, looking very dejected. The driver was really crazy.  He kept rambling in a very manic way, very stern that people stay away from near him, and yelling at all the other drivers. He had some great lines that I've forgotten. I got off near the city.

They had this flying fox type thing set up for some reason. People went flying along this while screaming.

I think I wandered back to the hostel, hung around for a while, and then decided to check out china town to see if there was anything worth buying since I was leaving the next day and I hadn't really checked out china town yet.

china town.

I didn't see anything that I really wanted to buy. I wanted something with chairman mao on it, but there wasn't much of that. I went into pretty much all of the stores just looking for that stuff. In some of them I got up the courage to ask the people if they sold any of it. I think that he's probably quite a divisive character to the chinese, so it might have been a rude question. But I figured I'd just let them deal with it, since it's just an honest question. One lady asked me if I liked chairman mao and I said something like "yeah, maybe, kind of. well he's interesting." and I asked what she thought, and she said that she likes some of the things he did but not the stuff after the cultural revolution. I thought that was a fair point: he did a variety of things.

Just before I was about to go I realised that I needed a shot of this building. I don't know if it's famous for something, but I think it looks fairly great.

I headed back to the hostel, and I'm sure that I went to sleep sometime.

July 14th: lots of riding, Golden Gate Bridge, Marin County, Muir Woods, more riding

[ Here are all the pictures I took from this day: https://picasaweb.google.com/110144623598348247797/20110714?authkey=Gv1sRgCI-AnafhnrLafg ]

I woke up and walked up Columbus Avenue until I got to the bike rental place. It was called 'Dave's Bikes' or something like that. I hired a bike for $18 or so. The shop guy and I took the bike outside. He told me to check it out and see if it's alright for me. Then he told me general directions for where I should go. He said to go north a couple of blocks until I get near to pier 49 and all that other tourist stuff, then turn left and ride along the coast until over the bridge etc. I asked him if I should ride on the road all the way or if I could take the footpath sometimes (the footpaths were fairly big and not too many people around and I was a bit nervous about riding next to cars). I was hoping I could since I wasn't so sure about riding around with traffic. I've never done that. But he said "the road. Always the road." So that was that settled: I'll have to go on the road.

I think that last evening, I bought some food ready for this journey. I bought a bunch of muesli bars, a bit of fruit, water, maybe nuts, and maybe other stuff.

I rode off and I started to get into it! You can take off pretty fast so that I don't think it's that much of a hassle for the cars. I was not sure how that would be. A few times I was riding all over the place in the middle of the three lane main road because I had to change lanes and so forth. I was getting into it. It was fun.

This was an epic day in terms of effort, and I took some pictures, but probably not as many as I could have, because it's a bit hard to stop riding and get your camera out at every small opportunity in comparison to when you're not attached to the bike.

Here I am after I'd been riding for a while. I'm next to some kind of big green space which is just a bit before the bridge. The top gear was grinding a bit so I wanted to see what was up with that. I think that the metal thing that guides the chain onto each gear needs to be adjusted a bit. I don't think I can do it here, so I decided to just not use that one.

I got to a place underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and I decided to lock the bike up and chill out for a while. For some reason I always associate this place underneath the bridge with the place where the robot from the book/movie Bicentennial Man goes to find the guy who can help make him more human. I don't know why, in the movie, they made that guy own the place underneath this bridge. I think it would be hugely expensive at any point in time... I was confused. I don't think that would happen.

I was sitting here eating some things and then I saw some dolphins jumping through the waves!

It doesn't look like it here, but at some points this walkway was very crowded with people walking along. You have to use the bell quite a bit to tell them to move.

Looking back over the city from the bridge.

I made it across the bridge. Hooray! Now I had to navigate the roads to find my way to Muir Woods. I headed through this place called "Marin County". Supposedly it's quite a nice looking place with some horse farms and those kinds of things.

I had to go through this tunnel. I didn't really like the prospect of this, to be honest. It was quite narrow and I was riding fairly slow because the bike isn't really a great one that lets you get best efficiency from your efforts and my concern was mainly that a car would come up behind me and get frustrated or try to overtake but that then another car would come the other way and because the tunnel is quite narrow, it might not be good.

But I made it. I found it all fairly amusing really. Then I rode a little way further and found that the whole road was being repaired so that it was local traffic only and that actually the route I wanted to take probably started a little bit later than I'd figured. So I road back through the tunnel the other way.

Then I came up to this tunnel! A bit amusing. People who ride probably aren't too bothered by any of this. It was just that I haven't really been riding with traffic before. This road through this tunnel goes slightly up hill and it's a decent length of something like 1km.

I get a special button because I'm on a bike.

I rode through that tunnel and it was very gruelling work. I first had to wait while cars came through from the opposite direction. Cars built up behind me and then eventually the light went green. I was determined to set a good speed so that I would make it through before the lights changed and cars started coming from the opposite direction again. The cars behind me all overtook me fairly quickly. Then I had a long slog of pushing the bike along up the hill for a considerable distance. I started off pretty good but eventually I became exhausted and ended up going quite slowly. The ending of the tunnel seemingly never came. It was very long. Inevitably the cars came at me from the opposite direction but they didn't seem too concerned. I made it through alive in the end!

On the other side of the tunnel.

I had a great time riding along these roads with great scenery around me.

The map told me to leave the road at some point and find this track leading up through the hills. A guy walking his dog told me I was probably at the right place.

This is the land I rode through now. This is Marin County.

The track was uphill for quite a way. I rode some of this at first, almost to the top, and then got exhausted and also finding that it was sometimes too steep so that the wheels just spun on the loose rocks.

There is a snake hiding in there! It might be visible if the resolution of the uploaded picture is high enough. It is visible in the original.

A view down to the coast. At this time I was thinking that these views are all fairly amazing. Also the clouds were all moving quite fast I think, which was a nice effect. After this the track went downhill for quite a while, down into a valley. That was really fun riding!

Down in the valley there is a horse ranch that I think you can visit. The track goes slightly through this and there are signs asking you to get off the bike if you were on one so that you don't scare the horses or something.

Another view to the ocean. I'm taking a slight detour to see this.

The Pacific Ocean! Australia is on the other side of that.

There were some huge waves crashing into this beach. None of the pictures captured this. You really wouldn't have wanted to swim here on this day...

I headed back out again (after seeing two more snakes. These ones had yellow stripes going lengthwise down their body, I think. They were almost squashed by my bike.) and then went up another hill out of this valley. I wasn't really sure if I was on the right trail because the map I had was a bit vague. It was just a trivial map given by a different bike hire place that isn't really meant to be used for this, I don't think... I saw this thing and tried to see if it could help with the situation. I think I left feeling more confused.

After the last photo, I spent a lot of time pushing the bike uphill. I was very exhausted and I was completely exposed to the sun all this time. So then I came to this point where the trail appears to be all downhill for a while. I was very happy. It was great fun riding down through here. When in Washington D.C., Jay, the guy from Texas, was telling me that he lived on a houseboat here in San Francisco for a while and that he's also into riding mountain bikes, I think on trails like this where I'm riding now. I'm starting to see that would be a really fun thing to do more regularly. ...Especially the downhill parts.

This is a town around a place called Muir Beach. On the trail, a little further ahead, I see now that you can actually see the two people whom I almost wiped out. I thought they would have heard me grinding the path up behind them. But apparently not. Anyway they weren't too fussed.

I went through Muir Beach then pushed on until I was on this road which goes beside a stream. I'm very close to being at Muir Woods! I was not sure that I would be able to get there. A guy at one of the bike stores told me that there was no way I'd be able to get there because it's too far and there are cars and so on. But at this point I know I will make it! I was very excited. I also had felt fairly sure that if I didn't make it today, I probably wouldn't have time to go by another method, so this encouraged me to push on over those hills with the sun hammering me with rays.

Muir Woods. Hooray. I made it!

This type of tree are actually the tallest trees in the world. It's a bit hard to capture their height in pictures. You can kind of capture it if you get some people to stand next to one. But if you do that then you also can't see how tall the tree is, just the bottom of it. In this picture, it looks like the rails must be ankle height or something, for the trees to make sense, but I think they were full height. The trees are very big.

Uhoh.

Easily fixed.

Since I was in the closed off area there were no other people walking through talking about inane things. So, I thought about what that guy from the bike hire place said about how he likes to ride up into Muir Woods and sleep there, looking up into the trees. I gave it a shot, minus the sleeping part. Plus I was quite exhausted from the ride and it was good to lie down. The trees are massive. It was quite nice.

I wonder if the scenes from the third star wars movie with the ewoks and the 'speeder bikes' were shot in these forests or ones near here, since George Lucas lives just a little to the north of where I am and it looks pretty much the same... I'm not really enough of a fan to know.

I got back on my bike and tried to make it back before the bike hire store closed. Unfortunately I had no idea when the store was supposed to close and I didn't have their phone number or a phone call them on. I made an ambitious guess as to when they might close. Muir Woods is down in a kind of valley. So I had to go up another hill again. My legs were completely wrecked from all the riding so far and the hills were a little steep, so I walked the bike up most of this way.

The scenery was good.

I made it to the top of these hills and then I was on some kind of small highway. Then the road started to go down. I got on the bike to take advantage of this. At one time I realised that there were cars coming up behind me. I wasn't sure how they would feel about having a slow rider curbing their progress. But with the hill I got some very good speeds. Then, the road became a bit windy, in addition to the downhill. I was getting great speed through the corners since I didn't have to brake much and I realised that I was leaving the cars far behind me. I then decided to use the whole of my lane to maximise speed. It was very good fun and the wind and shade from trees was good after all the exposure in the sun. As I continued, I realised that I was actually catching up to some cars in front of me. But then the road started to level out a bit more and I lost them. If I could have used the top gear it might have been better.

I came down into a town that is a little way north of Golden Gate Bridge. I didn't stop to check it out. I was trying to get back to the shop before they were to close.

In the town there is a path along this river thing. It was good to be off the road again.

I slogged my way along the road heading south, slightly up-hill, trying to reach the place where a ferry leaves heading for the city. It's a common plan for people to hire a bike, ride across the bridge, and then head back on the ferry and I thought that would be fun. But I got there, and I had missed the previous ferry by just a few minutes. The next ferry would arrive in one hour. Given that I'd then have to ride through the streets and find the shop, it meant that I'd definitely be late. I was quite worried about this because I thought it possible that the shop could charge me quite a high rate for having had the bike overnight. So I decided to race back across the bridge and see if I could make it. I figured I had a slight chance if I rode fast.

Riding back was incredibly gruelling. My leg muscles had nothing left. The slightest incline forced me to get off and walk.

I eventually made it back. I found the bike store. The store was closed. It actually closed considerably earlier than I had estimated so that there was no way I would have made it back in time even if I had caught that ferry I missed by a few minutes.

So I rode up/down Columbus Avenue towards Chinatown/downtown etc. It was kind of busy traffic hour now and I was right in the city. But I'd been on the bike all day in strange situations and I was feeling quite alright about it. Most of the way back was downhill so I had a really good speed and was beating most of the traffic. I think I'll have to get into cycling more!

I made it back to the hostel in china town and I pulled my bike up a few flights of stairs and chained it to the stair rails. Curiously I noticed that there were two or three other bikes from the same store that were also chained to the stair rails. I wonder if they had a similar experience.

I was very tired but I think I managed to cook myself a huge plate of pasta. It was enjoyed.

After all of this I made estimates about how far I rode. I estimated a possible 30 or 40 km. I mapped the route with google earth later and found that it was at least 62km.

This is the route I took.

There was no insomnia this night.