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.

July 13th: being tired, trolley car

I walked a long way on the day before this and I was already feeling a bit travel weary. I also was feeling quite sad about having to be back in Australia soon. This maybe should have made me more determined to go outside and see things. But it was a strange feeling, after having been away for about six months, to think that I have just a few more full days before I will be back home. It was hard to feel like going out and seeing things with that looming before me and also feeling quite exhausted. So I spent the morning hanging out for a while and resting and maybe thinking about how I will handle being home soon.

Eventually I went out and decided to catch a cable car.

I walked down to Market Street where you can catch cable cars. I probably walked around and saw some other stuff too. The line for the cable car was fairly long. I started lining up and then realised that people in the line were holding tickets that they'd already bought. I hadn't thought about that. I asked the lady in front of me if you could buy one on the thing. I think she said she wasn't sure, but that you can buy one from a booth just next to the line. She said she'd let me back in the line, because I'd advanced a little way already. I went and bought a ticket. I think the people in front of me buying tickets were taking forever figuring out their money. "Come on people! Make up your mind!" I got the ticket but the lady from before had moved pretty much right to the front of the line, and I think I'd kind of forgotten what she looked like because I forgot to make myself remember her appearance before. I decided to just go to the end of the line again. It was moving fairly fast...

The cable cars roll down to this circular thing and then there are employees who push to make it rotate around so it can go in the other direction. Pretty cool. I wonder if they are very heavy to push...

The guy sitting down is a busker who has one of those contraptions that lets you hit cymbals by moving your feet and a bunch of other instruments attached to other limbs. There is some kind of a shopping district here where these cable cars stop.

I got to the end of the queue and jumped on. I decided to hang onto the side instead of being inside.

You can see down the hill toward the bay now. At one point there were a bunch of rubber poles sticking up out of the ground close to where my legs would be. I could see them approaching and was fairly confused about what I was supposed to do. I tried to hang in close to avoid them hitting me, but I got a bit of a whack anyway. I found it amusing and perplexing. Why would they do that? I don't know. Maybe I'm not supposed to have legs.

The people inside the cable car. There was a family with their son on here. After some point, the mother asked the driver "... is your name Ben? [or some name...]". The driver said "yeah... how do you know?" and they said, to their son "oh my god! It's Ben! We've finally found him!" and their son was very excited. They explained that they'd been on a cable car last a year or so ago with their son and that he was the same driver and that this driver had let their son ring the bell on the cable car and that ever since then, their son had been asking if they can go see Ben again. The driver was fairly pleased by that and asked the son how he's been going etc. and if he would like to ring the bell again. He didn't want to ring the bell. The driver said that he's all grown up now, and no longer interested in ringing bells.

We got off the cable car somewhere near pier 49 I think. The cable car terminates here. It was very fun riding up and down those hills on this thing. At one time the hill was very steep. I held onto the bar quite tightly to make sure I didn't fall off because I was quite displaced from perpendicular orientation with the earth. At one time there was a truck parked on the right and the driver told me to make sure I hold myself in close so that I don't hit into the truck.

On some kind of pier, with Alcatraz island in the distance.

I found some kind of museum that was free so I decided to check it out. I didn't really know what it was about.

The museum was filled with lots of strange machines that you'd find in an arcade or something like that. This one is supposed to look like some kind of fair. I could probably have put a coin in, and a bunch of lights would light up and things would move.

I just had a little look around then headed out.

I walked back around the coast intending to eventually get back to the hostel. It was sometime in the afternoon and I wanted to just relax a bit and eat some food back at the hostel.

This is that main road around the coast next to the city. In some different video games, I usually drive along here at high speed in some kind of motor vehicle. You have to avoid hitting the trams sometimes.

I walked down this pier again because I think it's a pretty nice one. It's got some nice views of the city and you can just sit here for a while which is good to do if you've been exhausting yourself every day for a month.

Just a block away from the pier is Safeway, the place where you buy food. So I think I probably went there afterwards, bought some good food for myself, and then went back to the hostel. It's also possible that this was the time I went to a 7/11 store, because it happened near here. I may have included this in the previous blog entry I'm not sure: I went to enter the 7/11 and before this, a homeless lady outside asked a passing lady if she could spare any cash. She said that in English. I went into the shop, then came out, and was asked the same (I guess) thing to me in Spanish. Why did she say it to me in Spanish when she said it to another in English? Hmn...

I think that when I got back to the hostel I met an Australian guy there. He was returning home after being a student on exchange to Mexico. He'd been studying Spanish for two years before going there, and now he was able to speak quite good conversational Spanish. He was hanging out with two other Spanish guys here in San Francisco and they all conversed in Spanish. He said he had a really cool time in Mexico and I reckon I'll have to go there sometime. It also sounds like a really great thing to do to learn other languages so that you can experience these more different cultures.

Also, sometime while at this hostel, I met another Australian guy, although he was from Italy or somewhere, and was just spending a few years living in Australia. He was working as a chef in Cairns, cooking for all the tourists that go up there. He said that on his time off he goes to explore the Daintree rainforest up there. He says he quite enjoys that life. He wants to stay living in Australia more permanently.

I also heard from some people saying that although the Alcatraz Island tours are officially sold out, if you get out there early in the mornings, then you can usually get a ticket. I planned to do that two days from now since on the following day from this, I planned to hire a bike and ride around and I wanted to spend a long time doing that.