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.