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.