San Francisco - Day 3: The Thighmaster

I have incorporated an extended stay in the lobby as part of the morning ritual to check emails and do wifi business. The reasons/excuses for connection issues the front desk offers up sound phonier every day. Methinks they just don’t want to carry whatever internet costs usually go with running a hotel these days. That’s ok - one more day and we’re on the road back north again.

We made it out of our room by 10:30 and picked up hybrid bikes to head over the Golden Gate to Sausalito. I had to promise the boys that photos of them on the bikes would not make it to FB. Somehow they had the idea that the bikes didn’t make them look nearly cool enough. L The going was pretty good until we made it round the last few hills & bends before the bridge. The wind was fierce, but the sky was reasonably clear; at least we weren‘t going to get the dreaded marine fog descending on us. Everybody but…me made it without walking the uphill approaches. I’m blaming it on the extra Danish I plucked off the breakfast tray this morning. There was a steady stream of people on the bridge itself - families riding four-abreast, fast locals speeding by, pedestrians squinting ing out towards Alcatraz, etc. apparently you can even take a Segway tour across the bridge. If Evan and Alex were worried about the bikes’ cool factor, think how they would have looked riding over the bridge on a Segway (probably with bags over their heads!)

We took a break mid-span for a photo op and to marvel at the terrific current under us, then continued downhill towards Sausalito. Periodically along the bridge emergency phones with ’Don’t give up - make the call’ messages all over them are placed to dissuade those who’ve decided to go over and out in a really big way.

Sausalito is a small but lively community of galleries, restaurants and jewellery shops that reminded us a bit of Sidney or White Rock. Lunch was a deli sandwich picnic on the shore, and we continued riding around until it was time to head back on the 3:45 ferry. The ferry trip included a carefully co-ordinated exercise in bike balancing, with 150 of us leaning our bikes up against each other on the lower deck, then picking them up one by one and filing off the boat at Fisherman’s Wharf.

Alex found his airbrush artist at the wharf and picked up the picture he‘d been wanting, then we sent them back to the shop to return their bikes. The two of us continued riding to the Presidio (against the wind!) park area, and we may almost have earned the pizza that was coming up for supper.

It was probably the first and last time that I will wait 1 ½ hrs for a pizza - it was so highly recommended that I felt like we couldn’t get so close to Tony’s Pizza in North Beach and NOT try it out. We left our name with the front desk and wandered as long as we could in the cold and descending foggy breeze before squishing back into the incredibly-crowded restaurant entrance to wait our turn. The menu was a confusing array of different crust-styles and toppings; in the end we made simple choices - all that time in line wasn‘t totally wasted.

Best pizza ever? The other 3 agreed theirs was pretty good; I wasn’t totally convinced. Maybe it was a mistake to try a pizza with BBQ sauce and fried onions. Just sayin’…that might have coloured my opinion!

Some traditional things are not meant to be messed with. The waitress did give us a slightly funny look - in other words, you wait 90 minutes in line and then choose something you could have got at Papa Murphy’s?!

One more full day in town - we’ll do more wandering, visit the Aquarium, walk the crookedest street, stop by Ghiradelli Square for an ice cream sundae. One thing it will NOT include - a visit to Alcatraz. We stopped by the wharf the other day to see when we could book a tour - the answer was any day after AUGUST 1 L L Instead of booking those Giants tickets in April, I should have been online booking the tour instead. Apparently we’ll have to be satisfied with Clint Eastwood or Call of Duty: Black Ops version of the island…