Revised: Halfmoon Bay to Davis

Note: Pete informed me that I missed a bunch of stuff in the initial writing of this post, so here is the revised version. We did so much that day some of it slipped by. Revisions will be in this crazy colour for anyone who wants to just skip to the new stuff.

We woke up in the morning to someone blowing a whistle. I had a brief moment of fear that it was the cops and we were in shit. Turned out to be a woman walking her dog. I looked around and there were quite a few people on the beach. There were people walking their dogs and a couple of tents down at the other end, nobody even gave us a second glance. I got the impression people sleep on the beach there fairly often.

We hiked back up to the cars, which had not been towed. The path to the beach was a little frightening in daylight. It looked like it had been frequently used as a dump/bathroom. There was jagged metal and broken glass everywhere, and it smelled like pee. I got up to the top and had to wait a few minutes for Pete... he's not as good on the technical terrain as I am (Sorry Pete, you wanted the revisions, this is what you get!) We then went for breakfast at an awesome bakery in downtown Halfmoon Bay. It's a really neat little touristy resort community with a really cute downtown. Breakfast was awesome and we lingered around there for a while taking in the sights.

It was just a short drive to San Francisco from here. We arrived at about noon, parked the cars in the Sunset area of the city, got our bikes out, packed up all the stuff we would need for the day and went exploring. We were parked near Golden Gate State Park so we rode through that for a bit. It's such a beautiful huge park right in the middle of the city. There were huge palm trees, lakes and ponds, a rose garden and a botanical garden... and this is just in the small part that we rode through. And it smelled wonderful! The mix of lush trees, roses and salt air was amazing. It was also the perfect temperature, sunny skies with a mild breeze... lovely.

We stopped and took a walk through the Aids Memorial Garden for a bit. When we got back to the bench where we left our bikes there was an older lady there with a little mostly-Jack Russell dog. The dog had a frisbee that was bigger than it and I laughed immediately upon seeing this little dog walking with the huge frisbee in its mouth. This was only the tip of the iceberg though. Nick (as we would soon discover was his name) dropped the frisbee right-side-up under the bench and then proceeded to dig at it to get it up again. He would dig frantically until he couldn't take anymore, then stop, pant, recover, and continue again. Eventually he managed to get a big enough hole dug in the dirt in front of the frisbee that he could pick it up. He did so, then immediately dropped it again so he could start all over. The Nick's mom informed us that this is what he does for fun. She yelled at him the whole time, seeming quite embarrassed and exasperated. Pete and I were dying laughing, and I took a video. The video doesn't do it justice, but it was pretty funny stuff.

From the park we went downtown, locked up our bikes, got some Thai noodles and ate them while watching some break-dancers do their thing. There were so many interesting characters to watch, some of them sad, but all with their own story. That's one of the things I love about cities, taking a moment to do some people watching and observing all the lives that go on outside of our own little sheltered world.

After lunch we went down to the piers. I couldn't believe how many there were, I think the last one we went by was Pier 39. They are all varied in their uses, some were warehouses, a lot were docks for commercial tour boats, one had been taken over by sea lions (which Pete insisted were dirty, disgusting, stinky and boring). At the end of all the piers was Fishermans' Wharf, which consisted mostly of touristy stuff. From here you could sea Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and a tall ship. I took a panoramic picture, which is on Flickr, not believing that you could get all this in one shot.

We went for a swim at a little beach near the wharf. The water was absolutely freezing so we only stayed in for a few minutes. There were tons of people swimming laps back and forth across the little harbour. They were pretty hard-core, most weren't wearing wet suits, they were swimming some really long distances, and the water was extremely choppy. They effectively made me feel very non-hardcore.

After the swim we went and got some free chocolate at the Ghirardelli chocolate factory. With sweet teeth satisfied we thought we would try to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge. It looked pretty close from where we were so we set out towards it. We rode up this hill and stopped dead in our tracks at the top as we looked upon one of the most stunning views ever. To our left was the golden gate bridge, beneath us were beautiful piers and the bay, and to the right was Alcatraz. All of this was framed by big trees above us. It was one of those moments that encompassed all the senses. The view was stunning, I could smell salt water, taste chocolate, hear seagulls and people laughing and talking, and I could feel the gentle breeze on my face, and Pete's arms around me. This is where I took the picture below, but without the other senses it won't be quite the same.

This view also afforded us the opportunity to realize that the bridge was really far away and we did not have time to ride over there. We were on the edge of a little park so we went in and napped on the grass instead. There had been a lot of adventures in the last two days and I was completely spent. Post-nap, we were heading out of the park when Pete said "Is that a Segue convention or something?" I turned around to see about 10 middle-aged geeky people buzz by, single-file, with matching neon green safety vests, on their Segue's. It was awesome! Probably one of the most bizarre and funny things I'd seen in a while. I kept envisioning one of them doing a face-plant.

From there we went to a cafe, had a small supper and headed for an Amos Lee concert. Pete looked at the map and figured out how we had to get there. "It's just a mile or so." Ha! It was only a mile, but it was over one of San Francisco's steepest, longest hills! From the bottom I could only see about three blocks ahead of me, going straight up. I thought, meh, I can do it, it's not that far. As we got riding though, more and more of the hill kept appearing. I'm not sure how many blocks it ended up being, but it was damn friggin' long and hard! (which is good when your talking about a man, but not so good on a bike) People were laughing at us as they drove by. Yet another adventure!

I had never listened to any of Amos Lee stuff before, but had heard good things about him from Tamara and Katie so I was pretty excited. I was not to be disappointed. The music was beautiful, very soulful. His voice was amazing.

Pete had put his Visa down at the bar for our drinks, but there was a $30 minimum. By the time we had drank that much we were pretty tipsy so we had to wait to sober up before we headed for Davis. We had an interesting bike ride back to the cars, hoping we wouldn't get "shanked." I lost a shoe at one point. Ah, the joys of riding drunk... not the first time on the trip. When we got back to the cars we sat on the beach for a bit and then headed out.

By this time it was pretty late and we still had an hour drive ahead of us to get back to Pete's house in Davis. I drove with my windows open and AC cranked to keep myself awake. I really hate driving drowsy, scares the crap out of me.

Me (with a goofy look on my face) at Golden Gate Park

San Francisco cable car

Sea Lions

Piers and Golden Gate Bridge

Yay!

Amos Lee