San Francisco Day 2:
Heidi was up and off to work and we made plans to catch up later. I was still exhausted and went on back to bed. I made my way into the kitchen around 10:30 and made some breakfast with the groceries we’d gotten the day before...the yummy continues!
I decided to spend the day on foot walking from Heidi’s house -which was on the corner of Fell St and Divisadero- along Fell St Park and into Golden Gate Park. It was a beautiful day. I packed my little bag with water, snacks, and sunscreen and set off. I missed seeing the sakura in Tokyo, but as fate would have it the cherry blossoms were out and blooming right there in San Francisco along with just about every other plant that ever blossomed.
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| Cherry Blossoms San Fran |
Spring was truly at its best. I walked and walked and enjoyed using my new camera on the conservatory of flowers, the lily ponds, the Japanese tea garden, the many lakes, and the bikers on the dirt trails until finally my feet were exhausted and I sat down for a rest.
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| Golden Gate Park |
I looked at my watch and it was already 3:00pm. I’d made plans to meet with Heidi at about 5:30 so couldn’t rest for long. The walk back took half the time as I wasn’t snapping so many photos. I detoured up to Haight Street on my walk back to the house and got caught up in my camera once again on the variety of diverse people who lined the street that was so much a part of San Francisco’s history.
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| Heading up to Haight Ashbury |
Back to Heidi’s house I took out the directions she had given me and rolled her extra bike out of the house and onto the street. It was my first time on a bike in about 2 years and it felt great. Following her directions through the streets of San Francisco felt natural. Biking is definitely the way to go in that city. I met Heidi downtown outside of a Wells Fargo where we exchanged some yen for me. We then walked over to the Ferry building where we saw a large number of people gathering with their bikes. We both noticed it and made a brief comment about it but continued into the Ferry building for a look around. By the time we came out of the building the number of people with bikes had tripled and it dawned on Heidi what was going on. Unbelievable we ran into some people she knew and she asked them, “Is this CRITICAL MASS?” Yep, it was.
‘Critical Mass’ is a bicycling event held on the last Friday of every month in over 300 cities around the world, however, the ride was originally founded in 1992 in San Francisco. From what I could tell it is organized by meeting at a set location and time and traveling as a group through city streets on bikes trying as hard as possible to not allow any gap big enough for a car to go through. I guess the original intent of Critical Mass was to express how bicycle unfriendly the drivers and streets of San Francisco were and this was a marked revenge to create as much of a traffic debacle as possible. And it works. Happily Heidi and I had bikes and we decided to join the ride for a while.
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| Not my picture...unfortunatley I didn't have my camera with me which i was totally bummed about |
We’d noticed a few older naked ‘gentleman’ before the race started and they definitely gave us a laugh in their top hats and either a sock or nothing to cover their ‘bits’. Once the ride started we leisurely bike-strolled along the busiest street in San Fran and somehow ended up right next to the naked gentlemen. For the next hour no matter if we sped up or slowed down we always ended up either directly behind or inline with them. It was quite hysterical. They kept yelling out absurd comments to the people watching from the bars or stuck in traffic, like “Get naked and get a bike!” or “Get out of your cars and get naked!” The funniest part of it, however, was that inbetween their shouts they would speak to one another about business operations, the stock market, and so on. They were genuine upstanding citizens who once a month “Got naked and got on their bike!” Apparently the ride can last for hours but we ducked out and headed to meet up with a family friend of Heidi’s who was having a birthday dinner for his step-daughter.
We met up with Alex (who has since turned out to be an excellent resource of information on self-publishing and various other subjects) and his family at ‘Limon’ a Peruvian Restaurant on Valencia Street—in the middle of the Mission area. Let me just say that if you are ever in San Francisco you have GOT to go here! The company, service, and food made for a wonderful meal. ‘Limon’ has been voted as one of San Francisco’s top 100 restaurants, and in a city like that…I think that is saying a lot…but well deserved. They are famous for their rotisserie chicken but even a vegetarian like myself had no problem filling up. The lovely salads, quinoa and roasted vegetables, coconut fried rice, plantains, turnips, and sweet potato fries all were delicious.
http://www.limon-sf.com/
10:30pm and back on our bikes headed home; It was another great day in that great city.
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