Trekking in SF (Nick)

Colourful fruits in Chinatown. This state is amazingly fertile. 

There are miles and miles of  carefully tilled and prepared fields, with lots of 

irrigation and signs of serious fruit and veg production - bit like the Fens but with more sunshine.

It's not gold and it's not a gate but pretty neat all the same.

Waking up at dawn, and fast-forwarding to the day ahead. Thinking ahead, I have come to realise, is an essential biking tool. If you do not give that 15 mph curve ahead on Highway 1 that is racing towards you some serious consideration before you are there, then may God have mercy upon you. And when it comes to curves, J's God is mightier than mine. However, if rumour is anything to go by, J's God is nothing to that of Charlie (J's younger son), who apparently sees no difference in his biking goggles between a straight line and a right angle.

But today for the first time in a week, the bikes and their riders were to have a rest day. Off we went from the hostel, J in khaki shorts and sandals; me in jeans and boots. I HAD packed some shorts by the way, but reading into the literature about gay SF I thought better of putting them on (they are pink and can wait for Malibu).

We strolled down to where the cable car begins, a short distance from O'Farrell and the hostel. These old cable cars run by the SF Municipal Railway are great fun. We were at the terminus, and so as these little carriages reached the end of the line they were pushed onto a turntable and pushed round to face the direction whence they had come.

Cable car being pull round on the turntable

Back to the SF end, we bussed back into town to our hostel: not to sleep another night there - thank God - but to ship out with all our bike loads of luggage down the road to another. This was better quality in all respects but one. This time our accomodation was on the sixth floor. Handling those stairs after tramping SF's streets, and carrying up our stuff was either an amusing challenge or a reason for failing entry into the SAS, depending on whether your name is J Russell or Nick Inge.

Fortunately Mr Cline came to the rescue with his 2010 Heritage Zinfandel, which was magnificent. It was only after J and I had a couple of glasses and felt a bit woozy that we investigated the label and saw that it was 15.5%. That limited our desire earlier expressed to paint the town red. The hostel was putting on a film in their theatre room downstairs, a feature film about SF starring Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage, and free pizza, which was generous.

We took them up on it. It was an action thriller with mad ex-generals commanding renegade commandos, Alcatraz tourists being held hostage, germ warfare, massive explosions and a few F111 jets just for the hell of it. I could have given you the entire plot near the start, although J tells me I slept through most of it. Somehow I made it back to the sixth floor where a deep sleep was waiting for me.