Hello, Frisco!

Today we slept in and left the Manchester, CA KOA around 10:30 to drive further south on CA route 1, hugging the coastline at 200 feet above jagged rocks and breaking surf. We drove until we reached 101, then south for a jaunt until we reached our next KOA 2 1/2 hours later. Extremely odd for us to be checking in to our tent site when it's a) daylight and b) just minutes after your earliest available check-in time.
The plan was to check in early and then find a way into San Francisco. We figured there would be public transportation from a local suburb that would be easy enough to follow, just like our trip into Chicago.
It turns out that there isn't a local commuter rail line. Most people when commuting via public transport use the ferry system. The ferry system in San Francisco wasn't going to cooperate with our plans. We asked at the KOA front desk for any ideas. The girl said that we could take a bus from a nearby town. That would take 2 hours. So I said to myself that I've driven all this way across the entire country, driving into San Francisco wouldn't be terribly difficult.
So with the blessing of a former San Franciscan named Cutter, we drove in.
We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, which was exciting. Couldn't see much though because of the fog. We drove up to route 1 and parked in the Haight-Ashbury section.

Five years ago Kate and I were fortunate to spend some time in the city by the Bay. We were flying back from Osaka, Japan where I suffered an acute sinus infection and had to "decompress" for a day - EMT's orders. So we made the most of it while we were here in 2002. Although we didn't have time to see the Haight-Ashbury section, which was disappointing to me because of my affinity for the Grateful Dead and the counterculture movement. I was promised then that we would come back and see it. So today we did.

Mark Twain once said "The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco." From what I understand, today in Boston saw nearly 100 degree temperatures and 5 tornadoes touched down in New York City. San Francisco was a blustery 57 degrees. As we walked up and down Haight Street we were lamenting the fact that we had dressed for a summer's day in California.....on a summer's day in California.

We had a late lunch near the corner of Haight and Ashbury streets at the
Magnolia Brewpub. We had a few of their brews and an entree. After that we browsed the shops of Haight and then walked back to the car so we could drive across town to make it in time for....


...ANOTHER baseball game! This time we walked right up to the box office of AT&T Park (formerly SBC Park, formerly Pacific Bell Park) and bought two tickets. 24 hours earlier you couldn't sell your soul for a ticket, but since Barry Bonds* had hit that home run the night before, no one cared enough to go tonight. And we confirmed a few facts we were speculating earlier. For example, National League games are boring. We look around and no one is invested in the game. This guy is reading, that guy is browsing on his laptop (the stadium provided free WiFi). No energy, unless Bonds* got up. And in case you didn't know, he hit home run #756 yesterday. And if you didn't hear the first time they reminded you, they took care of that every 2 minutes. But despite all that falderal, the Giants are in last place. So we also realized that there would be no baseball in October because they experience October in August. It's so cold.