Day 333 – 30 June 2010: Going Electric

Feeling that I haven’t really explored San Francisco, I decide to rent a bike. As a hostel dweller, the reception tells me I can get a discounted rate of $18 if I go to a specific shop. However, when I pass a shop renting out electric bikes, my muscles that have tensed up at the thought of trying to push myself up San Franciscan hills walk me through the door. It will be $30 much better spent than on some buffet dinner in Las Vegas I tell myself.

From the west end of Fishermen’s Wharf, I go along the north shoreline past ‘Aquatic Park’, a small beach area almost enclosed by a hooked pier. This area is Presidio Park which originated as a military base founded by the Spanish in 1776 and it is from where the Golden Gate Bridge launches. I drove over the bridge a couple of weeks previously, but cycling over it is rather more hazardous....for pedestrians. Cyclists have to use the fenced off pavements on the sides of the bridge and legions of latex clad cyclists speed along it regardless of the fact that the path is shared with those on foot. Several overtake me as I move cautiously along looking out for people stepping out from the swarm of walkers.

I cycle down to Sausalito, the fishing port turned upmarket tourist stop across the bridge. I have doubts about my bikes ability to get me back up the hill on my return, but I gleefully overtake struggling cyclists, many of whom resort to walking. The extra $12 for the electric motor is definitely worth it.

After cycling back across the bridge, I travel south through Golden Gate Recreational Reserve. I stop by the grand ‘Legion of Honour’ war memorial and museum, which has a Rodin Thinker sculpture taking pride of place in the courtyard. Museums are expensive in California, the state’s notoriously perilous financial state limiting scope for subsidy, and this one charges $25 so I don’t go in.

On the hill up the Legion, my bike’s battery runs out, despite my efforts to only use the electric on uphill slopes. Come to think of it, most of my time was spent on uphill slopes, as the downhill ones don’t take so long. There is very little flatland in SF. From being the best and speediest bike on the road, I now find myself cycling an ill designed lump weight of metal with the dynamics of a tractor.

I get down the hill going along Ocean Beach and then into Golden Gate Park. I get lost in the park again, until finding an exit to establish my position. The hills I have to cycle up to get back to Fisherman’s Wharf are of the type SF is famous for, and even pushing the bike is a strain.

After giving the bike back, I go back to the hostel, and get a massage for $10 from a fellow resident. The masseuse is another Brit from Great Yarmouth. She tells me she loves SF because she can ‘feel the energy of the sea’. Um, that would be the wind coming from the bay and your mouth I can’t help thinking to myself.

A short walk down Broadway is the ‘Beat Museum’, with what I think is a replica, but may be the actual car that once took Jack Kerouac on a long journey. ‘On the Road’ is still near compulsory reading in SF, especially amongst the hostel dwellers. Actually I have a copy myself, which I bought in China of all places. I can’t think that ‘On the Road’ promotes a lifestyle that would be approved by the government of the People’s Republic. I’ve given up reading it though, as its prose has aged badly. It now reads like someone trying too hard to be ‘real hip, man’.

After helping out to cook a free dinner in the hostel, I chat to a photographer from Hawaii who tells me he does wildlife photography work for National Geographic. However, he also does ‘gallery work’. He has the air of someone confident that people will find him interesting, and seems too eager to share his stories with me. But then, what am I doing? He shows me a diverting video on his camera of some homeless people playing drums on upturned garbage bins and an old beat up guitar, a film he tells me he took last night in the small hours.

Later I chat to Tim, a German furniture maker taking a few months off to travel. We are both waiting for a hostel organised bar crawl offering the first couple of drinks free, though of course we will still have to tip the barman. However, after a couple of bars we realise that we are being led to a series of dance clubs with conversation defeating music and I suspect the bar staff are too used to getting 15% of nothing for the free drinks as the bar service is nearly absent. Tim and I retreat back to the hostel ‘ballroom’ for drinks and a few games of pool.

Alcatraz

 

fishing on the pier

relics from Presidio's time as an army base

 

Bucket Drummer at Fisherman's Wharf

floating restaurant

The Beat Museum

Day 332 – 29 June 2010: Coco Rosie in Berkeley

The last stragglers of the tour group leave the hostel today, excepting me. ‘Nice to meet you’, says Cristina as she shakes my hand with as much feigned sincerity she can muster.

I catch the BART over to Berkeley, the home to the University of California. Any of the places at the edges of San Francisco look more salubrious than West Broadway where the hostel is, and Berkeley is no different, except that it is almost entirely populated by students. Berkeley isn’t subject to the bay breeze, so it is much warmer here too.

There is another branch of Amoeba Records here and I have come to see an in-store performance by Coco Rosie, an odd sounding sister duo who employ children’s toys and a human beatbox amongst its musical coterie. One sister wearing a backward baseball cap and with her hair shaved at the sides sings in a squeaky scary fairy tale woman child voice, while the other is a classically trained operatic singer. Get the idea?

Anyway, though I arrive a half hour before the advertised time, there is already a queue and when the doors are eventually opened there are probably two hundred people waiting to get inside. Maybe like me they are deciding whether to pay money to see them do a full gig that night. The in-store performance is a short one of five or six songs, the last song causing a giggle as it broke the slightly hazy druggy feel by suddenly kicking into a techno dance beat leading some to start jigging. For the first time in my life, I queue up like a smitten fan to get my freshly purchased CDs signed. But I am actually just a knackered late thirty something and I don’t bother to see go to the concert in the evening, choosing to go to bed early.

Day 331 – 28 June 2010: Lost in Golden Gate Park

I catch a bus to Haight, and walk towards Golden Gate Park, passing several Irish / British theme bars packed with Portuguese and Spanish watching their respective teams play eachother in the World Cup.

I had walked this street about fifteen years ago. Then, there was a hangover from the sixties and the characters who hung around this street probably diminished the property values. Now however, the street is tidy and the homes spruced up with a handful of exotic restaurants inhabiting commercial units. There are still ‘smoke shops’ and a smattering of homeless people lie around near the entrance to Golden Gate Park. There is also the elaborately spray painted Amoeba Records, which was a paradise of rare vinyl and CDs to me the last time I was here.

You might expect Golden Gate Park to be somewhere near the Golden Gate Bridge, but it is a few miles to the south. The specific attractions like the Botanic Gardens and the Aids Memorial Garden are neatly manicured, but the rest of the park looks well trodden. There are roads and paths crisscrossing throughout the park and it reminds me of Central Park in New York. There are a couple of popular museums and few historic lodges, though I don’t visit these in my frugal state.

The park is much larger than I had anticipated. After an hour and a half of walking westwards through the park, I randomly recollect that today is the last day that I can pay my fine for parking the wrong way in Pacific Grove before it doubles, so decide to go back to the hostel. I know that I am somewhere in the middle of the park and there are lots of information plaques with maps etched into them. However, none of the maps say ‘you are here’, so they don’t prove very useful. Eventually after passing a road sign I realise that I am walking east on the south side of the park, exactly the opposite of where I need to be, so it takes me another couple of hours to get back to the hostel and my parking ticket.

The remaining National Parks tour group are going to see a San Francisco Giants baseball game tonight, but I always hated baseball even when I lived in Florida as a boy, so decline to join them. Instead I spend the evening in a bar I discovered from leaflets left in the hostel advertising a ‘Britpop / Punk / New Wave’ karaoke night. The leaflets don’t seem to have had much effect as, including me, there are only six people in the bar for the karaoke, and I discover that three of them are the DJ’s friends. There isn’t much evidence of punk or new wave on the playlist, but it is reassuring to know that someone somewhere is singing Happy Monday’s ‘Wrote For Luck’ (you used to tell the truth but now you’re clever) on a karaoke machine. However, I found it difficult to sit through the sensitive looking bloke singing Morrissey with a hoarse voice.

San Francisco Bowls Club

Day 330 – 27 June 2010: the mystery of the missing booze

For the overnight drive, I grab one of the overhead bunks which double as the baggage holds, my first night on the bus where I don’t have to sleep next to anybody. I awake dozily in the middle of the night as some people get dropped off in LA, but am too tired to rise myself for a wave of goodbyes.

When I finally arise, the passenger list has dissolved to ten and I feel tension easing from me. I am perhaps mildly claustrophobic, but I am glad I don’t have to sleep on this bus crammed with 35 people anymore. I even start talking cordially with Cristina.

The bus stops at a Denny’s for breakfast, a table service fast food chain restaurant like a Wimpy’s in the UK. I don’t remember eating at a Denny’s when I was a boy in Florida, though the prices can’t have changed much in twenty five years. A pancake and an egg costs $2, though I opt for a manwich of sausage, bacon, eggs, cheese, etc. There will be no need for lunch.

The table next to us have two waitresses assigned to them, one being in training. In the UK, you would have to be in a very much more expensive restaurant to expect the servers to be formally trained, but I guess the fixed smiles and perky ‘have a nice day’s take some practice.

Charlie is driving again, and we get off the Interstate at an earlier exit than Jimmy’s normal route onto the 101 to SF. Jimmy is in the driver’s cabin at the back of the bus, but Charlie predicts that he won’t be there long. Within seconds Jimmy comes stumbling down the bus to ask Charlie where he is going. After a few minutes of niggling Charlie about getting off at the wrong exit, we pass a sign to SF that makes Jimmy realise that he has cut about an hour off the journey.

Jimmy then takes over the driving as we approach SF. It is only then that he recalls that it is gay pride weekend, and the parade will be blocking off the central Market Street. Rick offers him some directions to avoid the blockage but after we have been in traffic for about ten minutes, which Jimmy says is half an hour, Jimmy decides it will take two hours for him to drive to Green Tortoise hostel, although it is only a mile or two away. He wants to drop us off to walk the rest of the way, but with everyone laden with luggage, nobody is very keen. Eventually Jimmy refuses to go any further, leaving the remaining passengers somewhat disgruntled. It also means that the leftover booze in the bus that I was planning to bring back for group consumption will have to be left behind, but Charlie promises to bring it to us when we meet up with him in the evening.

By the time we get to Market Street, the parade had passed and the road was on the verge of being re-opened, which leaves some people wondering if they can take back their driver’s tip.

I crash out for the afternoon in my dorm bed at the hostel, which is in the window bay overlooking Broadway. The San Franciscan Broadway is somewhat different to the New York one, with the most prominently lighted attractions being The Garden of Eden and Larry Flint’s Hustler Club and other such ‘gentlemanly’ delights.

There are a few of the people from the tour staying at the hostel with me and we meet up with Charlie and Rick for a Chinese dinner in the evening. Charlie tells me that as soon as they got the bus back to the compound, Jimmy disappeared as did the bag of booze.

By now I am looking forward to being a sole traveller again. Quite a lot of the people on the GT tour will have come away from it feeling that they have made a lot of good friends. Having been on a trip with a similar sized group for thirty-two weeks, I feel a little distanced from this as, in comparison to my UK to Oz colleagues, I know very little about the GT group, though there are a number of them I would like to keep in touch with.

After an over-sized, over-sauced and over flavoured meal, we say goodbye to Charlie, as he walks backwards across the road in his socks, having removed his boots because of aching feet.

The remaining party are going onto one of SF’s famed gay bars led by Rick, but I am too tired and pass a couple of hours in the hostel common room (‘The Ballroom’) while drinking Magner’s bought from the liquor store down the road and listening to drunk musicians destroy many standards, and few sub-standards too. It was almost bad enough for me to think about offering to play myself.

Back in SF

National Parks Tour Web Album (click)

Day 329 – 26 June 2010: Decadence & Folly

Tonight we’re going to Vegas, where some people will be leaving the trip before we go on to LA and finally San Francisco.

First though, we have to do a final ‘bus toss’ before we leave the Grand Canyon, which means getting everything off the bus so everyone can amalgamate their possessions. Jimmy keeps repeating a mantra: ‘the quicker we do this, the more time we have in Las Vegas’, but it takes two and a half hours. I’m not too bothered because I am not that keen on visiting Vegas.

On the way, still in Arizona, we stop in Seligman, on the old Route 66. A diversion was built about forty years ago and the town almost died, but after a campaign to have the road renamed ‘traditional Route 66’ the Seligman was reborn as a 1950s nostalgia trip. There’s a dusty outback feel to the place too, with the garage in the middle of town strewn with beat up cars that will no doubt be recreated as one of the fifties classics that line the street. There is also Delgadillo’s Snow Cap Drive-In, a ‘historic’ roadside restaurant still run by the Delgadillo family, though I am not tempted by its offerings of ‘cheeseburger with cheese’ or ‘dead chicken’, or even its ice cream, but instead walk up the road past the gas station with the 50s pick-ups outside it, and then the tat shop (‘Chevy Parking Only’ outside) where a mannequin of Elvis with a blond sit on the bumper of the old Chevy.

We’re doing good time as Charlie is on the wheel again and get to Vegas a half hour before planned, despite our later than planned start.

What can I say about Vegas? There’s the naff miniature rebuilds of some of the world’s architectural monuments, there are Casinos the size of Wembley Stadium, there are roller coasters swinging in and out of hotel buildings, a legion of Elvis impersonators charging $5 to pose for pictures, as well as the odd Gene Simmons from Kiss or a Slash from Guns’n’Roses. Then of course there is the fountain show outside the Bellagio Hotel, which I enjoyed despite the fountains dancing to the music of Barry Manilow.

However, the first thing that strikes me is just how sleazy this place is. The streets are lined with men and women handing out ticket sized leaflets for call girls or ‘masseuses’ and many thousands of these tickets layer the pavement. Beggars also line the street, with one holding up a sign saying ‘I’m so dirty, even my crabs have herpes’. Meanwhile, inside the Planet Hollywood Casino, the card tables at the centre are backed up with table dancers in lingerie, oddly gyrating to barely audible music. This must be why Vegas is part of the National Parks tour. It’s the national human zoo. Anything goes in LV.

The group decision was to eat at the Planet Hollywood buffet restaurant. At $30 a head, this must be one of the most expensive buffets you can find in the US, and is certainly more than I have paid for any meal I’ve had since I flew into LA at the end of May. We have to queue for a half hour to get tables. When I finally sit down at one, there are eight people at my table which is designated as a seven person table. In any other restaurant, they would be happy if the covers volunteered to cram themselves in, but this is Vegas, which is designed to part us with our money. The waiter tells us that there is a $40 cover charge (i.e. excluding the dinner) if we want to sit an extra person at our table, so Kiwi Emma kindly volunteers to move. So anything goes in Vegas, unless you want to sit an extra person at your restaurant table.

One thing that you can do is bring alcohol from outside into the casinos. It has probably been scientifically proven that the more drunk the patrons, the more likely they are to gamble.

Food-wise, there were plenty of options at the buffet with counters for East Asian, Italian, Seafood, ‘American’ (beef!), etc but nobody comes away overly impressed with it. That said, most of us take advantage of the ‘all you can eat’ policy after two weeks of veggie Green Tortoise bus meals.

The rest of the evening is spent hanging around various casinos watching people play incomprehensible slot machines. I try one which has three rows of five symbols and pushing a button makes some lines go up and down the blocks. I have no idea what any of it means and lose my dollar. That was the sum of my night’s gambling, though Korean Kids comes away gleaming having won $7.50. Meanwhile, San Franciscan Rick is seen getting carried out of the casino by some of the GT crew in an ecstatic display of celebration like he’d just won enough to retire. In reality he could just about buy a round of drinks.

We have several people on the trip, like the Scottish fiddler Neil, who are under 21, and therefore not technically allowed into the casinos. However, the only time anybody’s ID gets checked is when they try to cash their winnings, so you can gamble if you are under 21, you just can’t win.

After some protracted goodbyes to people staying in Vegas which almost costs a few people their rides to LA / SF, we leave Vegas just before midnight.

Seligman, Route 66

 

Vegas....

 

 

Day 328 – 25 June 2010: Recovering at the Canyon

To minimise the weight, none of us had brought our tents on the hike, which meant sleeping on the sheltered picnic tables or under the tree. This means we are all up at the first break of sunlight, and less than three hours later we are back at the top of the trail. Nearing the top, it starts to rain, which is a cooling welcome surprise. We march back to the bus in the campsite, with me chanting some triumphal nonsense, but nobody pays much attention.

A few hours later, after a shower and a nap on the bus, the hikers who had stayed near the bottom of the valley start to arrive. Kiwi Emma says she passed the two girls who I had escorted to the Ranger’s Hut last night, and the black girl was still stopping every ten steps apparently. And probably carrying her full bottle of water too.

We stay in the campsite for the night. Those who had not hiked yesterday had had a big party last night, and are feeling the after affects, but it doesn’t stop most of us staying up late chatting and drinking beer. Eventually hippy prefect Jimmy tells everyone to go to bed, but with no detention this term, we pay little attention, and I eventually retire close to midnight.

See Kidz on the Datso (Korean Flute) on the video below

Day 327 – 24 June 2010: Grand Canyon

Charlie is driving overnight again, and he never goes unnecessarily slow so we get to the Grand Canyon before sunrise and well before opening time. We park by the permit office to wait. Green Tortoise have reserved some overnight hiking permits, but some of these are for camping at the bottom of the valley. Given the heat we are now facing, nobody really wants to do this. There is a waiting list for permits so we have to rely on cancellations for the extra halfway permits. In the event we don’t get enough to go around, so we draw straws. Thankfully, I get a long one.

I volunteer to be the leader of our hiking group of eleven who will all be camping at Indian Garden, the campsite halfway down the Bright Angel Trail to the Colorado River at the base of the valley. Being the leader actually means I have to follow the tail to make sure we don’t lose anyone, which leads me to be dubbed the ‘arseman’. Official advice is to bring three gallons of water. There are water taps in the top half of the valley, though the rangers say that these don’t always work.

The group quickly splits into two, with Cristina, the artist Neil, hyperactive Aussie Tenille and her National Parks Tour boyfriend Johannes going ahead as they are determined to get to the bottom of the valley before coming back up to the campsite. I am with the Korean Kids, Hannes the 17 year old German, Line the Danish Aussie, Tom from Belgium, Lucy from Oxford and Emma from Newcastle. We are eventually joined by the bottom of the valley campers Kiwi Emma, ginger haired German Daniel and Brummie Ryan, as they are finding Army Captain K and his wife Jenny are stopping for too many photo ops.

It is no great revelation to say that the Grand Canyon is hot and dusty. Frequent signs warn against hiking between 10am and 4pm. We didn’t set off until after nine and it is a three hour hike to Indian Gardens. We are glad that the water taps do work, as carrying three gallons of water each would be tiring in itself. On the trail we pass a posse of horse riders coming up the valley from an early morning trip, and we spot a snake slithering by the rocks at the side of the trail. I am no snake expert and it is only a small one, but its red diamond markings indicate it is not one that you would be well advised to pick up and put around your neck.

We catch up with the lead group at Indian Garden for lunch. Line and Lucy are keen to continue down to the bottom of the valley straight after lunch, but after consulting a ranger, who references the fact that it is 120°F (c. 50°) in the sun, we decide to hang around until four o’clock before making the descent.

There are food lockers at the campsite, and Cristina has decided that one of them is exclusively for the lead group. On the initial stages of this tour, I got along with Cristina, but by this time I had come to see her as a needy attention seeker and had wearied of her habit of handing out easy compliments to everyone she speaks to as a way of ingratiating herself. I also had noticed that she was the last to be seen when meals needed preparing or bins from the bus needed to be emptied. I had denoted her as the most irritating person in the world, just as I have concluded that the best pizza in the world is in Cambodia. By this time, I was making no attempt to hide my distaste and I tell her how irritating she is. That said, nobody else in the group seems to share my feelings. It is another cliché to regard travelling as a journey of self discovery, but if I have discovered anything about myself, it is that I am fast becoming a grumpy old man. I am turning into my dad....arrrghhh!

However, I am not the most annoyed person here. While we are eating lunch, a Ranger stops by with a man whose fourteen year old son has gone missing from the trail. There are helicopters circling overhead, but the man appeared more angry than worried, saying that if we should see his son, we should tell him that he probably doesn’t want to see his dad right now.

After the little spat with Cristina, I go with Kids and Line to cool off in a small pond a ranger had told me about. It is hidden behind stables off the side of the trail near the bottom of the campsite, but it isn’t a big secret as we find it packed with boy scouts. With the temperature gauge posted to a fence stopped at the highest it can go, it is more than appreciated though.

In the absence of young Neil with his fiddle, we have another hiking musician in Kids, who plays a small type of flute which looks much like a hash pipe. He has a captive audience at the pond but, with his Korean sensibilities, he perhaps doesn’t realise that ‘My Heart Will Go On’ may not be to everybody’s taste. However, in this context, it sounds like a pleasant atmospheric tune.

It takes another couple of hours to get to the Colorado River. We find a small beach at the bottom of the trail, and take another cooling dip making sure to avoid the white water currents.

On the way back up, we come across a couple of college girls hiking back up the valley. One of them, a black girl, is struggling to walk any more than ten steps or so before stopping for another break. She is carrying a gallon of water, but appears not to have taken any drink from it, rather missing the point of the official advice. They had no camping equipment and are aiming to get back to the top of the trail, which seemed a delirious notion. At first, I offer to walk with them, but soon realise that it would be more helpful if I fetched help from the Ranger’s hut at the campsite.

I get to the Ranger’s hut at dusk, but there is no answer at the door. I use the emergency phone line outside, explaining to the voice at the end of the line that I had just left someone suffering from heat exhaustion and unable to walk more than a few steps. The response I get is a sceptical one to say the least, with the voice asking if the girl had asked for assistance. I explain that even if I had asked her that direct question, given her full bottle of water, I didn’t think she was being rational anyway. The voice says that she will report to the Ranger so that ‘she will keep a lookout for her’.

Now dark, I decide to go back down to see how far up the girls had made it. I am relieved to find them near the bottom of the campsite, although the black girl is now unable to take more than a couple of steps each time before stopping. I escort them to the Ranger’s hut, but still get no answer from knocking. I phone the emergency line again, and again the woman at the end of the line asks if the girl has asked for assistance herself. I tell her that the girls is hardly able to speak and that she is outside the Ranger’s hut door and is no state to go any further, but as I am in the middle of the conversation, the door opens. The Ranger had clearly just got out of bed. So much for her being told to ‘keep a lookout’. I leave the girls in the care of the Ranger. The hut is more like a small house and they will be getting a lot more comfortable accommodation than I will. I learn from the ranger that the missing boy she told us about at lunch time had been found back at the top of the trail, having abandoned his father after he had been left behind.

Back at the campsite, my dinner is a melting granola bar and a very mushy sandwich. Drained of energy, I lie down under the tree and go to sleep, though it is probably only eight o’clock.

 

a snake slithers under the rock