Colorado Cruiser: Pacific Coast Highway Ride

San Francisco

To start with, my brother's surgery went ok. He's critical and the next 24 hours are very crucial.

We didn't travel today, but toured around San Francisco. Greg wanted to get all the way up into Oregon to see his daughter, so he continued riding North without us. He called later to say that the coast was very cold and foggy, and that he eventually cut inland to the 101 to make some time. He made it all the way to Eureka which we will ride tomorrow.

The rest of us headed to the Dudly Perkins Harley Davidson store which was near our hotel. The GPS led the way and because I have it configured not to make U turns, it led us in a big circle at one point. All 5 of us were in the car just laughing as we did turn after turn back to where we had just been. But it did get us there in the end.

I got a hat, and Nan and I tried out an Ultra Glide. Nan's still not ready to make a habit out of getting on my motorcycle.

After that, we drove to the Bart station (subway) and caught a train to the ocean front. It cost $6.70 round trip per person to ride, and took about 20 minutes. We got off near the main terminal, and because we didn't know the rules and costs of riding busses or trams, we walked the mile and a bit over to fisherman's wharf. One of the bike-cabs offered to pedal us over for $20, but we'd have had to sit 3 across and 2 on top to do it, so we said no.

By the time we walked to the wharf we were a bit hungry so we looked for somewhere fun to eat. Eventually we wound up in Bubba Gump shrimp. Nan and I have eaten at Bubba Gumps in Breckenridge and in Kona Hawaii, but it was new to Shauna, Angela, and John. The meal was pretty good, and the signs reading "STOP FORREST" to get the waiter's attention kept us swimming in soda, so it was all good.

Next we walked to the end of the pier to see the sea lions. There is a colony that lives out on some of the floating piers rather than migrating, so they are there year round. There were only about 20 of them this day, and they seem to have learned to live as far from the humans as possible so we couldn't see them well.

As we left the pier, Nannette spotted the horse drawn carriages and said she'd always wanted to ride one. So we all piled in and our horse Susie and her driver took us on a 1/2 mile loop up and back. It was very different to sit and watch the crowds walking rather than being in them. I knew there were street performers all over, but I got to watch the people's reactions to them more. There were blues guitarists, singers, robot performers (guys painted silver and moving jerkily). We even saw sponge bob. One obviously homeless guy had taken a bunch of potted plants and made kind of a screen in front of him, then as people approched, he'd part the plants and yell "BOO" to scare them. And for some reason, the people would jump, then laugh, then drop some money in the cup beside him.

We tried to figure out where to go next, and someone suggested Ghirardelli square. I punched it into the GPS on my phone and found it was only 1/2 mile away, so we continued walking. We got there and then looked at each other trying to figure out why we were there. No one seemed to actually have wanted to do anything there, so we looked for a minute and started back down to the oceanfront.

We thought about riding on the cable cars, but the line was huge, and didn't seem to be moving very fast. Someone also said that it was only a 1 way ride, and we'd either have to walk back or find a bus, so we decided to skip the cable cars.

We found there was a national park exhibit of old boats, so we walked out onto it's pier. The wind was blowing pretty good and it was chilly, so Nan decided to go to In-N-Out burger to wait for us. We toured a large sailing ship, a smaller 3 masted schooner, and an old paddle wheeled ferry. As we were leaving the ferry I got a text message from Nan with 1 word. "Coldstone "

We met up with Nan, then continued walking back toward the subway. We found the trams and hopped onto one heading back the way we wanted. It cost $1.50 per person, but we seemed to be about the only people who paid. Most just got on and off without even attempting to put money into the machine. The driver kept telling people to scoot to the back until we were packed in like sardines. Since we'd gotten on at the very start, we had seats and it was a comfortable ride, but the people standing didn't look too happy.

We spent the evening chatting and figuring out where we were going to go the next day.

All of us around Greg's motorcycle just before he left