San Francisco - Day Three - Sharp Curves Ahead

This was my last 'free' day before heading to my meeting the next morning. I had to switch hotels today which meant I had to check out by 11:00a. I stuck around the hotel as long as I could doing a bit of work before heading downtown. I had hoped to catch the shuttle but it seems that it only runs on Friday and Saturday so I had to take the airport shuttle instead and then get on the BART to go downtown. Not much of an inconvenience, however like the Vancouver airport the cost of getting on at the airport is excessively more expensive then at other stops.

Once I got downtown I hopped on a bus for Lombard street. This was another of the 'must see' San Francisco sites. The whole city is quite hilly and this particular street tops them all. What amazed me the most was that there were several houses lining the street that had their driveways here. I can't imagine having to push past all the tourists every day just to get into my front door. It was a fun sight but the hardest part was that the bus dropped me off at the bottom of the hill on the other side. A tough trek with my luggage and backpack but worth it.

Once I'd tackled Lombard, it was a short walk to Ghirardelli Square where I felt it was important that I replace all those calories I had lost climbing the hills. Ghirardelli is a well known chocolate company and San Francisco was it's birthplace back in the 1800's. It was recommended to me that I try out one of their Sunday's and I'm certainly glad I did. I chose the Sea Salt Caramel creation and it was layer upon layer of sticky goodness. It more than made up for the lost calories and then some.

After several more hours of wandering around it was finally time to meet up with my work colleagues. We were meeting for dinner before driving out to San Ramon to our hotel which was near the location of our work meeting the next day. I was quite surprised that the first thing Will wanted to do was to get on the carousel at Pier 39. I think he's 90% kid. Even after dinner he wanted to check out some San Francisco sites when the rest of us were ready for bed. We obliged with another trip to Lombard. This time with a car and we drove down in the dark. I'm glad we did. It was a fun evening and a fun trip overall.

San Francisco - Day Two - A 'Full' Day

At the end of yesterday I finally found a transit map so I was able to do a bit more planning of my day. My first destination was Golden Gate Park. It was just a single bus ride away from Union Square and the route took me past some new San Francisco neighborhoods. So far I'm amazed at how diverse the houses are. All stuck together crossing many architectural styles. Considering the fire in 1906 I'm surprised they let people build so close together. I entered the park off Haight Street and scoped out the McDonald's nearby.

The reason I needed to know where the McDonald's was that I had a bit of work to do and I needed to find a place with WIFI. I quickly tested it out and then headed into the park. The park is incredibly long and I only had time to check out a portion of it. This included the botanical gardens, the lake, several sports fields, some great old buildings and a funky bridge made out of very large boulders. I think you'd need at least a full day to see the whole park.

A 30 minute walk from the park were the painted sisters. One of their claims to fame is that they were in the opening credits of a show called Full House from the late 80's and early 90's. I think the only reason I watched the show was because of the neat buildings and the funny uncle. Today my mission was to find them as well as the house from the show. It was only about 20 minutes from the sisters. The walk to both locals was relatively flat. By San Francisco standards at least.

After I'd done the Full House tour it was time to transit back to the hotel. I'd already planned it out and decided on the route that took me past AT&T park. I didn't have tickets but it was still fun to take in the atmosphere outside the park. After a few pictures I headed to the Cal Train. Yesterday I had taken the BART because it had a stop called South San Francisco which was on a map as being near my hotel. Turns out there are two different lines and two different stops. It took an extra hour to get home yesterday so I had learned my lesson and new to take the Cal Train this time.

San Francisco - Day One - Planes, Trains, Trolleys and Boats

One of the projects I'm working at work involves rolling out new tools for designing electrical substations. The group who will be using the tool had previously been in discussions with Pacific Gas & Electric on their experiences with the tool and decided it would be beneficial to get together for a day to share knowledge. This meant a paid trip down to San Francisco so I thought it would be a good idea to go down a few days early and check out the sites. A good idea except for the fact that the Giants made it into the World Series making it somewhat difficult to get a hotel.

It took some work but Kerry finally found one near the airport. Not a great location for site seeing however they have a free shuttle into town. A 45 minute bus ride later and I'm in the heart of downtown San Francisco at Union Square. I hadn't put much thought into what I was going to do first because I had no idea what was at Union Square. It's mostly shopping but it also happens to be the starting point for a cable car that goes all the way to Fisherman's Wharf. After about a 45 min wait I was riding a form of transportation that's over 100 years old.

The cars are powered by a single electrical motor in a central power house. As I was walking down to them there was an odd screeching sound coming from the street. It was only when I saw the first street car go by that I realized it was the sound of the cables dragging underground. The trip was about 30 minutes and went from Union Square all the way to Fisherman's Wharf. I'm not sure how they do it but it manages to go both up and down hills and make turns. I was expecting a single straight line up and down a hill but it was much better. Amazing technology for the time.

After a brief tour of some older ships including one of the oldest tug boats on the west coast I stopped at Lou's Fish Shack for some fish and chips. It didn't disappoint. It wasn't your typical beer battered fish but was very crispy and the tarter sauce was perfect. I'm a bit of a fish and chips connoisseur and this was up there on my list of favorites. After lunch I took a stroll down the peer and there was a boat advertising tours of the bay for $15.00. It wasn't a big ship but there were already about 30 people on board so it was ready to go.

The boat took you out past the Golden Gate Bridge and included your typical tour boat commentary and corny jokes though this one included a bit more political commentary than usual. Not Democrat or Republican. Just anti-government in general. The trip was only an hour which was the perfect amount of time and the weather was nice most of the way with the exception of some fog around the bridge. That just added to the experience. After we rounded Alcatraz and headed past some slumbering sea lions we were back to the dock.

Further down the dock was the San Francisco Mechanical Museum. Mostly made up of old penny arcade machines and amusement park novelties all converted to quarters. I started Callie collecting crushed pennies after a few of my previous trips and she's hooked. A nice cheap hobby. She would be in heaven here. There were crushed penny machines everywhere. A combination of electric and hand powered with multiple images in most of them. And they were only 50 cents where most are a dollar. I had change for five of them.

After the museum I headed to Pier 39. I had heard about it before but it wasn't originally on my list of things to check out. I'm glad I did though. The atmosphere was great and there are lot's of restaurants, tourist shops and sweet stores. It will be a great place to go back to on Sunday so I can pick up souvenirs for everyone. Callie picked the crushed pennies and all Carter wanted was chocolate. I'm covered nicely on both those items.

By this time I was ready to head back to the hotel. Unfortunately my Blackberry has a map but isn't great for planning your travel. I had hoped to find a transit map by now but hadn't come across one yet. I knew Fisherman's Wharf was as far as I could go so I decided I would just hop on a bus and see where it took me. It was a neat old electric trolley bus and it had two drivers seats for going in opposite directions. Very neat and it got me back to a Bart Station that I 'knew' would get me home. A bit of a story there that I will discuss tomorrow.

The Pumpkin Patch

We took our annual trip to the Aldor Acres Pumpkin patch last weekend. We've been every year since Callie was born and the place gets better every year. It's a family run farm that includes a petting zoo, a dairy farm and a Christmas tree farm. The pumpkin patch portion is on all four October weekends and I believe they've been doing it for over 20 years. Judging by the number of cars that arrive when we're there and the cost to get in, I'm fairly certain this is a big piece of their income.

Callie's favourite part is the fact that you get to pick up and feed the bunnies. I think she went back into the bunny barn three times this year. In previous years I've felt very sorry for the bunnies as she would grab them very quickly and often dropped them from quite a height when she put them back. This year though she was an expert and was even able to hold them with just one hand while she fed them hay. There were also a few baby chicks. (It's a good thing they have wings and seem to bounce when they get dropped.)

Carter was a bit pre-occupied this year. He had received some money from Barb and Reg for looking after the dogs while they were in Vegas and he was itching to spend it. He wanted to do all of the pumpkin patch activities as quickly as possible because we had promised him we'd go to the store so he could spend his money on new lego. We did manage to get him to pose for a few pictures.

As I'm looking through the pictures I've realized we forgot to get one of the kids in front of the height indicators. They have various picture boards for the kids to stand in front of that show how tall they are so you can look back at previous years. We haven't been that consistent so I'm not too concerned. At least I got one of Carter as a tiny rooster.

Geocaching at Campbell Valley Park

This summer we went Geocaching quite a few times. Geocaching is an GPS based treasure hunt. People hide cache's all over the world and post the location to a web site. Participants then get to track them down, sign the log book and move on to the next one. We've found 70 so far and have one of our own at the little free library in our front  yard. Some are just simple film canisters with a log book but others can be more elaborate and include small toys or books. The best part of geocaching is that it gets us to go to places we wouldn't ordinarily go. Most cache's are placed near something unique that you wouldn't ordinarily stop to look at.

The kids had been to Campbell Valley Park with Kerry already but Kerry wanted to go back to find a few they had missed and to take her parents with us. On one of the board walks, someone had left handfuls of bird seed. We don't usually feed the birds but since they food was already there I took advantage and showed the kids how to get the birds to land in their hand. The birds had obviously done this before and as long as you stayed still and kept your hand out they would eventually land. Callie, Reg and I all got one. Carter got one too but he immediately ran away from it. He didn't like the claws on his hands. The chipmunks were friendly as well though they never got close enough to actually eat out of your hand.

Carter's Birthday Party

This year Carter decided that his birthday party was going to be pirate themed. He toyed with a few other ideas including Spiderman and Transformers but we encouraged him down the pirate them route since we had so much gear already from our Disney Cruise and from a pirate night at Kerry's school. With his birthday happening before school even started it resulted in a rather eclectic mix of attendees because he hadn't built new friendships with any kids at school yet. There were two cousins, one of Callie's class mates, the daughter of a family friend, one kid from school and Uncle Ronnie.

It's fun that the kids still enjoy having their birthday at our house versus something like bowling or swimming because it means we get to work on the family activities as a family. They included;

1) Pirate Ring Toss - A game we made out of a sheet of plywood and some captain hook hooks screwed to a board.

2) A Pirate Treasure hunt that ended with a treasure chest I had built.

3) Walk the Plank

The cake was pirate ship shaped though when it was all decorated it just looked like a deserted island. We also got some great treasure box shaped cupcakes from Kerry's friend Kathy. They were complete with little coins and skull and cross bones. She always makes amazing goodies for the kids goodie bags. Lot's of gifts of course with one of the hits being some 3lb weights from Uncle Corey. Carter is trying to build up his muscles. 

First Day of School

First day of school was a bit later than usual this year. The teacher's strike that had started at the end of the previous year carried forward into the new school year and it wasn't until September 22nd that they finally got to return. By this time even the kids were eager to get back to see their friends. Three months of playing in the back yard and watching reruns on the Disney channel was enough.

I ordinarily schedule the first week of September off so I can help with the transition and I did exactly that except of course that turned out to be the wrong week. We have a tradition where the kids and I go to Rickey's for breakfast but since I couldn't be around on the first Monday we had to do that on the Sunday before. Barb and Reg had come down for Carter's Birthday so they got to handle first day of school duties. A few quick pictures and they were out the door for another year.