Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair

The hotel in Fremont was about 30-40 miles or so from downtown San Francisco. Rather than risk riding the motorcycle in San Francisco traffic, we rode to the local BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station and caught the train. The first thing we did (of course) was to ride a cable car to Fisherman's Wharf. It was to be one of many cable car rides we took and Ric rode standing on the outside for all of them. He figured he may not get the chance again and besides, where else in the developed world can you legally ride on the outside of public transport? In the two days in the Bay area, we spent more time waiting in line for a cable car than we actually spent riding them. As you'd expect, they are very popular with tourists as well as being part of the normal commuter transport system. We learned too late that it is easier and faster to walk one or two stops from the ends of the line and then catch a car - they can almost always squeeze a couple more on and people are getting on and off all the time. We walked along Fisherman's Wharf (including the famous Pier 39), rode a tram, visited the Cable Car Museum, and experienced the Aquarium on the Bay. Jenny shopped at Bloomingdales (but passed on the $57 G-string) and we had dinner at Lori's Diner - a 1950's themed restaurant. We also walked up Hyde Street to Lombard St (supposedly the world's steepest street with the most sharp curves in it) and walked down Lombard St. It was about four blocks along from the waterfront but felt about 20 blocks up. It was a steep, steep walk!

We left fairly early the next day, continuing north as the forecast was for more bad weather. It was morning rush hour but thanks to the carpool lane (which we could use) we managed to navigate our way through the freeway system pretty easily. We even rode across the Golden Gate Bridge and Jenny did not scream all the way across.

Shortly after leaving San Francisco we again hit rain which continued for the rest of the day. We knew it was not going to get any better so pushed on and arrived in Crescent City near the Oregon state line wet through after travelling more than 400 miles. Our worst incident of the trip ocuured this day. We were travelling through a small town which had disused rail tracks anglng across the main street. We hit these tracks and both wheels started sliding sideways. It was a nerve racking fraction of a second before Ric managed to get the bike under control but it was the closest we had come to having an "off" in the whole journey. Once at Crescent City, we put on dry clothes, dried out our wet gear and decided to order in pizza!