Tuesday, April 28, 2009

A bridge too far (especially when you forget your sunblock)
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After more wandering and buying of useless crap, we decide to rent bikes and cycle across the Golden Gate bridge. We make our way down a hill, quelle surprise, and are stopped in the street by a boy.



He's about 18, with braces on his huge white teeth and wearing a baseball cap backwards. His shorts are almost down to his ankles and he has thick white socks on with his shoes. He looks like he just fell out of a Pepsi advert.

"Hey man," he says, "Do you, know, like, where, like, I can get any, like, band t-shirts from?" He motions towards Vee's t-shirt.

We tell him that he should go up, it's always up, to Haight where there are lots of t-shirt and music shops. Then the conversation went like this, I kid you not:

"So, where are you guys from?"

"I'm from Portugal," says Vee. I never really bother telling people I am from England. As soon as they hear Portugal, they forget I exist.

"Ahhhhh Really, I'm from Portugal, I have, like, family there"

"Which part of Portugal are you from?"

"Aaah, I dunno."

AH AH AH AH AH AH AH.

Knobbly bits
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We find a bike rental shop. The girl renting us the bikes has a horrible skin condition. She's covered in tiny knobbles all over the place. I try not to wince or react in anyway and pray to the giant apple god that whatever it is she has is not contagious when she gives me the pen to sign the contract in about thirty different places:

Yes, I was offered a helmet. Yes, it is not a mistake that I refused the helmet because I did not want to take a helmet. Yes, I promise not to sue you if I fall off my bike and smash my head open like it's a watermelon falling from a great height because I am not wearing a helmet, even though I was offered one and refused it. Yes, I agree that falling off the bike can only be my own fault and in no way the fault of the crusty girl who rented me the bike. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.

The girl yaks and yaks and yaks on so much that I start to wonder whether she has tiny knobbly bits all over her brain as well.

"Naaaaaaah," she says when I ask her if there are many hills to cycle up on the way to the bridge. "Just a small one to get to the bridge entrance and it's downhill all the way there and on the other side."

She lied. Clearly I'd also forgotten that wherever you go in San Francisco there's infinitely more uphills than downhills and spout out many profanities about evil bike-renters with knobbly skin while cycling up several near vertical inclines in the first of about 45 gears.



Cycling across the bridge is great, even if the traffic roaring past on highway next to the cycle path causes the structure to bounce about in a rather alarming manner and even if you have to dodge huge gangs of camera-weilding Japanese tourists wandering aimlessly on the bike path. And I thought that only happened in Amsterdam. Why do people do that? Do you wander around in the middle of the road in your own city? Well, do you? I thought not.

On the other side of the bridge, the rolling hills are an amazing shade of green and we decide to cycle to Sausalito, which is very scary because there's no bike path and there seems to be a speed limit of anything-you-like as long as you drive dangerously close to those stupid cyclists who are not wearing helmets as fast as you possibly can. Sausalito is a very rich place and is full of yachts. We have an hour or so until the ferry takes us back to the city so we stop and eat amazing Mexican food at Sausalito Taco Shop, a cute little wooden shack with brightly painted walls. There's a very apologetic note explaining that the reason you have to pay for your nacho chips instead of getting them free like you do in every other Mexican restaurant is because they are homemade. It's the first time I've ever eaten homemade nachos and let me tell you, once you eat homemade nachos, you'll never, ever buy Casa Fiesta's cardboard triangles from Albert Swine again.

They serve us strong sangria in a huge glass which does not really help the fact that I seem to be developing severe sunburn and sunstroke, although at this point, I just feel rather hot and thirsty and do not know I am in the process of developing severe sunstroke and sunburn. There's an ominous rouge aura radiating from all parts of my face except those that were covered with the oversized sunglasses that I'd purchased for $10 earlier that day. I look like an albino panda.

The ferry back to San Francisco is the second to last ferry of the evening and it's packed with people who have done the same as us and can't face the cycle home. There is a queue of at least 100 bikes and I start to panic that I won't get on the boat and will have to cycle all the way back home up those huge hills so I queue like a Dutch person (i.e. not at all) and clandestinely push in as close to the front as I dare.

The boat has no proper space for bikes and for once, I truly appreciate the wonderful pragmatism and practicality of the Dutch; they'd always make sure there's ample space for bikes on a boat that takes hundreds of cyclists across the water several times a day. There's a man with at the entrance bellowing at us, a bit like the security guy from JFK, to:

"Hurry, it up, I've got forty more bikes to fit in here. You, there, put your bike THERE. LEAVE THEM UNLOCKED, and move out upstairs, come on, come on..."

I glare at him. I don't like being given orders and I don't like being made to feel like an idiot when the only idiots around are the ones who haven't removed the seating and put in bike racks. There's major chaos because the place where you have to buy your tickets blocks the way that we all have to exit the area where we put our bikes. The bikes are piled on top of each other and leaning against chairs. As they are all rental bikes, they are almost all exactly the same and I envisage fisticuffs occurring when we have to unload at the other end.

We spend the 20 minute journey, being windblown on the upper deck, which feels rather nice and cooling on my roasting flesh. We sail close to Alcatraz.



I realise how horrendously foreboding it is and how horrible it must have been to have been incarcerated in there. Although, I also think that if you bulldoze all the buildings to the ground and build a nice wooden hut and plant lots of palm trees (with which I have developed an unhealthy obsession and think I might start refusing to travel to any country that does not have palm tree-lined streets), I could quite happily live there with my Portugeezer, an internet connection and a few big dogs.

We arrive at San Francisco.



And I am yet again amazed at the fact that we all have to actually carry our bikes up a flight of stairs to get out, with constant drone of the bellower telling us to hurry up while little old ladies trip up the stairs with a bloody bike on their shoulder. Long live America.

Castro, but not the Cuban one
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After returning our bikes, we decide to go to the Castro, San Francisco's infamous and totally clichéd gay district for some booze. We pose gaily (no pun intended) outside restaurants and bars with amusingly stereotypical names such as:



and



and find ourselves a quiet and welcoming bar a little way down the hill and away from the main drag, which is heaving and pulsating with very loud music. We sit at the bar and sup very strong margaritas slapped on the bar by a very buffed and tanned man who obviously spends all his time and money on getting buffed and tanned and only does the slapping bit to earn the money for all the buffing and tanning. I return his slappings with my own slappings of dollar tips on the bar and feel totally integrated.

As we will leave San Francisco in a few hours, we decide to have a few drinks with Nick, Fergal and Tim, who have randomly also turned up in the Castro. We end up in a bar on the main drag. I'm the only woman in there. I go to the bar to order some drinks while Nick bounces off somewhere to check out the action and the others find a table as far away from any action as possible.



The hairlessly bare-chested bartender pours a massive extra slug of tequila into one margarita and, with a wink, says "That one's yours." I decide that it's great being a woman in a bar full of gay men.

When I return to the table, I find three shocked men trying not to look up and Nick in hysterics, telling me to look up at the TV behind me. I do and nearly choke on my cocktail. There's no-holds-barred hardcore gay porn on a huge flat screen TV. This, Nick explains, is not normal. He's done the rounds and found out that the porn film awards are taking place and so the nominated films are being shown in the bars. Although my back is to the TV, I can see the reflection in the window I am facing. It's like watching a train that is about to crash. You know you shouldn't watch, but you can't help it and every three seconds, I catch an eyeball full of stuff that eyeballs should probably not be exposed to too many times in their lifetime.

Nick bounces off and returns two minutes later with two men, both sporting buzz cuts and very purposeful tans. One of them is wearing what looks like a a dog chain and a big padlock around his neck. Nick proceeds to introduce them to us, pointing out our various nationalities. We all shake hands with Padlock and his keeper. Padlock is very enamoured with Vee and excitedly tells him that he has Portuguese heritage and that his stage name is somebody Silva. Then Nick says,

"And is it really you in that film?"

They both nod proudly. We all nod proudly because we are not sure what else we can do other than nod proudly. After lots of proud nodding, they nod off and we finish our drinks.

It's late and we have to get the train back to Palo Alto. Vee and I make a mad dash halfway across the city to the train station where I sit and roast quietly in a corner looking a bit like a very angry tomato and cursing myself for not putting on any sun block. We sleep for a grand total of three hours, which is not enough when you've drunk way too much tequila, and have sunburn so terrible that the ice cubes you take from the freezer to cool your face down melt, literally, the moment they touch your skin, and run off to get the ridiculously early bus to the airport for our ridiculously early flight to Seattle....

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