2/16/04 10:20pm San Francisco, CA
I woke up late again today, but this time it wasn’t my fault, since I didn’t get the 8:30am wakeup call I requested. I decided not to rush, and showered and grabbed breakfast before I headed out of town. Based on conversations I had and overheard, the locals dread the stretch of Highway 1 that I drove last night. The woman at the hotel said, “That is a bad road.” She told me the rest of Highway 1 was a smooth drive, twisty but not nearly as bad, and with a beautiful view. I decided I’d continue, but if the weather didn’t let up, I’d cut east to 101 at the first opportunity. I figured, what use is a good view if you can’t see it through the rain? Well, the rain didn’t let up so I took another mountainous road back to 101, but this one wasn’t nearly as bad, nor for nearly as long, as the one I was on last night. When I got back to 101, it was smooth, if wet, sailing to Santa Rosa. This region is wine country, with many vineyards visible from the road, some flooded. In fact, the radio said there was a lot of flooding going on here, and in some areas the road was overrun with several inches of water that I plowed through. Approaching Santa Rosa, I ran into some inexplicable traffic, but it eventually gave way to highway speeds.
I stopped at a gas station in town, where the attendant behind the counter had to give you a token to use the restroom. She denied the Mexican girl in front of me access, saying she couldn’t give it to customers, then gave me the token, saying “You’re a decent guy” and that she just didn’t want to give me the token while the other girl was there. When I went around back, the Mexican girl was just leaving the bathroom. I don’t know how she got in there, but good for her.
The rest of the way into San Francisco was uneventful. I was talking to my cousin Jim on the cell phone when I went through a tunnel lit by neon lights, rounded a turn, and all of a sudden, there was the Golden Gate Bridge. For some reason, I hadn’t even considered that I might have to cross it to get into San Francisco. It was six lanes wide, and the speed limit was 35mph. A line of cones separated the directions traffic was flowing. On the other side, I was charged $5.00 to enter. San Francisco is a white city, full of Victorian architecture and exceedingly steep hills that make for great views, which were today diminished by the weather. I resolved to take a bunch of pictures tomorrow regardless. When I was getting settled into the Green Tortoise hostel, a companion to the one in Seattle, I met a guy from Sweden in my room named Carl. He seemed cool, so I struck up a conversation with him. Turns out he’s traveling the west too, but he’s going on down to Mexico for a month. We ended up going out to a couple of historical bars in the area after supper, Vesuvio, where Jack Kerouac made a name for himself, and Specs, right across the street. Both were good with Guinness, full of atmosphere and newspaper clippings. Carl floated the idea of hitching a ride south as far as San Diego with me, and I told him that was cool, but then he found out about a half-price bus trip to Mexico he could take instead, and I recommended he do that. I remember my own bus trip around New Zealand fondly.
The building this hostel is housed in has been a hotel and brothel in the past, and it could use some fixing up, but it’s still pretty interesting. It reminded me a little of the house in Fight Club. They serve food and have monthly parties in the ballroom, sometimes including live bands, like the one they had last Saturday. It also has an open air atrium that looks cool from all 3 stories.
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