Does this sound like a good beginning to the day? I was outside talking with the family next door when the guy noted: ‘hey, you’ve got a really flat tire.’ And, flat is not the word, there was no air in that tire at all. It was resting on the rim, and the car tilted. Oops. Doesn’t sound good to me. But here’s the explanation: we have a tire monitoring system for the RV and the Jeep. Gary was recalibrating it yesterday and put the special valve stem covers on as usual. Same thing he’s done for 8 months but this time something went wrong with the fit and h-s-s-s-s all night. I’m surprised we didn’t hear it. All he had to do was to use his air compresser and fill it up. Problem solved. Day’s gotta get better, right?
And, it did. We journeyed into the city today, parked in a parking ramp that I had seen on the maps and went to the ticket booth to check the price. We were a little confused by the sign which read:
$2.50 7:00 - 11:00
$3.50 11:00 - 2:00
$2.50 2:00 - 5:00
We wanted to know what the day rate was since we were staying all day. Well, add it all up: arrive at 9:00 and leave at 5:00. You’ve got 2 hours at $2.50, 3 hours at $3.50, 3 hours at $2.50 and your total is: $23.00. Holy Toledo. Well, one day and we’re out of here. But in the Visitor Center, the guy told us that when he has to drive in, he parks at the Discount Parking for $9.00 for the whole day. He gave us the address about 2 blocks away, we checked it out, retrieved our car from the jaws of the parking ramp, and drove over to the new place.
OK, now we’re cooking. A flat tire, a parking lot relocation and finally, we’re on our way to enjoy San Francisco. Oops, the long line at the Cable cars tells us that we won’t get on for another 2 hours. Hey, let’s walk up the street just to see it all. And, we took off.
I have forgotten how frenetic a city can be. I worked in Boston for several years, we’ve been to New York and Chicago but that was a while back. This is a city with all the people, all the aromas wafting from the stores, the sirens of emergency vehicles, the car horns, the music from the street vendors, the babble of people all around and all the other sounds that accompany walking a city street. The pace is livelier, the decible level is higher and the sights much more vibrant. Whew.
We reached Union Square where there was an art show going on and I began to take a picture of Gary near a neart statue by Tony Bennet. A nicely dressed woman rushed us and gushed that she was a professional photographer and could take a picture of both of us. Now I hate to let anyone touch my camera but she was dressed well and had a large wheeled bag from which she was selling cards. I didn’t think she could run any faster than we could so I let her have the camera. Ooh la la, a professional photo. Well, after fumbling a bit, here’s what she took of us.
And here’s another one.
Finally, after 2 more of her elbow, one of the clock tower in the background and 3 of that guy reading a book at a bench, she did get this one. Note our pose. She thought that was cute. Luckily she was a pro - I wonder what an amateur might do.
Have you ever walked in SF? When you look at a map, the streets are laid out in a level grid. When you look at the terrain, this is what you get. Nothing is level. It is all hills. Now, I knew there were hills, but these were like walking up a ladder, they were steep. Look at this picture to get an idea of the angle.
And here’s another one.
No wonder they film car chases on the streets of SF. At the tops of hills, cars come flying over them blind. At the bottoms they screech to stop. They scrape bottom trying to get in to driveways. Wow. We have a hiking GPS which tracks elevation and it says that our cumulative elevation today was 1543’. Now, there is no hill in SF which is 1543’. However we climbed 3 which were 450’ or better. So, I’m claiming 1543’ for the day. My thighs tell me that’s what it was.
We were getting pretty warm as we huffed and puffed upwards so we took off our jackets, stapped them onto the backpack and started up again.
We stopped to eat lunch in a small park with a fountain at the top of Nob Hill. Many of the city’s mansions were on the top of this hill until the earthquake and fire of 1906. Now it is home to some of the poshest hotels in SF. Some think that the word ‘Nob’ comes from a contraction of the word ‘snob’ while others think it came from ‘nabob’ the word for the local governors during British rule in India.
We stopped at Grace Cathedral for our first stop. Beautiful church.
The belfry has 44 bronze bells with such names as Loving Kindness and Joy to the World. The front doors, called the Doors of Paradise are bronze and gold plate replicas of the ones made for a church in Florence, Italy.
The stained glass windows are beautiful and one, the Rose Window, is 25’ in diameter.
Now, you know how we like the unusual and seek out those things which most do not. Our search in San Francisco is for the hundreds of staircases which go from one level to another. Actually, these are what we in flat places would call sidewalks. Some homes are only accessible by one of these staircases and everything, EVERYTHING, has to go up them in your hands. Groceries, clothing, that new Kuerig coffee maker, the new flat screen TV, the replacement refrigerator for the one that broke, everything. You park on the street and carry everything up.
We have an IPhone ap for these staircases- imagine that. It finds where we are and then tells us where the stairways are, gives a picture and a short description of them and tells us how many steps. And we found our first one today. Here it is - uniting homes on 3 different levels. When we were there the mailperson had left her pouch at the bottom and was carrying the mail up the stairs to the homes. Here is the stairway. Pretty secret and quiet.
Off for the next stop of our day: the Cable Car Museum. We couldn’t get on the cable cars but we could get into the musuem. But, it’s not just a museum, it actually is where the repair the cars and where they house the mechanics of the cable cars are. Here you can actually see the huge cables which move the cars along their routes. Cable cars have no motors and are entirely driven by cables underground strung along the route. Inside each cable car is a ‘gripman’ who operates the lever which grips the cable to move the car at the 9.5 mph which whe cable moves or lets the cable slide through the grip when he wants to stop the car to let passengers on or off.
I had no idea about how cable cars worked. Now I do and have a great appreciation for them. Inside the Cable Car Museum are many things used on cable cars from the past. There are also some cable cars not in use and lots of explanation about how they work. You’ve all seen the cable cars, they’re an icon for San Francisco. A tourist thing but, when the mayor tried to get rid of them - there was a near rebellion and some citizen committees were able to save 3 lines. But, more about that in another blog along with the story of the cable car savior.
If you ever get to SF, you’ll probably ride the cable cars. Before you get on, check out the ‘Gripman’. Is he muscled and strong, does he have good hand-eye coordination and can he anticipate problems and solutions to them? If not, stay off that car. Because it is the gripman who handles the lever that moves the grips which grip the cable which keeps the car moving smoothly. But, seriously, if he is a gripman on a cable car in SF, he’s already one of the 30% who pass the training course and is an accredited gripman. And, as of August 2011, there have been 2 women who have been gripmen.
Here is a diagram about how the grip and the cable work together to move the car along the track.
Besides the gripman, each cable car carries a conductor whose job is to collect fares, manage the boarding and exiting of passengers, and control the rear wheel brakes when descending hills. When people grab anything and sit anywhere on the cable car, a good conductor is as necessary as a good gripman.
Meanwhile we really enjoyed seeing the guts of the cable car system. Here are 2 of the 3 wheels which have the cables wrapped around them.
Since these cables are strung along each remaining cable car line and are the cables that the gripman grips, they are what pull each cable car along.
They are about 1 1/2” thick and composed of many interwoven metal threads. But, you ask, what happens if they unravel or, as cables do, one strand breaks? Then what? Well, they had a picture of that. There are many ‘broken cable’ detectors under the cable line and they stop the car when a broken strand is detected. Right in the middle of the street with passengers on it. The location of the broken wire is noted and at night between the hours of 1 am and 6 am when all the cable cars are in the shop. The broken section of cable is removed and a new section is spliced in. But, not to worry, they splice these two sections together over 90’ to ensure its strength, continuity and integrity. This is all done by hand.
But, of course the cables wear out and need to be replaced. They are continually moving along the track all day long at 9.5 mph. Here is a new cable and a worn out one.
We spent some time in the museum but then moved into the gift shop where we bought 2 t-shirts. When Gary turned around he noticed that he only had one jacket strapped to the back pack. Oops. You should have seen those two old people run out of that store, up the hill to the right, cross the street, up another hill to the left and back to the Cathedral. Their heads were bobbing back and forth frantically looking every which way. But - they found no jacket. OH, shucks. But, you know, it was just a jacket. It can be replaced, but that wasn’t what we wanted to do.
We then called it a day and headed home. Near the parking lot was this street performer doing his thing.
Pretty good.
8.4 1468’
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