San Francisco

I stayed in the San Francisco bay area with my friend George and his wife Sue - I met George while traveling through Idaho in 2000 but we haven't seen each other since so there was a lot of catching up to do. George and Sue spoiled me with a place to stay, feeding me and even lending me a car to drive around, thanks a ton guys! I spent a couple days looking around San Francisco and Marin county (the area north of the Golden Gate bridge). I had been through here years ago but only really briefly. I wandered around Sausalito which is like a Manly or St Kilda for San Francisco. After spending much too long in a café I went for a walk along the waterfront in Sausalito. Sometimes you realise a camera just isn't the best method of recording your surroundings - hundreds of yachts are moored together in Sausalito and a strong sea breeze was ripping through the bay (it would seem San Fran is very rarely calm). The wind blowing through this forest of masts made a low undulating base sound which was mixed with the high-pitched squeal of the wire rigging. It was an eerie soundtrack and I almost expected the four horsemen of the apocalypse to ride onto the wharf, followed by Bruce Willis and bunch of guys who would save the day with some creative but totally unfeasible use of a nuclear weapon. But there was only sunshine and ice cream and other things not really befitting the end of days. I walked on, deciding I'd had more than enough caffeine.



San Francisco overall is remarkably like Sydney, just with larger sea gulls and a public transport system that actually works. San Fran has lots of water, a big bridge (actually several), open-minded residents and about the same number of Gum trees. Seriously the place is covered in them; there is an island in he middle of the bay that could easily be any bushland park in any Australian city. I don’t know how they got here but they definitely don’t mind the climate.

I guess it’s the waterways and their uses that make San Fran so similar to Sydney, people boat and windsurf and swim - George was telling me that people swim regularly but even in summer the water is cold enough to need a wetsuit. I had this in mind as I walked along a curved pier which forms a sheltered anchorage for yachts. Where the pier opens into the bay there is a stretch of just 50 metres where the boats enter. It was windy, choppy, flowing strongly and generally inviting disaster, so I was amused when I saw a large sign on the opposite side of the channel which said 'Beware of swimmers!' I wondered if this was a warning to skippers sailing into the small bay not to run over the swimmers or a warning to the general public as anybody swimming in this piece of water was either there because they'd escaped incarceration (San Quentin is a decent swim away but Alcatraz is just nearby...) or they were there by choice in which case their mental stability was seriously questionable and they could come at you with their webbed feet at any moment. With that I looked over the edge and there was one of them - a man roughly 60, with swim cap but sans wetsuit, happily splashing up and down. I said hello, out of surprise more than anything, and he responded in kind, then before I could ask if he needed assistance he started backstroking across the channel doing his best impression of a sane person. People think paragliding is crazy...