Brock's Adventures Day 8-10: Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

I was much slower to rise the next morning. For that matter, so was everyone else. By the time we had all gotten ready for another day in the city we came to the conclusion that there wasn’t much else to do. In a short amount of time we had been to places we hadn’t been before, seen sights that we hadn’t seen before. (I had seen Alcatraz, the wine country, Pier 39, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Japanese Tea Gardens, Lucas Valley and more) So, to round out our 4th day at San Francisco, we rode the cable cars.
That’s something I wish we had in Phoenix, even though it’d be pointless to have. In fact, to this day, San Francisco is the sole city in the world to use the cable car system (and it’s a very crowded ride). I remember sitting there at the cable car station and watching them fill up each car to the brim with people. They would cram, cram and then cram some more. And when they ran out of space? They just started putting people on the outside of the car, letting them hold on by the brass rail. When we finally got in a car we rode into the city and stopped at a little coffee shop and it was at that little café that I saw one of the oddest things on my trip.
At a table behind ours was a couple sitting and eating cake and drinking coffee. There was nothing out of the ordinary with those two; they simply didn’t finish all of their food. However, after they had left the café an elderly woman came in and sat down at their table. And ate. By all appearances, she didn’t seem to be homeless. She had nice clothing on and she looked groomed. She probably just thought to herself, “well here’s some perfectly good food, so I’ll simply take care of it”. Weird…
After browsing through some stores and walking around the city for a while we rode the cable cars, again, this time on the way to dinner. The second time around was much better since I got to hang out on the railing. We coasted up and down hills and I almost bumped into a few parked cars and street cones with my toe. Our driver was also an interesting fellow. At one stop there was a beautiful girl waiting for the car. When the driver stopped he told his attendant that he could only take on a single. Visibly pleased, the girl said she was single, at which the driver jumped away from his post and exclaimed “twenty-five to thirty?” All the way downhill he kept chuckling to himself unbelievably; “I’ve waited years to use that joke, and finally I got the opportunity!”

The last two days were pretty much just the indigestion of my trip. Don’t get me wrong, they were still nice and I was still mesmerized by the city. By now however, everything was wearing a little thin and I was starting to realize that I had been away from home for an uncharacteristically long period of time. (By the time I finally got back I was just 4 days shy of being gone two weeks)
Instead of doing anything ambitious I took time to meet up with a friend of mine who lived in the Bay Area. He was doing well and we spent a good amount of time just hanging around in my hotel lobby chatting. After that we went on our Chinatown tour. That wasn’t too great to be honest. I mean, I guess it was ok from a certain point of view; it’s just that I saw a plethora of garbage and useless kick-knacks. Most of the crap the vendors were selling were glass capsules with condoms in them, ingeniously labeled “break glass in case of an emergency”. Oh, and to answer your subliminal question, no, I didn’t buy any.
I guess I was expecting to see some oriental items, not birth control and fortune cookies with pornographic fortunes. Maybe I simply didn’t look in the right shops. Heck, I’m a tourist, I’m American, therefore I probably gravitated to all of the businesses that most Americans in Chinatown do. I saw some great swords that were imported from China though, and some teapots.
We spent the next two days getting back to Phoenix. Along the way we stopped off in San Diego and visited Coronado Island, my home away from home. San Francisco was amazing to be sure, but I’ll always enjoy San Diego. Maybe one day if I’m ever ludicrously rich (which is highly unlikely) I’ll move there. For the moment though, I was content to get back on the road and return to Phoenix, Home Sweet Home (awwww, sugar coated ending!)