Where I Wanna Be

You know how sometimes you go on vacation and wind up doing nothing but laying on a tropical beach and drink fruity beverages all day? This has not been one of those types of vacations at all.

For a long time, I have had the idea in my head that it would be awesome to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge. We enjoy biking at home (where it is flat) and the trip across the bridge and into Sausalito is one of the more famous bike rides in America. Naturally, when we decided on San Francisco, I decided to devote a day to biking across the bridge.

There were several problems with this plan:

1. There was a ferry strike yesterday, which meant that the ferry service from Sausalito back to the city was not going to happen. If we biked into Sausalito, we were going to have to bike BACK once we got there. Immediately the idea of biking into Sausalito got scrapped – I saw the hills into that place on our driving tour Monday and had no desire to tackle that ride back.
2. I have not been working out consistently since I sprained my ankle (roughly 3 months). We have done a few bike rides (on flat terrain), i’ve gone for some runs and walked Gracie – but consistent, hard exercise? It’s been a LONG time.
3. Both myself and Danny have a slightly irrational fear of heights.

Since the ferry service being down, we decided to rent bikes, ride up to the bridge and maybe halfway across or so before turning around. After procuring our bikes, we departed Fisherman’s Wharf and headed towards the bridge.

The first hill that we encountered was about 5 minutes into the ride. I thought that I could make it up, but, as I turned the corner and saw no end in sight, I got off my bike and walked it up the hill.

After riding past a little shop at the base of the bridge (called the Warming Hut), it was time to head northwards, up to the bike path for the main bridge.

I really, really wish that I had stopped to take a picture of what the incline at the base was like. I pedaled my little heart out, but, I just couldn’t make it. There was someone running behind me who actually passed me as I was struggling up. Once we got to the halfway point, our hard work was rewarded with an outstanding view.

We still had another hill to climb before actually making it onto the bridge itself. Again, that one was very painful – maybe more so than the first because there was the added fun of worrying about the cars that were sharing the road.

Eventually, we made it onto the bridge and started biking across.

 
At this point, the wind was blowing in full force, there were cars speeding across the bridge and tons of other tourists on bikes (and walking).  Many of whom had zero sense of self awareness.

 
I snapped this picture of Danny at our turnaround point (about a quarter of a way onto the bridge). When I showed it to him later he said that basically, he was totally freaking out about the wind and cars (not to mention his fear of heights is on par with mine). I had no idea he was nervous – he hid it pretty well!

After biking off the bridge, we headed over to the Fort Mason lookout for a quick breather…

 
…and then back down to the Warming Hut of the bridge for another rest.

 
As we were making our way back to the bike drop off, someone got a flat tire.

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I need to preface this post by saying that I am not a history buff. Danny is a huge fan of the History channel, and most of the programs on there bore me. There are, however, a few specific times of history that intrigue me. Alcatraz and all that it entails just happens to be one of those things.

Since this was a last minute vacation, we really did not have much planned before we flew out here. But, as soon as we bought plane tickets, we immediately went ahead and booked our night tour of Alcatraz. This tour sells out weeks in advance and we were totally psyched that we were able to get tickets to the tour that we wanted.

We boarded the first ferry of the evening (6:10pm) and departed from the pier. It was a very chilly boat ride over.

About 20 minutes later we pulled up to the dock and made our way onto The Rock.

The tour starts with a trek up a very steep hill. This is really nothing surprising because it seems like everything in San Francisco involves walking up a crazy incline. I think the tour book said that this was something like the equivalent of going up a 14 story building.

We were handed audio tours as we entered that gave a guided tour of the prison as told by several inmates/prison guards/family members who lived on the island. The beginning of the tour was super crowded, but, I read that if you hang back a bit, it thins out pretty quickly. We killed some time waiting on the crowd to move along by hanging out in the prison cafeteria.

We resumed the self guided tour soon enough and had tons of space to ourselves.

Of course we had to take the obligatory, "we’re in jail" photos…

…and then I hung out in solitary confinement for awhile.

Once the sun went down, it got a little creepy. One of the things that is unique to the night tour is that they open up the prison hospital for about 30 minutes. Of course we had to go check that out.

There was a brief minute or two that we found ourselves totally alone on one of the cell blocks. With the lights low and wind howling outside, the spook factor was high.
 
We caught the last ferry off a little after 9pm. Honestly? I could have probably killed at least another hour before leaving. That is high praise for someone who is not a history nerd.

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