San Fran

June 4th –Spoken from the voice of Zach

Matt, my roommate, and I were headed home from a walk around Berkeley when I heard my phone buzz. It was Lisa texting me, “We’re here!!” Coincidentally, Matt and I were only a block away at that point. I whistled loudly to get their attention, and Lisa responded by running up and giving me a big old Carper hug. These are special hugs you cannot find very often, and it’d been too long since I received one. I was filled with a nostalgic joy. My family was here.
That night was primarily dedicated to settling in. They helped me throw out some old rubbish furniture I had stored in my living room. Then we made up the futon, put away all their food, and got these soggy, travel-weary wayfarers washed, fed, and rested.
That night we went out to Yoshi’s Jazz club in Oakland for dinner. It’s a famous Japanese restaurant that I had a groupon for. Matt accompanied us and kept us entertained with his corky personality, overly agreeable attitude, and random world facts.  With our shoes off, we ate family style, sharing each other’s dishes—sea scallops and ginger cocktail for me, tempura roll and beer for matt, Sentai roll and Sake for Jarrett, king crab roll and Sake for Lisa and stuffed mushrooms and Sake for Melissa. Overall the meal was superb. The ambiance is mainly what made the experience. We were obligated to take off our shoes and sit around tables, which were situated in pits. How often do you get to sit around a sunken table during dinner??
After dinner, we stopped by Bevmo (conveniently right across the street from the restaurant) and picked up some rum and Mojito mix and headed home. Everyone met my two other room mates, Dustin and Veronica, and we pulled out my Apples to Apples cards, made Mojitos, and commenced a night of drunken board gaming.
The next morning we all headed out into Berkeley. Jarrett headed to a local bike cooperative to fix his bike, and Melissa, Lisa, and I toured Berkeley campus. We rendezvoused at Urban Turban at the north side of campus (a delicious “middle eastern Chipotle” we were tipped off about while at the UC Berkeley visitors center). They served things like chicken masala and rice wrapped in Nan. Jarrett in particular liked the place so much that he continued to repeat the name of the restaurant the rest of the night and the following day, heh heh oh Jarrett.
That night, another groupon of mine took us to an Ethiopian restaurant, where we dipped our Injera laced fingers into combinations of vegetarian and carne Ethiopian delicacies. Bob Marley was playing over the restaurant speakers, which triggered a long conversation about Ethiopian and Jamaican ties and their shared beliefs in Rastafarian traditions. Naturally, this led the conversation focal to weed, sex and reggae. We were the life of the restaurant. We even put on a puppet show through a bamboo fencing that surrounded our table, which was constructed in a way to look like a puppet stage (our puppets were plants from the table and our cell phones). After dinner, we headed home to get some rest for the epic day we planned to have in San Francisco.
At around 9am the next morning, we started getting ready for our adventure in the city. We readied our bikes, I went to the bike shop to change my tire, and soon we hopped on the BART and rode to the Embarcadero  in San Fran. Surfacing from the subway, we were greeted by a mob of rightist numb-nuts (the few that normally hide in the dark corners of the city) protesting Obamas short visit, brandishing signs with the words “NOBAMA” and “How’s that CHANGE working for you?” (I guess we’re all entitled to our own opinions, right?). Angery protesters aside, we had a city to see and only three bikes for four people. We needed a fourth bike and I knew of a place willing to offer free rentals to city concierge (which is what I do in the city for a living). Unfortunately the place was at the Fisherman’s wharf (roughly a mile and a half away from the Embarcadero BART), and with all the protesters and police barricades blocking the roads, public transportation was useless. So we jumped on our three bikes (Lisa rode on my seat while I pedaled) and rode up to the bike rental place. Before we headed out on our trip across the city, we stopped by the famous Buena Vista Café for a hot mug of their famous Irish coffee and a classic sour dough bowl n’ chowder.
From the Buena Vista, we began our two-wheeled journey across the hilly city. Our first terminus was the Haight. We perused the hippy shops and second hand stores. Jarrett bought a wrinkly orange…it was a good time.
Next was the Golden Gate Park area. We knew there would not be enough time in the day to enjoy all the great museums and land marks as the time was just grazing 5pm and the last ferry out of Sausalito—our final destination—was at 8:20pm (which we thought was 8pm at the time), which left us about 3 hours to travel and see 12 miles worth of cool sites (including the Golden Gate bridge mind you!!). With this in mind, we all basically began to race (almost competitively) through the beautiful park toward the shore and Ocean Beach, our next destination. Once we hit the ocean, we continued north along the tip of the peninsula toward the Golden Gate. The scenic trail we took consisted of a lot of ups and downs, dirt roads and paved roads, and maybe a few stairs (the views were breathtaking). The arduous journey along the coastline brought us to the place we wanted to see most, the Golden Gate Bridge.
Before we crossed, we stopped to take a few pictures in front of the bridge.  The wind was ridiculous (this is pretty typical). Luckily, we had our awesome, hip Blazing Saddles bike helmets to keep our hair in order and help us look cool while we took the snap shots. Unfortunately, the bikes were not so luck; they were blown over from their kickstands. Arguments ensued.
After the pictures, we cleared our heads of any whirlwind fantasies of being blown off the bridge and mustered the courage to cross. It was beginning to get dark so we sped up the pace so that we would not miss our ferry in Sausalito.  It was about 6:30pm and we thought the last ferry out was at 8 (we wanted to be at the ferry by 7:30 just in case), which left us a good hour to ride about 6 hilly miles and take pic or two in between. We ended up getting to the ferry a lot earlier than expected (it turn out that the last ferry came 20 minutes later than we planned for), so we walked around the old beautiful and ritzy town and got some ice cream. Jarrett also purchased a magnetic desk toy for work (be very excited potential IBM colleagues!) from a strange specialty store that sold random things like gummy bacon.. yes.. gummy bacon. After fooling around a little longer in Sausalito we hopped the ferry and headed back to the city.
The ferry dropped us off at Fisherman’s Wharf area where we returned our hired bike and did the four man, three-bike limp through North beach back to the financial district. Here I showed them the hotel I work for (The Galleria Park Hotel). We picked up a few maps and postcard that the hotel printed my lovely face on the front of and then headed out for dinner. It was around 10:15pm at this point, and we were starving! Unfortunately, unlike the wakefulness of New York City, we were stuck with a sleepy San Francisco. We went to 3 different restaurants in vain. Hunger pangs began to drive some of us to noticeably irritation. We were actually considering fast food. Luckily, while reaching steps away from Del Taco, we noticed the lights were on at one of my favorite burger places, Super Duper Burger (coincidentally, this sounds like a fast food restaurant, but it’s not.. oooh boy, it’s not). Delicious medium rare burgers, Chicken sandwiches, and garlic fries all filled our stomachs, and like a pack of ravenous dogs, we all growled if anyone got close to our food (especially Melissa).
After dinner, it was a bit late, maybe 11pm. Lisa and Melissa were a bit tired at that point, so they decided to head home. Jarrett and I, on the other hand, stayed back, grabbed a few brewskys, and relaxed on a public rooftop garden (Called a POPOS: Privately Owned Public Open Spaces) that is connected to the hotel I work for. It was a clear night and the rooftop provided some gorgeous views of the city. Eventually we got tired and it was time to go back home.
The ride home was an interesting one to say the very least. We had missed our last BART train, so we were forced to catch the dreaded trans bay 800 night owl bus. Imagine an HOURLY 10x30 bus cramming in all of the drunken late nighters and East Bay transients (for those not familiar, this includes people from OAKLAND and Berzerkeley).. freaky stuff.. and then there was us poor chaps. 
Luckily, it was just an interesting ride and nothing else. Jarrett struck up a conversation (it actually might have been the other way around) with some white woman who was jabbing a neighboring black man with her bike. When the black man protested, she actually insisted on screaming at the man for “leaning on her bike.”  While this was happening, I was forced to endure the ignorant hot air of a self proclaimed Berkeley mayor candidate who was talking to a few interested night owlers in the seats next to him. He was basically talking a bunch of popular nonsense about the 2008 economic downturn.. blaming the government.. so on..(I really hoped this man was just a talkative bum and not a really running for office. Although, he did have that used-car-salesman charm of a mayor). Of course, I spoke up to him and ask him a few simple questions, which seemed to leave him feeling a little stupid. For the sake of keeping this blog short(ish) (and neutral), though, I’ll continue the story without going into detail about the incident.
After Jarrett moved away from the conversation with the crazy woman and I had a short nap to clear my frustration, we started talking to the two Berkeley students that were sitting next to us. One was from South Africa and had an awesome accent and one was from China (gotta love the bay).  They were just coming from having a few drinks in the city like us. We shared a   light conversation with them until we reached our stop (which we almost missed) and made it off the dreaded 800 night owl.
Jarrett and I walked home from there and crashed out for the night, resting up for our next adventure.