SF Part 2

Sometimes it is best to take a step back, take a deep breath, and consider plan B.

Chew on that.

It was the 11th Commandment, recently discovered on a piece of sandstone found among the remains of a Nepalese guide and several hiking tourists on the north face of Everest. The Aeitheist Society commented, “Perhaps your God is now in such a position”. The Pope added, “What would Jesus have done!” Democrats wondered, “Plan B?”

OK. Perhaps the 11th Commandment is an alternate fact. But when IS plan B being implemented?

San Francisco is quite a city. Now we need some R&R out in the boonies, which is where we are right now, with no internet, prompting my recitation of the 11th Commandment when attempting to send this. Thus, these next couple of postings are a couple of weeks delayed – no plan B. I’m tired so let’s can the talk and go right to the pictures.

Where were we? Chinatown? Well, we came back to town a couple of more times.

We went up to Twin Peaks. No, not the high-brow restaurant – wait, my editor says it’s a high-bra restaurant and there aren’t any in San Francisco. You ever go to a Twin Peaks? Nevermind. In this town it really has to do with geography and altitude. This is San Francisco, after all, with a lot of hills. Probably a lot of transmission shops, too. Also the location for that car chase scene in Bullitt (spelling? No internet). You know, Ford built a 2019 Bullitt Mustang to commemorate Steve McQueen’s car. I kind of liked the bad guy’s Charger. But, I’m wandering. Let’s go up to Twin Peaks.

Do you feel high? After all, it is San Francisco.

You can see Alcatraz from here.

Look, there’s the red bridge. Either it rusted or the guys who named it were smokin’ something from Acapulco.

I spotted the real Twin Peaks. Wonder if there are any employees in that building wearing plaid.

The top of that hill – you know, perspective is something that doesn’t get enough credit. I think about the Earth being just an atom in a molecule, like our solar system, just a piece of a cell in a giant organism, in a – you get the drift. Perspective, right? And there we are, on Twin Peaks, with a thousand other tourists, like bed bugs crawling around on Stormy Daniels’…..(That’s dot, dot, dot, dot, dot for you Colbert fans).(Dot)

Speaking of all the tourists up there, I accidentally got Ariana Grande and her body guard in this shot – I swear it was accidental, the camera was in wide-angle mode and I couldn’t really see what I was shooting with the sun glare:

Hold on. My sharp-as-a-tack staff just pointed out that it was not Ariana Grande but that teenager we had seen up there with so much glittering make-up on that four people were treated for temporary blindness when they looked at her. One of those alternate facts.

Next stop that day was to one of the oddities on our agenda, The Wave Organ. No joke. Some guys who survived the perspective-altering era of San Francisco thought it would be a good idea to build pipes into the end of a jetty so we could all listen to the sea play music. Hey, we didn’t realize that the Audium experience (you can look that one up) was only available on the weekends – and sold out, so we settled for this:

They did seem to gurgle a bit and for a second I thought that they may have all had some of those Nova Scotia Oysters, the ones we heard the CDC says are making people sick. These poor dudes and dudettes tried to calm their bellies with a whole load of Pepto-Bismol, and it worked for a couple of them. The guy on the end, not so much, and asked if we’d leave him alone.

At least the northeastern part of this thing is low and out of the wind.

To Andrea’s left is the plaque the certifies the creators of this place. Certifies them as….(dot, dot, dot, dot)

The reflection of an old guy with a cane and camera really screwed up this one up.

We asked Luna if she was ready to go but she was grooving on sounds from those holes in the wall behind her – more organ pipes.

One of the organ pipes was getting married and got dressed up:

Just so that you don’t miss the experience, in case you never make it to this example of the confluence of art, nature, and science, we recorded a few moments of this achievement.
Here’s Andrea taking a video of a pipe.

I’ve chopped my own video down to 17 meg. With all the photos, I can’t send this to the website via email in this post, but it will go in a separate post, SF Part 2 & 1/2 – The Wave Organ Concert. And, with no internet right now, I can’t look anything up so I just hope you can access it. Riveting stuff!

From this little point in the harbor, we had a view of a barge that gave new meaning, or perhaps clarity, to the term “poop deck”.

The best time for experiencing the haunting rhythm of the Wave Organ is high tide and we arrived right at the peak on a full moon day. The parking lot got some of it as the sea wall was breached.

Something caught my eye moving under the bridge. That bubble right in the middle and under the bridge is the sail of a windsurfer. Cool location to do your thing.

(If you didn’t find Jesus in the Banana Museum, you might not spot this guy either. By the way, you can find Jesus in the International Banana Museum photo on the second shelf to the right of center. If you didn’t find him then, go back and look. I don’t want you to go through life and not be able to say you found Jesus. Here’s another clue:

Now if those people down at the VA ask if you found him, you don’t have to give them the Forrest Gump wise-ass remark, “I didn’t know I was supposed to be looking for him.” But I digress.)

A short walk back in from the Wave Organ is The Marina Lighthouse:

That’s kind of funny because we are now in The Lighthouse Marina and RV Resort in the Delta Region (with no internet and thus providing me lots of time to extrapolate on what’s going on). Just to the left of the lighthouse is a freighter coming into the harbor. Just to the right is Al Capone’s old home, Alcatraz.

So, there you have Twin Peaks and The Wave Organ. We skipped Fisherman’s Wharf and a billion tourists but just at the edge of that mania we stopped at a small place called Crabsters and picked up a lobster/crab roll and clam chowder. When we were in Chinatown we brought home what the shop called “dumplings” but we call them big, fat rolls stuffed with some meat that tastes like moo shoo. And in Haight-Ashbury,

because parking was limited and we had Luna, we ate a slice of really good pizza in the car. I went into a rock & roll stuff shop, no records, and almost bought a 1000 piece puzzle of this:

I thought it might be too easy and passed.

Leaving town we passed by city hall. I thought the architecture was cool from pictures I’d seen. You gotta be high – altitude – to get a good view of the whole complex. Down below, too many buildings get in your way. There’s a lot more to it than this.

I really do have an appreciation for man-made structures. Just a bigger appreciation for Nature Made. That reminds me, I need vitamins.

We took a rest one day and drove a mile or so down to the Pacifica Municipal Pier. It is the only pier on the West Coast (I think that’s what a campground dude said) that you can fish off without a license. You may have noticed it in a previous photo:

It’s about a quarter mile long. Looked like they were catching stripers (funny how spell-checker wants to make that stripper now) and crabs (funny how that word works better with stripper than striper). Dungenous Crabs are the rage here. Anyway, the pier was neat. Big waves relentless. The ocean is relentless.

We were warned about swimming near the pier:

At the end of the pier we could see our RV on the waterfront:

And, of course, there was a sunset.

Take a break. I know how exciting this is. Part three soon, but don’t miss Part 2 & 1/2.