Tuesday around the Bay, and over the Bridge

It was actually around noon Tuesday before we got to the bike rental depot. Out of interest in trying something new, we rented a tandem hybrid bike. It is something worth trying, but perhaps San Francisco was not the place for an experiment. If there's ever a next time, I think I prefer to be solely controlling the vehicle I'm powering. Adam had the front as I figured his frustration if not steering would be more severe than mine. It was a little disorienting as I couldn't see what was in front and we had to learn to call out moves to each other. You have to peddle in sync or both coast, there's no disengage between the front and back.

We took an easy meander along the waterfront part of the trail, and detoured a bit at the marina to see the Wave Organ, an art installation now built into the shoreline. Pipes extending into the Bay play "music" as the waves and tide roll in and out. The pier it is built into is constructed of material recovered from the cemeteries that were removed from the city years ago. There are no graves in San Francisco, and out on that lonely point one could fancy that the souls of those dug up might be haunting the rubble of their monuments along with the lonely breezes and seashore noise.

From there we decided we should get a move on if we were to get over the bridge much less around any part of the Bay perimeter. In the end, we didn't get too far. The ride over the Bridge was quite taxing on the strange and unfamiliar wheels, dodging pedestrians and motoring through the high winds almost 300 feet over the water. The views over the bay were spectacular, though. We made it over, me with what turned out to be a 2nd degree sunburn as the helmet didn't shade as much of my neck as my hat did, and my scant base tan was not up to it. At the end of the vertigo-inducing span, we concluded that we weren't going to get too much farther than Sausalito, but at least it was all downhill from there. We stopped at the Gaylord India restaurant and had an exceptional Tandoori lunch in an open dining room overlooking the Bay, and then walked the bike the rest of the way into town. Sausalito was a little bit slower paced than The City, though still quite busy by mid-afternoon.

Meandering up and down the main strip was a strange contrast of art galleries priced beyond reach and tourist kitsch of the sort that just gets re-printed with a different city name in every port. Other than some fun salt-water taffy we picked up as I'd finished the rest of my emergency sugar rations, we were empty-handed (except for the bike) waiting for our ferry back. The ferry ride was fun. Mainly because I didn't have to pedal it, but the views of Sausalito and Tiburon climbing their mountains, the Golden Gate, and the Bay Bridge were really fun as the fog rolled in. We wound up back at the Ferry port, having missed getting on the over-crowded earlier ferry that went back to Fisherman's Wharf. So we finished the day with an extra 20 minutes of riding to get the bike back to a drop-off. One more long hike home was interruped by a stop at Walgreens for Solarcaine. We got home just at the end of the hotel Cookie Hour, and Adam was just ready to crash so I took myself out for a quick, light dinner, and then did the same.