Short Trips: A Slice of San Francisco

I follow one simple line when traveling – don’t assume the chance to return will ever come. May 2014 ended up a collision of too many weekend trips and I found myself unable to turn down any of them. Earlier in the year, the annual North Carolina trip was booked; later, a long weekend in Seattle emerged due to a Frontier Early Returns reward flight I had to book. Then a work conference in San Francisco loomed in May. Top that all with Memorial Day jaunt down to Chattanooga – there has been no rest for the wicked.

Of the  major U.S. cities I have not visited, San Francisco topped the list. With a Tuesday conference, I tweaked the travel schedule to add a little downtime in the Bay area. As luck had it, another coworker planned the same thing, so we timed flights and accommodations together.

BART into Darkness
Jostling up the tracks from South San Francisco to downtown, the train gradually filled and included a few panhandlers wearing $100 jeans. In the Financial District, restaurants seemed to close early on Saturday. In many doorways, the homeless settled for the evening. I wasn't prepared for the volume of homeless, but few were panhandlers. Many found doorways and bunked for the night.

One bar had a pay-per-view fight, others seemed a little fancy for wayfarers just looking for a bite to eat. In the shadow of the TransAmerica Pyramid, we found Mangia Tutti.  The old neon sign an unremarkable exterior seemed the perfect portal to a pasta, pizza and salad bar. Inside we found anything but. Along with friendly pours of affordable Italian wines, the restaurant made its own pastas. Everything tasted fresh.

Working our way back with BART, we stopped on Mission. This stretch was  undeniably seedy. In addition to an increase in adult businesses, cop cars and ranting homeless grew more common. “At least out in California, they probably don’t have guns,” I remarked after one ranter got a little close.

Amid the restrained chaos, The Sycamore offered an oasis. The tiny corner bar had dozens of brews. We sampled a couple before descending into the BART. Traffic from the NBA game in Oakland had slowed the trains, as did a crime scene at a station further south. Soon enough the train moved and rocketed back to South San Francisco's still streets.

A Muir Moment of Peace
Morning came quickly and the drive north began before the sun broke open the fog. It was a little disorienting that a city of San Francisco's size lacked a north-south highway. But 101 became a city street, a main drag that passed in front of any number of centuries-old churches and the city's massive city hall, which dwarfed the capitols of many states. As 101 jogged west toward the Pacific, the orange bridge came into view. Fog obscured its upper pylons.

After some of the narrower spans Nancy and I crossed in recent years, the Golden Gate Bridge was the a breeze. The biggest challenge was not looking out at Alcatraz and the other bay island to the east or the rough Pacific currents slamming rocks to the west. The highway resumed north of the Golden Gate (the actual name for the strait connecting the bay with the Pacific.

From the moment we reached the Marin Headlands, Muir Woods beckoned. A steep, winding road dropped us down into a small grove of old-growth forest headlined by coastal redwoods, the world's tallest trees.

Years after my first view of the redwoods, I cannot shake them. Their height seems to defy possibility, their bark feels unreal, and the tiny cone from which they germinate seems laughably small. Like most unique things in this country, 95 percent of the redwoods are gone, nearly logged into extinction.

But no logging ever occurred in Muir Woods. Theodore Roosevelt created the national monument in the last year of his presidency, stopping planned development of a dam on Redwood Creek, the trickle of water cutting through the grove. It might not have always been a slow flow, but on the day we visited, the water ran only in ripples and small plunges where trees and stones blocked its path. Its relative inaccessibility saved this grove - everything else nearby had been logged.

Muir Woods was one of those natural cathedrals, the trees forming a canopy that made everything below feel somewhat wild. A young deer grazed in the shadow of a giant. We would see no more deer, but plenty of giants rising from the flood plain of the small creek.

A mile into our walk we crossed into Mount Tamalpais State Park. The paved path ended and the forest grew more rustic. The redwoods continued to soar.

Our early arrival worked in our favor. Returning to the entrance booth, a line queued. Our prime parking spot was swallowed up instantly as we pulled away. Cars line the road and more streamed downhill toward the redwood grove. As we climbed up the curving road, the grove appeared above the rest of the younger forest, a random patch of tall trees, a protected patch still standing when the rest were logged away.

Rare Brews of Russian River

Sanctification, my first Russian River taproom brew.

More eloquent words have been written about Northern California wine country, so bear with me. The richness of hills and mountains dotted with grapevines and occasional herds of piebald cows.

Deep in wine country resides a beer mecca like few others. Russian River Brewing Company pioneered the double IPA and has conducted rampant experiments with wild yeasts and barrel-aged beers. I could not cross the Golden Gate to skip Russian River. Sixty miles from Muir Woods, we needed only to find 4th Street.

Arriving shortly after 11 a.m., the taproom was already stuffed to the gills thanks to a generous all-day happy hour on Sundays. But we found a small place near the bar. We had limits on drinking, which created hardships. We made it to Russian River, killing any further need for beer stops along this trip (see my beer blog for more details).

Lost in the Mystery House
From Santa Rosa, we ventured back through San Francisco (because you have no choice) then down to San Jose. Roy mentioned the Winchester Mystery House. With no desire to monopolize time before the conference, I was eager to check it out. I had no idea what I was in for.

Ms. Winchester,  widow of the second president of the Winchester Rifle Co., moved to the Bay Area after her husband's death. Consulting a psychic, he warned her that the ghosts of people killed by rifles her husband's company manufactured might seek out revenge upon her. She added onto the house, built secret and dead-end rooms to confound said spirits.

Our timed tour paired us with a 70-something tour guide who provided just the energy and enthusiasm needed to wind through the labyrinthine home, the hour flew by

That night we met my old newspaper friend Court and her husband Mike. After a few missed turns we finally found their townhouse in the Presidio atop a heavily treed hill, the orange bridge looming in the forest's gaps.

A city hall more grand than most state capitols

We went down to Pacific Heights for a table at Burma Superstar, a local favorite where a crowd queued outside. Luckily,  a table awaited us. The breadth of Asian cuisine is truly staggering coming from a place where the only options are plentiful Thai and chain Chinese or Japanese.

I always think of San Francisco as sitting on the bay, not on the rocky ledge of Pacific Coast. Rounding a few corners in the Presidio, and the otherwise opaque ocean twinkled with handful of fishing boats. From the hotel in South San Francisco, I looked down and saw a truck loaded with produce scraps. A swarm of pigeons eagerly pecked what they could.

Dropping the rental car and grabbing a cab at SFO's international terminal, the work portion of the jaunt began. We would present to clients at a ballroom in a relatively swanky hotel, Clift, in the central city. Oversized furniture and other oddities filled the lobby. The rooms had been renovated but retained the early of an earlier age of travel. I spent much of the morning on the computer, catching up.

The diversity of offerings near the hotel was stunning. There were at least three Indian options on the same block, but Red Chili's offering of Indian and Nepalese won out. The Nepalese dishes were  lighter than the Indian but sacrificed none of the spiciness.

After lunch, work intervened. I met with the marketing director and headed off for an interview. 
After conducting an interview with a KQED reporter never to air and unlikely be used in any form.  The content wasn't the problem; I just can't force people to use material even when trekking 2,000 miles to serve it up. No matter - I did what the company expected without protest.

In the next few hours, work wrapped for the day - I refused to rehearse my presentation but answered scores of e-mails - I had to wander.

After a quick wild beer at the Mikkeller taproom down the street, the urge could not be contained. I started up the steep incline of  Powell Street, passing streetcars, then descended to Washington Square Park and Columbus Avenue. Of course I had left the directions to  City Lights on my room's desk. Columbus sounded familiar so I kept walking and soon enough, I bumped into the bookstore nexus of the Beat Generation. It's been a long time since I picked up anything from that movement besides a Lawence Ferlinghetti poetry book.

In my college days, I would have enjoyed this more.

I appreciated the entire floor of poetry, albeit not as much as I would have in my Mercyhurst days However, I would have still been a greenhorn. I outed himself as a tourist by purchasing a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poetry volume and a book of Ry Cooder's short stories.

Rush hour is not bad anymore you can afford the luxury of walking. Cars clumped together. I kept moving past walls of people. Even in Chinatown, I had few problems. Reconnecting with Roy, we set out along a similar path, traversing Chinatown and landing at the Comstock Tavern, yet another small corner bar with exquisite taste and a

In Clift's Redwood Room, most of our team had assembled. We had no dinner at our other stops, so I could not skip the menu here. As a quirk, the walls of the Redwood Room hosted what appeared to be paintings but were actually videos of people that moved ever so slight to those watching them. At that point in the evening,  I preferred to concentrate on my burger before calling it a night. I had an interview with the Newark Star-Ledger before the conference and plenty of work to occupy me during the presentations.

Most of Tuesday was swallowed by the conference. Sure, it was my reason for being there. . You don't want to hear about that anymore than I wanted to write about it. I did what I had to do. I moved swiftly through the presentation, dropping relatively few clues about my nervousness. After the presentation, I nearly collapsed when one of the sales guys told me my fly was down during the presentation. He was joking, obviously having no idea how easily it could have been true.

Conference wrapped, we adjourned to a cocktail reception. My early departure left me reluctant to join in the post-conference dinner, but eventually I acquiesced. After all, when would I get back to San Francisco?

Our team headed to the Ferry Building, yet another stately facility in the shadow of the Bay Bridge. The feeling that always overcomes me in the closing hours of any trip struck here as the twilight painted Oakland and the East Bay in rich pastels. The last sunset of any vacation is a moment to treasure.

With a short wait Sliding Door opened up a big table. Vietnamese fusion would close out the night in San Francisco. I went back, packed everything but my toiletries and clothes for the morning flight, then crashed. At 4 a.m. I passed the giant chair and odd lobby art for the last time, ready for my first leg to Denver.

Sleeping much of the way and trying to ignore to entitled fools in the seats next to me, I navigated when awake. Lake Tahoe passed north of the plane, then clouds hemmed in Wheeler Peak, the above-ground centerpiece of Great Basin National Park (Lehman Caves lie below). Soon the deeper clouds enveloped the empty stretches of Utah and northwest Colorado.

The cloud field developed plumes that almost resembled the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon and the American Southwest. Maybe that was just wishful thinking. I will take any bizarre terrain I can, even those that will be dispersed by aggressive winds.

Sunrise moments after takeoff from SFO