Bike Ride

I went for an awesome ride in the Golden Gate Park yesterday. Check out this tree!
















I'm still trying to figure out what it is. Will update as soon as I know... But there were loads of them. And at one place, there is a row of them where they are all sort of bent and curved in the same direction, like someone just grabbed the tops of them all together and shifted them over while the roots stayed in place, and then, since the trunks were made of clay, fired them all in a gigantic kiln.

So Joel toured me around the park, and then we got coffee at a café right where I first found the beach on my last trip here. Apparently it is a great neighborhood hang-out - especially being that there are not a lot of neighborhood hang-outs in that particular area (the Sunset - so named, I suppose, because it faces the sunset). They have good bagels and good hummus.

Just as a little aside/tangent, I have to remember to accept help still, sometimes. It's so easy to just try to do everything or to want to refuse when people are being generous. But people are being so generous, I almost can't believe it. But I am so grateful, really. The kindness of strangers, as it were.

So, back to the bike ride. We took a bus up to a nice look-out spot, where I did a touristy, photo-taking thing.
















But I guess I can allow myself to be a little touristy sometimes, just to get to know the place, I think. Although I have an aversion to being a tourist, which stems from my years in Kennebunk, where every year around April or May, a dusting of dread settled on all year-round residents, and in it was written "here come the tourists." but I didn't feel like a tourist. And anyway, Joel was filling me in on various elements of San Francisco history, such as the fact that all of the Golden Gate Park and the western neighborhoods were once sand dunes. Hard to imagine, but true.

And after I took the picture of the city, we went down a spiral ramp for pedestrians, and let me tell you, it was fun. I mean, hell's yes, fun. It was like little-kid-on-a-slide-I-want-to-do-it-again fun. You can have your video games.

So that was about it. We wound our way home through nice neighborhoods, picked up laundry, and went home.

It was a very good day.