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Published: February 27th 2008
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Onaxthiel writes: The night in X's apartment was short. Not only did we stay up far later than Obfuscator and I would have preferred, but she also has neighbors with small children that need to go to school about the same time as the sun decides it might consider rising soon. Weather.com claimed that the day was going to be rainy all the way through. Looking out the back door into X's backyard garden the skies looked rather clear and the ground looked dry, so we decided to try exploring the Marin Headlands. This is a region of the Golden Gate recreation area that lies across the bay to the north of SF. X's favorite place to see within it is called Muir woods, which is a very pleasant set of giant redwoods with a small stream and some foot paths. Being that the morning wasn't nearly as bad as predicted, the first half mile of trails were filled with other tourists and locals out to see the greenery. We quickly passed the point that most visitors don't bother going beyond, the Kent tree.
This was once the tallest tree in the park, named after the man that helped the
woods become a protected area. After being the landmark on the east side of the park for generations, weather and wear finally took their toll and knocked the tree down about a decade ago. The reason for the emptiness beyond the ruined tree is that soon thereafter the path crosses the river on a bridge that is no longer intact, and most people don't wish to waste their time. Obfuscator and I aren't most people. X was immediately dismayed by our callous disregard for the closed signs, as well as the fact that we expected her to jump from the bank of the stream to an Oxbow in the middle, and then clamber up the opposite bank. After much coaxing and cajoling, we still weren't able to confer the concept of “jumping” to her, so eventually she had to be taken across a more unstable stepping route across wet and slippery rocks. No accounting for taste in routes. From this point on we didn't run into any other hikers on the path. One little closed sign and everyone quits. Our walk continued up hill and was punctuated by occasional calls of of “Banana Slug!” from Obfuscator and me for the
reaction it would provoke from X. We really only saw two slugs on the walk, one of which was huge, and I decided to pet behind it's slug ears, since it looked lonely. We then found that our return path had been shut down too, so we had another closed sign to completely ignore, and then convince X to follow us.
Once we were done with the park, we started out towards a nearby beach to have a picnic. This sounds far more pleasant than it was, since it was a cold and occasionally drizzly day. We also spent the picnic surrounded by a cohort of seagulls that was really hoping we would drop some food just out of arms reach. Finally, we decided to feed a few last scraps to them and be on our way. We thought we would have just enough time to see a National Park that commemorates an old Nike missile site that once protected the Bay area from Soviet bombers. The site has been restored and has the only working launch elevator for this class in the nation. The stop is worth making if you are interested in cold war history and military
hardware of different eras, and we were lucky enough to have a retired SAC pilot there on our visit who shared some of his experiences in the bombers of different eras as well.
Then it was down to what was once the post housing for the Nike sites, an area now taken over by various other governmental agencies. In the bluffs above the old post are several large concrete emplacements that once housed the batteries that watched for Japanese ships. The walk up was a bit steep, which again required lots of convincing and cajoling of X to get her to come along with us. The view from the top was quite good though, and I think she didn't mind once she was there. Despite this, I wasn't able to convince her to cover the last three hundred yards to the next gunnery position.
We were all ready to call it a day at this point, and X had a favorite Cuban restaurant called ChaChaCha's that she wanted to go to. Being right off Haight street it is mostly a hipster hangout (Obfuscator adds: and Hippie. And Vagrant.). They make a sangria there that X is a big
fan of, due to the fact that drinking it gives her an excuse to lose her generally high level of inhibitions and do things like hug lampposts. The tapas at the place were pretty good, and the sangria was pretty good, but I dislike any place that has an hour and a half wait for tables, doesn't take reservations, and charges heavily for the food on top of it all. Upon exiting, we had to find a space toilet in the part of the park that X refers to as “the shady part,” and hence refuses to go into most nights. Then we went back to the bus stop so that X would have an opportunity to hug as many lampposts as possible before returning to her apartment.
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Nick
non-member comment
Of shoes and slugs
1) I always it was odd that a shoe company had their own missile silos but that's the Cold War for ya. 2) BANANA SLUG