Prisons, Bridges and Tattoo's - SF Part 2

---

Today we went to Alcatraz, the notorious prison off the coast of San Francisco. We caught the ferry from Pier 39 and as usual Kim was not appropriately dressed for such an occasion, wearing only a sarong she couldn’t help but notice how strong the winds were and how cold it was on the Pacific Ocean. Once we arrived on the island we sneaked on to the back of a walking tour and were told some very interesting facts about the inmates at Alcatraz:

• Do you know that Al Capone aka Scarface was responsible for inventing the expiry date on milk cartons that we use today! It was a genius idea to prevent the prisoners from getting sick because they were drinking sour milk.

• Did you know that the desperation and torment of the outside world drove inmates to suicide??? Obviously!

• One inmate was so desperate to die he stole a spoon from the kitchen and slit his throat with it.

• Another inmate threw himself into an incinerator…it is not known whether this prisoner was trying to escape Alcatraz or top himself either way we think he must have been a little crazy.

• Did you know that there were a few inmates who actually managed to escape the island? However getting off the island was a different matter. One inmate covered himself in lard to insulate himself whilst swimming in the pacific but underestimated how deep the water offshore was and knocked himself out on the shallow rocks. He was found dead floating in the water sixteen days later.

• Two inmates who escaped off the island have never been found to this day…They managed to escape prison by carving a bigger hole where the air vent used to be with spoons and escaped using the piping system of the building. it is believed that they drowned having fought the current of the pacific and the temperature for two miles. However, we are sceptical as to whether they succeeded and would like to think they did after living in the “hell hole” which was the prison.

• Did you know that the longest ever time recorded in solitary confinement happened at Alcatraz…this was 13 years. The inmates called it the “hole” which was a steel concrete box with no light and padded with extra bars to keep the inmates in.

The greatest escape story of Alcatraz involved six convicts one of which was named Stroudman known as birdman…a scary looking fella found guilty of first degree murder. These six convicts managed to escape their prison cells by starving themselves so their bodies could fit through the steel bars, steal the key which was hung under the gun mans quarter and hold six guards hostage. But this was all they could do as they had only planned that far ahead, how they were going to get off the island didn’t occur to them but managed to stay inside the prison with hostages for three days until the Marines shot their fire. As a result several hostages died and two of the convicts were killed in the crossfire. Two of them later received the death sentence for their punishment…..

As you can see we learnt a lot. However, Alcatraz was supposedly home to the most dangerous criminals. We think this is said to hype up tourism as Kim only recorded three criminals to be murderers. The majority of inmates were bank robbers or kidnappers, still very dangerous but the death sentence was never carried out on Alcatraz. An amazing tour which was most enjoyed.

Following the Alcatraz tour Kim wanted James to see the museum of Ripley’s Believe it or not which was located along the harbour. Now for those of you who don’t know Ripleys is like the Gusiness Book of World Records but in model form, touching form basically an activity centre for kids. A waste of money but we got a few funny pics which you can see below.

In the evening we took the night tour bus to China Town. Now we really should know by now not to go to the first few restaurants that are down the strip but some how the PR seems to coax us in thinking that we had picked a really gud place to eat at…wrong!!! Kim knew that these Chinese people eat anything but what she didn’t know is that they were inhumane about the way the food was prepared, because directly behind us in the restaurant were a selection of fish maybe a foot in length in a tank not much bigger. To Kim’s shock about half of them were floated on their backs. Kim kept on wanting to bring it to the attention of the waiters but James said not to as it was part of their culture and would be extremely embarrassing. Every time she tried to wave at a waiter he kicked her under the table. Ha. For a change Kim chose the correct dish (Because she always has food envy of James’s meals) However James went for the suckling pig with skin, hair and bones included. He wasn’t impressed.

The following day we decided to hire a couple of push-bikes and ride over the golden gate bridge and explore a little. As neither of us had ridden a bike in many years it took a while to get use to it……quite a bit longer for one of us though. For the first 1000 meters Kim refused to go faster than 4 mph which was driving James insane as he had to stop and wait for her every 30 seconds!!! It was going to be a long long day.

So we set off about midday and it took us about an hour to reach the beginning of golden gate bridge. Along the way we took lots of cool photos and we soon realised that biking in flip-flops wasn’t the best idea, but we had gone too far to turn back. We biked over the bridge and it definitely put our new biking skills to the test. Along with the hurricane winds we had to bike against there were hundreds of other bikers, pedestrians and the occasional police van we had to negotiate along the thin walk way over the bridge. Obviously this just slowed Kim down even more and by the time James had reached the far end of the bridge Kim was walking and weaving her bike past a large group of Japanese tourist, 20 mins later we met up and enjoyed the view of San Francisco harbour and Alcatraz before continuing our ride to a small coastal town called Socilita. As you can imagine San Francisco is extremely hilly and the route down to Socilita was no exception…James changed down into his lowest gear and set off at his typical speed of light, leaving Kim in a cloud of dust!
Obviously James was down the hill in about 5 mins and was enjoying a glass of water and taking in the scenery while waiting for Kim to make her way down. Quite a while later Kim comes tottering down the hill, cursing at the lorries that were passing her and with her feet scraping on the road as she thought it would be a good idea as a brake. James obviously found this hilarious and took an amusing video of Kim coming down the hill….

We locked up our bikes and found a nice little restaurant where we stopped for dinner and a well deserved rest. As it was only half way through the day we thought it would be a good idea to venture on and explore a little more of San Francisco, so we examined our map and thought we would visit Meir Woods that are host to some of the worlds tallest trees……it was only an extra 8 KM away, how hard could it be?

The route up to Meir Woods was slightly different to what we had been using, instead of the official bike tracks we had to use the bike lanes alone the main roads. This was quite nerve racking for both of us as the roads were quite busy and as Kim has never done her Cycling Proficiently she felt the need to get off her bike at every single traffic light and zebra crossing, even if there wasn’t a car in sight. After the seventh time of Kim doing this James was starting to pull his hair our and was starting to worry if we were going to make it to our destination on time.
After numerous wrong turns and a few arguments about directions we finally reach Meir Woods (it only took us 3 hours!!) and James’s bum was so sore that he felt like he had done hard jail time in Alcatraz :O)

As we said above; Meir Woods has some of the tallest Red wood trees in the world and we were not disappointed when we arrived. The scenery was absolutely amazing and the atmosphere was really surreal especially when a guy started playing his guitar…it was all very peaceful.
But as we were aware that time was ticking on, and that the last ferry back to San Fran was at 7:30 we had to get moving. So we took lots more cool pictures and jumped back on our bikes, much to the dislike of James’s saddle sore arse!
By this time it was 4:30pm and we had a good 15 KM to bike to the coastal town of Tiburin to catch the ferry….3 hours to get there, shouldn’t be a problem! Again the scenery was very stunning and as the sun was starting to go down the ride to Tiburin was very relaxing. This was until we hit a section that had lots of steep hills and after attempting to change up into our highest gear and bike up the hills we were forced to give in a push the bikes for about half an hour. It was at this time that James asked Kim how she was getting on using the different gears and she admitted that she didn’t know how to use them so had been in the same gear for the entire trip!! No wonder she looked so hot and sweaty. Ha!

After a relatively peaceful bike ride we made it to Tiburin; tired and a little sun burn we relaxed on the harbour and watch the sun set before boarding the ferry back to San Fran. Walking ‘Cowboy’ style back to our hostel we agreed that we had had a superb day and really enjoyed our 30 KM bike ride, and if we were to do it again we thought it would be best to wear trainers and not flip flops, put on a little more sun cream and learn how to read a map.

Tomorrow we are catching the Greyhound bus to LA and it is expected to take 7 hours, I do hope our Ipods are fully charged!

---