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Published: February 28th 2008
Posted by Onaxthiel: Saturday morning was a bit darker and gloomier than the previous morning. We had decided to head out to the shore line near X's apartment for the day, which is all part of the Golden Gate recreation area. The section of town is known as the Sutro district, after a man who was once the largest land owner in the city and then became the mayor. It's nice how things work out like that for some people. One of his investments was a hotel that stands over the ocean. The original fell into disrepair years ago, but the current incarnation is known as Cliff House and is a very nice looking restaurant. Our breakfast, however, was at a small, third generation cafe that was founded by a Greek family and been with them ever since. It was a very good breakfast, and has an excellent view of the ocean and the ruins of Sutro's once famous baths down below. At one time these baths brought sea water in during high tide, heated it with a coal furnace, and then pumped it into a huge pool capable of holding up to 3,700 bathers at a time. Unfortunately, it to
fell into disrepair eventually, and burned down in the mid sixties. Today though, the ruins are a sight to behold, and fun to climb around on, if you can convince X that she isn't going to slip and fall, or get soaked when waves pound the break wall below. You can also see the series of pipes and aqueducts that were used to get the water into the building, and feel the pressure changes as water rushes in with each wave and rapidly fills the tunnels you are walking in with compressed air.
Moving further up the cliffs on the shoreline, we encountered a set of park rangers that inform people of the history of the area and generally keep the area patrolled. One of the rangers that talked to us happened to be from the same county that Obfuscator and I are from originally, which we thought was kinda funny. Near the top of one of the cliffs is a memorial to the USS San Francisco, a cruiser that fought in the second world war and was involved in one of the very few gunnery duels in that war.
A few more paths lead us to some
very nice views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the mouth of the harbor. X took us to a spot where the waves managed to magnify their sound by pushing and dragging large rocks around on top of each other. Then we went to an art museum called the Legion of Honor. This is a three quarter scale replica of a French building of the same name. As a general rule, I don't like about half of what I see in an art museum. If I like more than half, I consider it to be a pretty good museum. In the case of the Legion of Honor, I was impressed to find that I liked almost every piece they had. Possibly because they almost completely ignored modern, post modern, and abstract art.
Dinner was the next order of business, and X took us to a Vietnamese place not too far from her home, and it was a good meal. Obfuscator and I both took the opportunity to try their fresh coconut juice, and I was quite satisfied by this choice. From there we headed back to X's to work on various projects that we all had to accomplish for
the weekend. Thus ended our stay in SF.
Now, because X didn't trust us to report on our excursion fairly, we've given her the opportunity to "rebut" our posts. This means that you'll have the opportunity to read basically the last few entries all over again! Enjoy!
Posted by Xtvcl: Up until this past weekend I had been waiting in a state of unsurpassed anticipation for the day when my good friends Onaxthiel and Obfuscator would eventually come to visit me. Now it also seems to fall upon me to tell my own side of the visit, a sort of clarifier of key facts, if one will. Even though I have been informed by Onaxthiel that these blog entries are just like FOX news “fair and balanced,” having never been actually been present to witness the events before I have my own suspicions. But let me begin my side of the story at the beginning. I moved to SF about two years ago so I cannot profess to know everything about this city, but it is my feeling that SF is an absolutely beautiful place, with something to offer everyone (and by everyone I am ambitiously including the
very difficult to please Onaxthiel). I also admit that I was confused about the timing of this visit. One must understand that I am a very busy girl who just cannot afford to play hostess at the drop of a hat.
Due to their extremely flexible schedule in September Onaxthiel was unable to really give me any concrete dates for the visit. This was not surprising when I realized that he was about a week off on the date of his own cousin’s wedding as well. It was only my duty to inform Onaxthiel and Obfuscator that the weather here is much nicer and more predictable in the fall of the year. By no means did I encourage them showing up in the middle of rainy season (well a 30% chance of rain weekend) in a week where I have two job interviews to contend with about. Nonetheless, I was very happy to see them. I am also not much of a wilderness person, so reading the blog up to this point I was extremely nervous that perhaps they would, in fact, end up disliking this leg of their journey. So I really did try my best to find
a way to make my time with them a happy one.
Upon their arrival in the afternoon of Day 180, we went over to the Presidio and had a lot of fun looking at the former military installations. I wouldn’t say that the cemetery was my favorite but it was definitely a lot more interesting than if I had gone on my own. The view also wasn’t all that bad. I was so excited that they both seemed up to trying different things food wise, so I had no choice but to take them to Burma Super Star, a restaurant that has the best samusa soup ever (and apparently it was featured on the Food Network as the menu will proudly tell you in several different places). We had quite the tasty dinner and then took a little drive up to Twin Peaks. I will also concede that the visibility was not the best, but imagine my surprise when, with the whole city of SF literally at his feet, Onaxthiel preferred to investigate the local city sponsored bathroom facility. I guess I just am not able to predict with any certainty what Onaxthiel will want to investigate next. We
went back to my place where Onaxthiel and Obfuscator subjected themselves to lots of DVD watching and overzealous excitement on my part to see them. We did, in fact, stay up until the wee hours of the morning.
Day 181 dawned and the weather was no where near as horrible as I had feared that it might be. We were able to take a nice drive over the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County. I was very eager to go hiking with Onaxthiel and Obfuscator, perhaps owning to the fact that I never ever go hiking. In my mind this was my big chance to be all hard core nature girl. No sooner did we veer off of the main trail then we happened upon a section of trail that was closed down (and for the legitimate reason that the makeshift branch that was the bridge spanning a little stream had collapsed). Being a rather law abiding nature girl, I could not even conceive of disobeying national park service posted signs. That was when the trouble began. All I remember from this first trail closure is that Onaxthiel and Obfuscator wanted me to jump across a small stream. This
is the kind of thing that I do not frequently do and good thing I didn’t attempt it because by “jump” what I think they meant was “running leap.” Luckily they were nice enough to show me another way across. For the most part they were also very patient with me.
In classic form, however, they seemed be very preoccupied with certain slugs that I found to be particularly distasteful. Imagine trying to enjoy nature while Onxathiel is stopping to pet a slug. I just don’t get it. Again I am not an expert but I really do suspect that slugs don’t need all of the human contact that Onxathiel says that they do. I was also skeptical of the second trail closure sign that we just blew past. This trail was closed for some kind of rebuilding project that involved a lot of rocks we had to hike over. All in all the time at Muir woods ended well and we were not busted by the National Park Service Police for being in not one but two off limits areas (luckily as Obfuscator pointed out the National Park Service doesn’t really have the staff to stringently enforce their
trail closures). Plus Onxathiel repeatedly reassured me that should I happen to plunge from the side of a hill he would use all of his government sponsored medical knowledge to save me (or at least his cell phone to call EMS). Somehow my nerves were not exactly calmed by these statements.
After a long morning of hiking around I entrusted Onxathiel to drive my car to and from Stinson Beach. Why I did that I am not sure, probably it was because he said that he liked windy roads. We had a lovely drive down Hwy 1 along the coast and stopped at a very nice overlook area. For lunch we had a picnic on Stinson Beach. It really wasn’t the best day for a picnic but I enjoyed it very much nonetheless. The only slight complications occurred when I couldn’t figure out how to use Onxathiel’s knife to slice the cheese for my sandwich (he kept telling me to slice and not saw, but again I am not really sure his way was the optimal one) and when Obfuscator somehow got up to chase a bird and got sand into our pepper potato chips. Sure Obfuscator will tell
you that a little sand is good for you, but I think that both Onxathiel and I doubted that one together. (Obfuscator adds: I DID in fact finish off those chips, and so far, so good.)
After the beach we went to a NIKE missile site. Personally I prefer not to think about missiles but from previous blog entries I knew that it might be something of interest to Onxathiel and Obfuscator. On the way to the missile site we took the panoramic highway, which as Onxathiel couldn’t resist pointing out turned out to be more “scenic” than “panoramic.” I was a little concerned when I started to hear Onxathiel squealing the tires of my car around the curves, but in the end it was the pickles in the back seat that kept bouncing up and hitting me in the back that really drove me crazy and ultimately put an end to Onxathiel’s driving of my car. At the missile site I don’t really remember much other than we got to ride a hydraulic elevator with a missile on it up and down. That was kind of neat. I was about ready to call it a day (I was
getting kind of tired and Obfuscator and Onxathiel both kept saying that they wanted to take naps) but I guess that there was in fact more hiking in my immediate future.
We stopped by the beach so that Obfuscator could take pictures of some surfers when (surprise surprise) Onxathiel decided that he wanted to climb up a very high up looking bunker thing. From my perspective it looked like a piece of concrete. I was not thrilled about it. Really I can’t say enough how really not thrilled I was but somehow I made it up to the top and Onxathiel was somewhat right that in that it was a very nice view. He even took a picture of me up there. Anyway, despite Onxathiel’s feeling that we should explore the entire former military defense of the SF Bay, better reason prevailed and we headed back down. At the bottom we were confronted by a group of people in two limos who were either a wedding without a bride, a funeral, the mob, or an early prom group and also a five minute long (literally that is what the sign said) red light with which to debate it all.
It was a long day and I honestly didn’t feel right again until I was able to take a nice hot shower. That night I decided to take a bit of risk (consisting of going to dinner with Obfuscator and Onxathiel at a tapas place in the upper Haight called Chachacha). I did have a sinking feeling about taking Onxathiel so close to so many pseudo hippies in such a liberal SF-y part of SF, but after the kind of day that we had, all I could think of was the promise of the city’s best sangria. Turns out Onxathiel likes going to busy tapas restaurants in the upper Haight just about as much as I like hiking up big hills to see empty concrete structures (which is to say not at all). Fortunately after a pitcher of sangria and some amazing tapas even Onxathiel grumpiness faded away. I just felt so happy. Plus, I was completely feeling the hippy vibe so much that I felt compelled to share my love with the local street posts. For his part Onaxthiel was back to his usual form of amusement of investigating city bathroom facilities, this time on the shady end
of Golden Gate Park. Good thing he tells me that those things are completely sanitized after each use.
Anyway, owing to the tight schedule of this all I fear my rebuttal will have to be limited to the first two days of the SF adventure. I can only hope that Onaxthiel will find a way to do today (Day 182) all of the justice that it rightly deserves. Truth be told I don’t really want Onaxthiel and Obfuscator to leave but I know that others of you out there are just waiting to have your own adventures with the two of them (and I don’t think that Onxathiel would consent to stay in this city a nanosecond longer than he had to). So even though we don’t exactly share the same point of view, I am truly grateful to Obfuscator and Onaxthiel for letting me share my point of view with you and I wish them well in their remaining travels.
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Mom
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Sorry Xtvcl, I was never very good at lines so the boys never got practice standing in lines. I'm really surprised you got them to wait for a table in a restaurant at all.