Last night Jessie ordered in India food. It was delish. Today Mike, Jessie, and I decamped. Mike rode his bike to work. Instead of riding her bike to work, Jessie rode the Muni streetcar with me downtown.
She hopped off at her office. I continued on, missing my stop at the Embarcadero Center where I worked for a summer a lifetime ago.
I corrected my error without difficulty other than the fact that the huge duffle was digging into my shoulders.
Back at Embarcadero I switched to BART. I find it amusing that BART hasn’t solved the problem of onboard announcements. “Next stop $&@/;)&&@&& Station.”
I managed not to miss my stop but once I got on the streets, I took some wrong turns before finally setting off toward my hotel.
I’m pretty sure this is an unsafe neighborhood. There’s trash everywhere. Lots of homeless people. Every other vehicle is a heap. Businesses are all protected by tall metal fencing and locked gates. Fortunately the hotel has an airport shuttle. (BART connects to the airport via a spur line that has smaller, shuttle trains.)
I’ve been in so many sketchy motels since I left home that I feel like a bank robber hiding out from the heat. No worries. They’ll never take me alive.
I’m not very far from where the interstate pancaked on itself during the World Series earthquake. And just a half mile from the ugliest stadium in Major League Baseball. I’d go to a game anyway but it’s the All Star break.
Walking around has re-awakened my wonky left knee and hip. During the tour, I pushed The Mule up some mighty big hills and my hip and leg never complained. I just walked a half mile and it feels like my left side has become unhinged. This will make for an interesting hike next Saturday.
Speaking of when I get home, I have a fairly busy schedule: refill my asthma prescription, repair my laptop, have diner breakfast with my wife, deal with 7 1/2 weeks of mail, try to go to two happy hours at the same time, go to Friday Coffee Club, do the hike, ride to the botanical garden to see the lotus blossoms, ride to the sunflowers fields in Montgomery County, Maryland, put The Mule back together, and take The Mule to the bike shop to replace worn out parts.
That’s too much. Maybe I should just stay here and rob a few banks.
Very big thanks to Jessie and Mike for being such terrific hosts these past few days.
A Few Spokes Shy of a Wheel 
I have enjoyed reading about your trip.
As a side note, I am getting new tires for my road bike. Any thoughts on brands you like? I am currently ride 23cm tires, but thinking of upsizing to 25cm.
Dude you need a break, every thought of riding your bike on a tour (rimshot) Safe travels home sir and thanks for letting us tag along.
We have a similar freeway here in Seattle – the Viaduct which is now being torn down – and every time I was on the lower portion I would flash back to the coverage of the Nimitz Freeway (880) there in nor cal and chant “no earth quake, no earth quake.” The New Yorker had an article in 2015 called the really big one about how the PNW will get flattened one day, so we got that going for us, which is nice.
Reading about your travels has made me very envious. What i don’t envy you is all the getting back into “normal” day-to-day life back home, especially having to go through all that mail!
Who knows? Maybe I’ll skip in another bike tour. A much shorter one.