San Francisco Walk-About

Thursday: (04/07) Up early, took a quick shower and headed off to the train at 0630 to go for a walk in San Francisco. The early departure is to get to the Arboretum in Golden Gate park before 0900 because it’s free. The last train that assures enough time to get across town to the park in time left Palo Alto at 0650. I ended up with about 50 minutes extra so I got my breakfast from Peasant Pies, a nice sausage egg and cheese hand pie. I enjoyed a good walk around the arboretum with very few other people and took way too many photos. It seems it only takes me about 2 hours to cover the whole place. I left the arboretum and picked up a donut and a tea then walked over to a neighborhood garden I like to enjoy them. It was overpopulated with tiny gardeners from some school. Then I hiked up to the top of Mt Sutro and over to Sutro Tower then back through the Sutro Open Space Preserve. I caught a train out to Ocean Beach. The train was delayed 45 minutes on a route that should have been every 10 minutes. Six trains passed by going the opposite direction. I probably could have walked out to the beach in the same time, only about 40 blocks. I had an idea to walk up along the bluffs to the Golden Gate Bridge then come back to get dinner in the Mission District at a restaurant I like, La Torta Gorda. I had checked earlier in the day and knew it closed at 6pm. It was 3pm now and I had run out of gas, so I decided to walk back through GG Park and head to dinner. I hadn’t had lunch and needed something so I picked up a snack and a drink at Safeway. I enjoy my snack at the tulip garden by one of the windmills in the park. Then I walked across the park back to the East end. I made it back and caught the train back toward the Mission. That train doesn’t go all the way so I was walking several block to get over to 24th Street then catch a bus to get me to the restaurant. I was 5 blocks from 24 St and it was 5:50pm. I finally realized I had goofed up and couldn’t possible make it before the restaurant closed so I returned to Mission Street and caught s bus toward the train. I transferred to a T train and returned to the Caltrain station. I had to wait 25 minutes for the next train. That next train was an Express train that would stop at the downtown Palo Alto station but not the California Avenue station near my home. The following train would be 25 minutes later and stop at California Avenue but would stop at every station and arrive in Palo Alto 45 minutes later than the earlier train. When I got to Palo Alto I caught a bus toward my house and arrived a block from the house at 824pm so the plan saved me 20 minutes and a half mile walk from the station to home. All day, Lou had been fighting getting the power back on for the cooler. In trying to restore that she lost power other places. To top that the LPG detector was sounding and couldn’t be reset either. When I got home I turned on a couple of breakers she had turned off and I cut the power to the LPG detector. I had already ordered a new detector but it had been cooperative and only needed to be reset once every couple of days. Fortunately, the replacement arrives tomorrow. I prepared a tortilla with ham, cheese and salsa with scrambled eggs for my dinner.