Today, I have one more cable car line to ride to complete the San Francisco cable car system, and three museums I've read about on the Internet that I want to check out.
To take care of the first, I get off BART at Embarcadero this time, and go upstairs to the other cable car terminal, to take the California Avenue route to its terminus at Van Ness Avenue.
I then walk one block up Van Ness and take a bus back in the other direction, headed for the Cable Car Museum, which is built around the machinery that powers the cable cars. It's also free, so the price is right.
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| The giant constantly turning wheels around which the cables are wrapped. |
After seeing the museum, and in particular, the videotaped explanation of how cable cars work, I want to take another cable car ride, but I still have two museums to go.
I leave the museum and get on a bus that I think is going to go within a block of the next museum I'm trying to get to, but as it turns out, the bus has been slightly rerouted since my San Francisco transit map was printed in 2000, so I end up with a four-block walk. It's not a big deal, since it's another nice day.
I find the Cartoon Art Museum, which is a block south of Market Street and is one of only two cartoon museums in the U.S., or so I'm told. It's actually a little smaller than I thought it would be, but it's still a very interesting place. The main exhibition is of original "Spider-Man" comic book artwork, with a couple of examples of the "Spider-Man" newspaper comic strip thrown in.
I, of course, want to buy about half the books that are for sale in the gift shop, but my excuse is that I don't have any space in my luggage.
I eat lunch at the first fast food place I see on Market Street, then head for the third museum of the day, which is over on the Pacific coast. To get there, I have to take the light rail and transfer to a bus.
This is the Musee Mecanique, which is in the basement of a building called the Cliff House. It's basically a private collection of old coin-operated mechanical devices, including fortune tellers, music makers, and games. My favorite is a mechanical baseball game; unfortunately, it's the closest thing the museum has to a pinball machine.
I get back on the bus going in the other direction and take it all the way to meet a different light rail line, head downtown, then head back out on yet another light rail line, which finally intersects with BART, which I take back to Berkeley.
Since BART has different fares according to distance traveled, farecards have to be run through the turnstiles when exiting the system as well as when entering it. It's rush hour, so there's a long line of people exiting at North Berkeley. Unsolicited, the man in line in front of me turns around and says, "When they call it Bay Area Rapid Transit, they don't mean this part." I give him my best noncommittal nod, and he looks somewhat disappointed that I didn't strike up a conversation with him about various rapid transit fare systems, or something like that.
I finally make it out of the station, and John, Elizabeth, Masako, Nat, and I go out for Mexican food, then drive up to the hills, stopping off at the Lawrence Hall of Science just in time for sunset.
After I say some random words into the telephone for a while, I manage to get "Julie," the automated voice of Amtrak, to claim that the Coast Starlight is running on time, based on the fact that it was reported leaving San Jose on time. John and Elizabeth drive me to the Emeryville station, and the Starlight turns out to be 20 minutes late. This time, I'm in Room 3 in the sleeping car named "Utah." The beds are already made up in my room, so I first of all figure out how to retract the upper bunk, and then I stay up for a while and look at the lights going by.
After the next stop, which is Martinez, there's an announcement over the P.A. system that passengers who just got off the bus can go to the lounge car for a free sandwich, bag of chips, and a drink, so I assume some train that was supposed to connect with this one was running way late. The couple in the room across the corridor from me starts talking loudly about this. He's going to go get a sandwich, but she's too tired to go, but she wants either tuna or ham if they have them, plus a bag of chips. Fortunately, this is the last loud conversation they have, at least that I'm awake for.
| The Pacific Ocean, seen from just outside the Musee Mecanique. |
| Former site of a bathhouse, right next to the Pacific. |
| Aside from the surfboard that someone has drawn in (I think that's supposed to be a surfboard), there's a big problem with this sign: it's a regular pedestrian crossing, but it's in the pentagon shape that's only supposed to be used for school crossings. |
| This sign is the correct shape, but the only people who are supposed to be looking at it are light rail operators. Also note the yellow band painted around the pole behind it, which is the sole indication of many bus/light rail stops in San Francisco. (On the other side, it has "CAR STOP" stenciled vertically, and then the "L" and "18" show which routes stop there. I was here because I was transferring from the 18 to the L.) |
| Sunset, as seen from the hills above Berkeley. |
| (Left to right) Me; my uncle John. |