Another week of craziness!

Eric likes to make himself the target of our pranks by forgetting to lock his room - twice!  We decided to take it upon ourselves to rearrange his room for him.  I think he has learned his lesson finally!

Yesterday we went to San Francisco to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge.  Before and after this, we biked all around the city and parks as well.  In doing so, I can honestly say that there is no exaggeration that San Francisco is full of hills.  It is sure pleasant to have your brakes on for 3 straight blocks but when you have to go the other direction, a much much bigger challenge.  I think I can say though that I only had to get off my bike and walk it up once, and I most definitely wasn't the only one.  I also now understand the importance of having the ability to change gears on your bike; it makes life a lot easier.

Here's a little more detail on our path:

We first got to the train station and I forgot that it was Sunday so there was the farmer's market.  I wanted to get some fruit to take with but thought better of it because we only had 10 minutes and I did not want to be having to run to get on the train (again).  There was a nice guy on the train that was visiting his daughter.  He supplied us with paper to play a game (similar to dots or tic tac toe) and suggested some places to eat and see in San Fran.

Once we got to the city we first ate lunch and had some delicious pizza.  As we then began our biking, we found the area of the city where, I'm nearly 100% sure, the opening of Full House was filmed.  Megan and I decided to pretend that we were having the picnic like the Tanners.




This describes our group quite well.

We then got to Golden Gate Park, which, to my understanding, is larger than Central Park.  They were having a Lindee Hop class for free!






After getting through the park, we headed up the west coast until getting to the bridge.  We saw the Cliff House and the Sutro Baths.  We decided to check that out more at a later date.  Getting up the hill of a coast, we had to cut through some paths.  This was major off-roading on these paths and I had carried my bike up stairs two times already during the day.  I'm pretty sure this was meant for walkers.  Our legs were definitely starting to feel the pain from the long bike ride.


 
We finally got to the bridge.  It was really neat.  



 
We biked on the bay side of the bridge so (though difficult to see in this picture, we could see Alcatraz)
 
Getting across it, we headed into a very quaint and charming city called Sausalito. 

  

From Sausalito we took the ferry back to San Francisco.  We then headed back to the train station to return to Mountain View and hurried to bed after the 23+ mile (see map below) mega-hilly bike ride.

View of San Francisco from the ferry