A good friend of mine and fellow traveler was flown home from Malta recently by good old Tulare County to testify against the guys who kidnapped her and stole her car last December. But that's another story.
The point is the county offered to pay for my gas if I'd pick her up from SFO, and seeing how I love San Francisco I told them "Well I guess I could..."
So I left Fresno last Friday with one of her best friends to pick her up from the airport at 8.
I knew we were in for an adventure when I inadvertently took the wrong freeway west across the valley. I'm not sure who decided to randomly include a freeway exit in the left lane but obviously I was not consulted.
Lucky for my passenger and I everything eventually meets up with the I-5 here in California, and I do mean everything, so all was not lost.
Just north of the junction with the 5 there is a massive facility of some kind surrounded by gigantic, 25-30 ft fence.... except for the north side of the complex.
I'm just as curious as you are.
Pushing onwards me and my compatriot got to SF without much further incident, if you don't count the ridiculous construction before the San Mateo bridge that is. Concrete barriers on each side of the lane and a 25 mph corkscrew of an on-ramp.
I felt like a hotwheels car.
In fact, as we got to the SFO exit on the 101 I noticed the clock on my dashboard reported we had made killer time, hour and a half to spare killer time.
With all that time on our hand we did what anyone would do, we hit the city.
Of course, we weren't entirely sure what we wanted to see, and we also seemed to be using Jack Sparrow's compass. If I was sure something was to our left then she was just as sure it was in the dead opposite direction.
So we wandered around the city like that until our bladders got the best of us and we parked near a Burger King to take care of business.
The Burger King on Market street has a bathroom guard. He's little and angry and holds the keys to relief. Not a good combination. Not a good combination at all.
Even after proving that we were indeed paying customers and had permission to use the restroom he had to be talked into it, and if you got that far he would still grumble about how much he hates letting people use it.
After solving all of the bathroom troll's riddles we returned to the car where I realized I had missed a phone call from south SF sometime during our wanderings.
Things I forgot to do:
1. Adjust my dashboard clock for daylight savings time.
Yup.
People whose flight got in early:
1. My friend.
Yup.
All told she waited about an hour in the airport while her deadbeat friends escaped from the city as fast as they could. Naturally we decided not to tell her why we had been late.
Naturally I was sold out as soon as we got to the curb.
The drive home was less eventful, we paid a visit to Donut Nation in Los Banos where the king requires a $5 minimum purchase if you wanna use a card and to Robertito's where they teach you how to fish your food out of a pool of delicious grease.
Finally rolled back home around 2 in AM and nobody even got kidnapped, so I deem the trip a success.
Cheers till next time,
The Wayward Hoover
