In Which I Visit SF and Begin Finalizing
Nov. 6th, 2018 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aI don't think I've been out to San Francisco recreationally all year. That's in large part because BART does most of its track maintenance on the weekends, and this year this were maintaining track around West Oakland. That means that about every other weekend all summer they were doing bus bridges into the city. Spoiler: you never want to bus bridge on public transit if you can avoid it, and you especially don't want to while hauling a bike. So the couple of times that I thought about heading into SF for a Saturday, because it was warm and there wasn't a big event going on out there, I couldn't because of the bus bridge.
But, it's autumn so the construction is down, and it was unseasonably warm this first Saturday in November, and I decided to get out to SF while I still could, with my main goal being to bike up to Golden Gate Park and around it.
Standing on the BART platform, I was pleased to see one of the new BART trains arriving. There are just a few of them on the tracks, so this was a special treat. By some definitions.
Clean: CHECK. Ugly as sin with day-glo colors: CHECK. Lots of space due to lack of seats: CHECK.
I was most surprised by the lack of bike space, because bike space is one of those things that BART has been highlighting on these new trains. The old cars have two spaces for bikes, one by each set of doors. You can easily place one bike against the wall, and you can more delicately lean one or two additional bikes against that first one. Easy bike space: 2. Total bike space: 6. The new BART cars cut that in half, and though they now have racks, that doesn't make up for the lost space. You can in fact only fit two bikes easily in the three rack spaces because the third has to be squished in the middle, backward. Easy bike space: 2. Total bike space: 3. In other words, there are going to be a lot more people forced to hold their bikes on the busier routes. Thanks BART for thinking of the future.
(I took two non-new trains over the course of the day, and each time someone laid their bike against mine; if the same went on at the other half of the car, that's more bikes than the crappy new cars could support.)
The Park was great. I love Golden Gate Park because it's so big and lusciously green and has so much different stuff in it. I biked all the way through the park out to Ocean Beach, enjoyed the beach for a little bit because it was shockingly warm and not windy, and then biked back up to Spreckels lake (where I wrote for a while) and then biked up to Stow Lake so that I could hike up Strawberry Hill (where I read for a while).
It turns out that Strawberry Hill to home (via walking, biking, and BARTing) takes about the same amount of time as the top of Tilden Park to home (via walking and bussing).
In other news ...
We're now 14 months from our planned move to Hawaii, and that means I've started to see some lasts.
When I got my glasses from optometrist last Thursday, I told him I probably wouldn't be back. My next glasses would usually come no earlier than October 2020, which should be after we're well settled into our island home, and enjoying the fact that winter isn't coming.
When we started the always-hated daylight-standard time on Sunday, I realized that this would be the last time I had to face its full wrath. This year we get four horrific months of it getting dark while I work, but next year it should only be two, before we move to the land without clock resetting.
And as of today, I think I've voted for the last time in California, which may mean that was also my last experience of going down to my polling place and filling in a ballot, because Hawaii is testing out all-mail voting in Kauai, starting in 2020.
In yet other news, the work on the house next door that started while I was in Toronto (at the end of September) continues. They actually disappeared for two full weeks at the end of October, and we sat watching to see if their unprotected wood-framed back area was going to get rained on, but they got lucky, and the one storm that was supposed to come in during that time disappeared. Now they're back waking me up every morning, but gone by 3pm or 4pm. Weird.
But, it's autumn so the construction is down, and it was unseasonably warm this first Saturday in November, and I decided to get out to SF while I still could, with my main goal being to bike up to Golden Gate Park and around it.
Standing on the BART platform, I was pleased to see one of the new BART trains arriving. There are just a few of them on the tracks, so this was a special treat. By some definitions.
Clean: CHECK. Ugly as sin with day-glo colors: CHECK. Lots of space due to lack of seats: CHECK.
I was most surprised by the lack of bike space, because bike space is one of those things that BART has been highlighting on these new trains. The old cars have two spaces for bikes, one by each set of doors. You can easily place one bike against the wall, and you can more delicately lean one or two additional bikes against that first one. Easy bike space: 2. Total bike space: 6. The new BART cars cut that in half, and though they now have racks, that doesn't make up for the lost space. You can in fact only fit two bikes easily in the three rack spaces because the third has to be squished in the middle, backward. Easy bike space: 2. Total bike space: 3. In other words, there are going to be a lot more people forced to hold their bikes on the busier routes. Thanks BART for thinking of the future.
(I took two non-new trains over the course of the day, and each time someone laid their bike against mine; if the same went on at the other half of the car, that's more bikes than the crappy new cars could support.)
The Park was great. I love Golden Gate Park because it's so big and lusciously green and has so much different stuff in it. I biked all the way through the park out to Ocean Beach, enjoyed the beach for a little bit because it was shockingly warm and not windy, and then biked back up to Spreckels lake (where I wrote for a while) and then biked up to Stow Lake so that I could hike up Strawberry Hill (where I read for a while).
It turns out that Strawberry Hill to home (via walking, biking, and BARTing) takes about the same amount of time as the top of Tilden Park to home (via walking and bussing).
In other news ...
We're now 14 months from our planned move to Hawaii, and that means I've started to see some lasts.
When I got my glasses from optometrist last Thursday, I told him I probably wouldn't be back. My next glasses would usually come no earlier than October 2020, which should be after we're well settled into our island home, and enjoying the fact that winter isn't coming.
When we started the always-hated daylight-standard time on Sunday, I realized that this would be the last time I had to face its full wrath. This year we get four horrific months of it getting dark while I work, but next year it should only be two, before we move to the land without clock resetting.
And as of today, I think I've voted for the last time in California, which may mean that was also my last experience of going down to my polling place and filling in a ballot, because Hawaii is testing out all-mail voting in Kauai, starting in 2020.
In yet other news, the work on the house next door that started while I was in Toronto (at the end of September) continues. They actually disappeared for two full weeks at the end of October, and we sat watching to see if their unprotected wood-framed back area was going to get rained on, but they got lucky, and the one storm that was supposed to come in during that time disappeared. Now they're back waking me up every morning, but gone by 3pm or 4pm. Weird.