In Which I Commute to Work By Cable Car

I spent the entire morning in my hotel room---a zero-foot commute. There was no coffee in the hotel---I'd prepared the night before with a bottled version so I could get up and start working without leaving the room.

Outside in America, I live an exceptional life, but here in San Francisco, I am like Superman on Kandor----I'm just a normal techie work drone. Or not. Sometimes I like thinking that I am. It gives me a chance to excel among the excellent. Who wouldn't want to take advantage of that?

After plowing through a bunch of work, and feeling caught up with obligations for the day and even for the next day, I tied up my desktop and finally sortied out onto Kearny, coming right out into busy mid-day San Francisco. I was right across from Cafe Zoetrope. I hoofed it uphill through Chinatown. The sun was still well high in the sky. The air was perfectly balmly.

I found myself glad I'd prepped for the City with that day of hking in Yosemite. Ironically the sidewalks in the city felt less urban and less crowded than the path in the park---and fewer European tourists as well.

I loved the way the hill feels in your legs as you climb it.

At the Chinese Hospital I across to Washington and went uphill from there. At the corning of Mason I grabbed a cup of hot coffee at the Gallery Cafe across from the Cable Car Museum. After I was done i went inside the museum. It was free, and magnificent. You can look right down at the sheaves as they guide the cables in from the four different lines (there are only three car routes, that use these four lines). I delighted in the exhibits, and being able to see out across the humming cables as they approach the reat engines that guide them. There's an awesome exhibit on cable splicing. Wire rope is a fascinating topic.

From there I followed the Hyde line for a while, uphill to the top of Nob Hill, and down to Hyde. Then I cut across to the south, to California, and followed that line to its end, at Van Ness, which is the end of the line. I went inside the guitar store, and looked at some of the stuff on the wall, and then I got on to the cable car that was sitting at the end of the line at Van Ness.

There were only a few people on the car. I sat on one of the outside seats, looking out at the street. I had the whole bench to myself.

When the car operator came up to me, I awkwardly offered him the fare at the wrong time---six dollars in casch. That confused him.

"You're a local, right?" he asked me.

He paused, a bit confused, and offered "or are you a tourist? I thought you were a local."

"Today," I said, "I'm a tourist."