An escapist tale (San Francisco, Day I) or Short-Sleeved Shirt, Shorts, and Sock-less Sandals

For anyone who didn't notice, there is a six letter alliteration in the title of this post. ssssss ...

checking  out of my SRO

 I check out at 11, pick up some French characters, namely M & C (originally from Epernay, France) across the street, and figure out which direction I should walk towards Fisherman's Wharf.  NO, I don't want to visit THAT tourist trap, but I know that the location of Blazing Saddles that has e-bikes is located close to the wharf.

 I had forgotten how BEAUTIFUL SF is.  None of the tear down the old and replace it by concrete mania has taken a hold here yet.  All those beautiful old buildings and trees gives the place a charming flair. Au contraire, Vancouver can be called many things ( Don't get me started, LOL), but charming is NOT one of them.

still life with insulators and moon

 The way up Russian Hill looks steep, so at some point I ask people waiting at a Cable Car stop how and how much one pays for the Cable Car. When I hear the answer of 'about $7 cash', I just shake my head and keep walking.  That means I still have NEVER EVER taken a San Francisco cable car.  I leave that to the tourists ;-)  And good thing I didn't take it. There are MANY places that I wouldn't have seen and where I wouldn't have stopped to take a picture.

The view from Russian Hill (yes, the crooked street is close to here ;-)

the Sausalito ferry heading into the fog

NOT cycling the bridge today

Just 2 blocks after taking this picture of Golden Gate (in the fog, as is not uncommon), I run RIGHT into the Blazing Saddles location I was looking for.  But after being told that the Stromer e-bike rents for a 'flat rate' of US$ 88 for 24 hours, I just laugh (nice try of highway robbery) and tell them I'll have lunch first.  The attendee tries to still reel me in with a last minute 'deal' of US$ 71 for the same bike, but even that seems VERY steep for a 4 or 5 hour rental.  




There is a Sushi place right next door and I order a Mackerel fillet. Not with the standard and boring Teriyaki sauce, but with something salt.  

The last time I had mackerel was in Saigon with Wilhelm and Ute and it was AMAZING. In September in Korbach, Ute told me with just a tiny touch of jovial Schadenfreude just the two of them went back to the same place the day I had left and had the same dish again.  My present meal might not beat their sneaky mackerel-munching in my absence, but I'm sure that I am scoring quite high in the Eat-fabulous-Mackerel-in-an-amazing-location Competition, if there is one.

All this musing takes place while I munch on the mackerel, and eating usually is conducive to the best thinking. I won't give them the pleasure of renting an e-bike for an outrageous amount, but will simply rent a regular bike (NO motor) to find head to Crissy Field.  Good pictures should be the result !  If these two glasses of wine don't affect my ability to hold the camera steady tooooo much, LOL.

The sticker right next to Indochina reads "You will change the world"

When I get to Crissy Field, I am disappointed.  There are no Herons on the field, unlike two years ago, when the slow-stepping birds were on the hunt for moles and I caught one on film (digital chip) just after it had pulled one from the ground.  The field today is filled with dogs and their owners. Could that be the reason why there are no more herons?????

At a lake next to Crissy Field,I finally discover two herons, but that's a measly number compared to two years ago.

I return the rented bike only a bit more than 2 hours later instead of the rented and paid for 4 hours. The distance is much shorter than I remember (or maybe I'm pedaling too fast) and my age is showing as well.

After another glass of wine at Applebees (another first) in Fisherman's Wharf, I take an old-fashioned tram to the next Bart station.

Bart takes me from Embarcadero to Lafayette, and after a 25 minute walk I am at the house of my hosts.

I don't think Clinton in this election display is meant to look like a Halloween Witch ;-)

The evening concludes with a fabulous meal at a French restaurant and in retrospect toooo much wine ;-)

Now these are scallops

Trade craft of an escape artist (or YVR to SFO)

After dealing with bilateral mediocrity at the security check and immigration control, I head straight for the Adult Section of the Duty Free Store. I still remember the strange feeling of EVERYONE looking at me when I entered the nudie magazine section of stores in my younger years (Remember, there was NO internet then) when I'm heading into the shielded-off and over-21-years-sign-protected section where they keep the tobacco products.   How times have changed ! Tobacco is the new Porn !

Anyhoo, they have something new there. Most things haven't changed. A carton of Canadian cigarettes costs almost CAD$ 90.  A carton of American cigarettes is much cheaper at CAD$ 63, so that is usually what I buy. Strange, American cigarettes contain  fewer additives and consequently taste better than Canadian products, so who in his right mind would pay more for an inferior product?  You guessed it: Canadians. (LOL)
So what is new?  Vancouver Duty Free now sells Chinese cigarettes.   For CAD$ 45 per carton. How could I refuse, especially with the charming name of the brand ;-)

No smoking lounge, but a Dog Shit-House?  Oh, P_LEASE, YVR, get real 

I get in the plane only to find out that I have the seat that I always envied other people for.  The small Airbus planes on this route have two emergency exits over the wings and at the exit doors, one window seat is just missing.  I'm sitting right behind that giant void, i.e. I have unlimited leg room.

I sleep through about 1.5 hours of the 2-hour flight.   But I wake up early enough to see San Francisco Bay approaching through the window.  Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, downtown San Francisco, everything is visible in breathtaking detail. Unfortunately my camera is in my backpack

Not my pic. And this doesn't even come close to the amazing view I had

Downtown San Francisco looks like an Aluminum sculpture of amazing detail. My seat neighbours ( a couple in their early 20s) are wielding a cell phone but the hope of getting a shot from a seat that far from the window is ZERO, so I offer to take a picture for them.  Let's just say that cell phone camera controls should be more standardized and that after 3 failed attempts, my neighbours treat me like a regrettable old man who never had a camera in his hand.  No point in disputing that assessment ;-)

At SFO airport I march straight to the front of the terminal (a Looooong walk) and light a cigarette.  As soon as I step out of the door, I  am surprised by the strength and HEAT the 5 pm afternoon sun hits my paling skin. Looking at the normally coloured (i.e. not pale) laughing people in the smoking area, I feel like something that has lived in a dark cold cave for 20 years and now has crept to the outside for the first time.

5 pm shadows

I take BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit from the airport to Civic Center Station (Somewhere in a box in Vancouver is a BART ticket with $10 left, but since I simply have too many boxes I ended up buying another one).  

By the time I reach Civic Center, it is almost 6 and the sun is low.

This is also the first time I take a bus in San Francisco. I acquired a Clipper Card at a vending machine in the Bart station and after a bit of a wait get to board an overcrowded bus for the rather steep fare of US$ 2.25.  But I'm too tired to walk !

The hotel is CHEAP for San Francisco, but then it also definitely is no Trump hotel (thank God!) , Muslims, Latinos, People who pay their rent here by providing favours to other guests (We'll leave it at that since there might be minor readers ;-), as well as guests who simply refuse to pay more than $300 per night to stay in a fancy hotel.. NO visitors are allowed between 9 pm and 9 am and most rooms don't have their own bathroom. Reminds me of the places on Hastings Street in Vancouver.  I'm staying In an SRO hotel !!!

But I sleep for an amazing 13 hours and the only reason I finally walk across the street to find some coffee is that the check-out hour is approaching rapidly.  That Sauvignon Blanc I bought at the CVS across the street before checking in might have something to do with that ;-)

You might have noticed a certain trend here. Instead of Davidoff Cigars, taxi cabs, and the San Francisco Nikko Hotel you see  cheap Chinese cigarettes, cheap public transport, and an SRO hotel.  

The moral of the story?  Whatever you don't spend on this trip can finance the next trip !

Pulling another Houdini (or A wet nightmare rant instead of a tale of wet dreams)

That title probably needs some explaining.  Just because someone else thought of that phrase before me (But not really the same way I thought of it ;-) 

It's even in the Urban Dictionary, but strangely the meaning shown there is To Disappear, which leaves me confused. 

Harry Houdini was an Escape Artist, not a Disappearing Artist.  And that was the intended meaning when I thought of coining the phrase. 

Another escape.
(a masterful one, if you like ;-)




But what is it that I feel that is worth escaping from?

Just watch Anthony Bourdain's episode of No Reservations about Vancouver and you'll get the idea. 

Right in front of my room, there are mushrooms breaking through the asphalt (I kid you NOT) !

 That should provide a reasonable image of how pleasantly WET everything is in these parts. And there is no reasonable hope of ever seeing dry soil until at least May.  But much worse than the WET and the CONSTANT CLAMMY COLD is the lack of light.  Life and Light SUCK under this constant cloud cover.  Just look at this animated GIF. Even Alaska gets more light than Seattle and Vancouver ! 

If you take a tram at 1 pm and the outside looks dark compared to the lit inside of the train, you know you have a problem.  It's so bad that there even exists a medical condition with an amazing acronym. SAD stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder. There is a reason why the city thought about installing anti-jumper netting under all the bridges and has installed impossible to climb fences on one major bridge. Work on another bridge is progress.  The Huffington Post wrote on the subject "Vancouver needs mental health funding, not suicide fences". Ah well, that's not the Canadian way (tongue in cheek) 

In the mad rush to sell shoe-box-sized condominiums for outrageous prices to unsuspecting young buyers who don't know any better and are willing to mortgage themselves to upper level lower lip (imagine standing in water; and then imagine what a rising water level / mortgage rates would do to you), yet another high-rise is being constructed right next to my hotel. Now imagine not only being accompanied by the noise of heavy machinery all day but also feeling the tracks of those machines moving over the ground through the soles of your feet (or your butt skin, if you happen to be in bed).  

Please note that I haven't even touched on car traffic, congestion, air quality, or the recently developed general tendency of Vancouverites to NOT smile. Also note that The Economist has selected this very city as the 3rd most liveable city in the world again last year.  LOL, Beam me up, Scotty ! 

It's not all bad.  I had my hair cut yesterday (YES, there is still some left).  My fabulous hair-cutter moved salons again and has moved to close to 41st and Victoria. I was starving right after I saw her (and I had to pee), so I looked for a place to eat rather frantically.  Out of the corner of my eye I see the text fragment Hoi and instantly my head spun around. Hoi An?? Yes, that's what it read. Hoi An Cafe.  
After spending TET (Vietnamese Chinese New Year) in Hoi An and experiencing the best fireworks of my life, how could I NOT eat there? And good thing I did. 

 The Special Cao Lau I ate at Hoi An Cafe yesterday was better than the Special Cao Lau that I ate in Hoi An in February.  And that's saying A LOT !!!!
(But then,the one in Hoi An was 1/5 of the price)
No, it's not the general appearance that distinguishes this dish from standard Vancouver fare.  There is FLAVOUR in this dish.  I don't know what it is but I know I will come back here, just to eat this dish again.

February's Special Cao Lau in Hoi An

I take this meal as an early glimpse of the NEXT Houdini about to be pulled. 11 more sleeps to that one !









But back to today's Houdini.
It's 6 am in Vancouver, DARK, WET, and my pants are still wet from last night's walk (Do YOU know what Herons do at night?). This afternoon it will be sunny and 20 degrees. It hasn't been that many weeks since I experienced weather like that, and in my present state of mind the physical and emotional well-being that I know this kind of weather will cause is hard to imagine.  

I'm coming !

NO, NO, if Crissy Field was in Vancouver, this image would depict a GREY HERON in front of a GREY SKY.

And they let me in.  Vancouver security personnel doesn't even understand the cattle reference in my comment anymore.  For them and their managers it has become normal to have the line-up continue all the way out the entrance gates to the security area. My question what it would take to open all the available security processing lines only gets me a blank look.  Ah well, why try to be world class if you can get by with mediocre hick-town performance?  

Go Canada Go!  

Yet another US border official lectures me that a passport just SHOULD NOT look like mine does. I heard the same from a US border guy 2 years ago. Strangely enough, no-one else in all those passport controls around the world ever said a single word.

Go Trump Go !

Crepey breakfast with the FFC (Foremost Ferry Consultant)

So my friend Alan is in town. The one who is also known as The Ferry Consultant.  I just checked my blog and even though I have used the term Ferry Consultant in 8 separate posts, I never got around to providing a detailed job description.  

That term actually predates this blog by about 6 months ! It all started in April of 2012 with my first ever trip to Asia, namely the journey to Hong Kong, just a week away.  Alan, being a native son of HK, provided a list of things to do while there, which included an item about taking a trip on something called The Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour.

Star Ferry May 2012

The Star Ferry got most of the credit of my fabulous 6 days in fabulous Hong Kong, when I asked Alan as a joke, whether he knew of any other great ferry rides around the world.  











The two obscure Italian names at a lake close to the Swiss border that he mentioned (Varenna, Bellagio,Lake Como) in reply were filed somewhere in the mental drawer labelled "As if I'm ever going to make it to that neck of the woods in this lifetime".











Six month later I was sitting in a train with my Spare Mom to EXACTLY that neck of the woods that I had thought I'd never ever see.  And Alan passed the test.

The ferry ...

Spare mom loved the trip so much that people at her funeral more than 2 years later were talking to me about that trip.

... from Varenna ...

And the ONLY reason that we traveled there was Alan's mentioning of two village names. 

... to Bellagio

Both my spare mom and I enjoyed the area so much that we ended up staying in Bellagio for 3 nights instead of the planned 1 night.  Ever since that 2012 trip Alan has occupied the position of Foremost Ferry Consultant (TM). 

But I digress. This post was supposed to be about the breakfast. And NO, it wasn't creepy or crappy at all !  Me living in this town meant I had to come up with a suggestion for a restaurant for meeting and Denny's was neither good enough nor conveniently located for Alan, so I used TripAdvisor and located a breakfast place serving crepes on Robson Street.

Given that this is Canada, and given that France is known for its fabulous food, I am expecting to be disappointed by the offered fare, but the very first impression actually is a very good one.  

The waiter brings me a liquor menu at 9:30 am !   

How tres civilized,LOL. 


Naturally I order a glass of wine, in particular a White Bear Sauvignon Blanc.











And the food is fabulous too!   
I wish this place was right next to my place of living instead of Denny's (No! Eda, Regina, et. al., DON'T rip my head off, I WOULD miss all the fabulous waitresses at Denny's).

National Geographic Magazine published a list of the TOP 10 City Boat Trips in the world. Bellagio to Varenna is not on the list (no city in sight ?), but Hong Kong's Star Ferry is. So is the Sausalito Ferry in San Francisco, the Bosphorus Ferry in Istanbul, and something by the name of BC Ferries.  But then lists are never complete and I don't know why the Havanna Harbour ferry is not on that list or the Speed Boat linking Phnom Penh to Siem Reap or the ferry between Bingen and Ruedesheim.  Must have to do with the sample sizes available to the reviewers ;-)


Anyhuu, breakfasting with Alan reminds me that I'm going to a concert in 10 days. ( I might finally get out of the constant pouring rain of Vancouver)

Hong Kong 2014

A new perusal of the list of performing artists leaves me a little in shock when I finally clue in who Roger Waters is. 

Because now that I know who Roger Waters is (think Pink Floyd), I know he will be playing a certain song next week.


And I know I'll be shedding tears during THIS SONG at the concert.  

. Put your hands over your ears: I'm going to SCREAM !!!

 Those F(^&$%g Microsoft MORONS

 HOW Friggin more RETARDED can this get?    It is unbelievably unbelievable already, but I'm sure those people without the right-to-life-certificate at Microsoft can do even better.

When booting up my laptop this morning, I find that MS installed updates AGAIN. I have nothing against updates, but every time they do that, I have to re-open all the tabs on my browser (about 10). Oh, sorry MS-guys,you didn't think of that, did you?  I know,you're NOT known for a lot of thinking going on over there!

But that's not the issue. the issue is that my speakers no longer work.  "Oh come on", you say? "An update wouldn't disable your speakers"  you say?   Go google it.   They actually managed to carry out this crime-of-the-century for retards (it's like winning the idiot Olympics).  You IDIOTS !!!!!!!!!!

No more Music. No more Netflix. No more anything with sound.  Oh Hang On!   That video where Jon Voight is supporting Trump and bitching about Clinton? (I always assumed there was a reason why Angelina J. doesn't talk to her father,LOL)  

I can't hear a word he's saying !   OK, so it's not ALL bad. 

Oh, I forgot one.....   I can no longer Skype-call Grandma when I'm away.  

OH F&^%!

Note: I didn't include a sound file of my screaming because it's just a matter of time until you get that update.  You wouldn't be able to hear me anyway !

Canucks fans must be unhappy human beings,Igloo Living, and the North American Way.of LIfe

It's cold in Vancouver.  Sure, if you're living in Dawson Creek or somewhere like that you will now put on that smile that says "Boy, you don't have a clue what COLD really is".  But for someone who only two weeks ago was cycling around Europe in shorts and without socks, 11 degrees Celsius is COLD.  I notice it every time I step into the shower. The water seems boiling hot at first and it takes me a minute to realize that it's not the water that is hot but my skin that is cold with pores sealed shut to keep out that arctic feeling.  No, I AM wearing socks, proper shoes, long pants, and my room has excellent electric heating, but it's still COLD.  Is it any wonder that I try to hang out in Indochina whenever I can?

NO, it's NOT quite as bad as this anonymous FROSTBITE, but it's uncomfortable !

It probably is a sign of the times of life in the Western World that when I googled for a picture of freezing skin, the results included this:

It's actually called, hold onto your seat CoolSculpting 

What is wrong with this Western Lifestyle?   People sit all day in an office and a car so that they have to go to a gym in the evening.  Walk or ride a bicycle and there is not need for a gym!  People confuse their craving for LIFE or whatever with the craving for food and then have to resort to liposuction or fat-freezing instead of just eating less.  People confuse LIVING with purchasing expensive crap to 'reward' themselves because they don't have the time anymore to actually LIVE life.  People are deeply unhappy but don't know where that comes from so they lash out at anyone that is visibly DIFFERENT from them instead of at the system that made them unhappy. 

Wow was that a good lead-over to the next story?
I had to take a SkyTrain a week ago.  From Waterfront Station to Joyce Station.  The train was already surprisingly full at Waterfront Station, but at Stadium Station things got out of hand (This was 7 pm on a Sunday).  My bike and I were wedged in by other passengers and a hijab-wearing woman with a 3-year old boy in a baby-carriage.  It was impossible to move the bike without anyone else moving first. In anticipation of more passengers at Stadium Station I had already asked the mother to pull back her baby carriage so my bike wouldn't block the door completely.  The platform at Stadium was PACKED with CROWDS of unhappy Vancouver Canucks fans, because 'their' team just wasted an early lead to loose against San Jose (I googled this after the train ride, expecting to find an explanation for the fans' behaviour). The crowd of young to middle aged fans pushed into the train.

Not my Canucks fans; but there are pictures of dumb retards on Google !

And they didn't stop pushing. The front row of sweat-pants wearing overweight retards told me to move my bike. DuH!  Do you like DONUTS?  People kept pushing from behind until I shouted out loud  "If you don't stop pushing your're going to squish a baby carriage".  That actually helped, because the rest of the people on the platform resigned themselves to taking the next train.  

My normal modus operandi in such situations is putting on a managing hat and trying to find the best possible solution.  But then I'm also no Hockey fan.  Just out of a 2 hour or so overpriced match against The Others, these fans just kept going in hating on the other guy, but this time the easiest target that was different from THEM, was the guy with the bicycle. In some way it might have been fortunate that I was around because otherwise the OTHER target might have been the hijab wearing mother.  Along the route from Stadium Station to Main Street station I was subjected to shoves, whining, abusive language, and direct threats against the bicycle, reminding me of the drunk guys on the German train not long ago.  

So that's it, Canada has really finally sunk to those same despicable levels of fundamental unhappiness.  

Time to become an ex-pat once again.

But be VERY careful.  Experiencing life outside your bubble has its risks.  You can never go back (Think about the action of getting out of a bubble and what happens to the bubble in the process ;-)  But on the other hand, once you experience life OUTSIDE, you probably never want to go back inside anyway.

Another excellent lead-over, LOL, to yet another story of how there are other ways of doing things:

I have driven a car about 3 times (on 3 days) since April of this year (That converts to driving a car for a day every two months). Yesterday I rented a car, because Grandma wished to go shopping and refused to ride shotgun on the bicycle.  The shopping trip was uneventful, but I really noticed two things today, when returning the car.  The first thing was going to a gas station to buy gasoline.  How Odd! If you haven't done that for a while, it seems like the stupidest thing to do ;-)  It costs money too !  For everyone else, this constant leak in the wallet seems to be perfectly acceptable and even normal.

The other thing that really rang my bell and merits almost unprecedented advertising in this blog was the price I paid for a 24 hour car rental.   CAD$ 45 including taxes.  Low-Cost Rent-a-car in North Vancouver. 

But it's not really the price why I keep going back, but it's the genuine nicety of the people at the place that makes renting a car almost fun.