8 Miles!

That's how far I walked yesterday! 8 Miles!!! Good Night Irene! I didn't think I had it in me. I went on a walk through one of my meetup groups: Walking in SF for Health & History. http://www.meetup.com/walking-in-SF/calendar/8804826/ Check out the description of the walk and some pictures.

I really had a good time. I was unusually warm in The City yesterday, 77 degrees at 4:30 pm!!!!! Seen as I was taking BART up to The City, and my "condo cats" are near the BART station, I swung by to feed them. On the way, I saw a Yes on Prop 8 sign in the meridian on Alvarado Blvd. Now, I've seen a lot of Yes on Prop 8 signs in people's yards and I have to respect them because I believe in freedom of speech and the signs are on personal property, even if I am 100% opposed to Yes on 8, but this was on public land and no one puts political signs in meridians. So I hung a U-turn and removed it! I felt great to remove that sign! With a smile on my face, I hopped on BART, deleted all 946 pictures from my camera on the ride and arrived in SF in time to meet at Starbucks. Big group of people, I think close to 30. They seemed pretty friendly and as the day went on, they did nothing to change my original opinion of them.

To start the walk off right, our first stop was at the Hyatt hotel's bathrooms. Unfortunately, they were having a conference of some sort, lots of people all over the place and we lost about 12-14 people from our group! I don't know what the hell happened, but they were gone. Maybe there's some type of black hole thing going on at the Hyatt :-)

After a lovely bathroom break, we walked down to Embarcadero. Our leader, Howard didn't just walk up along the street, he took us out and around 3 docks....just to add distance, to an already loooooong walk :-) That's were we came across the largest yacht in the world! It's called the Maltese Falcon and it's the oddest looking sailing vessel I've ever seen! I got a pictures, of course, but check out this site, they show the interior as well. Scroll down to the end of the article for the interior pictures: http://www.luxist.com/2008/03/27/maltese-falcon-yacht-for-sale/

Walking further up Embarcadero and our next bathroom stop was at the Aquarium of the Bay or by the Bay or whatever it's called. It's the one at Pier 39. Most of us bought more water there, as well :-) Did I mention we had record breaking hear in The City this day? Well they weren't kidding! If it was 77 at 4:30, it must have been 82 at the peak of the day. Now that may not sound hot for most areas, but San Francisco!? No way, that's HOT!

I thought we were walking all the way to Fort Mason....right under the Golden Gate bridge, but luckily, I was wrong. We walked to a part of Fort Mason, called Black Point: http://www.militarymuseum.org/BlackPointBty.html , which was thankfully, nowhere near as far as the Fort Mason located under the bridge. I'd have never made it all they way if we'd have walked that far :-) We had lunch at Black Point and then started the really tuff part of the day....walking to and up to Coit Tower. Good Night Irene! I saw how far it was, and how big the hill to Coit Tower was and I was scared. That was a fricken LONG way. And the hills! I'm glad I did it, but it didn't come w/out a lot of knee pain....BOTH knees :-( Needless to say, I was the caboose for the remainder of the walk, well, until we got down to the flat land, where I could keep up with the others.

Then our fearless leader, Howard, invited us to go for a drink at the beautiful Palace Hotel's Pied Piper bar: http://www.sfpalace.com/Pied-Piper-Bar This place is gorgeous! and in walks in this sweaty, exhausted group of 9 people...us. I was feeling fairly self conscience as we walked in; through all the men dressed in their suits and women in their best.... But after we sat down and ordered our drinks, I forgot about everyone else and had fun talking w/everyone. We all ordered water ASAP and most had ice tea or lemonade. I had orange juice and guess what Satarupa? This time is was really good orange juice :-) We hung around talking and drinking for probably about an hour. Then, on the way out, we of course hit the bathrooms, and stepped outside into unusually balmy air. We were all shocked at how warm it was at 5:30 pm in SF! Three of us headed to BART, while the rest went on their separate ways home.

I was glad not to have to drive home. I was feeling sooooo tired. It did seem as if it took longer to get home, than it did to get to SF, I think mostly because I was getting hungrier by the minute.

I was so tired! I was in bed by 9:15 pm. I thought I'd sleep like the dead, but I didn't. It's not as if my legs were hurting, but....I could "feel" them. You know how when you have cold, and you're now "aware" of your breathing? Well, it's kinda the same, I was "aware" of my legs. I think a nap may be in my near future. I'm going to make sure I do a lot of stretching in the coming days. This next weekend I'll be in San Diego visiting Chuck and Tony, so no SF walk that weekend, but the saturday after, there is another long, hilly walk, and I'm going to see how I feel and maybe go on it as well.

Minus the pain in my knees during the last of the down hills of the walk, I had a really good time. I chatted w/a bunch of great people and had a grand 'ole time. Took some pictures, but not an obscene amount, and I even went to a bar for drinks and chit chat. All in all, a great day. We'll see how my legs feel tomorrow. I think they're going to be damn stiff and I'm going to be"feeling" the walk.

It's a long day, and a fairly early one, for a saturday, but I would recommend these walks to whomever is interested. Oh, and people came from near and far. There were a hand full of us from the East bay, some local SF'ers, Anita came from Petaluma, and I think I heard someone came in from.....the Central Valley somewhere. Oh yeah, and a guy named Randy came down for San Rafael.

Ok, now it's time for me to upload some pictures and see if I can add them to this post. If not, I'll just post the link. I'm still not all that adept at loading pictures to this blog. I read other peoples blogs and they're so complicate and sophisticated and I feel my is too simplistic....and it is what it is, until I can figure all the tricks of the blogging trade.

Ciao