Finally! a train!

On the way to boarding platform:  Amtrak station, Chinese center, and offices beyond

Written last night:

The trip was more about the train than about the town where I was going -- or "the city," as they/we call San Francisco. I didn't expect it to be that way, for San Francisco is like Mecca to me. But early in the morning when I sat down on the bench by the tracks to wait for boarding, and I looked over at the train man as he knelt near a giant  wheel and then grunted and kicked it hard, and then finally went and got a big wrench and pounded something and grunted again as he leaned back on his heels, I just began to cry. Clark was with me; that's what he would have loved to see: someone who made the trains run right. So it was the ride that I savored. 

 I left home (!) for the Amtrak station about 8 a.m. and got back at 5:15 p.m. Four of those hours were on trains, and and I spent an hour walking to and from the station, so that means I was in San Francisco 4 1/4 hours. I got back to Sacramento about an hour earlier than planned, because I accidentally got an earlier BART connection. Nothing was particularly strenuous, but it was all new, exciting and tiring. When I got home I was exhausted. I loved every minute.

For someone from Tallahassee, this was big-city stuff. Tallahassee has a train station but no passenger service anymore. So I was fretting, nervous about losing my ticket, getting on the wrong train, missing my stop. After a couple of runs, this will be old hat to me. I probably won’t even gaze at the countryside clipping by. But today I feasted my eyes on the changing landscape and the hints of life I could see on the doorsteps that we passed. And, yes, I had a problem, but no, the world did not end. The problem was that in Richmond the machine wouldn’t accept my BART ticket. EEEk! the train won’t accept me! The turnstile hates me! 

“Never mind,” said the woman at the information island. “This happens all the time. Maybe you have a magnet in your purse.” Yes, maybe. She scribbled something on my ticket and told me to ask for help in San Francisco. I did. That transit system did not crash because of me, either.

I’m a nosy person, and trains give time to look around. I could have driven to Richmond and then got the BART train. That would have afforded a bit more flexibility. I mean, I would have had my car. And I would have had to drive that car (Sorry, Rosa —  nothing personal!) But the train was perfect: I loved watching the landscape change from flat to rolling hills to steeper slopes to foggy waterside. I could study the bridges that we passed and crossed (Steel truss bridges, mostly). Near the track at Davis there was a worn-looking red tent strung up between two trees -- a homeless haven, no doubt -- and closer to San Francisco I saw those houses we read about that are so expensive. They weren’t big or even fancy on the outside. And as we neared the city the conversations (Did I tell you I like to listen to the talk around me?) got nerdier and nerdier. Everybody wore kind of boring clothes (me too —  black, except for my owl socks). Then a woman got on, wearing a dazzling green wrap and black head covering, bold makeup and large hoop earrings. Two stops later she disembarked. People brought their bikes and leaned them against a special wall. A blind man tapped his cane over to the seats for the handicapped and a young woman scampered away to give him space. Lots of men wore backpacks and business suits. I literally heard several conversations that sounded like news stories I have read: How costly it is to live in San Francisco, how people are being woo-ed away from one start-up to work at another, how solar panels save money and the environment, how convenient it is to work from home and commute to the city only two days a week … also, good places to eat barbecue and fried pickles. For a while I sat next to a middle school girl who stared at her phone and chuckled as each click she put a different head treatment onto her own face: wild pink hair, round black glasses, odd hats … In between she talked to her best friend (That’s what she called her), and her mother, assuring her she’d do her homework as soon as she got home. She got off at Berkeley.

Why have I written all this and never even got to San Francisco? Well, I loved the ride. 

San Francisco too I love. And I bless the serendipity that led me to Mary Kaye! The city is dazzling and busy and could easily overwhelm me, but not with Mary Kaye as a guide. She led me to her special favorite spots, and to places she thought I’d favor. All along, in the planning stages, she texted me: “Would you like this? … Since you’re new, maybe this would give you an overview … 

“Just take me where you want to go,” I said. We browsed in some stores at Union Square, where we Uber-ed from the Embarcadero -- most notably the Britex fabric store, four stories of personally selected silks and cottons, feathers and sequins, that is a haven for quilters and home-sewers,  Not far away is the new Apple Store, a kind of clubby atmosphere with a giant open door and iPads on tables for everyone to try and maybe buy. (Mary Kaye demonstrated the one that has a pencil and can layer all kinds of creations.

We ate lunch at Tadich, which takes no reservations, but had a table for us when we arrived, and every table full when we left. Tadich is everybody’s favorite restaurant, Mary Kaye said: dark, intimate, noisy, delicious. We shared a crab Louis.

I think San Francisco might be a place to spend more than four hours. Today was a taste.

Love.
k

First stop: Davis, CA

Closer to city it gets foggy

Stairs at Apple store