Tuesday, Day 3, In which our heroine stalks the City

Today Jim’s conference began, the ostensible reason for our trip. While he is off learning about from “Hospital to Home,” I was out and about. Monte and Sue had gotten me a ticket to the Alcatraz boat and tour for my birthday. I didn’t need to be at Pier 39 until 10:30, so I had time on my hands from when Jim went down to the “welcome breakfast” for his conference at 7.
First, a word about cyclists in the city. They are brave souls, braving steep hills and heavy traffic. Most amazing to me, however, given the hills and traffic, is that quite a number of them are riding “fixe” (fixed gear bikes). These bikes have only one gear, and you must pedal as fast as the wheels are turning. If you are going quickly down a steep hill, your legs are a blur. If you are going uphill, remember that you only have one gear. A number of the fixies that I’ve seen had no brakes at all. The rider slows, among other ways, by putting one of his feet on the rear wheel and braking in that way. I chatted with one of the riders who had a brake, and asked how he managed climbing the hills, and he said modestly that he could manage most of them. Whereupon he took off up Bush Street at pretty good clip, with only a 10 or 12% grade.
I walked down to Roxanne Café for breakfast and ventured into the french toast side of the menu. In between two layers of french toast was a mixture of blueberries and cream cheese. Hmm.
I then trekked all the way to the Pier for my Alcatraz excursion, with a stop at the Tuesday Farmers Market at the Ferry Landing. There are Farmers Markets on Tuesday and Saturday there. I bought some delicious dried nectarines, and a bun at the bakery, to tide me over during my prison time.
I got to the Pier an hour early, and they let me take that boat. The morning was somewhat foggy, but not windy. The “Rock” loomed closer, and then we docked. There was a sign at the dock, left over from its prison days, about not landing unauthorized or you would be imprisoned. It also said “Welcome Indians.”
I hadn’t realized that Alcatraz is part of a National Park. I joined a tour guided by a park ranger, and he explained the strategic importance of the island, due to its location at the mouth of San Francisco Bay. The U.S. Army realized its importance just before the Civil War, and built a fort there. In its original state, Alcatraz was dome shaped. The ranger explained that every flat surface and road had been chipped out of the sandstone, mostly by hand.
The original fort had been designed to withstand cannon balls. The brick mason earned $10 per day, at a time when an army private earned $7.50 per month. The skill of the brick mason was evident, especially when he pointed out a portion to the side which had been done by forced labor a few years later.
Every army fort had its jail, and the one at Alcatraz was expanded during the Civil War. Although California had entered the Union as a non-slave state, some of the soldiers stationed there were from the south. So when there were Confederate victories, and those southern soldiers did some celebrating (shooting off their weapons and drinking), the general at the Presidio by the Golden Gate ordered that they be shipped to Alcatraz, and the “traitorous nature” of their feelings be sweated out of them by breaking rock with a sledgehammer. It took some two years of forced labor for the parade grounds to be leveled.
Eventually, Alcatraz became the prison for all of the Army, due to its hard to escape location. It didn’t become a federal prison until around 1930, and was only a prison until 1963.
After the ranger tour, I got my headphones for the audio tour. The recorded tour guides you through the complex in any of around 10 languages. It takes you from place to place, telling you about the life there and some of the more well known convicts. It held less than 300 convicts at a time, but it held the “worst of the worst.” The say was: “Break the law, and you went to prison; break the prison rules and you went to Alcatraz.”
The isolation cells were especially chilling, as you were put in them without any light at all. To keep from going crazy, men would do a variety of things, such as take a button off their shirt, and then crawl around looking for it. When he found the button, he’d throw it again, and then feel for it.
Some of the prisoners took up hobbies, including crocheting. Anything to pass the time. They could also hear the fireworks in the city on New Year’s Eve, and the city itself looked so achingly close. If the wind was right, they could hear the sounds of people in the city.
The most dangerous time of the day was when all of the convicts were in the dining hall together for each of the three meals. There were canisters of tear gas on the ceiling which could be set off if there was a riot.
Surprisingly to me, there were families of the guards which lived in quarters on one half of the island. Some of the voices on the audio tour were those of children who grew up there.
After the tour was done, I continued with my café tour of San Francisco. This time I was off to try the Café Trieste in the Italian neighborhood called North Beach. It didn’t look far on the map; just six blocks. Four of those blocks were nearly vertical, but by the time I realized that I was halfway up the hill. Then there were two blocks down the other side.
The walk was worth it, as lunch was a foccacia pizza, plum cake and another superb cappuccino. They roast their own coffee, so I bought a pound.
Then I walked towards the visible landmark of the TransAmerica Tower, and when I hit a familiar sounding street near the tower, I turned up that hill. Eventually my tired legs hauled me up to the hotel, where I sprawled out flat on the bed and rested my aching feet.
All in all I covered a lot of ground. I hope that Jim’s conference was interesting.
Dinner: Chinatown. After consulting with the guidebook, we decided to take another run at eating in Chinatown. This place was fancier and aimed more towards the tourist trade. We opened the vast menu, to be confronted with choices like “sea cucumber,” “frogs legs with xo sauce” and “duck tongue.” Hmm...time to take the combination dinner C. It did include lobster with a sauce, and a strange sweet and sour soup which neither of us ate, but the rest was comfortingly familiar dishes such as broccoli with beef and fried rice. The facial expressions on the faces of the tourist family next to us made us feel very sophisticated and at home. The teenage daughter frowned and made an expression which said “ewww” every time that she turned a page of the menu. Her parents were more restrained, at least until their food came. Mom’s face showed that she was definitely not enjoying the food.