So today was Saturday, a day that should be relaxing; however, we decided to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge. After that, we made the decision to go out to Point Bonita. All in all it was about 20 miles of biking. Now, 20miles doesn't seem too bad if you are just biking on some nice flat surfaces, but we all know what San Francisco is famous for...hills. There were some very nasty hills. For those of you who have been to the Virgin Islands with me, remember the hills that the truck couldn't make it up, yeah, now bike up those. Also, remember that while you are biking to one side there is always a nice big drop into the water. This was, to say, a hard bike ride. The ride was totally worth it, once we got out to the point the views were great, and I can always say that I biked out there.
After biking for about 4 hours we headed back to the hotel and then to In and Out so Brad could get a taste of heaven. Then we had to get back to the hotel so we could get ready to go to Alcatraz.
Alcatraz was pretty cool. We got the night tour so we got to see some things that are unique to the night tours. There is an audio tour that is narrated by four ex-employees and four ex-prisoners. It was really cool to hear the difference in views from the correctional officers and the cons. There was always a story behind where ever you were in the prison. One of the really cool rooms that I got to see was Robert 'the bird' Stroud's cell in the medical wing. It was relatively large compared to the other cells. One really cool thing was a demonstration of the cell doors.
The hospital was surprising large for the relatively small number of inmates. They had a dentist, x-ray room, surgery room, and a few other rooms. This part was only open for about 30min, and was rather creepy. A lot of the rooms just had camping lanterns for light, giving them a very very dim light, and casting some very long shadows. The best was the surgical room. They had a table and some other stuff, but the room had no lights. The only light in the room was from the one open door in an adjacent room. It made for a very scary room, that most people avoided.
That was pretty much our day today. Tomorrow is going to be another short entry, since all I really have to do tomorrow is watch the vikings win, and move to our other hotel in Menlo Park.
Here are a few pictures from various parts of the day.
Alcatraz, this is Broadway. The aisles of cells all had road names. You can see how it is dark, and a little creepy.
The owner of this house has one of the best locations in all of the U.S. And, if you look in the background you can see what I had to bike through.
Thanks all for reading, I hope you are enjoying the posts. Please let me know if there is anything else you would like to see hear about.
Aaron
Did you ride up all the hills from hell or walk up a few? How was the ride down??? I hope the brakes held out! Of course, if they didn't there would probably be a picture with a crumpled bike posted. Are there any pictures of your group on non-crumpled bikes with the bridge in it? "The Bird Man of Alcatraz" is a great movie. You should see if you can find it - high marks on amazon and rottentomatoes in case you don't trust me. Also you should watch "Escape from Alcatraz" with Clint Eastwood and see if you would take the same way out - have an Alcatraz movie festival one of these nights, you must be able to download them.
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