End of the line

My conference finished at lunchtime on Thursday, and Rhonda and I decided to spend the afternoon going for a walk to the University of California - Berkeley, which is in a different direction to all our walking so far.  It was a very pleasant stroll through a rather affluent suburb - very grand houses, a couple of which are below.

As we got closer to the university we started passing Fraternity Houses.  I wanted to ask where Animal House was (cultural reference for the older readers) but Rhonda kept me in line.  We were both a bit surprised how many there were (easy to spot because of the large Greek letters on the front of the buildings) and how grand they were.  Three of the frat houses are below.

The university was pretty much like any other university, so we didn't stay long, but turned downhill and walked along a street lined with shops and cafes - very handy for the students.  We then wandered along other streets as we worked our way back towards the hotel, seeing an interesting variety of shops, restaurants and sights.  I like the photo of the vehicles below.  At first glance it looks like a four-wheel drive vehicle parked between two small cars, until you realise that the car on the right is a Range Rover, which qualifies as quite a big vehicle in Australia.  The 4x4 is a Ford F250 - hard to imagine why anybody would need such a big truck, but the Americans love them.

We also saw some street art, a photo of one striking example is below.  Made us both realise we haven't seen a lot of graffiti here.  We also haven't seen a lot of garbage in the streets, cigarette butts or dog poo (which is surprising because the people here love their dogs - bit like the Brits).  Just goes to show that you can have clean streets if you try.

That pretty much finished our second-last full day.  We were booked for another Segway ride on Friday, and very much looking forward to it.  The day dawned looking quite overcast, but we have found out that San Francisco is actually rather cold, even in summer.  One of the staff at the Segway office told us that people make the mistake of thinking that when they come to San Francisco they are visiting California, when the reality is that San Francisco is its own frigid little island (it's not actually an island, but close enough).  At Golden gate Park they hadn't seen sunlight for four days, but if you cross the bridges to the north or east it's sunny and quite a bit warmer, like being in a different climate.  The Segway tour was brilliant, our guide, Kelly, was very knowledgeable and told us lots of interesting things about the areas in the park that we visited.  Some photos are below.

Yes, gum leaves, from the trees behind the Segway office

Our guide, Kelly, looking effortlessly cool

Us, looking effortlessly uncool - the jackets stopped us from freezing

Still uncool

Some photos of the things we saw during our ride are below.

Dahlias

The lookout tower at the de Young Museum

Statue of the first head gardener of the park, he was head gardener for something like 50 years

Interesting plant



Memorial to AIDS victims and their families and friends - very tranquil and quite moving

After that it was back to the hotel, then down the street for dinner at our 'local'.  But, before we finish, another sign.

There's a street sign in the foliage, proving that councils everywhere need to trim the trees back a little to make signs visible.  Rhonda kept me from breaking off the obstructing branch

We'll get croissants for breakfast from a bakery just outside the hotel car park tomorrow, then it's the journey home.  Before we go, however, some final thoughts about our experience.

1. We needed Jan to be in Washington and San Francisco to look after us - we missed her guidance and advice.
2. With television, less really is more.  So many channels to watch, and so little worth watching.  It was frustrating, without a good TV guide, to find which channel name corresponded with which number, and what time the shows were starting.  We always seemed to miss the start of things.
3. Advertising seemed to be focused on:
a. Providing tax advice to people owing more than $10,000 in back taxes,
b. Promoting drugs which were highly likely to reduce the impact of one chronic condition or another, while potentially killing you in a variety of unpleasant ways (the need to fully disclose potential side effects was commendable, but alarming).
c. Persuading you that junk food was delicious.
d. Persuading you to watch junk food for the brain.
4. Public transport in the US is so much better (more convenient and cheaper) than it is in Australia (especially Canberra).
5. Homelessness is very confronting and society (that's all of us) really needs to step up and sort it out.  I fully appreciate the complex nature of the problem, but we need to try harder to deal with it.
6. Eating out is quite cheap here, because you often only need to order one main meal between two of you.
7. We have felt safe everywhere we've been, and the locals have been generally very friendly.

Hope you've enjoyed sharing our journey.  'Bye for this trip.

Days 19 to 22 - Rhonda unleashed

While Richard was conferencing, I sought wider experiences.  These included a trip in to the city to visit the tourist information centre (booked a winery tour for Wednesday), walk around taking in the sights, and trying to find a good coffee shop - not as easy as I'd hoped.  The city doesn't impress me as much as New York or Washington, but it is still quite attractive - just not as user friendly as our previous experiences.  San Francisco is very hilly and quite cool and windy.  The area around our hotel is actually very attractive and just walking around is fascinating.

Interesting variety of architecture in the local area

Something about this photo reminded me of friends at home

Chocolate box house - Richard would prefer an actual box of chocolates

I've never seen so many fire engines and ambulances as I have in the USA, and the fire engines are huge.

Even the fire engines here are big and there is a man in the rear cabin

Another house - the colours they paint houses here are quite interesting

The top of our hotel, flag proudly flying - palms in the foreground and big gum trees on the hill behind the hotel

I had to get up early on Wednesday to meet the tour bus in the city.  The tour lasted for about 9 hours, and driving north of San Francisco was interesting - a lot warmer than the city and quite dry.  The scenery was very like Australia.  We visited three wineries and the wine there was OK, but nothing special.  The bus driver didn't stop talking the whole time and we probably found out more about him than we needed, such as he has been married five times.  Lunch was at a lovely litle town called Youngville, which had interesting street sculptures.  A few shots from the tour are below.

 

Dry countryside

Vines

First tasting

 

Big cask

More vines

Street sculpture in Youngville. The title is 'The Chef'

Cute little church on a hillside

The days without Richard were fun, but I'm starting to look forward to going home at the end of the week.  We'll go out on a high with another Segway ride on Friday, around the Golden Gate Park.

 

Days 19 to 22 - Richard and the conference

We've decided it is easier to just do a single blog for each of us for our days of doing different things in San Francisco.  Here's my experience.

I got to walk through the main lobby of the hotel several times each day - it is very impressive.

Main lobby of the Claremont Hotel

The 34th International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform started on Monday morning and there were about 350 attendees, from 20 other countries and 40 US States (I met people from Nigeria, Ireland, Antigua, Singapore, China (studying in Canada), Germany (working in the USA), and South Africa).  These conferences are great for the people you meet and the things you learn.  I was privileged to meet some really good people and hope to stay in touch with them.

Assembled for the opening ceremony

Three and a half day later the conference finished.

Me with Nelson from Nigeria at the closing ceremony

In between the opening and closing ceremonies I learned some things:
1. Thinking is really, really hard work, but rewarding if you do it properly and persevere.
2. Every domain in which we work has fundamental and powerful concepts - as trainers we need to identify these concepts and help the learners to develop a deep understanding of them.  Too often we lose sight of the fundamental and powerful concepts against a background of facts and trivia.
3. Television is not helping us to think.  I found out about a book, written by a man named Jerry Mander, titled: Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.  The surprising thing is that the book was published in 1978.
4. Ralph Nader, now 80 years old, is a most impressive human being.  He gave an excellent talk, stimulating, insightful and well reasoned.  I bought a copy of his latest book, and got to meet him to get him to sign the book.

Ralph Nader gets to meet me - I'm sure he was less impressed than I was by the experience

The workshops conducted during the conference actually required us to work - unlike many conferences where you can just kick back and soak up the experience.

One of the workshops during the conference

It's difficult to get a normal-sized cup of tea in the USA. 

My vat of tea is on the right.

 

 

Tomorrow we'll post Rhonda's experiences from the week.  By for now.

Day 18 - Rhonda and Richard win the San Francisco Marathon

Sorry, I meant to write: "Rhonda and Richard win over the San Francisco Marathon".  We were booked on a San Francisco Bay cruise and discovered that the San Francisco Marathon was scheduled for the same day, and running across our path to the harbour.  Luckily, the race was pretty much finished by the time we made our way to the harbour, so we didn't experience any delays in getting to the pier for the cruise, hence we won over it.

Along our way we came across Pier 1 1/2, a water box, and a finish line (the wording is a bit ambiguous.

In due course we reached our pier, checked in, and joined the line for the boat.  The cruise was excellent and gave us a very good look around Alcatraz, with commentary about the history of the prison.  Sadly we hadn't been able to visit the prison itself.  We tried booking online a couple of weeks ago but visits to the island are limited and were booked out until 20 August.  Still, we had a good look at the island, and learned a lot about it.

Our boat

Alcatraz 1

Alcatraz 2

Alcatraz 3

Alcatraz 4

Alcatraz 5

We also sailed out to, and under the Golden Gate Bridge, although I believe it should be called the Orange Gate Bridge, since that's the colour it is painted (to make it more visible in the frequent fogs). 

The Orange Gate Bridge - from a distance - hard to get a sense of scale from so far away

Almost there

On our way back - note the small building under the arch of the bridge, on the left

Not actually a small building - the bridge is huge

We had excellent views of the shore on the way back from the bridge, three random shots are below.

Safely back on dry land we set off for Pier 39, and lunch.  After a short wait, with me holding the 'buzzer thing' to let us know when a table was free, we settled down for a hearty meal (crab cakes for Rhonda, fish and chips for me - we felt like seafood after the cruise).  

A cleverly-named shop at Pier 39

After lunch we set off for a stroll further along the harbour edge, it was very interesting.  We saw a man walking his lizard, and other cool things.  After a short walk back towards the train station (it's actually a long walk back to the train station, but we got lazy, and the way back was very much up hill) we eventually waited for and caught a cable car.

Trust us, this street is very steep, tour buses and vans seating more than 8 are prohibited from driving up it

Our tram - after we got off

Another great day, and I'm looking forward to the conference, which starts tomorrow.  Bye for now, and hope this post finds you all happy and healthy.