San Francisco

Once we were all settled in our hotel rooms, we met in the guys’ room to discuss whether or not we should tour downtown San Francisco or not. “Let’s do it!” We all decided. “ We are here and we should do it!” Yes! I thought, let’s do this thing! I would feel differently once we were on our way, but I am getting ahead of myself. So we turned around and went back to the airport to catch the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) or subway to downtown San Fran. By the time we were in the BART, exhaustion caught up to us. It struck hard, and we were all incapacitated almost instantaneously. Although it was only 8:30pm San Francisco time, it was already 10:30pm for us. “Whose idea was it to tour downtown at this hour?” I  asked. “Oh, that’s right, mine.” It was no use trying to sleep on that BART, for the sound it made was like a whole class running up and scratching at the chalkboard, a Star Wars pod race, and every siren in the world going off at the same time combined to form the most horrid sound I would like to call horrendous cacophony. But we made it to downtown all the same.

An elevator took us up from BART to the city. I loved it from first sight even though it was pitch black outside. Everything was all lit up, and there were electrical wires strung about over the road. I soon found out they were for cable cars: buses running by electricity. San Fran is very green, but not in a ‘I’m trying to be all cool’ way and not in a ‘save the earth, man’ way. It was in a real way. I like that. It doesn’t have to try and be cool because it is already.

Due to lack of transportation, we were not able to see the Golden Gate Bridge, but we walked along from Pier One through Pier Five and back along the The Embarcadero. It is a very pleasant town that still has a certain secret thrill only those who live there can fully understand.  I thought I could see myself living there. I was very glad that we went until we were in the BART again. On the way back I was just so tired that I didn’t care. By the time we were in our hotel room again it was 12:00pm (2:00am Rockford time).  We girls, who were sharing a room, were getting ready for bed when Deborah noticed that her poison ivy that she had gotten before we left was swelling up. Her ankle was about an inch or two bigger than it was supposed to be. And, of course, her medicine was in her luggage — all the way across the world.  What could we do other than pray? We went to bed hoping for healing and much needed rest.

The next day started at 7:30am. Deborah’s poison ivy wasn’t unbearably itchy, but the swelling hadn’t gone down. We thought the problem might be the tongue on her tennis shoes rubbing on her ankle. Since my shoes had a smaller tongue, I lent her my shoes. Luckily, I had packed a spare!  Her dad, Dave, who had also gotten poison ivy, wasn’t doing so well either. We packed our carry-ons and brushed our teeth with the toothbrushes in the essential packets we had gotten. Then we went to the café and had a wonderful gourmet breakfast of cereal. Then it was off the airport again.

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