Direct reference to the best YouTube video of all time.
I would have written about this sooner, when it was more fresh in my head, but work got kind of busy this week, and doing things that I actually get paid for always comes first.
Last Saturday, my friends and I decided it would be a great day to drive up to Bolinas, which is about an hour or more North of the Bay. We had a bit of a delay in the morning due to some Friday night shenanigans, but by 1pm we had packed some lunches and jumped in the car to head out. Only we weren't heading out, we were actually heading to our other friends house (or dorm room...) to sit on the floor, look at some photographs, and have a cup of coffee. I was getting a little restless to get out of the city, but the coffee was good so I didn't complain.
The six of us cram back into our friends Prius around two o'clock and start driving towards the Golden Gate Bridge. The beers in the trunk are clunking around, and my friend is perched on another friends lap, her head bumping into the roof every time we hit a lump in the road. One of our guy friends insists that we have to stop by the Sutro Baths so we can check out the steps he has been building. After several turnarounds to find the right parking lot, we park and get out of the car. We're more concerned with fixing the beers than seeing Nick's steps, and when we tell him it's too cold to walk down all the stairs to the water where his steps are, he utters some profanity and tells us all how much he hates us. Thanks, Nick.
We finally cross the bridge and I am getting excited to reach our destination. The driver decides to take a detour and drive up the Marin Headlands so we can see where HE has been working. We opt to keep driving when we pass his station. After a bunch of windy curves and wrong turns, we can't figure out how to get back on route 1 - even with a GPS map system in the car. Then it starts to rain.
We get back on the highway, only to get off on Route 1 about five miles later. At this point, it's nearly 3:30 and Bolinas is starting to look more like Canada. We decide that there is no way we're going to make it there with enough time to hike before it gets dark, so against my will, the car heads towards Muir Woods. Muir Woods is a beautiful place to see, once or twice. I've already been three times. I wasn't exactly rooting for it. Luckily we were riding with a bunch of people who didn't want to spend money and balked at the $8 entrance fee.
I suggest looking for The Tourist Club, this brewery a few miles north of Muir Woods that you have to hike to. We check Mason's iPhone to see if we can figure out how to get there, and just when we think we have found the right turn off, Mason decides to keep driving to see "what else is around each corner." At this point the rain is falling harder and hiking doesn't seem like such a good idea, even if it is rewarded by an afternoon in a brewery.
We unanimously decide that our adventure has no real destination or organization, and it would probably be best to head back to the city. When we cross back over the Golden Gate Bridge, the sun is actually shining down on San Francisco. We take this wonderful opportunity to drive up to Coit Tower, because none of us have actually been there yet. We wait in a line of cars for about forty minutes before parking the Prius at the top of Telegraph Hill. Our friend from Sweden is literally in awe by the public self-cleaning toilet, which he doesn't stop talking about for the rest of the evening. Three of us decide to pay the $5 to get to the top of the tower, where we enjoy looking down on the fancy North Beach roof decks. The view of Marin is pretty crazy, because you can actually see the cloud of rain that we just drove through for two hours.
After a few more jaunts in the self-cleaning toilet, we cram back into the Prius once again and head home to prepare a lovely meal of roasted vegetables, qinuoa, a big green salad, and pork chops. After such a long day, I decide that passing out on the couch after dinner is way better than trekking to a concert in the Mission that is most likely sold out, if not crowded to the point where I can't even dance.
All in all, it was quite an adventure.
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