15th September 2010

As we had no other plans, other than to meet the Hawkins', we didn't hurry out of the motel room in Marina. I got a refund for the wifi card as the signal was not strong enough to get a connection. Phil called me on my mobile to discuss plans and to give some suggestions for where to head. God knows how much my bill is going to be. Phil suggesting driving through Redwood Drive in Oakmore. I didn't remember the Oakmore part.

We had already decided to head inland, to get away from the cold coast, having had enough of that the previous day. We took as direct a route East as was possible. We ended up travelling along the same road that we had used on our first day with the bikes, the 152. We stopped to get fuel and then continued on down the 152. The San Francisco clouds gradually cleared and it began to feel warmer with every mile.

We stopped at a shopping/entertainment area to get a coffee. There was a miniature train station, complete with working trains, and a carousel. There were a couple of gift shops and a sweet shop that sold our coffee. We also had turnovers each. Cherry for me and apple for Bill. They were so nice that we had another each. The lady at the counter assured me that they were diet turnovers. We fed some rather tame birds with our crumbs and also two male peacocks that were strutting around. There was also a tame duck but we didn't see her until all the eats were finished. As the sun was now beating down, I put some sun lotion on.

Golden Gate Bridge

We started to head North, as we had to be with the Hawkins' for dinner that night. I plugged Redwood Road, Livermore in to the satnav, thinking that we would take Phil's suggestion. To do the 99 mile journey to Livermore, we sat on the freeway for quite a while. I found it quite therapeutic but Bill was not too enamoured with the traffic and freeway driving style of the people around us.

 Redwood Road in Livermore turned out to be a housing estate, which is when I realised that we had the wrong road. I sent Phil a text letting him know we were on Redwood Road and how nice the houses were. I missed his call back as we had set off towards the nearest coffee house, which turned out to be McD's, in order to work out our route. We both had strawberry and banana smoothies in McD's; the healthier option for once. We

Bill and Kareen

 worked out where we were going and went for a short stroll in the blazing sun, before resuming our ride. 
We headed for San Rafael and a Travelodge that Phil had recommended as he said that "There are no Motel 6s round here.". I had booked the room in the morning for the price of $93. I set the satnav to avoid toll roads, which resulted in a longer journey but we had time to use up. A bonus was that the route would take us over the Golden Gate bridge, which we managed to miss back in 2008. We spent even more time humming along freeways, which was starting to get slightly boring. We stopped to fill up with fuel again at a Robbie Rotten's, somewhere along the 98. When we hit San Francisco, it became very cold again. The micro climates around San Francisco are strange. The traffic was very busy and more than once we stopped in a queue.

Kareen's Bush

We eventually got to the Golden Gate bridge and paused to take the obligatory tourist photos. I phoned Phil to let him know where we were and agreed to call him again when we left the motel. I tried to take some Go-Pro footage going over the bridge but found that the 32GB memory card had finally been exhausted. When we arrived at the motel it didn't look like $93 worth. I checked in to find that they only had a smoking room left. The room reeked of smoke. It was a pit. The whole place was just worn out. The bathroom door looked like it had been kicked in and the small window looked out on to an alley. We made do.

Phil 'I Shoot From The Hip' Hawkins

I thought that we should take some wine round to the Hawkins residence so quickly found a liquor store using Yelp.com. There was a store two blocks down so I went to shop while Bill got cleaned up. One block down I found a nice, clean, no doubt cheap Motel 6 and promised myself to rib Phil later about it. I found the store and bought a bottle of red Shiraz and a white Zinfandel. I also bought a half bottle of whisky for Bill as he is not a wine fan. The store did not understand what I meant by orange squash, cordial or concentrate. Apparently squash is not common in the USA. Bill would have to have water with his whisky. I returned to the motel and called a taxi. Thanks again Yelp. Reception gave me the number of a taxi company in the next area; probably hoping I'd make an expensive call. The motel phone wasn't even free for local calls so I had to use my mobile again. I ordered the taxi for 19:00 and jumped in the shower. It was 18:45 already. I phoned Phil while in the taxi. He sounded surprised as he thought we were riding over. The fare to Fairfax came to $25.50. I took $3 change out of 30.

 It was great to see Phil again and lovely to meet Kareen. They both come from Birmingham, UK but had met while in America. It seemed funny to come all the way to the USA to have dinner with some Brummies. Kareen had cooked a wonderful beef dinner, which we went inside to eat after enjoying a beer or two, and a chat, in their lovely garden. We met Justin, their son, who is a fine upstanding and thoroughly nice chap. He works with disabled children and is a baseball coach. I thanked Justin for making my life seem worthless within 5 minutes of meeting him. Phil opened and expensive bottle of Zinfandel, which disappeared way too quickly.
In to the night, details begin to get a little hazy and are probably best left that way. We all had a great night with lots of laughter and too much alcohol, which of course, makes for a bad morning. Kareen and Phil asked us to stay over so our $93 flea pit motel room didn't even get slept in. Phil certainly got some ribbing. I slept in the spare room and think I woke up in exactly the same position as when I first got in. Although parked up at the motel, the mileage on the bike was 49106, which means that we rode 234 miles this day.