16th September 2010

I awoke at around 07:30 and it took some time to realise where I was. I went downstairs to find Phil and Bill awake and sat out in the garden, waiting for the sun to breach the hills and flood the valley the house lies in. We had coffee and I studied a large spider that was sitting in its web; wondering whether it was poisonous. I checked on the Internet later. It appears to be a harmless garden spider. I stroked the spider's back with a dead leaf. I don't know if it was enjoying it but it didn't move or react.

When Kareen got up we went into Fairfax for breakfast at Hilda's cafe. Phil drove us there in the car. I was feeling ok but I later realised that I just hadn't sobered up at this point. I had 2 eggs, 2 rashers of bacon and some hash browns. Tabasco sauce on hash browns is lovely. Phil tried to pay with his credit card but they didn't take cards. I was relieved as I wanted to pay for breakfast to thank them both for their hospitality. Breakfast came to $39. After breakfast Phil and Kareen drove us back to the Travelodge, via a store where Phil bought me a box of Carol Shelby's chilli mix. Apparently he had seen my chilli making effort on Facebook and thought it looked crap. I will endeavour to try harder. There was much ribbing along the way regarding the motel situation, especially when we drove past Motel 6 in San Rafael.

We said our goodbyes and went into the room to clean up a little. My hangover was starting to set in. I could not face moving much, let alone having a shower. I must have brushed my teeth for 10 minutes at least. We packed up slowly and were  

Hangovers Look Like This

still loitering about the hotel and room at 11:30 but set off shortly after this. To avoid a 99 mile drive to Eaglerider, we opted to pay a toll charge. According to the satnav, the journey was only 20 miles and 30 minutes away. The traffic through San Francisco was again busy at supposedly at a quiet time. Bill said that he wondered what it is like when it is busy. Our going was steady until we reached  the toll gate, where we queued to go through and again to merge out the other side. The toll charge was $4. We stopped at a garage on 8th Street to fill the bikes up for the final time. The garage was only 60 yards from Eaglerider.

Make Way For the Segway

We handed the bikes in and packed up our suitcases. I eventually managed to borrow a spanner, in order to remove the ram mount from the handle bars, after remembering that I needed to ask the mechanic for a wrench, not a spanner. The bikes were signed back in with no damage. Eaglerider called us a car, to take us to the airport. We were picked up by the same chatty Chinese guy who had collected us on the way in but he did not remember us.When we got to the airport, my hangover was in full force. I never used to suffer from hangovers badly but I had three really bad ones on this trip. I don't expect that the alcohol is much different in America so will have to concede that it is either age of my lack of general fitness that is making the difference these days. I didn't feel like moving at the airport. Luckily SFO has free wifi, which kept me entertained. When I  started feeling slightly better, around 16:00, I had a massive Chinese chicken curry from Lum Fun. We  wasted time looking round the shops. I bought $130 worth of gifts: expensive chocolates for Karen to say thank you for having the kids on several consecutive weekends and San Francisco t-shirts and chocolates for Amy and Eric. I spoke to a policeman who was whizzing around the airport on a Segway and he was happy to have his photo taken. Our flight was on time thankfully. We took off at around 19:15.

The final bike mileage was 49126, which means that we only rode 20 miles this day. Our total trip mileage was 4750 miles exactly.