Me on the Ferry

Every winter break, my sister, Kris and I, take our kids on a day trip to San Francisco. We’ve been doing it for years. Sometimes the hubbies are able to go. This was the first year my other sister, Kathy, and her kids went along with us. Having just gotten a cute little digital camera for Christmas, I decided to take it along and make a photo journal of our day. So come along with us as we travel through one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

We catch the Vallejo ferry at 10:00, coffee in hand.The boat is crowded, but the nine of us all manage to get seats together. The weather is cold, breezy, and crisp, and the sky is impossibly blue. On our hour long ride, we pass San Quentin Prison and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Alcatraz

The Golden Gate Bridge

As we approach the city, I can see the Transamerica building, with its distinctive pyramid shape, rising into the sky. And to the west, is the lovely silhouette of Coit Tower with its collection of colorful houses resting below it.

Transamerica Pyramid Building

Coit Tower

After arriving at the pier, we go into the Ferry Building which is filled with wonderful shops. There’s a bakery, olive oil stores, candy stores, cheese market, flower shops, all open onto a main walk way. There are restaurants and coffee shops and other little stores. At this point, the kids usually complain about being hungry, so we grab a couple of freshly baked baquettes to nibble on as we walk.

Candy Shop

A Decorative Tile Outside the Olive Oil Shop

Dishes of Exquisite Chocolates

Flower and Plant Shop

Sightseeing Tours

Eventually we leave the Ferry Building and walk across the street to the Hyatt Regency Hotel. If we do our little trip before Christmas, we always enjoy the elaborate, minature Santa’s Village that they set up in the hotel lobby. But since we this trip is after the holiday, the village display has been taken down in preparation for the New Year’s Eve party. It’s always fun to ride up seventeen floors inside the hotel’s glass elevator. Sometimes we go to the very top where they have a rotating restaurant called the Equinox.

Sculpture in the Lobby of the Hyatt Regency Hotel

Right outside of hotel, at the corner of Market and California streets, we catch the cable car for our ride to Chinatown. The office buildings along California Street still have most of their Christmas decorations up.

Our Cable Car Ride

Decorations on California Street

After the slow climb to the top of the hill, we jump off the cable car at Grant Street and start our descent through Chinatown. My sister and I always enjoy going into a little religious gift shop next to St. Mary’s Church. The church has been there since before the 1906 earthquake.

Carved Wooden Angel

Chinatown in so much fun; it’s a feast for the senses. The street is narrow and the sidewalks crowded. Shop’s wares spill out into the sidewalk. The kids usually buy sparklers and smoke bombs for New Years, and I love looking at the silks and pottery and ivory carvings. Kris and I always buy boxes of chewy rice candy. Exotic smells come out of the herb shops and there seems to be a different Chinese restaurant at every other door.

A View Down Grant Street

Gold Ornaments and Tiles Decorate a Bank

Oriental Store

Dragon Mural

At the end of Grant Street, I see this street sign. I’ve never noticed it before. It leads into a tiny alley that’s closed off for construction.

Jack Keroac Street

We head down Columbus Street, backtracking a bit, as we make our way to our favorite Chinese restaurant. Everyone goes ahead while I take some more pictures. I pass City Lights Bookstore, where the Beat Poets (like Jack) used to hang out. There’s a colorful collage mural on the side of wall of a local bar. The letters were spelled out using wine bottle labels. The Transamerica building looms overhead, and so does the green building which is shaped like a giant ornate wedge of cheese.

Famous City Lights Bookstore

Vesuvio

Transamerica Building

The Green Building

I finally reach the restaurant, and everyone is waiting at our favorite table — a huge round one with a lazy susan in the middle. We devore garlicky string beans, sizzling rice soup, honey walnut prawns, potsickers, and cashew chicken. At the end of the meal, they bring us a little dish with quarters of ice cold oranges and fortune cookies. We read our fortune cookies aloud, and then I make everyone give me the little strips of paper. I don’t know the name of this restaurant; it’s a little hole in the wall. But we’ve been going here for years and the meal is always fabulous.

Usually this is the time when the kids start complaining that their feet are tired, be we still have a lot of walking to do before we reach our final destination. A hot fudge sundae at Ghiradelli Square is always a good motivator, so soon we’re back on Columbus and walking up the hill through North Beach to Fisherman’s Wharf. It’s a nice long trek, and there’s always lots to see.

Bridal Boutique

Mural on the Side of a Building

St. Peters and St. Pauls Cathedral at Washington Square

Wig Shop Window

Bimbo’s Comedy Club

Since I’m taking so long with all this photography stuff, everyone else goes on ahead. Eventually I reach The Cannery, a collection of shops and restaurants in an old brick building across from Fisherman’s Wharf. Inside is the Basic Brown Bear Factory, where you can pick out and dress your own stuffed bear or other animal. And across the street is a cute little Italian restaurant. We also pass Hyde Street Pier which has a very cool submarine and two old ships that you can tour.

The Cannery

The Basic Brown Bear Factory

Ciopinno and Pasta

Hyde Street Pier

Another Old Ship

I’m almost to my destination, and I know I’ll find everyone there at Ghiradelli’s Square. From the bottom of the hill below the cable car turn-around, I look over the San Francisco Bay to the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin Headlands. Over me is the huge Ghiradelli sign

Golden Gate Bridge and Marin Headlands

Ghiradelli Square

Ghiradelli Chocolate Shop

I find everyone waiting in line to get ice cream. This place is always packed, but people move in and out pretty fast, so we usually don’t have trouble getting a seat. They bring a huge, gooey, made-to-order banana split to our table and Kris and I dive in (we always share.) Afterwards, I go into the candy store and stock up on Peppermint Bark.

By now, we are really worn out, so we catch the J line bus back to the Ferry Building. If we rushed, we could catch the next boat, but we decide to take our time. We go back inside and get bread, cheese, olives, and a bottle of wine for the ride back home. I know it sounds like all we do is eat, and you are absolutely right! We get back on the ferry boat. The sun is just beginning to slink down, and the lights on the Bay Bridge are just starting to twinkle. I sit on the deck of the boat, and take some last photographs of our City by the Bay.

Ferry Boat

The Bay Bridge

The Port of San Francisco

Night Skyline

I consider myself to be an optimistic person. I tend to see the glass as half-full, look on the bright side, think positive, and believe that the sun will come out tomorrow. When I took my computer’s dead hard drive to the disk recovery people, it never really occured to me that they wouldn’t be able to rescue some, if not all, of the data. So when I got the call and they said that they were unable to retrieve any information at all, I totally freaked-out.

There was one thing I wanted more than anything else on my computer, and that was the set of pictures I had taken of my mom’s “nature” art work that she created around her home as her Alzheimer’s worsened. Every time I went to visit, I had secretly taken pictures of the beautiful designs she made on table tops, chairs, pathways, dirt patches — all over the yard.

When I got off the phone and realized that all these images were gone, I lay my head on the table and sobbed. I felt like my mom had been taken from me again. I felt like this was the last little gift of artistic beauty that she was able to share with us, and I was devastated that it was gone.

My husband and son tried to console me, but it was no use. I felt stupid, careless, thoughtless. How could I not have backed-up my pictures and documents? I went into the shower and cried some more as the water washed over me. I felt heartbroken. Yet, these were just inanimate objects. Just memories. Everyone was healthy. No one had gotten hurt. The house hadn’t burned down. As I drove to the computer place, I cried some more. All my public domain scans, photos of all my old art work, the email addresses of all my students’ parents, all those bookmarks and blog spots I’d collected over the years. But it wasn’t that I’d lost email addresses or music, all of which could be replaced over time; I had allowed my computer to become the repository of my artistic endeavors for the past five years, and now there was nothing left.

I composed myself in the car before walking into the computer shop. I approached the receptionist, and she said she was sorry that they hadn’t been able to recover the data.

“Do you have a grief counselor?” I asked facetiously.

“Why, as a matter of fact we do,” she replied. Apparently all those feelings I was experiencing are very common, and they actually have a counselor (formerly a suicide-hotline volunteer) to listen to anguished customers vent their frustrations about the loss of their computer hard drives and data.

The receptionist asked me to have a seat in their waiting room — the “Museum of Bizarre Disk-asters.” All over the place were examples of miraculous data recovery missions. Here was a CPU that had been charred and melted during a house fire. “Data Recovered!” said the sign next to it. There was a lap top that had been run over by a semi-truck. “Data Recovered!” Here was a story of a woman who had been working as a juggler on a cruise ship — which sank. She rented scuba diving equipment, dived into the murky waters, and retrieved her laptop. “Data Recovered!” Autographed pictures of Sting, Barbara Mandrell, Isaac Hayes, the writers of the Simpson’s and other famous people lined the walls. They had all had their “Data Recovered!” But not little old me.

I read an article about the counselor. In an interview she said that her clients usually felt angry with themselves for not having backed-up their computers [check], confused over their feelings of sorrow about the loss of an inanimate object [check], and depressed because of the loss of information which had been the result of years of creative expression [check]. She said that losing the information often fit the definition of a traumatic event because the total loss of control involved. I could totally relate.

“May I have a tissue?” I had to ask the lady at the front desk as my weeping resumed.

Driving back home, I wondered what life lessons I could learn from this dismal experience, beyond the most obvious one about backing-up the hard drive. Maybe I trust technology too much. Maybe I rely on it more than I should. But things happen, and we make the best of it and go on. After all, tomorrow is another day.

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My hard drive was replaced by Apple (thank goodness for extended warranties!!), and today I started reinstalling software, setting up my email accounts, and adding in some of my more important bookmarks. As I was going through my CD’s, I found one in a case that said – Back-Up Disk, 8/23/05. My heart started pumping as I place it in the drive. I saw the iPhotos folder. I tried not to get my hopes up as I previewed a jpeg, but there they were — all of the pictures I had taken of my mother’s nature designs! I had backed them up after all. What a miracle! What a treasure recovered! Oh what a lucky girl I am!

Sticks and Stones