California Visit
Pictures of our week in California - Page 2

Day 4 - Visit to local scrap and storage yards.
While out walking with his Father one evening after a visit to a friend locally, Tim came across a yard with some engines in, and knowing my interest he took a note of the location and we went there after visiting the same friend. It is a small lock-up yard with no office and just a chain-link fence around the perimeter. The engines are mainly horizontal types, although there is one vertical like a Novo tucked away under a trailer.
We took some pictures which were taken through the fence as there were no people around to ask about the items, and a return visit later the next day was the same, so what we have is all that we could get in the way of information.

Day 5 - Visit to Electronics Surplus and Fry's Electrical Warehouses.
One of the delights of going shopping with Tim, is that there are a lot of surplus shops around, plus the retail outlets are pretty good, so on the Tuesday, we split up, Rita and Sally going off in Sally's car, while Tim and I went off to the electronics shops. There are a couple of surplus shops quite close to Tim, one of which is more computer oriented, the other is more electronics. Tim was after a housing for a couple of disk drives for his BBC Master computer, so we spent a happy few hours sorting through the shelves of stuff, eventually finding something at a place called "Weird Stuff" on Caribbean Drive near to Moffat Airfield. They had things like Laser Disc players and tons of leads and computer bits, plus older software. Tim's bits came to about $25.
Another visit to Fry's had been on the cards as I wanted to upgrade my laptop memory, and there were some DVD players on offer which Tim thought might be able to be used on UK (PAL) TV's. We bought one DVD player after opening the box and checking the options. It not only worked on PAL for European TV, but after we checked it at home on Tim's 240V transformer we confirmed that it would happily work on 240V input, a real bargain at $US 50.00!
That took up most of the day, and we all felt quite tired when we got together later on. I was feeling particularly tired and I hadn't really adjusted to the time difference, something that had caused me problems before when travelling West. We had an evening meal out, but apart from that it was the end of the day for us.

Day 6 - Visit to San Francisco.
This was an early start day, as we hoped to be able to do a lot in the one trip and save a day for another run out if possible, but the weather had other ideas and we had a lot of mist around early on, which meant that the Golden gate sightseeing and photography would have to be postponed until tomorrow, before we caught the plane home (leaving at 16.45pm)
The trip up was very slow, with rush-hour traffic and fog/mist, but by the time we had reached our breakfast stop it was starting to lift a bit. American breakfasts are quite comprehensive, and the choice is huge... I had learned my lesson by now and stuck to something light (omelette) and it was excellent. The restuarant was located near to the site of an old swimming baths right on the edge of the sea, and it had got burned down in the 1920's or 1930's, so all that remained was the skeleton of the floor and baths. The cafe had posters of the pictures of then place (as it was before the fire) for sale.

We then went on to the Golden Gate park, where we left the car and caught a No5 Trolleybus down to the cable car terminus in Market Street. We had never been on the cable cars before and we were both looking forward to the ride, rather like as couple of kids... We had about 20 minutes wait, during which the queue built up to about 100 people, then three cable cars turned up together. There are two cable car companies, running to two destinations but using bits of the same track system. The cables that pull the cars cost about $US 80,000 each and last about 6 months or so. They run continuously, the cable cars having a gripper mechanism that is controlled by the driver. Braking is by two sets of wheel brakes, controlled by the driver at the front and a brakeman at the rear. An emergency brake that digs into the road is controlled by the driver through a third red-painted lever.

We then walked through the shops and down to the seafront. Along this area are the main tourist shops and restuarants in the area known as Fisherman's Wharf.
But away from all that there are quite a few interesting sights to see, two of which are the USS Pampanito and the Jeremiah O'Brien, both WWII veterans. Guided tours of the boats are available, but we were unable to go on them at the time. We have promised ourselves a visit next time.

We left the WWII boats and walked down to Pier 39, where we heard the sounds of Sea Lions. There are a series of floating platforms provided for the animals, and they bask in the sunshine while the tourists look at them and take pictures of the seals and the Bay area, just like we did!

We then walked up to Ghirardelli Square, calling at a few camera shops on the way to see if we could pick up a cheap digital camera for Rita. Unfortunately the shopkeepers were somewhat aggressive with their sales chat, and we walked out of every shop that we went into, bar one. None had proper prices in the windows, and none would offer a straight price for a given model. The last one explained that to get a cheap camera, he would have to order it in specially, so we could either wait for it or take one of the dearer cameras on show....
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