Day 2: First Day of Scavenges!!

Saturday, April 15, 2017

          Day 2, we made it! We were up at 7:30, ready by 8:30, and scavenging by 9:30. Busy busy busy. We had a group photo in front of a cable car before we got our first scavenge lists (where the first phone of the trip was stolen). After receiving our scavenge list and map, my dad and I went with Catherine and Greg (the other daddy-daughter team) back to the hotel lobby to talk and plan out our day and what we would do together. You are able to do 3 scavenges per day with another team, all the other scavenges you have to do with only your own team. Just BTW, if my spelling and some grammar is off I apologize, I am sitting on the floor in the airport and it is 3am Houston time, so I'm felling like a zombie.

Ghirardelli Square with Catherine! 

          For our first few scavenges, we went to the 3 street intersection: Washington, Columbus, and Montgomery. We interviewed locals, we went to Beat-era hangouts (NOT inside), climbed half of Telegraph Hill, took a bus to Fishermans' Wharf, and walked to Ghirardelli Square where we met up with Catherine and Greg. There we started our teamed up scavenges. 

Attempting a photo with Alcatraz

          The first thing we did together was climb down AND up the crookedest street in America, Lombard Street. It looks a lot harder to walk up than it actually is. We had a 25 minute lunch, and we were off to learn how to ride segways! Which was easily Catherine and I's favorite task of the day. We did a 2 1/2 hour tour around San Francisco (which just so happened to be the #1 segway tour company in the world) and we got to go on the "freeway", around Washington Square Park, we stopped for ice cream, passed St. Peter and Paul Church, it was just so much fun. 

Seeing the GGB via segway!

          After segway riding we had about 2 1/2 hours before we had to be back at the hotel so we decided to go to China Town so we could finish some quick scavenges there. We separated from Catherine and Greg at that point and we found a place to have a dim sum lunch (which was one of the mandatory scavenges we could do). We also got to have dumplings there, which helped us with our Dumpling Challenge part of this trip. We went to the Gateway to China Town, where we learned what the saying on the gate says (loosely translated to: All of heaven is equal) and then it was time to head back to the hotel.

          We took a cab back to the hotel, and we were able to solicit a joke from our driver (which was a scavenge). This was a 5 minute cab ride with a middle-aged, clearly single, Asian man as our driver. We asked him to tell us a joke. I can't say what the joke was because it has tons of swear words, but just know it had to do with strippers and a transgender night club. We got back to the hotel and we had our first peer review. The peer review is basically where two teams talk about the scavenges they did and the other team has to decide whether they actually completed the task or not. This time, we were with Tom and Paula. They are veterans of this trip, and they were very enjoyable to be with. 

          We were told to do what we had to do, but to not miss the flight because the flight is 14 hours to.... Hong Kong! It is a 1:25am flight, very excited, and ready to go to sleep. So until next time! ;)

Dad's view:

The interesting thing about an experience-focused scavenger theme for traveling... is that it can take even the familiar and make it into a novel and humanity-enriching time.

I've been to San Francisco a lot.  But I have *never* had to try to find the last phone booth in the town.  Or had to decipher the words above the Chinatown dragon gate.  Or start at the *very* bottom of Filbert street and climb up Telegraph hill, counting the steps.

The wonderful thing about these scavenges is that someone - Bill and Pamela - who really cares about travel and positivity... has put the time and effort into thinking really hard about the tasks, with the goal of making the aggregate experience a life-affirming one.

We had to stop about a half dozen strangers on the street and ask them who they thought the most famous San Franciscan was.  The most hilarious answer was the Latino gentleman who in broken english said "Chinese people."

Sydney and I jumped into a bus on Telegraph hill, didn't have bus fair, and a total stranger, a lovely red-haired 75 year old woman, paid our fair.  All she said was "pay it forward."  We stayed on the bus with her and struck up a really wonderful 30 minute conversation - she was going down from Telegraph hill to pick up her 66 mustang down by Fisherman's Wharf.  She'd lived on Telegraph Hill for 30 years, and she had some stories.

We had to figure out what the "Beat-era" was, down at the edge of Chinatown.  We had a conversation with a *really* invested hipster manning the book store - lovely guy.  He taught us the importance of Kerouac and Ginsberg and all the people who almost went to jail in the 60s for publishing poetry with curse words in it.  He told us the stories about the Vesuvio bar, and City Lights book store, and Cafe Trieste restaurant - all within 100 feet of where we were standing - where all those "Beat-era" authors sat, had espresso, smoked weed, drank absinthe, and wrote.

Never in my dozens of trips to San Francisco was I even aware that these places existed.  It's been a great start.  Now it's off to Hong Kong.