The politics of the region are entirely different from Massachusetts with the homogeneous political framework, which remains largely consistent from one county to the other. As LA abuts Riverside county and Orange county huge philosophical issues regarding various concerns arise. It also amazing to notice how the desert has been tamed into an urban landscape. The beach is not too far from downtown Los Angeles, but it can seem a world apart as you have to traverse mountains and the urban jungle to reach the water’s edge. The beaches in LA County are greatly superior to any of the stock within metro Boston. They have tons of sand and plenty of room for you on the public beaches. A nice multi-use trail allows you to move along the beach in Santa Monica. By the way I did manage to find Dr. Welby’s hospital.
fond of the various competing hamburger parlours spread generously through out the area. He was very reluctant to try some of the overwhelming Mexican options. Have you ever heard of In-N-Out Burger, Fatburger, Carl Jr’s, or Jack in the Box? Nor had I. I had known of Sonics and I had been to those previously. They were low priced and of average quality. I was shocked by the Carl Jr which sells hamburgers for $6.99 or more. I needed to try better options that would also provide me with some regard to the more favored cuisine of the locals. One place that was insanely popular and located in one of those bizarre places near the motel was Cafe ’50’s. It was pretty good. All of the ladies had to have red hair. I could not say that I was not pleased. It had flair and was a pretty good place to eat. Our waitress was suprised when we said that needed plenty of water. I had just been in the Mojave desert all day and I was not going to drink anything that would de-hydrate me. I tended to notice that many of the locals do not travel very far out of their valley. We also drove by other restaurants with some inklings of fame such as Liousas. I also ate lunch at Philips in downtown Los Angeles. KB1PBT really took a shine to their ala-cart menu. I had not eaten there for quite awhile. We also saw Joe Lessor’s train collection on display within the restaurant. While we were in Los Angeles we also rode the new Red Line. I tried to take a few photographs in the Red Line, but too much of the stations had been dimly lit. We also extensively photographed the Gold Line in a big blitz similiar to our visit to San Diego. Don’t worry, I will show you some of those pictures, eventually. I am getting a lot of flak on .67 about not putting up enough new train pictures. Well, you can not please everyone.
The Port of Los Angeles is at the southern most point of influence for the City of Los Angeles. It is very interesting in that it is next to the Port of Long Beach. The Long Beach Port is owned by the city of Long Beach. I also found it very interesting that Los Angeles had several municipal airports, and Long Beach has it own airport. Many airlines make transcontinental flights to Long Beach Airport, which is very small. My first taste of the California sunshine was in Long Beach. KB1PBT would pick me 
up by the blue line after I had explored the area a little bit. The Port of Los Angeles is just to the west of the Long Beach Port. It was very interesting in that the Port of Los Angeles ran a subsidized service in San Pedro, which went absolutely no where. They had several crews that ran regular shifts. Herzog was the operator responsible for maintaining railroad operations. One of the fellows from the Seashore Trolley museum went to San Pedro on special contract to study an original Pacific Electric traction car. Seashore Trolley museum helped the Port obtain needed hardware and provided guidance so that they could have two replica cars constructed in a facility near by to the port. In the picture 501 is heading north and we are riding 500 south.
pictures of San Francisco are the first to appear on the website. It is always LIFO. Your trusty ham was able to bicycle around San Francisco in addition to taking municipal transportation. A lot of people like to rent bicycles on their vacations in San Francisco. There were three large bicycle rental chains near Fisherman’s wharf. Tons of people came to San Francisco just to see the cable cars. I do not know if anyone came to the City to re-perform scenes from the Streets of San Francisco, but I had concerns upon seeing some of the drivers. The streets are pretty tough around here. I am not talking about crime but hills! On Lombard Street cars are required to park completely perpendicular to the curb. It is too steep for parallel parking in various stretches. Your trusty author was able to rent a mountain bicycle with lower gearing the traditional sport road model in order to enjoy the wonderful hills of San Francisco. I think that I had my brain engaged in low gear when I decided to rent the mountain bicycle. The only respite are the flats at intersections of the streets. Just so you know the cable cars do stop. They stop in the middle of the intersections because those are the flat spots as I just mentioned to you. It is not easy trying to take photographs of City. I did notice that everyone called the downtown area as the City unlike Boston, which is called downtown. San Francisco is considerably larger than downtown Boston with many more residential dwellings. There are remnants of a once vibrant ocean shipping port, but much of the port is actually in the next county in the city of Oakland. Oakland is not a suburb of SF in the manner of Newton being subordinate to Boston. However, there is lot of bustling activity in the City regardless of its large neighbors. The area is knitted together with a large highway network and BART.
around and having a great time at the Fort. There is a tough hill on one of the bike routes that takes you along the coast and through Fort Mason. I saw many people walk their bicycles upwards, but I had to try it! It was tough, but I’ve seen steeper. Tons of residential housing is located very close by. The Fort is right on the water. Further down the coastline, you can see some of the old commercial shipping wharves as you head towards the Golden Gate Bridge and the Presidio. The Presidio was a very large army fort separate from Fort Mason. Just like Fort Mason it has been converted into public use. Offices and residential dwellings are scattered across the Presidio. The remainder of these bases are for public recreation and they are patrolled by the National Park Service. You can see many commercial ships head underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. They are not pulling into the Port of San Francisco. 
Most of the remaining wharves for San Francisco demonstrate their limited use in the modern era of container shipping. Only commercial fishing remains in a steady state in the San Francisco seabound community. In Alameida County, which is across the lower bay from San Francisco is a large port with cranes for unloading the container ships and assembling large stack trains. There is very little freight service in San Francisco and the trunk lines effectively terminate around Oakland in Alameida County. I rode my rented bicycle over to the Golden Gate Bridge. I managed to ride over it. It was cold and a very heavy fog had set in. You could not see much until you rode into Marin County. You could continously hear vessel after vessel blow their fog horns underneath the bridge. I saw tons of bicyclists coming out of Marin County and heading for work as I crossed the bridge. Most of them were in proper road kit with short-sleeve jerseys and shorts. It was bright and beautiful in Marin County! Yet, I was wondering if I would only wear shorts to ride into San Francisco. I was alm
ost tempted to the take the ferry back to San Francisco, but I decided that I should just ride back. Back in San Francisco County I went to see a bunch of other things. I took a picture of the Ferry Building just so you could see it, but I did not ride a ferry service originating from the building. The building was built by the City in order to consolidate the ferry service in a central terminal. The Port of San Francisco was one of the first ports to also be completely owned by the City for whose boundaries it resided in. Most of the land in the area is similar to Boston in that it is all fill. The Ferry building rests on many Douglas fir pilings. Does this sound familiar? It just might. The F Line also runs right in front of the building. I did manage to take the NPS-sponsored ferry to Alacratz Island, but this leaves from a building further up the street. I did some of the touristy things such as see the otters laying abut the water at Pier 39. They sure make a lot of noise. When you visit the City just make sure that you put plenty of time in to wait for the darn F car to arrive. I also got pretty lucky and rode by all of these buildings in the open-boat car from Blackpool, England. I don’t know if you will ever see such a car in regular service anywhere else in the WORLD!
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