France - leaving Toulouse

(This post has pics this time around!)

After a very busy but happy few days in Toulouse, we headed off to Dijon. We had to get up before dawn (as did our host) and the train was well on its way by the time the sun got out of bed.



The train was very pleasant and we had the carriage almost to ourselves for the first hour or two of the journey. This is first class.



The train also went super fast between Montpellier and Lyon. Gosh that was fab! 300km/h. Just a bit faster than I've ever been except in a plane of course.

Finally, six hours later, we arrived in Dijon. Cheers!

For train nuffies only

Here's a couple of wonky-cam videos of the Tehachapi Loop in action.





If I can get a video editing thing going, I'll show you one that Nathan took too. It is too big for blogger. You can read more on Nathan's blog.

:-)

NY Drive Day 3

The day dawned grey and cold and miserable - the dense fog Bakersfield greeted us with the night before had settled in for the long haul it seemed. We were glad to leave and headed sorta eastish, towards the desert.

As we started to climb out of Central Valley, the fog began to clear, revealing rolling green velvet hills. There were even some cows grazing in the paddocks! That required a photo - we are not used to this idea of cattle being able to graze on their right and proper food here in the US - we see too many intensive dairy and cattle farms.



The terrain became more rugged as we climbed a bit further, and more scenic.


Some of the mountains had snow on top!


Eventually we were high enough to see patches of snow around us. We passed a small town and headed for the desert. But first,




The vegetation suddenly changes - rainshadow I guess - and we saw our first Joshua Trees. Weird looking things but fairly typical of agaves.




This is the best pic we got in Mojave. I think it sums up our visit there - we came, we saw, we got out of this benighted place as soon as we could. It is on a vast desert plain and I cannot imagine how hot it would be in summer when the winds blow out of the desert towards the coast.

We left the land of the Joshua Tree behind and crossed the pass again.





We stopped in Tehachapi (te-*hatch*-a-pee) for lunch. It has a very good train shop, for reasons that were about to become abundantly evident to me. The hippy eatery at the east end of town fed us some very nice chili - it was even Lynne friendly (though not very hippy when i think about it cos it had meat in it). The sign shown above indicates how important the local train attraction is to the town. It also looks a little sad - the bare land behind it was until recently their railway museum. A fire razed it in 2008 just after it was completed.


We also saw this sign at another eatery - we sniggered quite a bit.

So why had we come here? To see the Tehachapi Loop, a 130-odd year old engineering marvel that lets trains negotiate the grade up the Tehachapi Pass. Trains are important in this household.

As we returned to our car, we heard dingdongs and a train horn! Oooh, we were in luck! This BNSF train was on its way west to the loop!


We dashed back to the car and took off towards the loop.

We were still beating the train to our date at the Tehachapi loop.

The road became a bit windy with patches of snow in the sheltered areas. Were we still beating the train? There was a chap selling souvenirs at a layby on the road. In talking to him we discovered we had to backtrack 100 yards and go along a little track to get the best view. Back we went to get that view!


The train looping around half the loop.




The train then winds around some more bends on its way to Central Valley.

(A picture without trains or trainlines in it for those not interested in trains)


And back we headed into Central Valley

to find a solar power plant designed by Aussie ingenuity (our pic shows little of consequence), and pass a bunch of turkey vultures (I got excited cos I thought they might be condors but condors don't feed in packs) and face RAIN and excitable cars before finding a place to stay in Oakhurst.

SF2

BTW, it most definitely was winter the day I travelled to SF, but it sure didn't feel like it. Hooray for places with mild winters!


This old riverboat appears to have been modified to become a nightclub or something. Bizarre.

I walked and walked and walked. My legs were getting weary as I finally reached pier 39. I liked the crab that greeted me


The pier is a tourist trap but I didn't mind. I was ready for a tourist trap with its various diversions. It had Stuff in it, some of which was almost interesting! The merry-go-round was very nifty


and quite a number of people were admiring the pretty horses (mostly adults, probably like me wondering if the things could bear our weight)


The stars of the show at pier 39 are of course the sea lions. I thought I got a totally brilliant video of two sea lions threatening each other but alas no the camera didn't understand that pressing the shutter button means start recording now. (I got a totally brilliant video of the decking :-) Instead, you get to see a still shot of this seagull enjoying some pre-digested lunch...


By the time I had reached Pier 39, I was sick of walking. I was going to walk all the way back into town to check out yarn shops and there was no way I was walking any closer to this SF icon:


And I certainly was not swimming all the way to there:

(though I could've caught a ferry if I wanted to share it with 500 or so 15 year olds. Ick)

A number of old trams/trolleys/streetcars rumble up and down the (dangnabbit, getting old, I think it is a Spanish word that would translate to esplanade, though it sounds like place of embarkation). Embarcadero. That is it! I spent quite a few frustrating minutes trying to get a shot of a tram rather than the side of a truck or a taxi or some enormous hulking SUV. Eventually my patience was rewarded:


I think this building demonstrates that I was in SF and not some other place


This steep street could be in SF or Wellington in New Zealand - both of them are subject to the same forces that cause sudden uplift of land


But these houses have a very Bay area feel to them


The centre of town was interesting - it was older than I expected but then again I guess the last *rooly* big earthquake was what 1906? 1908? Anyway, there were a lot of pretty looking buildings. I could've wandered around for hours if my feet didn't hurt after walking 5 miles and if I didn't want to find a yarn shop or two. (Imagiknit, which is two miles out of town and art fibers which is right in the heart of town.) I didn't take a ride on one of the cable cars (and I forgot to wait for it to rumble past so I could get a photo - I only saw one in the distance). Next time! I didn't get any good shots there either - the best views are in the middle of the streets and the streets are busy and a little canyon like (as one might expect when surrounded by skyscrapers).


On the way back a heap of Caltrains awaited me, but I chose the one that was express most of the way. Hooray for express trains! Boo hiss for diesels that spew poisonous fumes everywhere! Caltrain is going to be electrified - it is running at capacity now and if they electrify it, they can run more trains as electric trains accelerate faster. Having two tracks all the way would help too - one there, one back Yeah, it's all train stuff to me! But I sure prefer riding the train to a big city than driving a car cos at least I don't have to worry about traffic in the train nor finding a car park without having to pay extortionist rates to release the thing at the end of the day....

SF1

And that is not science fiction! Nope San Francisco.


Alas, I didn't wear a flower in my hair but I did go to SF. I plotted and planned over a MONTH ago now and chose the first sunny day in over a week for the trip. It said it would be clear in SF, which I think is pretty important if I am to take a brazilian pictures, which I did. Think yourself lucky that you get what I consider are the best ones, and think yourself unlucky that I am not very discriminatory when it comes to chosing the best photos.

Since it was half an hour to the Caltrain on the light rail in whatever direction I took, I hopped on the tram-train to Mountain View.


This is the most amusing thing I saw all day (except maybe the sea lions).


The Caltrain runs *backwards* all the way to SF. There is no turning point for the trains so the driver sits up in the "front" carriage. Clang clang clang (they have clangie things not horns for pulling into and out of stations) and the train "backs" into the station. Most bizarre. The advantage of having the loco at the back? No diesel fumes! (But this means the trip to SJ is most pongy and quite a number of people were coughing, me included.)

So I hopped off the train at San Francisco and started wandering around. I had no idea where Good Stuff was (except for my little scratch map of how to get to yarn shops) so I headed for the waterfront and walked past the ball park and onwards ever onwards.






The bridge that goes to Berkeley, etc.


I love the barrier on the bridge suspension to stop people walking/climbing up it. I can't imagine ever getting to a point where I would need to be stopped from climbing further. I would've fallen off much earlier after the vertigo got me in its clutches. Not only is the suspension support a few metres above the upper bridge deck, it is also at least 14 stories above the ground (there are buildings pretty much underneath the bridge). Ackles.


(For some reason I like the shot with the pigeon in it so you get to see it too. The bird fluttered down in front of me and strutted around importantly and amused me, even if it is a rat of the sky.)


Just what every city needs.

Along with its own little Elder thing


and a

But wait, there's more!

An ENORMOUS spidery thing. Have I scared all you arachniphobes yet?


Maybe you'll find this scarier

It is the hint of the unknown and the frightening that is more scary than the real thing!

Hmm, now that I have scared off half my audience, I had best put the rest in another blog post!

Things I've learned

Number Two.

Trains are seemingly never-ending here. Each train must be about a mile or more long. Make sure you avoid level crossings when trains are nearby cos you will have to wait and wait and wait.

We drove up to this loco (plus a mate) outside Denver on the way to Colorado Springs

and past so many of these container thingos Nathan couldn't keep count

and eventually we found the other end of the train over a minute later (and we were in a 65 mph zone)

Five locos presumably all slaved together, three at one end, two at the other.

The BNSF line runs literally straight through Fort Collins. It goes down the middle of a street in Old Town. It runs through the university. The train has to do 15mph. It takes a VERY long time to get through the old town area and blasts its horn a very great deal. It is pretty obvious when it is about.

This is why last night when I heard the train hooting its horn frantically I rode like the clappers to get across the railway line before the train reached it. I had left the LYS knitty group a bit later than I meant to and it was full on dark, so I'm belting along in the dark with my lights on (but really they are not meant for lighting the street up, more to warn car/truck drivers of my presence. And other cyclists who don't have lights, but that is another story). I heard tooting of a train. Ack. Ride fast! Faster! Must beat the train!

I beat the train by three intersections. Then I kept pace with it despite riding away and then alongside it three roads across. It was fun!