Good evening from Oakland International Airport, where I am awaiting my redeye flight back home. It is just after 10 PM PT on Thursday, August 9. I am due in to Washington-Dulles at about 7:40 AM ET tomorrow morning. However, my plane is coming from Denver and is late. Therefore, my flight will be leaving late.
Before continuing further, I should state that I was not as diligent in recording the vehicle numbers of the trains I was on here in San Francisco as I would have liked, so there are missing numbers, and others I am not totally sure of. And with that out of the way, I can now tell you about my time in San Francisco, the last city on my trip.
On Wednesday morning, I took a cab from Janet’s house to Vancouver International Airport. The cab ride only took about 20 minutes, and no more than 25, and was quite nice. I got a glimpse of a Translink facility from the cab. There was no line to check-in, and I proceeded straight to US Customs. The United States has a customs preclearance facility at Vancouver International, so anyone on a US-bound flights does customs prior to boarding their flight. 
However, the computers were down, so it took longer than it should have to go through the customs line. However, I believe I was through that line at about 9:50 AM PT, not too long after I had arrived at the airport and with plenty of time to spare before my flight was to board. I bought a USAToday and some breakfast, read the newspaper while eating, and then wrote the travelogue post about my close brush with baseball history. The airplane was then ready for boarding. While I purchased my ticket through United, the flight was an Air Canada flight on an Embraer E90 jet. And while I had been assigned to seat 22A, a window seat, when I had confirmed my flight before leaving home several weeks ago, I discovered upon check-in that morning I was now in 12D, an aisle in the bulkhead row, which I much preferred. The flight itself was uneventful, although we had a 20 minute taxi to leave Vancouver, and the pilot on our plane only told us after landing at San Francisco International that it is normal to have other planes landing on a parallel runway coming in on the same approach visible just outside our plane’s windows. Excellent timing on his part. After deplaning, I proceeded to baggage claim, and then took the AirTrain to the BART station to head into downtown San Francisco.
BART is very much like the Washington, DC Metro, in that it is a subway-commuter rail hybrid, but it leans closer to commuter railroad than the DC Metro does. Unfortunately, there are no railfan windows on BART. 
I took BART from the poorly designed San Francisco Airport stop on a train that was only 4 cars long for some reason I cannot comprehend to Civic Center (car number 2569, I believe), where I transferred to the MUNI Metro Subway. However, due to a train at Montgomery that had “no forward motion”, there was a delay in service, and I had to wait over 10 minutes for an N-Judah streetcar (1527) which I took to my hotel. The hotel was recommended to me by my second cousins, who used to live in the area, and it worked out well. I checked in, unpacked, downloaded my email, and wrote about my last day in Vancouver for the travelogue.
Then, it was off to AT&T Park, for that night’s game between the San Francisco Giants and the Washington Nationals. 
The reason for coming to San Francisco was that I figured if I am doing all this traveling, why not add one more city so that I could make it to another ballpark, since ultimately, I wish to make it to every single one? I looked at all the matchups for that night, figured out where I could fly to easily from Vancouver, and had it narrowed down to Toronto or San Francisco, before choosing the latter due to what I had heard about the ballpark there, and the fact that the Nationals, my second favorite team, were playing. Since Barry Bonds already had his 756th career home run, this was now a fairly meaningless game between two last place teams. However, Barry Bonds did hit a home run (his 757th), and the Giants went on to win the game 5-0. Despite it being early August, it was a very cool evening. Additionally, the afternoon fog was starting to roll in and the weather had already been cloudy, so the amazing views of the San Francisco Bay were not to be had. A number of fans seated near me said it was better during the day time.
After the game, I took the N Line back to the hotel, and determined my options for the next day. 
I went to sleep at around 1 AM PT, and got up in the 8 AM hour. I went to breakfast off the hotel lobby, then returned to my room. Earlier in the week, I bought a ticket to the Thursday afternoon Giants-Nationals game, hoping to increase my chances of seeing Bonds break the home run record. Unless you’ve only started reading my travelogue with this paragraph or never pay attention to any baseball news item ever, you know that Barry Bonds already hit the record breaking home run. However, I figured since I had the ticket, I might as well use it, and returned to the ballpark again. This time, I arrived early enough to walk around, which I had not done the previous night. I saw some kayakers in McCovey’s Cove, walked by the Coca-Cola Fan Zone, and saw an amusing sign that pointed out the distances to various Giants points of interest, such as the Polo Grounds, Candlestick Park, and Cooperstown, NY.
For the night game, I was sitting in the club level (200 level), right behind home plate and in front of the radio press box. 
For the day game, I was in the 300 level, along the first base line. However, from all points in the stadium, the view out into the bay was spectacular, and certainly was more like what I expected based on the rave reviews I’ve previously read about AT&T Park. The Nationals won this game 3-1. The Giants left many runners on third base, and 10 runners over the course of the game.
Overall, I like AT&T Park. It is set beautifully; I can’t think of any stadium that is built up against a body of water the way that AT&T Park is. However, this view can really only be had during a day game. Night games can be cold, windy, and foggy and have no view of the bay after a few innings. 
There are very good views from throughout the stadium, and the scoreboard shows all sorts of useful information while the game is played, including what each batter did during the current inning. Also of note, the Giants have a female public address announcer, the only one I know of in the major leagues. However, the Giants certainly have their share of silly promotions. Wednesday was Jewish Heritage Night, and the music between half-innings included songs such as Heivenu Shalom Aleichem, Mayim Mayim, and even Hava Nagila during the 7th inning stretch after Take Me Out to the Ballgame (If you recognize all those songs, you will also know why this is quite strange). Thursday was Native American Heritage Day. A look at the Giants website will show that there are plenty of cultural heritage nights over the course of the season, many of which seemed quite silly to me.
After the game, I took MUNI back to Embarcadero, where I boarded the F Line Historic Streetcar, and rode that to Fisherman’s Wharf. I then walked over to the cable car terminal at Taylor and Bay streets, and then followed the line so I could photograph cable cars coming up and down the steep hills. 
I then rode a car back to the terminal, hoping to ride on the outside which I have yet to do, but was unable to do so since all those spaces were taken. Then, it was back on to the F Line to go back to Embarcadero, where I walked down Market Street to the Montgomery Station, photographing buses and F Line streetcars as I walked. I then took the N Line out to the UCSF campus, where I was hoping to photograph the streetcars on an “S-curve”, but the photo spot proved to be more challenging than I expected, and I’m not sure I am totally pleased with the results yet. I bought dinner on the way back to the hotel, which I checked out of this morning, but left my stuff there for the day. I reclaimed my luggage, and then returned to the MUNI stop, where I just missed a trolley, but another pulled in right away (1525). I noticed the sign read J-CHURCH/BALBOA PARK, but I figured this was an error of some sort, and the car would go into the Metro Tunnel. But it turned onto the J Line at the portal, much to my surprise, and I had to walk back a block to await a “real” N streetcar to downtown. 
I think an unintelligible about the train not going downtown was made, but I certainly couldn’t understand it if that was the case. The next train did go into the tunnel, so I took it to Civic Center and changed for BART, which I took to Coliseum/Oakland Airport (car 392). Once there, I got on the AirBART bus that connects the BART station to the airport. The bus runs every 10 minutes, and the one I got on sat there for about 9 (I got on at about 9:11, we left at 9:20). The ride to the airport took just over 10 minutes, but BART warns that it can take up to 30 when there is heavy traffic. Needless to say, this train-to-the-plane connection will be come much easier when and if the people mover train (similar to AirTrain at JFK or Newark airports) is constructed. I checked in for my flight, went through security, and now am writing this post.
I’m signing off at this point for now, but I’ll write a concluding post, detailing the rest of my trip home and other last thoughts for this travelogue, once back on the East Coast over the weekend.
