(With a street side breakfast, one tandem bike, and sweet talking people into free parking)

We knew today would be a busy day, so we got up early and were back in the saddle. J is thinking about grad school at Stanford, so we decided to take a quick detour through the campus to see how it looked, and while it was beautiful, the campus seemed more like a sprawling mix of housing and intermittent buildings rather than a centralized school with a connective campus.
 
We then made sure to visti a gas station to fill up, and found ourselves facing a record high in prices: $4.39 a gallon. Only 4 gallons later (we thought it best to fill up the rest at a cheaper pump), we drove into downtown San Fran to try and see as much of the city as possible before heading up to Oregon.

Walking along the warf, it was clear we had landed in the tourist district, but the city was still entertaining. We got to see Alcatraz (from a distance), the famous San Francisco sea lions, and the fishing piers. Unfortunately, it was also soon discovered that San Francisco doesn’t believe in breakfast – after searching up and down the street for a spot, we eventually had to go to a tourism desk, who recommended a small café a few blocks in from the pier.

Our omelets and blueberry pancakes filled us up and we were easily convinced by a sassy salesman to rent a tandem bike – clearly one of the best decisions of the trip thus far. Being the naturally competitive but poor college kids that we are, we shoved over our $11 and hightailed it for the Golden Gate bridge, dodging dogs, bikers, runners and elderly grandmothers. It was a beautiful, cloudless day and the bridge looked pretty awesome – it’s not hard to understand why the bridge is so loved.

Sadly, we had to get going, so we quickly returned, hopped in the car and headed up the city’s steepest streets to get one last view. Upon scaling the highest hill, we unknowingly turned onto Lombard Street, the “crookedest” street in the world.  Eight hairpin turns at 5 miles per hour later, we headed north across the Golden gate and put our sights on Oregon – my home state.

We sped through North Cal’s farming fields, wound through lake Shasta and the Southern Cascades, and made the border by sunset. Three hours later, we pulled into Corvallis, home to Oregon State University, and found my friends much the same way I left them almost exactly a year ago – laying around, drinking beer in a bed at Motel 6. Still, I couldn’t help but be happy to see them (despite the extreme redneck vibe), and the rest of the night was spent with some well-needed rest and laughter.