Reflections on San Fran

Thinking back of my trip to San Francisco, one of the things that really stuck with me was the amount of international tourists in the city. There were LOTS of tourists. Every bus we rode, every street we walked, every stop we made had lots of tourists in the city. Many of the tourists were international. I expected Asian tourists because we were on the west coast. But there were many European tourists, too. Like French, German, Spanish, British, and other languages I could not figure out. The dollar is weak overseas and touring the USA is reasonably priced for the international tourists.

The public transit drivers could not have been nicer to all the tourists who, collectively, were trying to get to the same place. I really have to put in a plug for all the bus, etc, drivers that we met. At one bus stop, the entire bus (save a few locals) exited the bus to catch a connection to the downtown area. A few tourists were confused as to where to pick up the next bus. The corner was the same where we got caught the connection before, but now we were going in the opposite direction.

I walked to the bus stop on the side of the street I knew we had to be on. Shortly a bus showed up, but the other riders from my bus had not gotten there yet. They hurried toward the stop, but were still far away after we had loaded. But the driver still waited for them to catch up. I expected him to leave, but he waited.

Many times, Rita and I would tell the driver we wanted to get off to go to a certain place and he would stop for us and call out the stop. Often, other tourists were headed to the same place.

A few times, we would wait at the bus stop and ask the next bus driver which bus we needed to take to get somewhere. The drivers were always courteous and gave us good directions.

On the last bus we rode in the city, we needed to go down Stockton street to Market, to our hotel. We asked the next bus that pulled up if she went to Market. Yes she did. But the bus was full. She stood up to yell at the riders to "Move on back so we can get these ladies on the bus." lol..

Rita and I had an enjoyable chat with her as we hung on to the railings as the bus barreled down the street. The driver had been a nurse but didn't like nursing. She had only gone into nursing to please her mother. She didn't particularly like driving bus, but it paid the bills. She could not afford to live in San Fran and lived to the west of the city.

We told her we were from Ohio. She had been there once, flying into the Cleveland airport to drop off a relative. Then she got back on a plane to return to California. She says Hello to all the buckeyes.

Great people, all of the transit workers.