San Francisco

The main reason we went was that [eldest] was going to be a bridesmaid in the wedding of her best friend from high school. It would be the only way we would see her this year (although we had seen her, but not daughter-in-law, at spouse's mother's funeral). Spouse & youngest had never seen San Francisco, and the only time I was there was in 1970. We had then visited Chinatown, and my parents' friends the Hellers, and that was all. I also had the opportunity to meet face to face a friend I had only known by e-mail and other remote meetings, and we planned to visit a science-fiction bookstore called Borderlands; there is no such bookstore in this area of course.

We flew, and that meant flying Delta, an airline about which I have complained in the past. On we got to the Birmingham Airport the Delta computer system was down. A Delta employee told us that it seemed to be more important to pay the CEO $24 million per year than to upgrade the computer systems. It took us nearly an hour to check in because it took almost an hour to get the computer to respond. Thus we had no time to buy much-needed food before we got on the plane. Youngest gets hungry fast and she also has a bigger appetite than she used to. We are all allergic to overpriced airport crap, but sometimes there is no choice. Anyway, the Delta operation in Detroit and the one in San Francisco didn't give us any trouble, surprisingly (In previous years we have had problems with Atlanta but none with Boston; is there a pattern here?). Alas, on our return to Birmingham we had to wait about 20 minutes for my wheelchair, although that's not terribly much longer than it takes in other places.

Because we need a fully accessible room, our hotel choices are limited. We ended up in the Sheraton on fisherman's wharf, which is I think the most expensive hotel we've ever stayed in. It did have the advantage of being located in the heart of the tourist district. We were able to walk almost every place we went, which saved money. Although, San Francisco Mass transit is very wheelchair friendly, and not very expensive, so it didn't save us a lot of money. Everyone but me did get some exercise.

When we first got to the hotel they put us in a room that was not, after all, fully accessible. It was two o'clock in the morning, and we didn't notice until the next day. By that time we had unpacked everything and had to re-pack it for the move to the other room. Two things we still haven't found. By way of apology for our inconvenience they gave us five vouchers to their vastly overpriced breakfast buffet. We made sure to use all five vouchers. The buffet was good, although the variety was only moderate, and the price was $25 per person. This would've been a bargain if we were all football players! Aside from that, the hotel service was excellent in every way.

Friday, eldest and DIL were not yet in town. We explored Fisherman's Wharf. Before we did that we ate breakfast at IHOP. It was very convenient and we were very hungry because some of us had slept very late. Fisherman's wharf is all about tourism, but it is fun nevertheless. For me the highlight was the aquarium. It contains denizens of San Francisco Bay, which is saline enough that the wildlife is marine wildlife. They have a lot of jellyfish, sea anemones, brightly colored fish, one octopus, vast numbers of sharks, skates, and large fish, and plenty of other things. I really liked best the tanks, where you can get close to the reef organisms, but they did have a cool tunnel that went “under the Bay.” Actually, an air-filled tunnel is inside a water-filled tunnel, but it's big enough and the lighting is such that it looks quite realistic. The tunnel that has water in it is full of fish and starfish for the most part.

I think it was later that day that we went to Russian Hill and looked at lots of Art Deco homes. Beautiful houses, large flowering tropical plants, and an astonishingly steep hill.

The wedding was Saturday. It was probably that morning that we went to the North Beach area. It was really a lot of the same: steep hills, beautiful architecture, and an incredible church on Washington Square. It wasn't that easy to find a wheelchair accessible taxi driver willing to drive to the wedding site. It was across the Golden gate Bridge and up a long 1.5 lane winding road in the mountains (Sequoia trees) and then up a long winding driveway. As soon as we got there we started hunting for a driver to take us back at eight o'clock that night. The one we found was a local man who was off duty, but he never turns down disabled people: Lucky for us! The wedding was in a large and beautiful lodge way up in the mountains and we had the place to ourselves. There were probably about a hundred people there. The wedding was outside and the day was uncharacteristically hot. I doubt that it was a record, but it definitely was close. It was sunny and 90° and I had to stay in the shade of the porch. Finnish DIL stayed with me, not being used to temperatures that she considers to be typical of the surface of the sun. The reception was right after the wedding. The food had been chosen using taste as the sole criterion, and it was definitely the best food I've ever had at a reception of any kind. Most of the bride and groom's friends are self-identified geeks, and even though we are too, we felt a little out of place. It is not a monolithic subculture. We definitely had fun though, and enjoyed the attack of the pirate ninjas.

Eldest and DIL left Tuesday morning, so we only had two days to hang out with them after the wedding. Sunday we went to Ghirardelli square with them. At one time it was part of the original Ghirardelli chocolate factory, but now it is a small mall. Very crowded. We bought some chocolate. So did thousands and thousands of other people! I'm sure we did something else that day, besides eat at IHOP again. For DIL, IHOP is an American icon, and she simply had to eat there. She liked it so much that we did that again on Monday.

Monday we planned to meet a friend of mine whom I had never met face-to-face before at the borderlands science fiction bookstore in the Mission District. We ended up being late, because we foolishly did not realize we had to call two hours ahead of time to get a wheelchair accessible taxi. We ended up taking the streetcar, for which we only had to wait 10 minutes. It took a long time to get us to eight blocks away from our destination, from which point we had to walk. It worked out okay, and it was a really nice bookstore. Everybody bought some books. Then we went to a nearby restaurant, rather expensive, as are all San Francisco restaurants, but the food was good. Spouse and I split one dish, and she finished what youngest ordered. Then I finished the dessert that youngest ordered. Everybody had plenty to eat! In the meantime, we had met a friend of eldest and DIL, whom they had also not previously met face-to-face. She ate with us. We said goodbye to my friend and then the rest of us walked over to the Castro. We wandered around a bit and went into a tiny bakery, an odd little store, and a small bookstore. The famous gay and lesbian bookstore we had wanted to visit had gone out of business, which we would have known I suppose if we had googled them. I thought what everybody wanted to leave when we left, but it turns out eldest wished we had stayed longer. I would have been happy to, although it was starting to get cold. San Francisco wasn't really very cold, we had checked out the expected temperatures, but we didn't realize that it is very very windy. The wind was high enough to make 70° in the sun barely tolerable for me.

After eldest and DIL left we were still there Tuesday and half of Wednesday. Wednesday we didn't go terribly far, but we did find a cute little store where they sell nothing but candy: “It'sweet.” On Tuesday we went to Chinatown and to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Chinatown is like all Chinatown's, although this one is pretty large. We ate dim sum, which spouse had always wanted to do. We didn't do it the cool way, but we did eat five different kinds of things and we were very full when we were done. We went to the art museum because they had a show of photographs by Cindy Sherman. I knew of her work, but really didn't know very much about it. The show was comprehensive and large. Sherman's art is all about society's portrayal of women and what that means about women and about men and what it does to women. All of the photographs are of her. If you've never seen her work, this might sound rather limited. The range of works she has produced is almost mind-boggling and they are all good. One of the things we saw was a short black-and-white film featuring her as a paper doll. We saw most of the rest of the museum, although we hurried through about half of it. We all like modern art, although I at least don't like all of modern Art. The museum is large and has plenty of really good stuff.

I could say more about the trip, but this letter is already extremely long.

Accessibility among the Friscoites

Review of institutions dealt with on a trip to San Francisco


We visited the San Francisco area as a multipurpose vacation. Our oldest daughter was in a wedding across the Bay. She lives in Finland, and we don't see her too often. Also, only I had been to San Francisco before, and that as a teenager. Finally, we were going to meet a friend with whom I have previously only communicated at a distance. Whenever we travel, we find out how various organizations handle the needs of disabled people, and I usually report on the result.


State of Alabama

Because my injury was acquired while I was on state business, a lot of my care is paid for and handled by the state. Mostly I work with an RN at the State Employees Injury Compensation Trust Fund. My current case manager does a very good job; this has not always been true with some of her predecessors.


Accent Care, home health agency

One of the tasks handled by my case manager at the state involves finding a home health care agency in a city I visit. Typically, these agencies have to provide people to help me get up in the morning and go to bed at night. This is skilled work, but people who can do it are available in every major city and plenty of smaller cities. In this particular case, I needed 12 visits, and two individuals were assigned to the case. On two of the 12 occasions my caregiver did not show up. This is a failure rate of almost 20%, which would certainly not be acceptable in the long term. The management of Accent Care sent replacement caregivers for the subsequent days, and the three caregivers I actually worked with were all competent, friendly, and professional. I enjoy working with talkative people when they have something to say. I learned a lot about the Bay area, life as a Chinese immigrant, and many other things. So I would probably give the company a B- grade.


Delta Airlines

I have reviewed Delta Airlines in the past. Their quality of service is spotty at best. On this particular trip, we traveled on four different planes and visited three different airports. At the Birmingham Airport on the day of our departure of all of their computers were down. Employees were disgruntled, and audibly blamed the highly paid CEO of the company ($24 million/yr). I don't know whether this person is 100% responsible, but certainly the check-in personnel are not. I would say that a Delta Airlines is in trouble if they can't purchase 21st-century computer technology and keep their employees happy enough with their jobs to at least pretend to enjoy working for the company. So we missed a meal because we spent nearly an hour waiting for overtaxed equipment to finally cough up our boarding passes. My youngest daughter is thin and she gets hungry fast. So this is actually a serious problem for us.

We had no significant problems in Detroit or San Francisco. When we returned to Birmingham, we had to wait about 20 minutes for my wheelchair to be brought up from the cargo hold of the air plane. This might have been partly because we got off of the small plane relatively quickly.

Overall, I would give Delta a C+, for making us miss a meal because they were too cheap to upgrade their computer systems.


Sheraton Fisherman's Wharf (San Francisco)

This is a very expensive hotel, but not for the touristy part of San Francisco. We were somewhat limited, because we needed a place with a fully wheelchair accessible room. Funny thing is they gave us the wrong room. We did not realize right away, so when we did realize we had unpacked everything. This necessitated repacking everything in a hurry and a couple of things are still lost as a result. They gave us five vouchers to their breakfast buffet by way of apology. The buffet normally costs $25 a person (it's worth about eight dollars a person). Of course, we would never have gone there if it wasn't free, but it was still very nice of them to do that. Every employee of the hotel we interacted with was very nice and very helpful. Several of them spent a lot of time with us, as we tried to figure out the best way to get around the city, and so on. I would rate the hotel an A.


several taxi companies

I don't remember which taxi companies we used, but all three cabbies were very helpful. Of course I need a special wheelchair accessible cab, and there are a lot of those in the city. Anyway, we had a lot of luggage, and we needed a fair amount of help, and all three guys did what we needed. When we went way up in the mountains for the wedding, the cabbie was actually kind of grumpy, but we made it there on time.


San Francisco

For such a hilly place, San Francisco is a very accessible city. The streetcars, the buses, and the trains are all wheelchair accessible. Of the three, we only used the streetcars, but that was quite satisfactory. You either roll up a concrete ramp that puts you at streetcar-floor level, or you are carried up in a small outdoor lift. Certain places in the streetcar have to be cleared if a wheelchair traveler wants to use those spaces. During rush-hour, the streetcar is too crowded for someone in a wheelchair to get on and off without help. Fortunately, the drivers provide that help. Some of the hills are extremely steep, and going down them in a wheelchair is dangerous. When I'm going downhill, the weight of my arm pushes my hand against the joystick. I am not strong enough to pull my hand back if I get going very quickly. I did not have a wreck, but only because I was very cautious in certain steep spots. If I lived there, I would find the smoothest and gentlest ways to get up and down, but I know some areas would still only be accessible over steep terrain.

Back in Green (& white)!

Spent a week in San Francisco; got home ~noon. Very little sleep during a night of travel. Met some new folks & reacquainted w friends at wedding in hills north of the Bay. Beautiful forest! Met Gary Clark. Now I'll have a face-voice-manner to go w the letters & emails. SF is a beautiful city, but a bit hilly for a wheelchair.