We were allowed to use the amenities at the hostel since we had rented a bed for the night, but we couldn't check into our room until 2 or 3. On this day and the next day I decided to take opportunities to leave Susan alone as much as possible. There was a large common kitchen room, which had two kitchens, and cubbies and refrigerators to store things. On any food you kept there you had to put a label with your name and the date of your check-out written on it. Anything that was there after checkout dates became free food for anyone who was there. This hostel was indeed very nice, and was larger than any I had seen in Japan. We were actually in one of the smaller rooms, a 10 person co-ed room. There were rooms with at least 20 if not more people in them. The showers had shampoo and soap dispensers like hotels in Japan, which I was relieved to find. There was a theater room where they played movies throughout the week, although not on the day we were staying there. The front counter girl was really nice, as were the rest of the staff. You had to keep your receipt or key on you at all times to show them for security reasons, although it was only really enforced at night.
That morning while Susan was making some breakfast for herself I decided to go out and find some food for myself. It was a combination of wanting to get away from Susan (for her sake more than mine... maybe to represent a bit that I didn't feel like I needed her to be around me all the time also) and wanting to go out and explore by myself and get food that Susan may not have been interested in. I asked her where the Safeway was, and she drew me a cute map with the hostel, some palm trees in the park outside, the marina, and the Safeway; it wasn't really incorrect but I ended up interpreting it in the wrong way and just walking back up into the marina district and getting lost. I found an organic food market and bought an apple and a bunch of cliff bars that were on sale (good move, actually). I ended up finding a trendy Indian restaurant, and Indian had been something I was craving, so I decided to check it out. It was like Indian food that was made by white people who were imitating Indian food, which was in a way disappointing, but it was still tasty and I was hungry. I discovered upon leaving that I had spilled it on my one pink, light colored shirt, which embarrassed me unreasonably. I guess leaving and trying to get back is where I actually became lost, and it took me quite awhile to get back to the hostel, which may have been a good thing given that I wanted to leave Susan alone anyway.
I met her back behind the hostel at the battery where we had slept surreptitiously the night before. I think this is the order of things... we spent to daytime periods around this hostel and I am having trouble not mixing them up. Oh well. Anyway I believe this is the day where we spent most of the day laying around in the area near the battery. I was very, very tired. Exhausted in fact. I don't think I had really had a good night of sleep in quite some time by this point in San Francisco. We spent a lot of time not doing anything around the hostel. My legs were starting to manifest their injuries because of all the walking we did. While we were walking the night before I was worried because I started to feel the ligament pain in my knee again, and my feet hurt a lot. This day I didn't feel too bad. Good thing, because this was Golden Gate Park day. This would end up being one of the most trying and strenuous days of my vacation, although also one of the most rewarding and beautiful.
You could see the Golden Gate Bridge from the park in which our hostel stood, and today is the day Susan wanted to take me on that tour. Starting in the late afternoon/early evening we started our walk toward the bridge. It's so large that it's hard to gauge how long it really takes to get over that - it loomed ever larger over the course of some indeterminate amount of time. Susan and I finally started talking about things that are actually of some importance to her. About what makes us happy, about our core beliefs in life. For an example, I remember one thing that Susan told me that is very different from how I think, but which I will probably not forget for a long time, if ever: "I'm not so interested in what objective reality is, but in what I can brainwash myself into believing that makes me happy." Susan is very intelligent, she could easily do as well in academics as me if she so chose. She is also perhaps much wiser than me. Or at least, she is very wise, and I am very impressed by the degree to which she exhibits both of those traits, so never take anything I quote from her to be held foolishly. The tension that had existed intensely in the morning faded as we began to talk about deeper things. I felt like I was with Susan again. Near the bridge I took the picture you see at the top of this post.
We held hands as we walked up toward the Presidio, where the real wealthy of San Francisco live, where there are lots of trees and big houses. We walked from there to the sand stairs down to Baker Beach, where we sat and danced across the edge of the tide. We could see the Golden Gate Bridge from the other side, lit up at night. As we walked back toward the path toward the city we met some foreigners shouting "Marco," who were actually looking for their son name Marco rather than playing the game (I'm glad I didn't shout Polo...), who asked us what they should do - call the police. I ate a cliff bar as we reached the pavement and we began the most excruciating walk of my life. My feet were in a lot of pain, in particular my left heel which had a blister that caused me terrible pain when we started walking after a pause and gradually faded into the general pain of my lower body as we continued. We walked in silence from there all the way back to the hostel, which took over an hour at a brisk pace. It even started to hurt Susan's feet, and she is much more accustomed to walking than me, so I know it was a rather grueling journey. I bought a growler when we were approaching the area of our hostel and drank it on a bench outside our hostel while Susan went inside to do whatever. I sat and drank the San Francisco beer and smoked cigarettes and called my mom for a short time before my phone ran out of batteries. Afterward I went in and passed out for the night, noting with dismay the note on our door that said that the following morning construction on the road outside our hostel would begin, loudly, at 7 or 8 in the morning. I passed out on the bunk above Susan.
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