Mick's musings: City by the Bay, part 4

Geeking out and misusing technology

We start the day a bit later than we did the one before, which coincidentally, started later than the one before it. May be a pattern forming. Also, as I dress, I find that my clothes fit more loosely. Hmm.

The plan today is to head to Golden Gate Park and go to the California Academy of Sciences. If we have time left, we may wander about some of the park. The first part of the plan will work out.

Interior of the California Academy of Sciences. I don't have
an exterior shot, Why not? I'm really sure, so the simple answer
is because neither of us took one.

The reason the second part doesn’t work out is because this is a fascinating place for science lovers. It combines a rainforest, an aquarium, a planetarium, natural history and a living rooftop, among other things. The rainforest was closed, but we still had plenty to explore.

A planetarium show was included in the admission, and we had a few minutes before the show started, so we wandered around a bit looking at some of the exhibits.

T-Rex skeleton near the entrance. (Photo by Sharon O'Connor)

Pretty sure this is a whale skeleton

A number of student groups had invaded the academy, and several organizations had set up displays, mostly climate and ecology centered, and pretty much geared toward the students. We picked up a free, LED light bulb at one of the displays while wandering around. Strangely, I seemed to know more about the relative virtues of incandescents versus fluorescents and LEDs. than the woman manning the booth.

Most of the exhibits are interactive in a variety of ways. One exhibit that fascinated me contained heavy, colored nylon strings, about the size of standing bass strings, in front of LCD displays. Each of the four strings was a different color and tuning, and plucking a string would cause the display to show a fact about that display’s topic. Each factoid remained on screen as the next string was plucked. If you strummed all four at once, all the information would display in rapid succession.

The planetarium show took us on a tour of the universe, with an emphasis on star formation. Interesting, immersive film, but not much new info for a former science teacher and her husband. When the show ended, it was time for lunch.

We actually ate lunch in the museum cafe, and like most of the meals we had, our food was locally sourced, organic, etc. It was also good, though I suppose it can be hard to mess up a pulled pork sandwich. A woman sitting behind Sharon with her baby provided me with a lot of entertainment while we ate.

We went to the aquarium after lunch, and though it covered much of the same territory as the Aquarium of the Bay, I enjoyed it more for some reason. Somehow the layout and presentation of information captured my interest better. No tunnels though.

In the reef section

An alligator snapping turtle. This guy was huge. The shells on these
animals can reach almot 3 feet. This specimen was every bit of that.

At a tidal pool display you were allowed to touch the animals -- gently, with one finger -- and like many aquariums they had a pool with skates and rays you could interact with. A couple of the rays would turn sideways along the rock edges and flap their fins against the rock. Not sure what that was about.

Looking at one of the exhibits, and a guest drops in.

We went to the “living roof”, which contains a number of features designed to reduce energy use and provide some illumination and energy to help run the academy. All kinds of plants grow on the roof, and excess rainfall is channeled away from the roof for later use. We finished with the mineral and gem exhibit.

The living roof. It covers 2.5 acres. The sign says the idea was to capture
the concept of picking up the ground and putting a museum underneath. (Photo
by Sharon O'Connor) Scroll to the bottom for more random pictures.

We’d eaten up most of the day and decided to return to the hotel, so I pulled up the bus route. GPS is one of mankind’s great inventions, but like any tool, it’s only as good as the person using it. I misread the map -- mostly because I assumed we need to go back the way we came, and led us out the wrong side of the park -- in the opposite direction of where we should have gone, in fact. Sharon pulled out the map the hotel folks had given us and figured out why we weren’t finding the bus stop and then used it to figure out the best route to take. Once that was accomplished we grabbed an appropriate bus and headed back.

The route took us through Haight-Ashbury, the hippie haunt of the ‘60s, and past Glide Memorial United Methodist Church, which was a flashpoint of the ‘70s in United Methodism with its support of the gay community and other liberal causes, but we only viewed them through the bus window. Our stop was less than a block from the hotel, so no steep climbs today.

Still, we tried to watch some streaming TV -- the WiFi was that good -- but I kept falling asleep during the shows and waking up for the endings. The night before, we’d tried to watch a movie I’d downloaded, and I nodded off frequently through that as well. I’ve gone back and watched some of what I missed, and everything made so much more sense. Go figure.

Only one day left. Right now it doesn’t feel like enough.