San Francisco Journal, Entry #2: "The Coldest Winter I Ever Spent Was a Summer in San Francisco"

[tartysuz]

Ray in the Alcatraz recreation yard: bleak



Before I left Edmonton, my friends in San Francisco warned me against expecting to be in sunny California. Unusually, the skies were clear for pretty much all 11 days we were there. However, it did indeed get very cold, so cold that when we got back to Edmonton, where it was 20 C, Ray and I almost fainted of heat shock walking home from Safeway.

In the weeks leading up to our trip, temperatures in Edmonton and San Francisco were about the same, 17 to 20 C, so I packed what I was wearing back home. At the last minute, I threw in a couple of hot weather items because I was sweltering in Edmonton as I was running around doing the last errands before our flight out. The addition was unnecessary. In San Francisco, temperatures were 67 to 68 F almost every day, but the wind from the Pacific could be frigid. Ray and I hadn't actually been that cold in Edmonton for weeks.

During our visit, a number of our friends noted a Mark Twain quote: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." Snopes.com says that this is not actually a Mark Twain quote.

No matter who said it, I was convinced of its truth when we visited Alcatraz. After we finished the audio tour, we went to the prison recreation yard to take photos. "Recreation" would have been card games and whatever exercise you could manage without freezing your nuts off. The wind was so strong, I struggled to walk across the yard without being knocked over. The yard is enclosed on four sides, but without a roof, so wind that doesn't blow clear across swirls around in there, circulating icy Pacific air. A lot of our fellow tourists peeked into the yard, but thought better of actually coming out into it.


Me in the Sonoma Valley: channelling Lily Tomlin

The only hot day we experienced was during our bus trip to the Muir Woods and Sonoma Valley. The Sonoma Valley is north of San Francisco and quite a bit inland. Its temperatures are routinely higher, and there's none of that Pacific air. We were there on a glorious day and strolled along the vineyards sunning ourselves silly, loving the heat (well, I did).

Although we were in the San Francisco for 11 days, we never felt like we were stuck in place. My friend Brian, who is from Edmonton, says he's still amazed by the Bay area's many microclimates. He's lived here for many years, currently quite a bit inland, where temperatures routinely run 20 F higher than in San Francisco. Thanks to driving tours by Brian, Rachel, Atsushi and Johnson, as well as the Muir Woods and Sonoma Valley tour, we saw a wide spectrum of weather, topography and flora. It was like touching down on different worlds.