San Francisco

The Friday before Mark got married, after everyone flew in and drove in and arrived at the hotel, we decided to go site-seeing in San Francisco, since no one knew when they'd be in the city again. We were going to be spontaneous. Anyone who knows me well knows I'm not very good at spontaneity. Todd loves it. So I threw caution to the wind and took a few deep breaths and told myself, what's the worse that could happen?

The objective: Golden Gate Bridge for some photo ops. Little did we know the fiasco we were about to endure.

The first hurdle: getting over the Bay Bridge. We didn't realize it was a toll bridge till we were stuck in traffic leading up to the toll booths. The toll was $6, and no one in our car had any cash on them. So Whitney, who was in the car behind us, had to maneuver so she could hand us a $20 through her window. Todd held up traffic behind him waiting for Whitney to catch up. The grumpy man behind us in a big truck kept revving his engine like he was going to run us off the road, and let Todd know in no uncertain terms and in some very colorful language, exactly how he felt. I'm not sure if our Arizona license plate helped very much. California doesn't like Arizona very much right now because of the whole immigration debate.

But we made it over the bridge, only to get stuck on traffic on the other side. The traffic! I haven't been in such bad traffic since I can't remember when!

And then Todd got pulled over. No joke. We had to pull off the interstate and into a parking lot with police lights flashing and the cop guiding him to a stop over the megaphone. Very embarrassing! And a little scary, too! Both cops got out of the car with guns drawn as they came up to Todd's window. Todd's offense: Arizona license plate in the back, no license plate in front (which is how they do it in Arizona. You don't get a plate for the front of your car), and dark tinted windows, which are also illegal anywhere else except Arizona. Once the cops looked inside and saw me with the twins in the back seat, they put their guns away. I guess we didn't look very suspicious up close. But man, my heart was pounding! The cops were nice and gave us directions to the Golden Gate Bridge.

After another hour in traffic, we finally made it! It was beautiful, but windy and COLD! Good thing I had our jackets in the trunk. 50 degrees and windy is down-right death for us desert rats.

The picture below is the best we could get as a group. Just kidding. Wouldn't that have been horrible after all the craziness it took to get there?

So now I can say I've been to the Golden Gate Bridge. Been there, done that, never doing it again. It made for some great memories, but some really frayed nerves!