12/02/08

San Francisco is what we have always termed our turning point, and we have spent 3 nights here. However getting here was not without its problems. We set off earlier than usual and at 11am we were quite happily driving along when a cacophony of clattering came from under the bonnet, instant diagnosis was that the accessory belt had snapped, luckily that was not the case, it was in fact starting to strip.
We were 16 miles from civilisation so I cut off the offending thrashing tail and continued on our way, a mile onward and the noise returned, so I cut off another tail. The noise returned once more, but it managed to strip the remaining half belt off onto the road, and with half a belt hanging on in there we limped into Half Moon Bay.
Found a NAPA parts place, and as luck would have it, a guy called Roland to fit the new one when he had eaten a late lunch. That is now guaranteed for life against breakage, great, we need another 3½ months, so I reckon it will do. 30 miles to SF along route one, through what is known as Devils Slide, quite an exciting switchback but not as bad as the one we had already been through leaving Los Angeles.
Then things seem to go wrong, we must have missed a turn. We had booked a place near the airport out of town, and expected to see signs to the airport. Not on your nelly, we found ourselves in rush hour traffic with the piers on our right, we needed to be going the opposite way and did not manage to turn around until pier 38, anyway we got here, quite hair raising really, with traffic bumper to bumper and no one giving way to allow a lane change.