Musee Mechanique

"People talk about bad losers, but you're worse. You're a bad winner."
"I'm not gloating. I just think the score speaks for itself." Chris corrected, helpfully.
It was 10:3, and not in my favour.
We were both so busy not-gloating and not-sulking that we left the black and white photo strip lying on the edge of the table football table. This scenario has apparently played itself out so many times - over Foosball, over Pac-man, over the one-armed bandit - that the museum has issued a book of these abandoned photo strips that you can buy for $20 from a vending machine by the door, which only took $5 bills.

Our library-loaned Fodor's guide had pointed out Musee Mechanique as the only must-do attraction amongst the clam chowder stalls and tourist hoards of Fisherman's Wharf. And it was easy to see the appeal... In amongst the retro shoot-em-ups and the Amstrad games were PG-rated peep shows, mechanical batting games and the monstrous Laughing Sal, whose maniacal cries had been drowning out conversations and making babies cry for a hundred years or more. In keeping with the vintage theme, most everything cost 25 cents to play. Clutching in my hot little hand a whole tower of quarters I got to wander the vast warehouse space, looking for where I could get the most bang for my buck, like a kid in a penny shop weighing white mice against space invaders in terms of value, sugar-rush and tongue-feel.

The football grudge match used up the last of our quarters - to the extent that we had to beg the bus driver to let us ride back to our hostel when we found only a couple of sorry singles lining our collective coffers. It was as we were paying our leave to Laughing Sal we remembered the photo strip.
"Glad we didn't forget these."
"They're not bad are they?" I said, "Except this one I mean..."
"Yeah you like like..." Chris trailed off.
"What?" I asked, frowning at my reflection in the square.
"I was going to say, you look like a loser, but that would be acting like a bad winner, wouldn't it?"
I snatched the photo strip back and tucked it away in the Fodor's, letting old Sal have the last laugh.

Blazing Saddles

Whatever the man in the cycle shop tells you, the Bay Area, just wide of the Golden Gate Bridge, is not "just like the South of France". It's especially not like the South of France on a dark and blustery Sunday, which feels even more frigid thanks to the warm, sunny-natured days that proceeded it. Not, in any case, unless the South of France has been covered with strip malls since the last time I visited.

"Just to let you know, I'm definitely walking up this last hill." I muttered, as the unnervingly hyper staff of Blazing Saddles cheered on an anguished looking biker as they grunted up the sharp incline to the store. We were being fitted for helmets.
"Then they won't clap for you."
"I don't want them to clap. In fact I'll warn them in advance not to clap."
Chris shrugged. You could tell that if I was going to get off and push, I should plan on doing it alone.

We started off in San Francisco, where a vicious headwind meant the flat, scenic bike path along the Marina felt like it'd been tilted uphill. By the time we were actually pedalling up the steep path to the bridge, my hill-addled legs were ready to mutiny.
"Sorry. We're cheating!" ho-hoed a couple who whizzed past us on electric bikes. Despite the evil glares of more than a dozen panting, unelectrified cyclists they singularly failed to fall off or run out of juice.

Cycling the bridge itself, watching the fog roll over the Marin headland and seeing the tops of pelicans plunge-diving for fish, was worth the climb - mainly because we knew we were taking the ferry back. In the end we had to sprint up the side of a dual carriageway to Tiburon to catch the boat at the last possible moment. Drinking sweet rose up on the top deck we ignored two venture capitalists verbally marauding South America and watched the sealions playing in the ship's wake.
"What is that, a porpoise?" Venture Capitalist 1, asked, jabbing a plump finger, but his friend was busy launching a mental raid on Brazil.

Back in San Francisco I found myself, against better judgement, sweating up Hyde street to Blazing Saddles HQ. Despite all my posturing, they clapped, I smiled, and I didn't even set them right about Sausalito and the South of France.