7 - What a ride

#7: Ride a cable car in San Francisco

While I understand that riding a cable car for the first time can be an exhilarating experience, I don't think it calls for constant screeching, giggling, hollering and uncontrollable flapping of the arms. On a ride from Nob Hill to Union Square (which is downhill the whole way), I was one of the standees on the inside track - meaning, when another cable car passed by, you sucked it in and hoped that the oncoming standees were doing the same.

On this particular ride I was second from the front, and beside me was an extremely over zealous, screechy arm flapper. This girl was white knuckling the handrail with one arm and waving at people, animals, trees, and storefronts with the other arm....all the white emitting a constant stream of high-pitched giggles, squeals and of course, "ohhh...ohhhh...OHHHHH, WOOOOOOOO!! Heee hee heeeee....WOOOOO...heee heee hee." It was hard to enjoy the breeze ruffling my shirtsleeves and whipping through my hair when this girl (and when I say girl I mean roughly 25 years old) was 5 seconds away from a self-induced hyper-excitement seizure. I kept thinking to myself, "how do I tell her kindly to shut her pie hole? Would people think I was rude if I held her flapping arm down and tied it to the handrail? Doesn't she know the whole Kate & Leo Titanic thing is only funny at the front of a boat? Did she just wave at a mailbox?" When all of a sudden, like the universe was doing me (and everyone else on that cable car) a favour.....SLAP!!!! Someone in an oncoming cable car reached their arm out and slapped little miss screechy across the face. It happened so fast but it my mind I could almost see it coming in slow motion. Screechy was hanging her body out and flapping her arms in the wind, she was doing one of her crescendo oooh's when someone in the oncoming cable car outstretched their arm, cocked their wrist, and intentionally or not, slapped screechy right in the middle of her cheek. SMACK! The cracking noise of palm to soft cheek silenced her only momentarily, and then it was a whole new kind of screeching, but a quiet, indignant screeching. She wasn't really hurt, so I didn't feel bad laughing. I still turned my face away so that she couldn't see that I was having a pretty good giggle over this, and I noticed that all of the people sitting down were doing the same thing. We laaaaaughed and we laaaaaughed!

It was certainly the most eventful of all my cable car rides while in San Francisco. Although we walked most places, I managed to get a few good rides in. Below is a picture of a cable car down at Fisherman's Wharf.