Valerie Goes to Jail

You may have already heard that Paris Hilton was sent back to jail this week after being sent home by the sheriff in Los Angeles.    What is less known, is that Valerie and I both went to a much tougher jail in San Francisco.  And we weren't escorted there either.  We had to pay for a boat to take us there.

You can see by the photo of Valerie behind bars, just how unhappy she is to be incarcerated in this manner.  But do you see paparazzi following us and campaigns underway to free us from jail?  No way.

We were in San Francisco for the annual "Internet Retailer" convention in San Jose, California.  We decided to get there one day early to take in the sites and sounds of San Francisco and we're glad we did.  Last time I was in this city, I heard about an outfit called GoCars.    Go Car is a three wheeled 50cc scooter that features GPS navigation for a self guided tour of the city.  Sounds fun right?  Well, I wouldn't recommend it for everyone.

Go Car had a three hour tour plus Alcatraz special on their website and that sounded perfect for us.  So I scheduled the Alcatraz tour for 11:00 on Monday.  Since we were jet lagged, we got up early on Monday and visited the San Francisco aquarium in the morning before our Alcatraz trip.  We very much enjoyed this aquarium.  It is the perfect size for a brief visit and had a lot of great exhibits.

Afterwards, we made our way down to Pier 39 to take the boat over to Alcatraz.  When we got there, I was surprised to learn that the island is as much about the native plants and birds that inhabit it as it is about the jail.  Only about 1,600 people were ever confined there.  After the maximum security penitentiary was abandoned, some American Indians took over the island for about 19 months in the 1960s.

Some of the plants and birds are really interesting.  So if you ever get a chance, I'd recommend a visit to Alcatraz.

Afterwards, we had lunch then went to pick up our gocar.  Right off the bat, I knew things weren't going to go well when we arrived and our car wasn't ready.  It reminded me of the Seinfeld scene were Jerry had reserved a car but they were sold out by the time he got there.  "The most important part of the reservation is to have the car available."  In any case, we had to wait about 20 minutes for a car to come in before we could begin our "voice guided" tour.

There are two things I'd like to point out about go car.  First of all, it is by no means a car.  It is, in reality, a really weak, uncomfortable three wheeled scooter.  Secondly, the navigation is pretty bad and has no screen map which you'd expect on most navigation systems.

They gave us orientation on the vehicle and sent us on our way.  I think the fact that they make you wear a helmet and the obvious damage to the vehicle should have been our clue to run the other way as fast as possible.  However, we were in an adventurous mood and we used to own a two wheeled scooter and what the heck.  Let's try it.  So off we went.

The voice navigation started at the bottom of the hill and we were on our way.  Almost immediately, we became aware of the vehicle's limitations after we approached our first hill.  If you have children, you may be familiar with the little train that could.  Well that was us on each and every hill.  "I think I can, I think I can" our little car repeated to itself with each push up the hill.  At times, it would have been much faster to simply get out of the car and walk up the hill but we paid for this  thing and I didn't care how many people were behind us honking their horns and getting annoyed.  I'm positive that the good citizens of San Francisco must really hate gocar.  These little yellow vehicles crawling up the hills must drive them crazy.

Even with the very latest GPS technology available to us, it didn't take us very long to get lost.  You have to figure if anyone in the world could get lost using a GPS, it would have to be me.  I'm the biggest fan of the technology in the world.  I've owned at least 7 unites in the last 10 years and absolutely love the things.  But in my opinion, their GPS is a total piece of junk.   As we were in the middle of one of the first intersections, the voice navigation said "Right turn".  Of course, I was halfway through the intersection and couldn't suddenly change course without capsizing this little tricycle in the middle of the busy street so I went straight ahead.

Now, I figured that our little voice navigator would see that we were off course and suggest a new course back to the route.  I was naive.  This voice navigation GPS has a very special feature when you get off the route.  It simply does nothing.  That's right.  If you go off course, it won't guide you back to your route.  Suddenly, we figured out why they gave us the laminated map at the beginning of the tour.  So we went back to navigating the old fashion way by reading street signs and asking for directions.  Can you believe it?

The map they gave us was pretty cryptic.  It had dotted red and blue lines going in loops at certain places and contradictory arrows at other points along the route.  So we did our best to get back on one of the routes and expected the voice navigation to begin again.  No luck.  After pondering the problem, I turned the cart around and suddenly our voice came back.  So we were back on track.

The rest of the tour was pretty uneventful except for the fact that Valerie was freezing.  I'm sure you've heard the expression "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."  Well it's true.  It averaged about 65 degrees as a high during the day and poor Valerie was simply under dressed for this cold and windy adventure.  So we headed back in and turned in our gocar.

The rest of the week, we spent in San Jose for the conference.