It’s Scooter My original plan was to take some pictures of scooters in San Francisco while there this weekend, but that didn’t happen. There were so many of them and so little time, I didn’t feel like whipping out the camera to take pictures of each one we saw. On Friday, my daughter and I flew out to San Francisco for the Outside Lands music festival at Golden Gate Park. Friday’s nights headlining band was Radiohead. [click here for a gallery of photos] Radiohead put on an excellent two hour show. The band was flawless. However, the sound engineers running the festival were flawed. Seriously flawed. The sound went out twice during their set. For at least 30 seconds each time. Not only that, but whoever planned the schedule was flawed. Multiple bands on multiple stages with 60,000 people packed into an area that was made for maybe 20,000 was extremely poor planning. Regardless, we enjoyed our first time seeing Radiohead live. The show finished at 10pm. All attendees were encouraged to take public transportation. We took BART and MUNI to get there without any trouble. Getting back to the hotel was another story. It took us over four hours to go from Golden Gate Park back to our hotel near the airport. All of the buses were packed. No extra busses. Taxis were at least 4 hours out when we called for pickup. And there were still two more days to this. EPIC FAIL. The next night was no where near the public transportation fiasco. We went to a pre-season Oakland Raiders game. I had been to NFL games before, but this was my daughter’s first. And BART took us right to the McAfee Coliseum, with a walkway leading right to the stadium. They didn’t win [they lost to the Arizona Cardinals 24-0], but it was still fun to mingle with the serious fans. [of which there were a LOT] Our last day, we headed downtown to ride the cable car… … and see Fisherman’s Wharf Then back on the plane to head back to Utah. But wait… what about scooter coverage?… keep reading… After taking my daughter for her first day back to school this morning, I came home and got my scooter. I went to start it and nothing… tried it again… nothing. I had to manually kickstart it. It had only been three days since I last rode it, I didn’t think there would be any issues. But obviously, there was. The battery was pretty much dead. I didn’t have time to charge it [trickle charge takes 12 hours], so after kickstarting it, I hopped on and went to work. Going to lunch, I had to kickstart it again. Same with going home at night. GRRRR!!! Frustrating. According to the manual, it says it needs at least an hour of continuous riding time to fully charge the battery. I’m lucky to be on it 10 minutes going to work and 15 minutes coming home. Do that five days a week and it adds up to well over an hour, just not continuous. Once home from work, I got out the charger tonight and put it on the battery [it only take about five minutes and an extension cord]. So when I get up in the morning, I will take it off the charger and it’s ready to go for another few weeks. That’s All Folks Speaking of ready to go, that’s it for this week. I am working on getting more posting and more often. I lead a busy life, as you have read, but never too busy to post some scooter goodness for my readers. Until next time….Sunday Monday and I just got back from out of town, so this is getting posted a day late. I know… the emptiness of not seeing that Twitter reminder for Scooter Sunday. We’ll be back to Sundays next week.
San Francisco Trip
The Video Screen Montage of Radiohead
At least it wasn’t a VW bug they were trying to fit into
RAIDERS
Black & Silver on the field
Downtown
“Goodbye San Francisco…” *sniff*
Scooter Dead?
Scooter Sunday #19 – The Monday Edition by Banal Leakage, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
You saw Radiohead? Lucky bugger, I’ve been meaning to see them for the longest time. I’ve heard they are really really good live.
Loved the photos of San Francisco. I went there a couple of years back and had an excellent time. Your pic of Fisherman’s Wharf brought back some memories.
My husband’s been to San Fran and all the places you mentioned. He got to go on business and I’m SO jealous! I would love to go to California. Glad you had a good time!
kevin – I had been wanting to see Radiohead for a long time, but they have only been to Utah once. They were very good live. Incredible set… “Karma Police” “Fake Plastic Trees” “Pyramid Song” “Paranoid Android” and most of the IN RAINBOWS album.
It had been over 15 years since the last time I was in SF. I did more exploring this time.
blondeblogger – You must go with him sometime. It’s really a cool city. I’m a big public transportation person (where there’s not 60,000 people going to a concert), so riding MUNI and BART was pretty cool. Plus it’s easy to get around the city. Make sure you have a map handy (they are free from most places)
I’m painfully jealous… I’ve yet to see Radiohead live.
4 hours waiting for transport is ridiculous!
Despite that, it sounds like you had a fabulous time, I always enjoy your photos.
PS. Is it weird that I have a teensy crush on your scooter? It’s just too damn cute! ;o)
Well what did you expect driving your scooter all the way to San Francisco! Sheesh.
dave2 – They are really good live. Next time they tour, you should try to catch them.
penelope – It was so crazy… as you saw from the pic of the packed bus. That picture was taken at around midnight. We just kept walking until we found a place to eat and rest (Island Cafe at Taraval & 19th Street) then seeing an empty bus right as we walked out. And nope… not weird at all.
kapgar – LOL… I’m telling you, I wished we would have had the scooter. It could have shaved off 2 hours of us walking. There were enough people on scooters riding past the throngs of us walkers.
I haven’t been to San Francisco in forever. I miss that place. Great destination city. Especially when Radiohead is in the mix.
Four hours? That’s crazy. I got stuck at the SF Airport once for eight hours so I took the BART into town, I was able to see a ton of stuff and make it back with an hour to spare. I love good public transportation. Seattle, get on the ball already.
Sounds like a great trip if you don’t count the transportation issues. I don’t think I have ever ben to San Francisco. My husband goes there all the time for work…maybe I should tag along sometime.
I really wanna see Radiohead too. Someday…
Poor scooter! He just needs to be ridden hard! Hee hee.
nilsa – It is a great city to visit. Makes me want to go back sooner than later. And of course, for Radiohead.
brandon – BART was the best part of the whole thing. They were actually very prepared for the masses, even running a train almost 2 hours past their normal stop time. It was the MUNI buses that failed. They should have had tons of extra buses out there running every 5 minutes for the first two hours.
tori – Fortunately, I think the issues were related to the tens of thousands of concert goers in one place. I didn’t hear how the other two days went because we stayed away from the Golden Gate Park area the rest of the time.
winter – You will like them. They just did two nights at Hollywood Bowl there in L.A. I know tix were not cheap (scalpers had some going for $3,000 per ticket). Ouch!
Yeah, I need to do at least one hour long ride a week to keep the battery going. Not looking forward to winter time when I have to charge the battery once a month. At least I can do that indoors.
Gah – waits like that are the WORST.
I love SF. I lived there one year during the summer and again in a later year for the winter, had a lot of fun both times. As a Seattleite, it’s where I’d go to escape for a long weekend from time to time, sort of a hometown away from hometown. I haven’t done that since living here in L.A., opting to go home to Seattle whenever I have plane fare. I know I’ll visit again sometime though.
catherine – SF and Seattle are great cities that sit right off the ocean that have a big feel, but yet comfortable enough to get around. It’s been almost 20 years since the last time I was in Seattle (at least if I remember the last time I was there). I would like to go back soon.
Oh my gosh. I can’t believe the sound went out twice! That is ridiculous! You would think the people would know what they are doing – it’s not like it was some local nobody band!
I would love to visit San Francisco someday… I’ll just avoid public transportation the weekend of the music festival!
I first saw Radiohead live in 1997 and have been blessed enough to see them twice more since. Just mind blowingly good!
I remember going to a Foo Fighters set at Leeds Festival and the organisers cut the sound because they overran. Dave et al continued to play without speakers for a further 20minutes. I was lucky enough to be near enough to the front to be able to hear the ‘protest’.
kilax – They hired a sound company to come in and manage it all, which obviously, wasn’t doing the best of jobs.
I’ve determined the best time to go to SF is when there’s not a big event going on at night. LOL
bec – So you know the awesomeness that is Radiohead live… multiple times. I would like to see them live again someday. Incredible.
I could see Dave Grohl staging a protest about it. Of course, it’s the conversation he and their manager had with the venue afterwards that I wouldn’t mind hearing!!