Finished another trip to The Scoliosis Care Center a week ago. Instead of a 5 day intensive treatment, my son only has to do 3. I’m getting the feeling we’re are on the down hill side of this battle with scoliosis. Surgery was never an option. Praying that we can start weening him out of his brace but he. Weds to stop growing first. This kid of mine has grown 3-1/2 inches in a year. Crazy!!
Due to flight costs we had to come down a day earlier than I had planned. The tickets were double if we tried to leave on Sunday. Even though I would be paying an extra day for a rental car and hotel, it still didn’t come close to adding up to the plane tickets if we flew on Saturday. This gave us a whole day full of nothing… So I figured it was a good time to let my son experience the big city. Where we Live the whole county has approximately 62,000 people… so yeah, we are small town folks. Lol. I figured we would take the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) from West Oakland under the San Francisco Bay through the 3.6 mile Transbay Tube into San Francisco.
My boy has never been to a big city like San Francisco. So what a great opportunity to show him what the big city is like. Traffic and trash everywhere, homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks, ran down RVs covered in spray paint and tarps, porta-potties setup at random places to keep people from shitting on the sidewalks… definitely a culture shock for him. I knew what to expect. Lol.
We battled traffic from San Jose to the West Oakland BART station. I hadn’t ridden BART since 2005 after doing testing to work for Pacific Gas and Electric. It’s funny how we ended up taking the same route into San Francisco as I did back then. It brought back memories…
Under the San Francisco Bay we go…
As we came up the stairs, because the escalator was broke, I was expecting a ton of people, horns honking and taxis everywhere. Like back in 2005. It was a Sunday 75F, blue skies, absolutely beautiful day. Where is everyone?? I could have drove my own car all around downtown San Francisco no problem… weird. It was totally different than when I was there last. 180 degrees different.
We didn’t have any sort of plan. We were just gonna take walk around for a couple hours, check things out and grab a bite to eat for lunch. I was thinking about hitting up Alcatraz but figured I would wait for the whole family to be here for that.
After waking a couple blocks to the east we arrived at The Port of San Francisco. You can see out into the San Francisco Bay and get a good look at the amazing architecture of San Francisco.
There must have been something goin on earlier. Workers were busy taking down a bunch of pop-up canopies. Other than that there was some traffic on the San Francisco Bay Trail road along with some scattered out homeless Groups. A guy smacking meth right in the open 200 feet from a cop, drugged out people yelling at each other… other than that pretty normal.
We walked to 3 different restaurants in an attempt to get something eat. They were all closed down with For Lease signs in the windows. There were an amazing amount of street level places with For Lease sings in their windows. It wasn’t at all like that in 2005. So we just kept walking and looking up restaurants on my phone trying to decide what to eat.
Then we came across this little gem…
Ziggy’s Burgers
I’m glad they had more than just burgers because we had them the night before at the house. I decided on their Ziggy’s Philly Cheese Steak and @w-splatts chose fish and chips.
This jalapeños added just the right kick…
TASTY
Stepping foot outside of Ziggy’s I couldn’t help but look up. I. Aught myself doing that quite often. Lol
So we took off wondering the streets of San Francisco a little more. If was pretty fun to be able answer the questions he was asking. One I remember was about the Electric Trollies.
“That’s how they are powered. They are electric. Those poles have a sort of spring on them that keeps pressure on the overhead electric cables”
”That’s Weird!”
I could tell he really wasn’t feeling it. Kids these days I swear. Lol He did say that it was pretty cool to see all the massive buildings and be able to ride the BART under the bay. He was taking pictures and sending them to his friends and stuff, so I think he had a good time.
I asked if he wanted to go out and check out the San Francisco Bay, but he asked if we could go. Small town kid doesn’t care for the big city too much. Lol. Plus he doesn’t like walking long distances in his scoliosis so he wasn’t wearing it at the time.
Down the stairs we went to catch the BART back to the West Oakland Station. We only had to wait like 5 minutes and we were on board.
Hopefully the whole family will be able to come next time and I will have a better plan on what to do and where to go. Alcatraz is definitely on the list. I remember going there when I was a little kid.
Time to relax at the hotel and get some good sleep. This kid has some serious work to put in for the next few days at the Scoliosis Care Center
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whoa.. some good growth there!
Ziggy's looks awesome.
and those buildings are cool too..
He needs to stop that growing stuff. LOL.
I wish we could have wondered around a little more but maybe next time.
I hope it's all going as planned
His curves are holding at 7 and 3 degrees. We just gotta keep on keepin' on. The brace is what helps the ligaments and tissues to hold everything in place. Plus building the muscles. He just need to quit growing. He is almost as tall as me. Lol
@tipu curate 4
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I took my two sons to San Francisco when they were 3 and 5. That's been nearly 25 years. Even then, homeless were on the streets. But, not everywhere. We were from a small town also, so as we walked to McDonald's I gave everyone we met some change. It wasn't long until I had run out of change. I can't imagine what it is like now. I see some things on the internet and you pretty much confirmed what I expected. Anyway, the memories you make with your son will last a lifetime. It might be hard to judge now, but when he is older, he will bring up this day and have some good stories. Thanks for sharing and I wish the best for you and your family.
It’s pretty sad to see these beautiful cities on this downward spiral. I’ll stick to my southeast corner of Washington. Lol.
Even though we didn’t do anything exciting, I am sure like you said, he will remember it.
Thanks for stopping by.
YUM, I need a cheese steak like that immediately! Congratulations on another successful exercise learning excursion... learning how to workout. A skill he will cary with him for the rest of his life. Some people don't know about workout routines and reps and ect...