Planes, trains and automobiles

PLANES

The girls and I flew to San Francisco to visit my sister Shonda last week. The plane from Albuquerque to Salt Lake City was a small one, three seats across with an aisle in the middle. So Isobel and Eva both got a window seat, and Eva even got the aisle as a buffer between her and me. Both of them wanted that buffer, but Isobel is in a very unselfish phase.

Before we took off, Eva noticed something.

"Dad. We're in a jet! This is a jet!"

"How can you tell?"

"Because the wings stick up. See?"

It was a jet, an ExpressJet.

Eva kept looking out the window, then looking over at me with wide eyes, a little shiver of excitement and a small smile.

While we were on the plane, Isobel drew an airplane and wrote me this note:

"Dad. Thanks for taking us on this trip. The airplane is so fun!"

TRAINS

We were eating in Chinatown the night we arrived and Isobel asked Shonda, "What did I say that was cute when I was little?"

Shonda remembered sitting downstairs in her mom's house in Hyrum, during a summer between BYU accounting classes, trying to work on the Scenic Canyons books, and hearing Isobel chant from the top of the stairs, "shon...DA, shon...DA, shon...DA."

"And then you would come down and say, 'Shonda, you don't really need to work today, do you?' And I would say, 'No, I guess not; I can take a break.' "

At 7:45 a.m. the next day, we were all on the BART, Shonda's commuter train. She was headed to work. The two small girls and I were off for a fun-filled day on the buses, trains and light rail of San Francisco.

As we neared Shonda's stop, Isobel said, "I wish I was little so I could say, 'Shonda, you don't really need to work today, do you?' "

AUTOMOBILES

4 p.m.

We had seen Golden Gate Park, with plants from all over the world, and turtles in a pond, and millions of roses;


(these are called Betty Boop roses)








and the Golden Gate Bridge, walking halfway across while a guy surfed the bay below and a sea lion popped up every now and again;













and the Exploratorium, with endless exhibits featuring big magnets and little tornados and floating beach balls and meditation chambers;

















and were now headed to the sea lions at Pier 39. I got a bit turned around and we did a little extra walking before finding the bus stop we needed. In the meantime, we'd gone through all of our snacks and lunch was long gone.

We were tired. Luckily, we passed a grocery store with fresh strawberries out front. I paid a buck-fifty, found the bus stop and the girls chowed down. I gave them a bit of distance, until I noticed a funky looking little woman eyeing them, then walked back toward them.

"Are those your little girls?"

Oh boy.
"It is really dangerous to let them eat those strawberries without washing them. And you should know that. I know it's hard to say 'no' - and maybe it's not my place -but that is really dangerous."

Then she said, "Uh oh. It looks like I made your daddy mad."

And Eva, who has seen me do a lot more than glare silently, said, "No. He's fine."

So I snatched the strawberries away (to protests) and we walked back to the grocery store to have them fill our empty water bottle. Then I walked back to the bus stop, sprinkled a little water over the strawberries and handed them back to the girls.

The woman said, "Oh good, now you can have a feast," and Eva promptly dropped the basket and spilled the strawberries all over the dirty, oily sidewalk. So I sprinkled the strawberries one more time and handed them back to the girls. The woman walked away and never looked at us again.

EPILOGUE

(This is Eva, just before I got scolded again, this time for letting her climb the fence.)

Public transportation was free that day, the one day of the year, on the one day in our lives we had to visit downtown San Francisco. I'm pretty cheap, so I was excited about it at first. But so was everybody else. The line was this long for the light rail, I swear - one train had already filled up and left us there, and another had zoomed right by without even stopping, and we had been waiting for almost an hour - by the time this guy started prancing up and down in front of everyone shouting, "LIMO. BART stations, downtown hotels, MARKET STREET. $5 per person. LIMO RIDE. BART stations ... "

Unfortunately, I'd burned through the last of our cash at dinner, and on horsie rides and other gizmos at the Musee Mechanique, and I'm sure this guy didn't take credit cards. So I watched 15 other people pile in -- including three on the front seat with the driver -- and drive away. It was 9:45 p.m. (that's 10:45 p.m. in Santa Fe), Isobel was sagging on a bench, and even Eva was starting to slow down.

Those two were incredible that day, though, I'll tell you what. They were pretty pleasant all day, even at the end. And a train eventually did come. I sharpened my elbows and got us all on. We started the 45 minute BART ride to Concord between 10:30 and 11 p.m. If you're counting, that's 16 hours of public transport; the girls snuggled in and spent the last 44 minutes just like this: