by Patrick Boniface

Created on: September 20, 2008   Last Updated: December 04, 2008

It's corny and obvious I know, but my lasting memory of San Francisco is the sun beating down on a hot October day looking out across the Bay from fisherman's wharf at Alcatraz and hearing Otis Reading in my head. I was content and happy. The end of my vacation had been much better than the start, flying in from Gatwick on a Virgin flight to Los Angeles on my first holiday alone, what did I expect on a road trip across California? What characters would I encounter? Would I survive?

The flight proved to be uneventful and with a thump and the ear piercing screech of reverse thrust we were on the ground at LAX. In those days immigration was a breeze and I was into the Good Ol' US of A.

Next day I picked up my hire car and after some confusion found I was driving the wrong one out of the hire firm's gates. An angry guard ordered me back inside and noted the mistake to me in uncertain and frankly unpleasant way. Day one of the holiday and already I was in trouble. I Exchanged the hire car for the right one and hit the roads of Los Angeles. What a wake up call for someone more used to driving small cars on small roads in the United Kingdom and I was driving on the right hand side of the road too. After a few false turns I got on the interstate heading south to San Diego.

Only when I got to San Diego did I discover that I had left my airline tickets and passport back in the other car in LA. Disaster! Panic, every emotion in the book flooded my brain. How was I going to get back home. Some calls put me in touch with the embassy in San Francisco and they promised to sort it out for me when I arrived there in a weeks time.

Meanwhile, their advice, chill out relax, enjoy San Diego. It was in the most southerly city in the US that I encountered my first 'character' of the trip and what a character. I stayed at the cheap end of cheap motels, the kind where the cockroaches keep you company if you're lonely and Norman Bates sits behind the reception welcome sign. If the cockroaches are busy the local hookers will invariably make house calls to see if 'your settling in'. The one who knocked on my door was, pug ugly but had a way with words. "You're hairy, I am horny how about it?"

No I didn't.

After a few nights in San Diego I headed north through the desert heading to San Francisco and my replacement travel documents. Three nights of pounding the road and eating in Denny's with their never ending supply of Cola and waffles I arrived.

San Francisco would, I discovered be the place

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