 We
arrived in San Francisco after a fairly difficult week at work. We went across the bay to
Berkeley to check out a couple of brew pubs and clear our minds. First stop was Bison,
known for their experimental beer styles. Pictured are: Toasted Oat Molasses Brown Ale,
Lemongrass Wheat Ale, Honey Basil Ale, Gingerbread Ale, Pecan Smoked Scotch Ale, and
Pumpernickel Ale. We also had Coriander Rye on draft. I've cropped out the people as a
courtesy. ;-)We stopped at Triple Rock in Berkley. I
had a Bug Juice Ale. We took the BART back to SF. At the last stop before the tunnel the
driver announced, "There will be a delay due to a power problem in the trans-bay
tube." Hmm.
 This is the San Francisco
Museum Of Modern Art, SFMOMA. This was between our hotel and the conference center. This
was taken Monday at lunch. One of the few days we were not getting El Niņo driven rain.
 We didn't have much time to
see the sites until Saturday. Here we are at the Golden Gate Bridge. A storm was rolling
in and in a few minutes we took shelter in Ft Point. The Civil War Era fort under the
bridge was built in 1861. The fort is visible just to the left of us.
 The bridge was built in the
1930's. I told the cabby I wanted to go to Fort Point. He spoke little English and
didn't seem to know about the fort. I told him it was near the bridge and he dropped us
off at the top of the bridge.
 This actually turned out to
give us a nice hike from the road level down to the water level. We found a field of Calla
Lilies. There were also banana slugs. Icky large yellow slug. Cool.
 By the time we reached the
water level it was raining and the surf was rough. There were three people surfing under
the bridge. This didn't look very safe to me. The view from the top of the fort was cool
even though the winds threatened to blow us off!
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 We
caught a cab back up at the street level after the storm. This cabby had just gotten a hot
dog with more mustard than it could physically hold. I asked him to take us to the Marina
district so we could find some lunch. This guy takes off dumping his coke, which I ended
up holding for him. He then proceeded to take out a lane marker, one of those three foot
tall yellow plastic pipes. Yikes! We had a great lunch at The Grove, California Cuisine. The
Marina District is very cool and probably very expensive. We walked over to The Palace Of
Fine Arts. These faux ruins were built for the World's Fair in 1915.
 As luck would have it, Saturday night was
the Chinese New Year Parade. It's the year of the tiger and the post office passed out
stamp pins. The parade started at 6pm and ran until about 9pm. It was cold and rainy,
which cut attendance a great deal.
 This dragon was on a firetruck that led the parade. Also on the truck were a
number of firemen with drums and cymbals. Think bright colors and loud noises.
 There were several of these
tall men roaming the streets. Firecrackers were repeatedly set off at their feet. There
were also the signature dragons some of which were about 200 feet long.
 These dragons zig-zagged down
the street carried by dozens of men. Many were also lighted, which means a generator was
in tow as well.
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