The City on the Bay

Well, in a total break with tradition, after we met our fellow travellers last night (they seem  to be  a great bunch) we fully expected to be heading to the airport after dinner for 13 or 14 hours of hell on board a plane to somewhere in Asia. Instead we spent a wonderful sunny day running around San Francisco.  We  were handed our scavenge books at about 9 a.m. (a pleasantly civilized hour) and a half hour later we were on our way.  We started by plotting a route that began in Chinatown where we found our horoscope signs in Chinese.  We learned that "Du Pon Gai" means Grant Street and that St. Mary's Square has a statue of Sun Yat-Sen.  We found a "lonely meter" off the Filbert street steps.  It's a parking meter that does not have a parking space attached to it - there's a park bench instead. Not sure if you're supposed to feed the meter while resting after the steep climb up to the Coit Tower! We visited Washington Square (which is not a square at all but a trapezoid), checked out some haunts of the beat poets, and were back at our hotel by 5 p.m. to hand in our score sheets and to find out that we are flying to Taipei at about 1 a.m.Sunday morning.  We have 10 teams this year.  Besides Team MadDog, there is a team of sisters (Katrina and Fiona)  from Sidney, Australia, and a couple of  teams from New Zealand,  as well as a single traveller also from N.Z.  who has been paired up with a fellow from New Orleans.  There's a couple from Wyoming and a father and son team from California.  Then of course there is the Littlepage-Booth contingent:  Rainey and Zoe (the reigning champs) along with David and Natasha who are repeating and Rainey's daughter  Emily with her guy Angel.